Amazon SES stands as a formidable bulk email solution harnessing Amazon’s expansive cloud infrastructure, enabling scalable sending operations with limitless potential. Sounds a bit complex? We’ll make it easier for you.
While Amazon SES presents a cost-efficient alternative to conventional email SMTP servers, its suitability may not extend universally. As an SMT platform, it lacks extensive direct support and fails to provide options for email creation, rendering it unsuitable for certain businesses. So, many people seek alternative solutions to Amazon SES.
And, in this blog, we will be showing you some of the best alternatives to look in 2024.
Best Amazon SES Alternatives Overview
Amazon SES serves as a dependable email service tailored for bulk sending, equipped with advanced deliverability features. However, it operates under the premise of self-sufficiency, primarily targeting only developers.
If you are looking for a more hands-on approach, and personalised SMTP service, especially if you aren’t a technical person, you should go for a user-friendly alternative.
A solution offering person-to-person support could be ideal. Moreover, a comprehensive platform enabling the creation and dispatch of various email types, encompassing not only transactional messages but also marketing campaigns. While Amazon SES provides rudimentary transactional email templates, it doesn’t come with native email marketing tools, essentially functioning solely as a sending platform.
In the following list, we’ve highlighted those Amazon SES alternatives those are excels in various facets compared to Amazon SES. These areas include user-friendliness, email creation flexibility, enhanced support options, and, in certain instances, superior deliverability capabilities.
Here’s a summary of what they all offer.
| Amazon SES Alternative | Best For | Free Plan? | Starting Price |
| SMTP2GO | Deliverability Reporting and Testing | Yes | $15/mo |
| Brevo | Free Marketing & Transactional Emails | Yes | $25/mo |
| Mailersend | Low-cost Sending for Teams | Yes | $25/mo |
| Moosend | Value for Small Businesses | Yes, 30 days | $9/mo |
| SMTP.com | High volume senders | None | $25/mo |
| ActiveCampaign | Automation & transactional emails | Yes | $15/mo |
| Free bulk sending through Gmail | Yes, w/ Workspace | $6/mo | |
| Mailgun | Integrating into any platform | Yes, 30 days | $35/mo |
| SendGrid | Cost-effective deliverability | Yes | $19.95/mo |
| Elastic Email | User-friendly Interface | Yes | $9/mo |
What is Amazon SES – a Deifinition
SES, an acronym for Simple Email Service, might evoke associations with Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, commonly known as SMTP. SMTP serves as the standard protocol utilized for bulk email transmission between mail servers.
SMTP servers boast reliability and speed, particularly in skilled hands, where they excel in safeguarding sender reputation, crucial for maintaining high-volume email credibility and achieving superior deliverability.
Presently, numerous providers offer cloud-based SMTP services or cloud-accessible SMTP servers, commonly known as SMTP relays. Discover the top free SMTP servers for transactional emails in our comprehensive review.
Amazon SES transcends mere SMTP relay functionality, representing a cloud-based email service leveraging Amazon’s technology infrastructure while supporting SMTP protocols. From a user’s perspective, it operates akin to an SMTP relay, additionally furnishing an API facilitating email-sending integration with diverse services and applications.
Amazon SES’s paramount advantage lies in its scalability, leveraging the expansive Amazon cloud to provide virtually boundless sending capacity, surpassing conventional SMTP relays. With a pay-as-you-go pricing model, users only incur charges based on their actual usage. Moreover, it offers robust tools for send optimization, sender reputation management, and advanced testing, alongside the option to purchase a dedicated IP address for enhanced sender reputation control.
However, navigating Amazon SES can prove challenging for novices, compounded by the intricacies of its pricing structure. Users are charged $0.10 per 1000 emails sent, plus $0.12 per gigabyte of attachments, adding complexity to cost calculations.
Best Amazon SES Alternatives in 2023
The following 9 Amazon SES alternatives cover a range of different services. Some are SMTP relays and APIs. Some are specialist transactional email services. Some are email marketing platforms. Some do a little bit of everything.
Check them out in no time –
1. SMTP2GO
SMTP2GO is a prominent SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) platform renowned for its reliability and efficiency in facilitating email delivery. It offers a comprehensive suite of features tailored to meet the needs of businesses and organizations, ensuring seamless communication with customers and clients.
One of the key highlights of SMTP2GO is its user-friendly interface, which simplifies the process of setting up and managing email delivery. Whether sending transactional emails, marketing campaigns, or other types of communications, users can easily configure their SMTP settings to integrate with SMTP2GO’s infrastructure.
Moreover, SMTP2GO prides itself on its robust deliverability capabilities, employing advanced algorithms and techniques to maximize email inbox placement and minimize the risk of messages being marked as spam. This commitment to deliverability ensures that emails sent through SMTP2GO reach their intended recipients promptly and reliably.
Additionally, SMTP2GO offers comprehensive reporting and analytics tools, allowing users to monitor the performance of their email campaigns in real-time. From tracking open rates and click-through rates to analyzing bounce rates and spam complaints, these insights enable users to optimize their email strategies for maximum effectiveness.
Overall, SMTP2GO serves as a trusted partner for businesses seeking a reliable SMTP solution, offering unparalleled deliverability, ease of use, and performance monitoring capabilities.
2. Brevo
Brevo, with a focus on its SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) service, emphasizes providing businesses with a robust and reliable infrastructure for sending emails. The primary aim of Brevo’s SMTP service is to ensure seamless email delivery, whether for transactional messages, marketing campaigns, or any other type of communication.
Brevo’s SMTP service offers several key features designed to enhance email delivery performance. These features include –
- Hige deliverability
- Scalability
- Reliability
- Security
- Analytics and reporting
Overall, Brevo’s focus on its SMTP service underscores its commitment to providing businesses with a reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure for email delivery. By prioritizing deliverability, scalability, reliability, security, and analytics, Brevo aims to empower businesses to effectively communicate with their audiences via email.
3. Mailersend
Mailersend is an email delivery platform designed to streamline and optimize the process of sending emails for businesses of all sizes. It offers a comprehensive suite of features and tools to facilitate efficient email communication, whether for transactional messages, marketing campaigns, or other purposes.
Key features of Mailersend include –
- Easy Integration
- High deliverability
- Scalability
- Analytics and reporting
- Automation
- Security
- Personalization
It’s a comprehensive email delivery platform that empowers businesses to create, send, and analyze email campaigns with ease and efficiency. Its focus on deliverability, scalability, analytics, automation, personalization, and security makes it a valuable tool for businesses looking to optimize their email communication strategies.
4. Moosend
Moosend’s SMTP service is a feature-rich solution designed to simplify and optimize email delivery for businesses.
As a part of Moosend’s comprehensive email marketing platform, its SMTP service offers a range of functionalities tailored to meet the needs of various businesses, whether they are small startups or large enterprises.
Moosend’s SMTP service is a powerful tool that empowers businesses to deliver highly targeted and personalized email campaigns with ease and efficiency. Its focus on reliability, scalability, integration, analytics, personalization, and automation makes it a valuable asset for businesses looking to optimize their email marketing efforts.
5. SMTP.com
SMTP.com is a service provider that specializes in offering SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) solutions for businesses and individuals. SMTP is the standard protocol used for sending emails across the internet. SMTP.com offers a range of services related to email delivery, including –
- SMTP Relay Service
- Email Delivery Optimization
- API Integration
- Authentication and Security
- Dedicated IP Addresses
The platforms core functionality aimed at helping businesses send emails reliably, securely, and efficiently. By leveraging their expertise and infrastructure, businesses can enhance their email communication strategies and achieve better results with their email marketing campaigns and transactional emails.
6. Active Campaign
ActiveCampaign is primarily known as an all-in-one marketing automation platform that offers a range of features including email marketing, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), automation, and sales automation.
However, ActiveCampaign also provides SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) services, allowing users to send emails through their platform.
Their SMTP service is a robust email delivery solution integrated into the broader marketing automation platform. It enables users to create, send, and automate email campaigns effectively while providing tools to improve deliverability and engagement.
7. Google SMTP
Google SMTP is the SMTP server provided by Google for sending emails. Google’s SMTP server is commonly used by individuals, businesses, and developers to send outgoing emails through their Gmail or G Suite accounts.
It’s a reliable and convenient way to send emails using your Gmail or G Suite accounts, whether it’s for personal or business purposes. It’s a popular choice due to its ease of use, security features, and integration with other Google services.
8. Mailgun
Mailgun offers a comprehensive set of features and benefits for businesses looking to manage their email communications effectively, from transactional emails to marketing campaigns. Its reliable infrastructure, powerful APIs, and advanced email management tools make it a popular choice among businesses of all sizes.
It can be considered a viable alternative to Amazon SES, especially for businesses that prioritize ease of use, advanced features, and flexible pricing options. It’s important for businesses to evaluate their specific email sending needs and consider factors such as pricing, features, scalability, and support when choosing between Mailgun and Amazon SES.
9. Sendgrid
Both SendGrid and Amazon SES offer similar basic features for sending transactional and marketing emails, including SMTP and API-based sending, delivery optimization, bounce handling, and email tracking.
However, SendGrid tends to offer more advanced features out-of-the-box, such as marketing automation, email templates, A/B testing, and detailed analytics. These features make SendGrid more suitable for businesses looking for a comprehensive email marketing solution beyond basic email sending.
Before you go
Making a decision is always a complex process. You need to understand your scope, budget, and combined them with your goals. Choosing an Amazon SES alternative follows the same pattern.
We’ve listed the best alternatives along with their benefits and needful comparisons to help your cause. Tell us which platforms you think would be best for you?
