Overview

Mailjet and Amazon SES represent opposite ends of the email spectrum. Mailjet is a complete platform with marketing, transactional, and visual tools. Amazon SES is raw infrastructure at rock-bottom prices. The choice comes down to ease of use vs cost at scale.

The Price Difference

Amazon SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails. That's it. No platform fees, no markup.

At 100,000 emails/month:

• Amazon SES: ~$10
• Mailjet: ~$85-100

At 1 million emails/month, SES costs roughly $100 while Mailjet would cost significantly more. For pure volume, SES is unbeatable on price.

The Complexity Cost

SES's low price comes with hidden costs: engineering time.

Setting up SES requires:

• AWS account configuration
• DNS verification (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• IAM policies for API access
• SNS queues for bounce/complaint handling
• IP warmup for new accounts
• Ongoing deliverability management

Mailjet handles all this automatically. For non-technical teams, Mailjet is the only realistic option.

Marketing vs Infrastructure

Mailjet has marketing features: campaigns, automation, Passport editor, A/B testing.

SES has zero marketing features. It sends emails. That's all. If you need marketing capabilities, SES requires pairing with another tool.

When SES Makes Sense

SES is right when:

• You send millions of emails monthly
• You have engineering resources for email infrastructure
• You're already on AWS
• Cost is the primary concern
• You only need transactional email

For most companies, especially those without dedicated email engineers, managed platforms like Mailjet save more in time than they cost in price.

For SaaS Companies

Mailjet offers more than SES but is still general-purpose. SES is pure infrastructure.

If you're SaaS with Stripe billing, consider Sequenzy. We offer managed email infrastructure with native Stripe integration and SaaS-specific automation. No AWS complexity, no building marketing features yourself.

Making the Choice

Choose Mailjet for a complete, user-friendly email platform. Choose Amazon SES for maximum volume at minimum cost if you have engineering resources. For SaaS with Stripe, consider Sequenzy.