# Amazon SES vs MailerSend

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

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Amazon SES | MailerSend |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | 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. | $31.50/month for Starter, billed $378 a year. Professional is $99/month, billed $1,188. |
| Pricing model | 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. | Volume plans quoted in USD, EUR or GBP, with SMS metered separately from email and a 500,000 daily API request ceiling on Professional. Annual billing is twelve months at a discount rather than ten. |
| Emails included | None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one. | 50,000 a month on both Starter and Professional — the plans differ on features and SMS allowance rather than email volume. |
| Price per 1,000 over | $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. | $1.30 per 1,000 emails on both Starter and Professional. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- 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/))
- MailerSend: $31.50/month for Starter, billed $378 a year. Professional is $99/month, billed $1,188. ([source](https://www.mailersend.com/pricing))

### Pricing model

- 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/))
- MailerSend: Volume plans quoted in USD, EUR or GBP, with SMS metered separately from email and a 500,000 daily API request ceiling on Professional. Annual billing is twelve months at a discount rather than ten. ([source](https://www.mailersend.com/pricing))

### Emails included

- 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/))
- MailerSend: 50,000 a month on both Starter and Professional — the plans differ on features and SMS allowance rather than email volume. ([source](https://www.mailersend.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/))
- MailerSend: $1.30 per 1,000 emails on both Starter and Professional. ([source](https://www.mailersend.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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.

Pick MailerSend if Teams sending email and SMS from one provider who need a longer activity window than a debugging log — 30 days of activity data against 7 days of API logs is a distinction the rest of this category does not draw.

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.

Consider something else: MailerSend — Both paid tiers include the same 50,000 emails, so paying three times more buys features rather than volume, and the entry price is the highest here.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Amazon SES: Yes
- Log retention: MailerSend: Two windows, which no other provider here separates: 7 days of API logs and 30 days of activity data on Professional; 7-day activity data on Starter.
- Dedicated IP: Amazon SES: Supported
- 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: Amazon SES or MailerSend?**

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.
MailerSend: $31.50/month for Starter, billed $378 a year. Professional is $99/month, billed $1,188.

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

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.
Pick MailerSend if Teams sending email and SMS from one provider who need a longer activity window than a debugging log — 30 days of activity data against 7 days of API logs is a distinction the rest of this category does not draw.