The four ways to pay for SES
| Model | Monthly fee | 0–10M emails | 10–100M | 100M+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| À la carte | None | $0.10 | $0.10 | $0.10 |
| Essentials | None | $0.16 | $0.14 | $0.11 |
| Pro | $105 | $0.22 | $0.17 | $0.12 |
| Enterprise | $500 | $0.23 | $0.18 | $0.13 |
Plan fees are charged per AWS account and per region, so an account sending from two regions pays twice. Plan rates are marginal: each rate applies only to the emails inside its band. Source: Amazon SES pricing, checked 2026-10-19.
What each plan includes
- Essentials: outbound sending, Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) for SES deliverability insights, Mail Manager email processing and an authenticated ingress endpoint.
- Pro: everything in Essentials plus managed dedicated IPs, 2,500 email validations a month, VDM global deliverability for one domain, and Trend Micro scanning.
- Enterprise: everything in Pro plus global endpoints, tenants, an open ingress endpoint, Spamhaus, and larger allowances.
- À la carte: sending at $0.10 per 1,000 and inbound at $0.10 per 1,000 (plus $0.09 per 1,000 256 KB chunks). Everything else is an add-on, such as VDM at $0.07 per 1,000 or standard dedicated IPs at $24.95 per IP a month.
What it costs in practice
| Emails a month | À la carte | Essentials | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 | $10 | $16 | $6 (37.5%) |
| 1,000,000 | $100 | $160 | $60 (37.5%) |
| 5,000,000 | $500 | $800 | $300 (37.5%) |
Up to 10 million emails a month, Essentials costs 60% more per email than à la carte ($0.16 vs $0.10). What you get for the difference is mainly VDM’s deliverability dashboard.
Which one should you pick?
Pick à la carte if you send transactional or product email and want the lowest bill. Pair it with your own monitoring, or with Stamp0, which tracks delivery, bounce and complaint rates per domain from SES events and explains DNS problems. This is what we recommend for most Stamp0 customers.
Stay on Essentials if you want AWS’s own VDM dashboard and Mail Manager without assembling anything, and the extra $0.06 per 1,000 is not material.
Consider Pro or Enterprise only at high volume where managed dedicated IPs, global deliverability tooling or tenants matter to you.
How to switch to à la carte
In the SES console, open your account’s pricing plan settings and choose à la carte. If AWS placed you on Essentials by default, your first switch to à la carte takes effect immediately; other downgrades apply from the next billing cycle. Repeat the change in every region you send from.
Still in the sandbox? Read how to get production access first.