# Amazon SES 19 Hacker News commenters recommended Amazon SES and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend it as a cheap, reliable way to send email through SMTP or an API, with good deliverability. Common caveat: sending approval is hard to get. ## Why people recommend it - Very low per-email cost (7 comments): "At a few cents for five-figure numbers of emails, it's as close to free for personal/vanity email quantities as it gets" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49041805)) "its probably cheaper to pay Amazon SES or whatever for getting your emails to an inbox reliably" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958592)) "I realized how cheap SES is and thought I might as well make the service free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46944913)) - Good deliverability (3 comments): "Cheap ($0.10/1000 emails) + good deliverability" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48358368)) "to ensure high deliverability from day one" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46606894)) "It fixed all my deliverability problems." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330149)) - Easier than running own SMTP (3 comments): "using SES is probably a better option compared to running a VPS just for SMTP" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47798167)) "I feel as if Amazon SES might be the best option for it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46816676)) "I gave up and moved everyone over to SES instead." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042394)) - Reliable performance and uptime (2 comments): "their performance profiles and uptime guarantees are more than acceptable for the price we pay" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46337615)) "Amazon SES works well and is cheap for SMTP." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958790)) ## What people warn about - Shared AWS IPs get blocklisted (2 comments): "I have seen them do this to IPs fro Hetzner, Linode, Amazon AWS (SES), etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252989)) "I have seen blocks of ip addrs blocklisted from AWS due to others abusing nearby ip addrs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332557)) - AWS console and support frustrations (3 comments): "finally forget about the nightmare of logging into the AWS console" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763628)) "It is a major pita dealing with the SES team." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47800478)) "I’ve used Amazon SES begrudgingly for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47795642)) - Hard to get sending approved (2 comments): "Amazon gates usage and denies it even for super boring internal company email." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49000838)) "It's next to impossible to get approved on Amazon SES now vs 10 years ago." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47800613)) - Rewrites Message-ID, breaks threading (2 comments): "the provider (SES) rewrites the Message-ID in transit, so In-Reply-To/References matching silently breaks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49666854)) "SES for instance throws away your Message-ID and replaces it with another one" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989581)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Cloudflare Email Service](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-email-service.md): 27 recommend - [Postmark](https://hackerapproved.com/p/postmark.md): 9 recommend - [AWS SES](https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-ses.md): 8 recommend - [SMTP2GO](https://hackerapproved.com/p/smtp2go.md): 7 recommend - [Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-simple-email-service.md): 6 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Amazon SES", https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-ses/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).