Raw Price vs Managed Delivery
Amazon SES vs SendGrid: Which One Should You Choose in 1970?
Amazon SES is roughly 2% of SendGrid's per-email price and scales to millions of messages, but you build the DNS, reputation and monitoring work yourself. SendGrid sells that work as a product.
Quick verdict
- Cost at scale
- Amazon SESpennies per thousand, inside existing AWS billing
- Operational simplicity
- SendGridmanaged reputation, dashboards and webhooks out of the box
Amazon SES vs SendGrid: feature comparison
| Feature | Amazon SESProprietary | Twilio SendGridProprietary |
|---|---|---|
| Entry Price | $0.10 per 1,000 emails | $19.95/mo for 50,000 emails |
| Free Tier | 3,000 message charges/mo for 12 months | 100 emails/day |
| Sandbox / Approval | Production access request required | Account review for bulk senders |
| Deliverability Dashboard | Basic CloudWatch metrics | Full reputation and suppression UI |
| Self-Hosted | No | No |
Pricing takeaway
Sending 500,000 emails a month costs about $50 on SES and roughly $180 or more on SendGrid's equivalent tier, but SES gives you no deliverability team, so the saving is only real if an engineer owns email.
- Amazon SES
- Pay-as-you-go per 1,000 emails. Starts at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. 3,000 message charges/mo for the first 12 months on a new AWS account.Full Amazon SES pricing breakdown
- Twilio SendGrid
- Per-email plan, marketing features as add-ons. Starts at $19.95/mo (Essentials, 50,000 emails). Free 100 emails/day forever.Full SendGrid pricing breakdown
Pros and cons
Amazon SES
Visit Amazon SESPros
- The lowest per-email price of any major provider
- Scales to millions of messages with regions, dedicated IPs and reputation dashboards
- Wires into IAM, CloudWatch and the rest of AWS without extra glue
Cons
- Onboarding is console-and-DNS first: leaving the sandbox takes setup and a support request
- Deliverability tooling is basic compared with SendGrid or Postmark
- Billing arrives as one line in a larger AWS invoice, which is easy to lose track of
Twilio SendGrid
Visit SendGridPros
- Delivery infrastructure and IP reputation built over more than a decade of volume
- Marketing campaigns, templates and transactional mail under one account
- Extensive documentation, webhooks and legacy SMTP support
Cons
- Feature tiers and email volumes are mixed together, which makes upgrading confusing
- Account reviews can restrict sending at short notice
- Priority deliverability support only comes with the expensive plans
Amazon SES vs SendGrid: FAQ
Is SendGrid a good alternative to Amazon SES?
Amazon SES is roughly 2% of SendGrid's per-email price and scales to millions of messages, but you build the DNS, reputation and monitoring work yourself. SendGrid sells that work as a product.
Which is cheaper, Amazon SES or SendGrid?
Sending 500,000 emails a month costs about $50 on SES and roughly $180 or more on SendGrid's equivalent tier, but SES gives you no deliverability team, so the saving is only real if an engineer owns email.
Is Amazon SES or SendGrid open source?
Amazon SES is proprietary. Twilio SendGrid is proprietary.
Can I self-host Amazon SES or SendGrid?
Amazon SES cannot be self-hosted. Twilio SendGrid cannot be self-hosted.
Do Amazon SES and SendGrid have a free tier?
Amazon SES: 3,000 message charges/mo for the first 12 months on a new AWS account. Twilio SendGrid: Free 100 emails/day forever.