# AhaSend vs Amazon SES

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/ahasend-vs-amazon-ses/

Every value below is read from AhaSend's and Amazon SES's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | AhaSend | Amazon SES |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $10/month for Pro; Max is $80/month. | No monthly plan — SES bills per email. Ten thousand emails, the tier Postmark and Mailgun both price at, costs $1.00 at the published $0.10 per 1,000. Our arithmetic on Amazon's rate, not a price Amazon quotes, and attachments add $0.12 per GB. |
| Pricing model | Volume plans on EU multi-region infrastructure, with retention as a plan axis rather than a fixed policy — every tier states a range, and the floor is zero on the paid plans. | Pure usage billing with no monthly minimum: $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails plus $0.12 per GB of attachments, with dedicated IPs, deliverability tooling and address validation each metered separately on top. |
| Emails included | 25,000 a month on Pro and 100,000 on Max. The free plan allows 1,000. | None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one. |
| Dedicated IP | Limited | Supported |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- AhaSend: $10/month for Pro; Max is $80/month. ([source](https://ahasend.com/pricing))
- Amazon SES: No monthly plan — SES bills per email. Ten thousand emails, the tier Postmark and Mailgun both price at, costs $1.00 at the published $0.10 per 1,000. Our arithmetic on Amazon's rate, not a price Amazon quotes, and attachments add $0.12 per GB. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/))

### Pricing model

- AhaSend: Volume plans on EU multi-region infrastructure, with retention as a plan axis rather than a fixed policy — every tier states a range, and the floor is zero on the paid plans. ([source](https://ahasend.com/pricing))
- Amazon SES: Pure usage billing with no monthly minimum: $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails plus $0.12 per GB of attachments, with dedicated IPs, deliverability tooling and address validation each metered separately on top. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/))

### Emails included

- AhaSend: 25,000 a month on Pro and 100,000 on Max. The free plan allows 1,000. ([source](https://ahasend.com/pricing))
- Amazon SES: None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/))

### Dedicated IP

- AhaSend: Limited ([source](https://ahasend.com/pricing))
- Amazon SES: Supported ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick AhaSend if EU-resident sending where you want to choose how long message data is kept — retention is a setting with a floor of zero on paid plans, not a policy you inherit.

Pick Amazon SES if High volume where the per-1,000 rate dominates everything else — at $0.10 per 1,000 it is roughly a twentieth of what the managed services charge in overage.

Consider something else: AhaSend — The published table stops at 100,000 emails and does not state a per-thousand overage rate, so what happens past the plan ceiling is not documented.

Consider something else: Amazon SES — There is no included allowance, no log retention on the pricing page, and deliverability tooling that the others bundle is metered separately here.

## Documented by only one

- Price per 1,000 over: Amazon SES: $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails, charged per recipient. Mail Manager tiers run $0.16 to $0.23 per 1,000 depending on feature set, and a multi-region endpoint adds $0.03 per 1,000.
- Log retention: AhaSend: Configurable rather than fixed: 1 to 7 days on the free plan, 0 to 14 on Pro and 0 to 30 on Max. The lower bound of zero means retention can be turned off entirely.
- SOC 2: Amazon SES: Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
- ISO 27001: Amazon SES: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
- HIPAA: Amazon SES: Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
- GDPR / data residency: Amazon SES: AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
- PCI DSS: Amazon SES: Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: AhaSend or Amazon SES?**

AhaSend: $10/month for Pro; Max is $80/month.
Amazon SES: No monthly plan — SES bills per email. Ten thousand emails, the tier Postmark and Mailgun both price at, costs $1.00 at the published $0.10 per 1,000. Our arithmetic on Amazon's rate, not a price Amazon quotes, and attachments add $0.12 per GB.

**Should I choose AhaSend or Amazon SES?**

Pick AhaSend if EU-resident sending where you want to choose how long message data is kept — retention is a setting with a floor of zero on paid plans, not a policy you inherit.
Pick Amazon SES if High volume where the per-1,000 rate dominates everything else — at $0.10 per 1,000 it is roughly a twentieth of what the managed services charge in overage.