Amazon SES is not an email marketing platform — it is cloud email sending infrastructure. It is the lowest-cost per-email option available but requires significant engineering work to build a usable email programme on top of it. For technical teams that want full control, it is powerful. For marketing teams that need a complete platform, it is the wrong tool entirely.
| Feature | ✓ Migomail | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| Email marketing features | Complete platform — no setup | None — infrastructure only |
| Drag & drop email builder | ✓ | no — must build or integrate |
| Template management | yes — 200+ templates | no — store and render yourself |
| List management | ✓ | no — build your own |
| Unsubscribe handling | Automatic — CAN-SPAM compliant | Build your own |
| Bounce + complaint processing | Automatic | Must integrate via SNS/SQS |
| Marketing automation | ✓ | no — build your own |
| Analytics and reporting | ✓ | CloudWatch metrics only |
| Spam testing | Unlimited | — |
| Hosted DMARC reports | ✓ | — |
| Blacklist monitoring | 50+ RBLs | — |
| Inbox placement testing | ✓ | — |
| Dedicated IP | Included from Pro | Available — additional cost |
| Cost per 1,000 emails | Subscriber-based (unlimited) | $0.10 per 1,000 |
| Engineering required | None | Significant |
Use Amazon SES if you are a developer or engineering team that needs raw email sending API at extreme scale (billions of emails/month) and you are building your own email application on top of it — with custom list management, unsubscribe handling, bounce processing, and analytics all built internally. If you need a complete email marketing platform without engineering overhead, Migomail is the right choice.
Amazon SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails — extremely cheap for raw sending. However, the true cost of Amazon SES includes: engineering time to build list management, unsubscribe handling, bounce/complaint processing, template management, and analytics. For marketing teams, the total cost of ownership (including engineering) typically exceeds the cost of a complete platform like Migomail. For teams with existing infrastructure, SES costs are genuinely very low.
Amazon SES can send emails that are email marketing campaigns but it is not an email marketing platform. You need separate tools (or custom code) for: designing emails, managing subscriber lists, handling unsubscribes and preferences, processing bounces, analysing campaign performance, and complying with CAN-SPAM/GDPR. Migomail handles all of these out of the box.
Yes. Migomail can be used as a complete email marketing platform replacing your SES-based setup. The Migration Audit is particularly useful for SES migrations — auditing your current bounce/complaint history, list health, and authentication setup before migrating to Migomail infrastructure.
Amazon SES provides DKIM signing capability and can send DMARC aggregate reports from your domain, but it does not include DMARC aggregate report processing, blacklist monitoring, or inbox placement testing. You must use third-party tools or build your own monitoring. Migomail includes all of these as standard features.
"Switching to Migomail cut our email costs by 40% and our inbox placement jumped to 98.7%. The onboarding team set up DKIM, SPF, and DMARC in a single call — and our campaigns have been running flawlessly ever since."
Rahul Menon
Head of Growth, SaaS Platform — India
