Postmark vs Amazon SES
A comparison of Postmark and Amazon SES built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- Pick Postmark if
- Teams that need to answer "what happened to this message" weeks later — 45 days of retention as standard, extendable to a year, is the longest window in this set.
- 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.
4 sourced criteria separate them:
- Entry paid plan
- Postmark: $15.00/month for Basic at the 10,000-email tier. Postmark prices by volume, so the figure rises with the slider.
- 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.
- Pricing model
- Postmark: One monthly price per volume tier, chosen on a slider, covering both sent and received email. Overage rates improve as the plan gets larger.
- 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.
- Emails included
- Postmark: 10,000 a month at the $15 Basic tier. The plan price scales with volume — 50,000, 125,000, 300,000, 700,000 and 1.5M are the published steps. The free tier is 100 a month.
- Amazon SES: None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one.
- Price per 1,000 over
- Postmark: $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic, $1.30 on Pro and $1.20 on Platform. The free tier allows no overage at all.
- 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.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Postmark 0
Amazon SES 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Postmark | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $15.00/month for Basic at the 10,000-email tier. Postmark prices by volume, so the figure rises with the slider. | 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 | One monthly price per volume tier, chosen on a slider, covering both sent and received email. Overage rates improve as the plan gets larger. | 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 | 10,000 a month at the $15 Basic tier. The plan price scales with volume — 50,000, 125,000, 300,000, 700,000 and 1.5M are the published steps. The free tier is 100 a month. | None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one. |
| Price per 1,000 over | $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic, $1.30 on Pro and $1.20 on Platform. The free tier allows no overage at all. | $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. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Postmark
- $15.00/month for Basic at the 10,000-email tier. Postmark prices by volume, so the figure rises with the slider.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Postmark ↗
“How many emails do you send and receive each month? 10,000 emails [...] Basic $15.00/mo”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Amazon SES Pricing — AWS ↗
“Outbound email $0.10 / 1,000 emails $0.12 per GB of attachment data sent”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Postmark
- One monthly price per volume tier, chosen on a slider, covering both sent and received email. Overage rates improve as the plan gets larger.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Postmark ↗
“How many emails do you send and receive each month? [...] Basic $15.00/mo [...] Pro $16.50/mo [...] Platform $18.00/mo”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Amazon SES Pricing — AWS ↗
“Outbound email $0.10 / 1,000 emails $0.12 per GB of attachment data sent [...] Email Validation $0.01 per validation [...] Virtual Deliverability Manager – SES deliverability Per-email fee + query fee”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Emails included
10,000 a month at the $15 Basic tier. The plan price scales with volume — 50,000, 125,000, 300,000, 700,000 and 1.5M are the published steps. The free tier is 100 a month.
None. There is no included allowance on the pay-as-you-go rate; every email is billed from the first one.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Postmark ↗
“10,000 50,000 125,000 300,000 700,000 1,500,000 More [...] Basic $15.00/mo [...] Test your integration with 100 emails/month”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Amazon SES Pricing — AWS ↗
“Outbound email $0.10 / 1,000 emails”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Price per 1,000 over
- Postmark
- $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic, $1.30 on Pro and $1.20 on Platform. The free tier allows no overage at all.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Postmark ↗
“Extra emails @ $1.80 / 1,000 [...] Extra emails @ $1.30 / 1,000 [...] Extra emails @ $1.20 / 1,000 [...] No overages allowed in this plan.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
- Amazon SES Pricing — AWS ↗
“Outbound email $0.10 / 1,000 emails [...] Global Endpoints $0.03 / 1,000 emails [...] 0 – 10M emails / month $0.16 per 1,000 emails $0.22 per 1,000 emails $0.23 per 1,000 emails”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing
Which should you choose?
Choose Postmark if…
Teams that need to answer "what happened to this message" weeks later — 45 days of retention as standard, extendable to a year, is the longest window in this set.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Postmark: The included volume is small for the price and overage is the most expensive here at $1.80 per 1,000 on the entry plan.
- 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.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Postmark or Amazon SES?
Postmark: $15.00/month for Basic at the 10,000-email tier. Postmark prices by volume, so the figure rises with the slider.
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 Postmark or Amazon SES?
Pick Postmark if Teams that need to answer "what happened to this message" weeks later — 45 days of retention as standard, extendable to a year, is the longest window in this set.
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.