Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)
Ranked 6 of 6 email sending services by recommenders
Recommended for reliable, cheap email delivery through AWS, with per-use pricing people say is hard to beat. Critics find its editor clumsy and dislike the AWS tie-in.
Recommended for reliable, cheap email delivery through AWS, with per-use pricing people say is hard to beat. Critics find its editor clumsy and dislike the AWS tie-in.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Reliable email delivery
“you can still use SES to deliver your mail. Delivery is not an issue here.”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “.name Termination” Pricing hard to beat
“can't beat that SES pricing”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Email API benchmarks – Real-world performance data for email providers” Stores mail in your S3 bucket
“your emails land in your own bucket — no third-party inbox”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Yapit – PDF and webpage reader with TTS that doesn't suck” Good fit for AWS users
“Especially if you send emails through the AWS mail service.”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Self-host your mail server”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Clumsy editor and console
“Simple editor (God knows we had to do it more than a few times) & AWS sucks at it.”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 on Hacker News Some want to leave AWS
“im looking to ditch SES, one of the last services i have running on AWS”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: I made a down detector for down detector” Tied to AWS ecosystem
“Especially if you send emails through the AWS mail service.”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Self-host your mail server”
Other email sending services people recommend
The four most recommended other email sending services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Email Service | 27 | 21 | 56% | 5 | — | — |
| Amazon SES | 19 | 11 | 63% | 11 | — | — |
| Postmark | 9 | 1 | 90% | 6 | — | — |
| AWS SES | 8 | 6 | 57% | 5 | — | — |
| Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)This page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“you can still use SES to deliver your mail. Delivery is not an issue here.”
“Especially if you send emails through the AWS mail service.”
“They could price per use, but it would have to start with a base fee”
“your emails land in your own bucket — no third-party inbox”
“can't beat that SES pricing”
“Simple editor (God knows we had to do it more than a few times) & AWS sucks at it.”
“im looking to ditch SES, one of the last services i have running on AWS”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.