Amazon SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails on à la carte pricing, but new accounts no longer start there. Since 21 July 2026, a new SES account (or a Region you have not sent from since June 2025) starts on the Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000: 60% more for the same email. You can switch back to $0.10 whenever you like. Every price here was read from aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing on 6 October 2026.
Most articles, and plenty of email software, still quote “a dime per thousand” without mentioning the plan. If you opened an AWS account this summer, check which one you are on.
The four ways to pay for SES
| Per 1,000 emails sent | À la carte | Essentials | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First 10 million a month | $0.10 | $0.16 | $0.22 | $0.23 |
| 10 to 100 million | $0.10 | $0.14 | $0.17 | $0.18 |
| Over 100 million | $0.10 | $0.11 | $0.12 | $0.13 |
| Monthly fee, per account and Region | none | none | $105 | $500 |
| Deliverability insights (VDM) | $0.07 per 1,000 extra | included | included | included |
| Inbox placement and blocklist tests | $1,250 a month | $1,250 add-on | 1 domain | 5 domains |
| Managed dedicated IPs | add-on | add-on | 1 included | 12 included |
The plans bundle features that used to be add-ons. Choosing one switches nothing on by itself: you still enable each feature, and you pay the plan rate on every email either way.
What changed on 21 July 2026
- Plans arrived. Essentials, Pro and Enterprise, alongside the old pay-per-email price, which AWS now calls à la carte.
- New accounts default to Essentials, and so does any account and Region with no metered SES use since 1 June 2025. Accounts that were already sending stay on à la carte.
- The SES free tier ended for new customers. The old 3,000 free messages a month for the first year are gone; accounts that already had it keep it until their 12 months are up.
- Not everywhere. Plans do not exist in the Middle East (UAE) and Middle East (Bahrain) Regions.
How to switch to the $0.10 rate
- Open the Amazon SES console in the Region you send from.
- Go to the Pricing plan page.
- Choose Cancel plan. “If you do not have a plan, you are on à la carte pricing.”
- Repeat in every other Region you send from: plans are set per account and per Region.
Or from the command line, once per Region:
aws sesv2 put-account-pricing-attributes --plan NONE --region us-east-1When it takes effect: if you never chose a plan and were put on Essentials by default, your first downgrade is immediate. Every other downgrade waits for the start of the next billing cycle. Upgrades are always immediate.
When Essentials is actually the cheaper choice
Essentials includes Virtual Deliverability Manager, AWS’s deliverability dashboard and advice. On à la carte, VDM costs $0.07 per 1,000 emails on top, which makes $0.17 per 1,000 against Essentials’ $0.16. So the rule is simple: if you use VDM, stay on Essentials; if you do not, à la carte saves 37.5%.
What SES costs for a newsletter
Four campaigns a month to the whole list, every recipient counted as one email:
| Contacts | Emails a month | Essentials | À la carte | You save a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 4,000 | $0.64 | $0.40 | $2.88 |
| 10,000 | 40,000 | $6.40 | $4 | $28.80 |
| 50,000 | 200,000 | $32 | $20 | $144 |
For comparison, emailing 10,000 people four times a month through a hosted platform means a plan priced on those 10,000 contacts: Mailchimp Standard is $135 a month (see Mailchimp pricing). On SES the sending is about $4 a month. The difference is the software, the list and the reports, which SES does not give you.
The other charges
| Item | Price (à la carte) |
|---|---|
| Standard dedicated IP | $24.95 a month per IP |
| Managed dedicated IPs | $15 a month plus $0.08 per 1,000 emails (first 10 million) |
| Data (attachments) | $0.12 per GB |
| Receiving email | $0.10 per 1,000, plus $0.09 per 1,000 chunks of 256 KB |
| Email address validation | $0.01 each |
A shared IP is fine for most senders under a few hundred thousand emails a month. A dedicated IP only helps once you send enough, steadily enough, to keep its reputation warm.
The sandbox, and getting out of it
Every new SES account starts in the sandbox, in each Region: 200 emails per 24 hours, one per second, and only to addresses you have verified. No pricing plan lifts it. To send to your list you request production access in the console (Account dashboard, then Request production access), say whether the mail is marketing or transactional, give your website, and confirm that recipients opted in and that you handle bounces and complaints. AWS says it gives a first response within 24 hours; verifying your domain first helps.
After approval, AWS no longer publishes a standard starting quota: it “varies based on your specific use case”, and rises automatically as you send good mail close to your limit.
Free credits
- New AWS customers get up to $200 in credits ($100 at sign-up, up to $100 more for completing tasks), usable on SES. The free account plan closes after six months or when the credits run out unless you upgrade to a paid plan.
- US nonprofits can apply for $1,000 to $5,000 of AWS credits a year through TechSoup, for an admin fee. See email marketing for nonprofits.
Using Amazon SES for email marketing
SES is a delivery service, and a very cheap one. It takes an email and gets it to an inbox. Everything else a newsletter needs, the list, signup forms, the designer, automations, unsubscribe handling across campaigns, and reports on who clicked what, comes from software you put in front of it.
ReplaMail is that software, bought once for $299 and run on your own server. It sends through Amazon SES or six other providers (SMTP2GO, Resend, SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, or any SMTP server), and each brand you run can use its own sending account. When you connect SES, its connection test shows your 24-hour sending quota and warns you if the account is still in the sandbox. Other self-hosted options are compared on the Sendy alternative page.
Worth knowing. Whichever software you use, the SES account is yours: you request production access, you keep bounces and complaints low, and you own the sender reputation. ReplaMail helps with the last part: give Amazon SNS the address on a brand’s Email service page, and every hard bounce and spam complaint SES reports is blocked for that brand at once, with Amazon’s signature checked on each message.
Questions people ask
How much does Amazon SES cost per 1,000 emails?
$0.10 on à la carte pricing. Since 21 July 2026 new accounts start on the Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000 for the first 10 million emails a month, and can switch to à la carte at any time. Pro is $0.22 plus $105 a month, Enterprise $0.23 plus $500. Checked on aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing, 6 October 2026.
Is Amazon SES free?
Not any more for new customers. The SES free tier of 3,000 messages a month ended for new accounts on 21 July 2026. New AWS customers get up to $200 of general credits that can be spent on SES, but the free account plan ends after six months.
How do I switch Amazon SES to à la carte pricing?
In the SES console open the Pricing plan page and choose Cancel plan, or run aws sesv2 put-account-pricing-attributes --plan NONE. Do it in every Region you send from. If you were put on Essentials by default, the first switch takes effect straight away.
Is the SES Essentials plan worth it?
Only if you would otherwise pay for Virtual Deliverability Manager. À la carte plus VDM is $0.17 per 1,000, so Essentials at $0.16 with VDM included is cheaper. Without VDM, à la carte is 37.5% cheaper.
How long does SES production access take?
AWS says it gives an initial response within 24 hours. Until then the account is in the sandbox: 200 emails a day, one a second, and only to addresses you have verified.
Can I use Amazon SES for email marketing?
Yes, as the delivery service. SES sends the email; the list, signup forms, designer, automations and campaign reports come from software you run in front of it, such as ReplaMail, Sendy or listmonk.
Own your list.
$299 once. Every brand you run, unlimited contacts, your own sending account. Nobody bills you again because the list grew.
The demo signs in with demo / demo and is read-only. Questions first? hello@replamail.com