Overview

Courier and Amazon SES are at different layers of the messaging stack. SES is ultra-cheap email delivery. Courier is notification orchestration that can route through SES. They're often used together rather than as alternatives. For our take on each, see our Courier comparison and Amazon SES comparison.

The Complementary Pattern

Many teams use Courier with SES as the email provider. Courier handles routing logic — which channel, which provider, what fallbacks. SES handles the actual email delivery at $0.10/1,000 emails. This combination gives you multi-channel routing with the cheapest email delivery.

When SES Alone Suffices

If email is your only channel and cost is the priority, SES directly at $5/month for 50k emails beats any other option. Adding Courier on top only makes sense if you need multi-channel routing.

The Sequenzy Alternative

For SaaS founders who want simplicity over AWS complexity, Sequenzy combines transactional email and marketing campaigns with Stripe integration at $49/month — no AWS knowledge required.