Two transactional email providers, compared on price, features and ratings, so you can pick fast.
Updated November 2026
THE VERDICT
AWS SES wins on deliverability and developer experience. AWS SNS wins on cost at scale.
AWS SES starts at $0.10 versus AWS SNS's Free. Pick based on volume and team, and the scorecard below breaks down where each one leads.
Winner cells are tinted, green where AWS SES leads, violet where AWS SNS does.
FAQ
AWS SES starts at $0.10 versus AWS SNS's Free. Because pricing models differ by tier, the cheaper option depends on your monthly volume, so compare the pricing rows in the scorecard above.
Amazon SES is pay-as-you-go with no fixed monthly plan. Outbound email through shared sending costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails, or $0.0001 per message, and is billed per recipient rather than per message. Additional charges apply for outgoing attachment data, dedicated IP addresses, and inbound email processing.
Yes. Amazon SNS includes 1 million mobile push notifications free every month, and this free allowance renews monthly rather than expiring after the first year. Deliveries to other AWS services such as SQS, Lambda, and Firehose are also free.
Yes. Many teams route different message types through different providers or fail over between them. Courier lets you send through both behind a single API and switch providers without changing your code.
Why not both?
Use both behind one API.
Route AWS SES, AWS SNS, or both, and switch providers without changing your code. Courier sits in front of every channel.
Pricing, plans and feature availability as of November 2026 and may change. Ratings are aggregated from public review platforms.