Overview
Mailgun and Amazon SES represent different philosophies in email infrastructure. Mailgun is a managed platform that handles deliverability, analytics, and optimization for you. Amazon SES is raw email infrastructure - incredibly cheap but requiring significant engineering investment to use effectively.
The choice between them often comes down to build vs. buy: do you want to build your email infrastructure on AWS primitives, or pay more for a managed solution?
The True Cost Comparison
At face value, Amazon SES costs $10 for 100,000 emails versus Mailgun's $75. But this comparison misses crucial factors:
- Analytics: SES provides only CloudWatch metrics. You will need to build dashboards or integrate third-party tools.
- Bounce handling: SES uses SNS notifications that you must process and act on. Mailgun handles this automatically.
- Webhooks: SES requires Lambda functions to process email events. Mailgun provides native webhook endpoints.
- Email validation: Not included with SES - you will need a separate service.
For teams with infrastructure engineers and AWS expertise, SES can deliver real savings at scale. For everyone else, the engineering cost often exceeds Mailgun's premium.
Developer Experience
Mailgun offers a more straightforward developer experience. Sign up, verify your domain, and start sending. Their dashboard provides immediate visibility into deliverability, and webhooks work out of the box.
Amazon SES requires more initial setup: IAM permissions, domain verification through Route 53 or manual DNS, configuring SNS topics for notifications, and setting up CloudWatch alarms. If you are already deep in AWS, this feels natural. If not, expect a learning curve.
Deliverability Management
Mailgun provides automatic suppression list management, bounce processing, and reputation monitoring. Their dashboard shows you exactly what is happening with your email program.
With Amazon SES, you are responsible for maintaining your sender reputation. You must process bounce and complaint notifications, manage your own suppression lists, and monitor deliverability metrics manually. This gives you more control but requires more work.
When Each Tool Shines
Choose Mailgun when: You want email infrastructure that just works. You do not have dedicated email engineers, and you value your team's time over raw sending costs.
Choose Amazon SES when: You are already all-in on AWS, have engineers who can build and maintain email infrastructure, and send enough volume that the cost savings justify the investment.
The Sequenzy Alternative
For SaaS companies, the infrastructure question might be beside the point. Do you really need to manage transactional email infrastructure separately from your marketing email?
Sequenzy unifies both in a single platform with Stripe integration, behavioral automation, and simple per-subscriber pricing. No infrastructure to build, no per-email costs to track, and full visibility into customer communication.