If you are pricing Amazon SES against Mailchimp, SendGrid, or Brevo, the headline number is simple: $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails, uniform across every AWS region (AWS SES Pricing). The honest answer is more layered. Your real bill is a base sending charge, plus optional dedicated IPs, plus Virtual Deliverability Manager if you turn it on, plus a tiny amount of data transfer. This guide walks every line at five common volumes so you can build an accurate estimate before you migrate.
| Monthly volume | Base sending | + 1 dedicated IP | + VDM Advanced | All-in estimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $1.00 | $25.95 | $0.70 | $1.00 - $26.65 |
| 100,000 | $10.00 | $34.95 | $7.00 | $10.00 - $41.95 |
| 500,000 | $50.00 | $74.95 | $35.00 | $50.00 - $109.95 |
| 1,000,000 | $100.00 | $124.95 | $70.00 | $100.00 - $194.95 |
| 10,000,000 | $1,000.00 | $1,024.95 | $400.00 - $700.00 | $1,000.00 - $1,724.95 |
SES pricing breakdown - the six line items
Amazon SES is one of the cheapest sending APIs on the market because it strips away everything except delivery. The pricing page lists six components that can hit your invoice: outbound sending, inbound receiving, attachment data, dedicated IPs, Virtual Deliverability Manager, and data transfer through co-located AWS services (AWS SES Pricing). Most senders only ever touch the first one - but knowing the whole menu is what lets you forecast correctly.
| Component | Rate | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound email | $0.10 per 1,000 | Every message you send. The line item nearly everyone pays. |
| Attachment data | $0.12 per GB | Bytes of attached files over the base message envelope. |
| Inbound email | $0.10 per 1,000 | Routing replies or bounces back through SES inbound. |
| Incoming chunks | $0.09 per 1,000 | 256KB chunks of incoming mail body parsed by SES. |
| Dedicated IP (Standard) | $24.95 per IP / month | Reserved sending IPs you warm and own the reputation of. |
| Virtual Deliverability Manager | $0.02 - $0.07 per 1,000 | Optional deliverability analytics layer, tiered by volume. |
Base sending - the $0.10 per 1,000 line
For 99% of senders, the entire bill is base sending. Amazon charges a flat $0.10 per 1,000 outbound messages with no minimums and no tier breaks below the dedicated IP threshold (AWS SES Pricing). That means the math is genuinely linear: multiply monthly emails by $0.0001 and you have your base SES cost. The chart below plots that line across the volumes most B2B and B2C senders operate at.
Worked examples on the base rate alone:
- 10,000 emails/month: 10,000 / 1,000 x $0.10 = $1.00
- 100,000 emails/month: 100,000 / 1,000 x $0.10 = $10.00
- 1,000,000 emails/month: 1,000,000 / 1,000 x $0.10 = $100.00
- 10,000,000 emails/month: 10,000,000 / 1,000 x $0.10 = $1,000.00
New AWS customers also get the first 3,000 message charges per month free for 12 months after enabling SES, which zeroes out the base bill for very small senders during year one.
When you actually pay for data transfer
Pure email sending almost never triggers a meaningful data transfer charge. The published rate is $0.12 per GB of attachment data above the base message envelope (AWS SES Pricing). A typical 50KB HTML newsletter sends 50,000 bytes; even at one million sends, that is about 50GB or roughly $6 in attachment data, and pure HTML below the threshold is effectively zero.
Where data transfer becomes a real line item:
- Heavy attachments - invoicing systems mailing 1MB PDFs run up tangible bytes.
- Inbound parsing - inbound chunks bill at $0.09 per 1,000 plus $0.10 per 1,000 inbound emails.
- Cross-service traffic - SES talking to EC2, S3, SNS, or CloudWatch in another region pays standard inter-region transfer rates published on the EC2 page.
For an outbound-only marketing stack hitting under 5MB attachment payload per million sends, you can ignore this line entirely in your forecast.
Dedicated IPs - when is $24.95/month per IP worth it
A standard SES dedicated IP costs $24.95 per month per IP, with a managed option at $15 per month per account plus tiered per-1,000 send fees, and BYOIP at $24.95 per IP with a 256-address minimum (AWS SES Pricing). Most senders under 100,000 emails a month do not need one - shared IPs perform fine when you keep complaints low. Dedicated IPs start paying off when you have predictable volume, a stable audience, and need exclusive control of inbox reputation.
| Scenario | Dedicated IP worth it? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50k/month | ✗ No | Not enough volume to maintain warmth; shared IPs deliver fine. |
| 50k - 250k/month transactional | Maybe | Only if you need predictable reputation for partner allowlists. |
| 250k+/month consistent | ✓ Yes | You can warm and sustain reputation independently from other senders. |
| Spiky campaign blasts | ✗ No | Inconsistent volume cools dedicated IPs and hurts deliverability. |
| Regulated B2B (finance, health) | ✓ Yes | Audit-friendly isolation and named IP for SPF authorization. |
If you run two dedicated IPs (a common pairing for reputation redundancy), add a flat $49.90 per month on top of base sending regardless of volume.
Virtual Deliverability Manager and other optional costs
Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) is SES's optional analytics and reputation layer. It bills on a tiered per-1,000-email basis starting at $0.07 per 1,000 emails and dropping to $0.02 per 1,000 above 100M monthly sends (AWS SES Pricing). VDM Advanced queries cost $0.0005 per 1,000 with the first 5,000 per month free. A global deliverability subscription is also available at $1,250 per month per region per account for enterprise teams.
For a sender doing 500,000 emails per month, VDM Advanced at $0.07 per 1,000 adds 500 x $0.07 = $35 per month. At 5 million per month it scales to roughly $250 per month before tier discounts kick in. Most small and mid-volume senders skip VDM and rely on their ESP layer or open-source dashboards for the same insights.
The total cost formula
Putting every line item together gives you a single formula you can drop into a spreadsheet. For monthly volume V (emails), I dedicated IPs, attachment data A (GB), and VDM rate R per 1,000:
Total = (V / 1,000) x $0.10 + I x $24.95 + A x $0.12 + (V / 1,000) x R
For a sender doing 500,000 emails a month with one dedicated IP, 2GB of attachment data, and VDM Advanced at $0.07 per 1,000:
- Base: 500,000 / 1,000 x $0.10 = $50.00
- Dedicated IP: 1 x $24.95 = $24.95
- Attachment data: 2 x $0.12 = $0.24
- VDM Advanced: 500,000 / 1,000 x $0.07 = $35.00
- Total: $110.19 / month
For comparison, the same volume in pure base sending mode (no IP, no VDM) costs $50.00 flat.
How SES compares to Mailchimp, Brevo, and SendGrid
Amazon SES base sending is roughly 15x to 50x cheaper per 1,000 emails than equivalent volumes on Mailchimp, Brevo, or SendGrid at the 100,000+ tier. Those platforms bundle list management, templates, and deliverability into a single subscription, which is why the per-message-equivalent rate is so much higher. The chart below compares the at-100k all-in monthly cost.
The catch: SES gives you only the sending API. Mailchimp gives you a UI, segmentation, automation, and templates. Comparing them apples-to-apples requires adding a management layer, which is where Mailblast fits. See the deeper breakdown in amazon ses vs mailchimp vs sendgrid and the full per-line teardown in amazon ses pricing.
Mailblast + SES total cost
Mailblast is the management layer on top of your own Amazon SES account. You pay Amazon directly for sending and pay Mailblast a subscription for the editor, automation, list management, and analytics, on a 32-rung ladder from $10/month (1,000 contacts) to $255/month (500,000 contacts). The free plan covers 1,000 contacts and 10,000 emails per month with no automation sends. The total cost picture for a typical 100,000-emails-per-month sender (10,000 contacts, $20/month on Mailblast) is the Mailblast subscription for the matching contact tier plus $10 of SES base sending plus, optionally, a $24.95 dedicated IP if reputation isolation matters.
That total still lands well below the Mailchimp or SendGrid equivalent because the SES half stays linear at $0.10 per 1,000 forever and the management layer fee is fixed by contact count rather than send volume. The trade-off, of course, is that you own your SES configuration, reputation, and bounce monitoring.
Frequently asked questions
Is the AWS SES price the same in every region? Yes - Amazon SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails uniformly across every commercial AWS region according to the official SES pricing page. Region choice affects latency and compliance, not the per-email rate. The only region-specific costs come from co-located services like EC2 egress or CloudWatch logs that you wire into your sending pipeline.
Does the SES free tier still exist? Yes, but it changed. New AWS customers get up to 3,000 SES message charges free each month for the first 12 months after enabling SES, per the AWS pricing page. The old always-free 62,000-emails-from-EC2 tier was retired. After year one, every email is billed at $0.10 per 1,000.
When do I need a dedicated IP on SES? Most senders below 100,000 emails a month do not need one. Dedicated IPs cost $24.95 per IP per month and require warm-up. They make sense once you are sending consistently high volume to a stable audience, need a clean isolated reputation for a regulated industry, or have to declare a sending IP for SPF or partner allowlisting.
How do I estimate data transfer cost for SES? For pure SES sending, attachment data is billed at $0.12 per GB and only applies to bytes above the per-message base. A 50KB HTML email with no attachments has negligible data cost. Data transfer becomes material only when you send heavy attachments or run SES alongside EC2, S3, or CloudWatch within the same pipeline.
What does SES plus a management layer like Mailblast actually cost? At 100,000 emails to 10,000 contacts you would pay about $10 in SES charges plus the Mailblast subscription for that contact tier ($20/month). Mailblast adds list management, automation, the BeeFree drag-and-drop editor, and analytics on top of your own SES account, so you keep AWS deliverability and pay one fixed subscription instead of per-contact ESP pricing.
Disclosure: Mailblast is a hosted management layer for your own Amazon SES account. We benefit when readers choose the BYO-SES model, so we have a commercial interest in accurate SES cost analysis. All pricing figures in this article come from the public AWS SES pricing page; verify before you commit.