The $0.10 email that isn’t.
SES advertises $0.10 per thousand emails. But once you add a dedicated IP, data transfer charges, SNS event notifications, and Virtual Deliverability Manager, the real cost is $0.186 per thousand, 86% more than the headline. And that’s before you build the Lambda functions, SQS queues, and DynamoDB tables you need to actually process your email events. Support costs extra. Deliverability expertise isn’t available at any price.
unMTA gives you dedicated email infrastructure starting at $450/mo. Unlimited sending, dedicated IPs, deliverability management, and full observability included.
How They Compare
Infrastructure
Amazon SES
Shared multi-tenant AWS infrastructure. Your emails share compute and delivery queues with every other SES customer.
unMTA
Single-tenant MTA instances. Your infrastructure runs in isolation with no shared queues and no noisy neighbors.
IP Addresses
Amazon SES
Shared IP pool by default. Dedicated IPs available at $24.95/mo each, but warmup and reputation management are entirely your responsibility.
unMTA
Dedicated IPs included on every plan. We handle warmup, authentication, and ongoing monitoring as part of the service.
Pricing Model
Amazon SES
Headline rate of $0.10/1K emails, but true cost with a dedicated IP, data transfer for 100KB messages, SNS event notifications, and VDM is ~$0.186/1K, 86% above the headline. Plus you need to build and maintain Lambda, SQS, and DynamoDB infrastructure to process events.
unMTA
Flat monthly rate. Unlimited sending on every plan. Your costs are predictable regardless of volume.
Deliverability Management
Amazon SES
No deliverability support or expert guidance at any tier. Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) provides monitoring dashboards for an additional per-message fee but no hands-on help. AWS support plans cost extra and don’t include email deliverability expertise.
unMTA
Dedicated IPs with professional deliverability management included on every plan. We handle IP warmup, DNS authentication, monitoring, and ongoing tuning so you can focus on sending.
Observability
Amazon SES
CloudWatch metrics and SNS notifications for events. Processing those events requires you to build and maintain your own infrastructure: Lambda functions, SQS queues, DynamoDB tables. No built-in dashboard or log archival.
unMTA
Dashboard, webhooks, S3 log archival, and configurable retention. Your data, exported on your terms.
Underlying Technology
Amazon SES
AWS managed service where email is a small product in a massive portfolio. No dedicated email engineering team relationship or deliverability partnership.
unMTA
Powered by KumoMTA, a high-performance MTA built by engineers with decades of experience running some of the largest email platforms in the world.
What You'll Actually Pay
Amazon SES charges per message. unMTA charges a flat rate. Here's what that looks like at real-world volumes.
Amazon SES
2 Dedicated IPs + VDM (true cost)
$515/mo
True cost: dedicated IP + VDM + events + data transfer
unMTA
Launch (annual)
$450/mo
Flat rate, unlimited sending
You save $65/mo with unMTA
Amazon SES pricing from aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/, March 2026. unMTA pricing includes dedicated IPs and unlimited sending with no add-ons or overages.
Dedicated to You, Controlled by You
Hardware Isolation
Amazon SES
Shared AWS infrastructure with logical isolation only. Dedicated IPs help with reputation but you still share compute and delivery queues with every other SES customer.
unMTA
Dedicated instances with no shared resources. Your MTA doesn’t share memory, disk, or network with anyone else’s workload.
Data Retention
Amazon SES
No built-in log storage or export. Event data requires you to build your own pipeline (SNS to SQS to Lambda to DynamoDB or S3) and maintain it yourself.
unMTA
Configurable retention with full export via webhooks and S3. Keep your data as long as you need it.
Cost Predictability
Amazon SES
Headline rate is misleading. True cost depends on email size, event volume, VDM usage, dedicated IP count, AWS support tier, and the infrastructure you build to process it all.
unMTA
Flat-rate plans. Whether it’s a slow month or your biggest product launch, the bill is the same.
When Amazon SES Is the Better Fit
Zero infrastructure to start
SES requires no capacity planning. You enable it in the AWS console and start sending. If you don’t need dedicated infrastructure or deliverability support, that simplicity has value early on.
Low cost at low volume
If you’re sending a modest volume and don’t need dedicated IPs or deliverability support, SES’s per-message pricing is genuinely cheap. There’s a volume threshold where dedicated infrastructure makes sense, and below it, SES is hard to beat on price.
AWS ecosystem
If you’re already deep in AWS, SES integrates naturally with IAM, CloudWatch, S3, Lambda, and the rest of the stack. That integration has value if your team already knows the platform.
SES makes sense when you have the engineering resources to build and maintain your own email delivery infrastructure on top of it. But if you’d rather have dedicated infrastructure that’s fully managed, with deliverability support, predictable costs, and no hidden line items, that’s what we built unMTA for.
Predictable costs. Dedicated infrastructure. Full control.
Every unMTA plan includes dedicated IPs, unlimited sending, and hands-on deliverability management. Starting at $450/mo.