Email Marketing · alternatives
Alternatives to Amazon SES
20 email marketing tools sit alongside Amazon SES in this directory. Below is what separates each from Amazon SES on the figures we hold, price, model, tier count and rating, and a direct comparison for every one.
- Alternatives listed
- 20
- With a free tier
- 12
- Cheaper to start
- -
- Amazon SES starts at
- On request
Why people look past Amazon SES
Only what the record supports. Each point below is a figure on the Amazon SES entry measured against the tools listed beside it.
There is no free tier
The record for Amazon SES carries no free tier, so evaluating it means paying first. 12 of the 20 alternatives below can be used without paying.
What each alternative does differently
Ordered by the aggregated rating on each catalogue entry. Differences are drawn from price, pricing model, tier count and rating, the fields the category listing carries. For a feature-level difference, follow the head-to-head link on each card: those pages read both full records.
Email at scale, proven deliverability, and so much more
- Can be used without paying; Amazon SES cannot.
- Sold on a freemium model rather than Per 1,000 emails sent, tiered by volume, no campaign features included.
Email marketing platform priced by contact tier, with unlimited sends only from the mid tier up
- Sold on a Per month by contact tier and plan level model rather than Per 1,000 emails sent, tiered by volume, no campaign features included.
- 4 tiers to Amazon SES's 3.
Email marketing tool with a genuine free tier, priced by contact count once paid
- Can be used without paying; Amazon SES cannot.
- Sold on a Per month by contact tier once on a paid plan model rather than Per 1,000 emails sent, tiered by volume, no campaign features included.
Self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager that ships as a single Go binary
- Can be used without paying; Amazon SES cannot.
- Sold on a Open source, no licence fee model rather than Per 1,000 emails sent, tiered by volume, no campaign features included.
- 2 tiers to Amazon SES's 3.
AGPL newsletter tool from Germany, self-hostable or hosted in the EU with no free plan
- Can be used without paying; Amazon SES cannot.
- Publishes an entry price of €8/month, where Amazon SES does not.
- Sold on a Per month by emails sent model rather than Per 1,000 emails sent, tiered by volume, no campaign features included.
- 4 tiers to Amazon SES's 3.
AI-powered email assistant for intelligent inbox management
- Can be used without paying; Amazon SES cannot.
- Publishes an entry price of $30/month, where Amazon SES does not.
- 4 tiers to Amazon SES's 3.
Every Amazon SES alternative at a glance
A dash means the catalogue entry carries no figure, not that the answer is nothing.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Tiers | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon SES (this page) | On request | Per 1,000 emails sent, tiered by volume, no campaign features included | 3 | |
| SendGridIf you want transactional email infrastructure with more built-in developer tooling and templates | Free | Freemium | - | vs Amazon SES |
| Campaign MonitorIf you need a full marketing campaign UI rather than raw sending infrastructure | On request | Per month by contact tier and plan level | 4 | vs Amazon SES |
| Zoho CampaignsIf you want campaign management bundled in rather than building it yourself | Free | Per month by contact tier once on a paid plan | 3 | vs Amazon SES |
| Listmonk | Free | Open source, no licence fee | 2 | vs Amazon SES |
| Keila | Free, then €8/month | Per month by emails sent | 4 | vs Amazon SES |
| Shortwave | Free, then $30/month | - | 4 | vs Amazon SES |
| Resend | Free, then $20/month | Freemium | 3 | vs Amazon SES |
| AWeber | Free, then $15/month | Freemium | 3 | vs Amazon SES |
| Brevo | Free | Freemium | - | vs Amazon SES |
| EmailOctopus | Free, then $9/month | Freemium | 2 | vs Amazon SES |
| Flodesk | Free | Freemium | 4 | vs Amazon SES |
| Loops | Free | Freemium | 1 | vs Amazon SES |
| RD Station Marketing | Free, then $16/month | Subscription | 4 | vs Amazon SES |
| SAP Emarsys | On request | Quote | 1 | vs Amazon SES |
| Attentive | On request | Quote | 1 | vs Amazon SES |
| Ortto | On request | Quote | 1 | vs Amazon SES |
| Sailthru | On request | Quote | 1 | vs Amazon SES |
| Sendy | $69/one-time | One-time purchase | 3 | vs Amazon SES |
| Moosend | On request | Per month by contact count | 4 | vs Amazon SES |
| Dotdigital | On request | Quote | 1 | vs Amazon SES |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry; Softwr hosts no reviews of these products. How each figure is used is set out on the Amazon SES badges page.
Cheaper ways to solve the same problem
What you would be giving up
Amazon SES is most often brought in for an engineering team sending transactional email (receipts, password resets, alerts) at a volume where per-message cost dominates the decision, a company building its own email product or newsletter tool on aws and wanting to own the campaign layer itself, a business already deep in aws infrastructure wanting to avoid adding a separate marketing-platform vendor for pure transactional sending, a high-volume sender for whom ses's per-thousand rate is materially cheaper than a marketing platform's equivalent volume pricing. Anything replacing it has to cover the ones you actually depend on, and a cheaper tool that misses one of them is not cheaper.
Two things this page cannot settle. It compares on price, model, tier count and rating, because those are the fields the category listing carries, feature-level differences need both full records, which is what the head-to-head pages load. And the ratings are third-party aggregates imported with each entry rather than reviews written here, so a 0.2 difference between two tools is noise rather than a finding.
If Amazon SES is broadly right and the question is cost, the Amazon SES pricing breakdown covers every tier and what each one adds. If you want the whole field rather than a shortlist, the Email Marketing category lists everything the directory holds, and best email marketing tools ranks them.
Amazon SES runs on web. Platform coverage is not carried on the category listing for the alternatives, so it is one more thing to check on each head-to-head page rather than here.
Questions about Amazon SES alternatives
- What are the main alternatives to Amazon SES?
- 20 other email marketing tools are listed in this directory, led by SendGrid, Campaign Monitor, Zoho Campaigns, Listmonk. They are ordered by the aggregated rating on each catalogue entry, not by any Softwr ranking.
- What is the best free alternative to Amazon SES?
- 12 of the alternatives listed here can be used without paying: SendGrid, Zoho Campaigns, Listmonk, Keila, Shortwave.
- Why do people look for an alternative to Amazon SES?
- On the figures on record, one thing stands out: there is no free tier. Each is set out with the numbers behind it above.
- What would I give up by switching from Amazon SES?
- Amazon SES is most often brought in for an engineering team sending transactional email (receipts, password resets, alerts) at a volume where per-message cost dominates the decision, a company building its own email product or newsletter tool on aws and wanting to own the campaign layer itself, a business already deep in aws infrastructure wanting to avoid adding a separate marketing-platform vendor for pure transactional sending, a high-volume sender for whom ses's per-thousand rate is materially cheaper than a marketing platform's equivalent volume pricing. Anything you replace it with has to cover the ones you actually rely on, the side-by-side comparisons linked from each alternative below put the two feature records against each other.
- Is there an open-source alternative to Amazon SES?
- None of the email marketing tools listed here are recorded as open source. That is what the licence field on each entry says, and the field is not always filled in, so it is worth checking directly for any tool you are serious about.
- How were these Amazon SES alternatives chosen?
- They are the tools filed in the same category, Email Marketing, ordered by the aggregated rating on each entry. There is no editorial shortlist, and nothing on this page is paid: no sponsored placement runs on alternatives pages and the order cannot be bought. Softwr has not used these products.
- Where can I compare Amazon SES against one of these directly?
- Every alternative below has a side-by-side page against Amazon SES covering price, platforms, features and what each one is used for. Those pages read the full record for both products rather than the summary shown here.
- Does this list cover every email marketing tool?
- No. It covers what this directory holds in the Email Marketing category, 20 tools beside Amazon SES. The category page lists the rest of the catalogue as it grows.