Amazon SES,
with the product on top.
SES is the cheapest reliable way to send email and one of the least pleasant to use directly: IAM policies, SNS topics, configuration sets, event destinations, a console that hides the bounce you are looking for. Sendsprite is the layer the other email APIs sell — and it runs in your account, on your SES, for SES's price.
Install
curl -fsSL https://sendsprite.com/install.sh | shDocker + Postgres. Prompts for a domain, brings up the container, opens the setup wizard.
01 — Why leave Amazon SES
What you give up staying on Amazon SES.
If you already have SES wired up with SNS, a bounce handler and a log pipeline you trust, and your team is fluent in the console, you may not need anything on top.
SES's price, an email API's product
You keep paying Amazon $0.10 per 1,000. Sendsprite adds the dashboard, the logs, the suppression list, the templates, the webhooks and the SDK — the things Resend and Postmark charge ten times SES's rate for.
The AWS setup is one click
A CloudFormation quick-create stack provisions the IAM role, SNS topics, configuration set and event destinations. Sendsprite waits for it and picks up the role. No policy authoring, no console spelunking.
Bounces become a suppression list, not an SNS payload
Every delivery, bounce, complaint, open and click lands in your Postgres, is searchable in the dashboard, is re-emitted as a signed webhook, and hard bounces and complaints are suppressed automatically before SES's reputation dashboard notices.
Domains verified for you
Authorise Cloudflare once and DKIM, SPF, MAIL FROM and DMARC records are written and verified. Other DNS providers get a clean copy-paste list and a link to the right zone.
02 — Side by side
Sendsprite vs Amazon SES.
| Amazon SES | Sendsprite | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.10 per 1,000 emails | $0.10 per 1,000 — it is the same SES — plus the box |
| Setup | IAM, SNS, configuration sets, event destinations by hand | One-click CloudFormation stack |
| Dashboard and logs | CloudWatch and the SES console | Searchable event log per email, in your Postgres |
| Suppression | Account-level list; you wire the SNS handler | Automatic on hard bounce and complaint, per team, with an API |
| Webhooks | SNS topics you subscribe to | Signed webhooks for delivery, bounce, complaint, open and click, plus a live SSE stream |
| Templates | SES templates, no editor | Visual editor, React email, merge fields, linked layouts |
| SMTP relay | SES SMTP credentials | Yes — port 587 with an API key as the password |
| API keys and teams | IAM users and policies | Per-team API keys with scopes, rate limits and an audit log |
| AI agents | — | MCP server included, scoped by the same API keys |
| Source | — | Open source — MIT server, SDK, CLI and MCP server |
Amazon SES figures are list prices from aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/ on 2026-08-29. Amazon SES is $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails plus $0.12 per GB of attachments.
03 — Questions
Amazon SES alternative, asked plainly.
- Does Sendsprite replace Amazon SES?
- No, it runs on it. Sendsprite is the API, dashboard and event pipeline; SES in your own AWS account does the sending. You pay Amazon SES's rate and nothing to Sendsprite when self-hosting.
- What AWS permissions does Sendsprite need?
- A role created by the CloudFormation stack with the SES and SNS actions the pipeline uses — sending, configuration sets, event destinations, identity verification and the SNS topics for events. The template is public and the policy is tested against every SDK call the app makes.
- Can I use SES's sandbox with Sendsprite?
- Yes. Sendsprite works in the SES sandbox for verified recipients and tells you when the account needs production access.
- Does Sendsprite support SES dedicated IPs and multiple regions?
- Sendsprite sends through the region you connect; dedicated IPs are an SES setting in your account and apply to sends from it.
04 — Also compared