AWS introduced three pricing plans for Amazon SES on 21 July 2026 — Essentials, Pro and Enterprise — and withdrew the service's free tier for new accounts on the same day.
The plans are presented as bundles that save "up to 22%" against buying features individually. What the announcement does not spell out is how the send rates compare between plans, so we computed it.
What each plan costs to send with
| Monthly send | Essentials | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 | $16.00 | $127.00 | $523.00 |
| 500,000 | $80.00 | $215.00 | $615.00 |
| 1,000,000 | $160.00 | $325.00 | $730.00 |
| 5,000,000 | $800.00 | $1,205.00 | $1,650.00 |
| 10,000,000 | $1,600.00 | $2,305.00 | $2,800.00 |
Computed from the published fixed fee plus the 0–10M band rate. All five volumes sit inside that band, so no assumption about how the higher bands are applied is needed.
Pro is dearer per email at every volume
The usual reason to move up a pricing tier is that the per-unit rate falls. Here it rises:
| Volume band | Essentials $/1k | Pro $/1k | Pro premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 – 10M | $0.16 | $0.22 | +37.5% |
| 10M – 100M | $0.14 | $0.17 | +21.4% |
| Over 100M | $0.11 | $0.12 | +9.1% |
Pro costs more per email in every published band. The premium narrows with volume but never closes, so no crossover volume exists.
There is no crossover. Because Pro's per-email rate is higher than Essentials' in all three bands and it carries a US$105 monthly fee, no send volume exists at which Pro becomes the cheaper way to deliver the same email. The premium narrows as volume grows — from 37.5% in the entry band to 9.1% above 100 million — but it never reaches zero.
That is not a criticism, but it does change the question. The plans are not volume discounts; they are feature bundles with a per-email surcharge attached.
So what is the fixed fee buying?
Priced against the à-la-carte menu, Pro's US$105 a month is equivalent to 4.21 standard dedicated IP addresses at US$24.95 each. Managed dedicated IPs are billed differently again — US$15 per month per account plus a per-email fee — and bring-your-own-IP costs US$24.95 per IP per month with a 256-address minimum.
If your deliverability setup already needs four or more dedicated IPs, the fixed fee is close to a wash and the bundle may pay for itself. If you run on shared IPs and send in the low millions, you are paying 37.5% more per message for features you were not buying.
The free tier, in money terms
New accounts no longer receive the SES free tier, which covered 3,000 message charges a month for the first 12 months. Existing users keep it until their 12 months elapse.
Priced at the Essentials rate, the allowance was worth a little under six dollars across the whole year:
| Step | Figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Free-tier allowance | 3,000 messages / month | AWS, for the first 12 months |
| Over the full window | 36,000 messages | computed: 3,000 × 12 |
| Essentials rate | $0.16 / 1,000 | AWS pricing page |
| Total value withdrawn | $5.76 | computed: 36 × $0.16 |
What a new account no longer receives, priced at the plan it would otherwise pay.
The financial impact on a new project is negligible. The signal is not: SES has stopped treating new accounts as something worth seeding, which matters more to a solo developer choosing a provider than the five dollars does.
The caveats that matter
- Fees are per account, per region. A multi-region sender pays the fixed fee once per region, so the monthly floor multiplies with your footprint before a single email is sent.
- Plans are not available everywhere. Middle East (UAE) and Middle East (Bahrain) are excluded; the Asia-Pacific regions are in scope.
- Our table stays inside the entry band deliberately. AWS publishes three volume bands but not whether they apply marginally or as a flat rate on total volume, so every figure above sits under 10 million where that distinction cannot bite.
- Dormant accounts returning to SES are treated as new, and land on the plan structure rather than any legacy arrangement.
Key takeaways
- The structure. Three plans from 21 July 2026 — Essentials at US$0 a month, Pro at US$105, Enterprise at US$500, each per account per region.
- The surprise. Higher plans cost more per email in every band, so there is no volume at which upgrading is cheaper for sending alone.
- The real test. Pro's fixed fee equals about 4.2 standard dedicated IPs; if you need that many, the bundle is defensible.
- The free tier. Withdrawn for new accounts, and worth US$5.76 over 12 months — a signal rather than a cost.
- The regional wrinkle. Not offered in the two Middle East regions; Asia-Pacific is covered.
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