The Amazon SES alternative built for modern teams
Amazon SES is raw infrastructure that makes you build your own email platform. Sendbound gives you enterprise reliability with tracking, templates, and marketing tools out of the box.
Built for a better email experience
The AWS Sandbox is a nightmare
Getting out of the SES sandbox requires submitting support tickets, explaining your use case, and waiting days for approval. Sendbound lets you start sending immediately.
SES is just infrastructure, not a product
SES sends emails. That's it. If you want open tracking, click tracking, templates, or bounce handling, you have to build it yourself using SNS, CloudWatch, and Lambda.
No template management
Managing SES templates via the AWS CLI is painful. Sendbound provides a beautiful UI, React Email support, and AI tools to manage your templates effortlessly.
No marketing tools
SES is strictly for transactional email. If you ever want to send a newsletter or marketing broadcast, you'll need a completely separate tool. Sendbound handles both.
What you actually pay at scale
See full pricing →| Plan | Volume | Sendbound |  Amazon SES | You save |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 3,000 / mo | $0 | ~$0.30 + infra | No infra cost |
| Starter | 50,000 / mo | $15 | $5 + infra* | Time = money |
| Growth | 100,000 / mo | $39 | $10 + infra* | Weeks of dev |
| Scale | 1,000,000 / mo | $329 | $100 + infra* | Months of dev |
Prices shown are list price at time of writing. Sendbound free tier: 3,000 emails/month included, no credit card required.
Compare the essentials
| Feature | Sendbound | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| React Email native support | ||
| TypeScript SDK (first-class) | ||
| Setup time to first email | < 5 min | Days (Sandbox) |
| API latency (p50) | 23ms | Fast |
| Dashboard UI | Beautiful | AWS Console |
| DMARC + BIMI wizard | ||
| Real-time blocklist monitoring | ||
| Automatic DKIM rotation | ||
| Built-in analytics | Requires CloudWatch | |
| Marketing broadcasts | ||
| Automated sequences | ||
| Bounce handling built-in | Requires SNS+Lambda | |
| Template management | Basic |
Move from Amazon SES in four steps
Avg time: < 1 hourVerify your domain
Add your sending domain. We walk you through DNS, DKIM, and SPF and verify automatically.
Install the SDK
One command. TypeScript types and IntelliSense included out of the box.
Swap the API call
Change your import and key. The REST API is intentionally familiar.
Go live
We monitor your first send live and stay on call. Lists, webhooks, and templates come with you.
Developers who made the switch
We spent three weeks building bounce handling and open tracking on top of SES. We should have just used Sendbound and focused on our actual product.
The AWS Console is miserable. Sendbound gives us the reliability of enterprise infrastructure with a dashboard that our whole team actually likes using.
Common questions about switching from Amazon SES
Ready to leave Amazon SES behind?
Migrate in under an hour. Step-by-step guide included, and our team is on call for your first send.