The full platform,
not just delivery.
Amazon SES is raw email infrastructure — no contacts, no campaigns, no dashboard. Sendwave is the complete email platform built on top of SES. Open-source, self-hostable, and available managed at $0.001 per email.
The Real Cost Comparison
SES is cheap per email — but you still have to build everything else yourself
Complete platform, managed
Everything included. Or self-host and pay SES rates directly.
- ✓Contact management, campaigns, automation
- ✓Bounce & complaint handling built in
- ✓Self-host for near-SES pricing
Delivery infrastructure only
Cheap delivery — but everything else is your problem to build.
- No contacts, no campaigns, no dashboard
- You must handle bounces and complaints yourself
- Significant engineering cost to build the rest
What Sendwave Provides
Everything SES doesn't — ready to use, not to build
Contact Management
Store and manage your subscribers. Track events, manage unsubscribes, and build dynamic segments. SES has no concept of contacts.
Marketing Campaigns
Send one-time broadcasts, schedule campaigns, track opens and clicks. SES delivers bytes — Sendwave runs your entire email program.
Workflow Automation
Multi-step sequences triggered by events. Onboarding flows, drip campaigns, re-engagement. None of this exists in SES — you'd build it yourself.
Open Source
AGPL-3.0 licensed. Inspect the code, contribute, and self-host. You get all the benefits of SES deliverability with full control over the platform layer.
Self-Hostable
Run Sendwave on your own infrastructure. Your SES account handles delivery — you get full-platform functionality at SES prices, nothing more.
Bounce & Complaint Handling
Automatic processing of SES bounce and complaint notifications. Sendwave keeps your sender reputation clean without any code on your end.
Feature comparison
Frequently asked questions
When should I use raw Amazon SES instead of Sendwave?
Use raw SES if you have an existing email platform and only need a delivery layer, or if your engineering team wants full control over every part of the stack and has the capacity to build contact management, unsubscribe handling, bounce processing, and analytics themselves. Sendwave is built on SES — when you self-host Sendwave, you get the full platform at near-SES prices.
Is Sendwave more expensive than Amazon SES?
SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 emails ($0.0001/email) for delivery alone. Sendwave's managed service is $0.001/email — 10x more, but that includes contact management, campaigns, automation, segmentation, bounce/complaint handling, an admin dashboard, and unsubscribe management. If you self-host Sendwave on your own infrastructure, you pay SES rates directly plus your hosting costs.
Does Sendwave use Amazon SES under the hood?
Yes. Sendwave uses AWS SES for email delivery. That means you get the same deliverability infrastructure as SES, plus the full platform layer on top. When you self-host Sendwave, your SES account handles delivery directly — giving you SES pricing with Sendwave functionality.
How hard is it to migrate from SES to Sendwave?
If you're currently sending through SES directly, migrating to Sendwave means switching your sending code to use Sendwave's API instead of the SES SDK. Your existing SES domain verification and DKIM configuration can carry over. The benefit: you immediately gain contact management, bounce handling, unsubscribe lists, campaign tools, and a dashboard — without building any of that yourself.
Try Sendwave free
1,000 emails/month free. No credit card required. Add marketing and automation when you need it.