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Amazon SES vs SendGrid

Two sides of the transactional email decision: raw infrastructure and transactional + marketing. When each fits, what it costs, who moves from one to the other, and what makers who chose it say.

Amazon SESRaw infrastructure
SendGridTransactional + marketingllms.txtIn Replit
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Amazon SES if
  • You send at high volume and cost per email matters most

Use it whenYou already run on AWS, or your email volume makes per-message price the main cost.

Trade-offBare-bones; you build templates, bounce handling and tooling yourself.

Choose SendGrid if
  • One vendor for both jobs at large scale.

Use it whenYou want transactional and marketing sending under one account and one dashboard.

Trade-offHeavier than a small team needs.

At a glance

Amazon SESSendGrid
Used by4 makers' products · 32 open-source projects1055 makers' products · 26 open-source projects
Cost at default usageemails 50k emails$5.00/mo À la carte$20/mo Essentials 50k
Moved to it on GitHubpull requests since Oct 202412 from SendGrid4 from Amazon SES
Downloads3.6M/wk−15% vs npm4.5M/wk−33% vs npm
PricingPay per message; the cheapest option at high volume. · paid from $0.10 per 1k emails60-day free trial (100 emails/day); paid plans by volume from $19.95/month. · paid from $19.95/mo
Free tierNoNo
Open sourceNoNo
Incidents, 90 daysfrom its status pageno public status feed50+

Cost as you grow

At 1k emails Amazon SES costs less ($0.10 vs $20). They're different kinds of tool — raw infrastructure and transactional + marketing — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

$0$20$100$200$5001k5k10k25k50k100k250k500k1M5M
SendGridAmazon SESx: emails per month (email) · cheapest usable plan at each point, list prices · try your own numbers
The numbers, plan by plan
Emails per monthAmazon SESSendGrid
1,000$0.10 À la carte$20 Essentials 50k
5,000$0.50 À la carte$20 Essentials 50k
10,000$1.00 À la carte$20 Essentials 50k
25,000$2.50 À la carte$20 Essentials 50k
50,000$5.00 À la carte$20 Essentials 50k
100,000$10 À la carte$35 Essentials 100k
250,000$25 À la carte$249 Pro 300k
500,000$50 À la carte$499 Pro 700k
1,000,000$100 À la carte$799 Pro 1.5M
5,000,000$500 À la carteover plan limits

From each vendor's pricing page: Amazon SES, SendGrid.

Who moves from one to the other

Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "Amazon SES to SendGrid" or the reverse — real code changes, by developers in general rather than makers only.

SendGrid → Amazon SES12 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗
Amazon SES → SendGrid4 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗

What makers say

Makers on using it for transactional email, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Amazon SES

No maker quote about Amazon SES for transactional email yet.

On SendGrid
…downside is that it’s much harder to implement than you might think! We’ve since moved to Sendgrid for delivery, which takes a lot of pain out of the process but it is expensive.…
Construct, the makerSep 2021 ↗
Now for the tools, here on ADYOUNEED we use ClickUp pretty much for all the task management and sprints, Stripe for payment, Segment for tracking, and Sendgrid for emails.
ADYOUNEED, the makerOct 2021 ↗
…eetings, and docs Slack and Loom for internal communication Tawk.to for customer chatbots Sendgrid for mass email comms Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for social media What have been the…
Swift App, the makerSep 2022 ↗
31 more on the SendGrid page →

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Amazon SES
Most loved
  • Sending costs pennies per thousand emails, with a free monthly allowance through the API. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • Relaying outgoing mail through it fixes deliverability for self-hosted mail servers. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • It enforces anti-spam discipline, warning senders early when complaint rates spike. HNHN 2
Watch-outs
  • Getting out of the sandbox is hard, and requests can be rejected with no clear reason. HNHN 2
  • Shared IP reputation is outside your control, and a dedicated IP costs extra without guaranteeing delivery. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • The console is clunky, and domain and DNS setup often needs hand-holding. HNHN 2
SendGrid
Most loved
  • Client libraries for JavaScript and Python are easy to use, and the docs are clear. PHPH 2
  • One service covers onboarding, transactional and bulk marketing email at scale. PHPH 2Starter Story
  • It can act as a plain SMTP smarthost behind Postfix, with no API work needed. HNHN 2
Watch-outs
  • Deliverability is poor, and its internal reputation score can look great while Gmail and Microsoft reputation tanks. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • Since the Twilio acquisition the free plan was retired and the product feels neglected. HNHN 2HN 3
  • Its network carries a lot of spam, and phishing emails that pose as SendGrid are common. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
On Product Hunt: 4.7★, 21 reviews · mentioned most: easy integration, scalability, transactional emails

Who uses each

Amazon SES4 makers' products
BetterPicChat DataScrapingdogUptimeRobot
SendGrid1055 makers' products
ADYOUNEEDASOAssemblyBasedLabs.aiBricksBrokeeBrowserlessChat DataClearCheckbook Money ManagementClosing CreditsClosingDealzCognota+1043 more
Used by both — often one replacing the other, or each for a different part of the product
Chat Data

What makers pair each with

With Amazon SES
Database
Frontend Framework
File Storage
Backend Framework
With SendGrid
Frontend Framework
Payments
Hosting
LLM API

Neither quite right?

See the whole transactional email decision →
ResendTransactional APIA modern developer API with email templates written as React components.vs Amazon SES →vs SendGrid →
PostmarkTransactional APIDeliverability when the mail has to arrive within seconds.vs Amazon SES →vs SendGrid →
MailgunTransactional APIHigh volume and inbound email parsing and routing.vs Amazon SES →vs SendGrid →