Amazon SES is the cheapest way to send email that exists: $0.10 per 1,000 à la carte, with an API and an SMTP interface and nothing else. Notix is what most teams end up building for themselves, ready-made: a dashboard, a suppression list shared across transactional and marketing mail, signed webhooks, templates, domain onboarding with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, plus OTP and deliverability APIs, on a free plan with no card and Pro at $15 a month. AWS-native teams with the time to build that layer, or very high volume, should stay on SES. If you are still deciding whether to use SES at all, read SES directly or an email API first.
SES reports delivery, bounces and complaints as events you route through SNS to a queue or a function and then store yourself. The product page describes a sending service, not an engagement view. The first week on SES is usually spent building the screen that shows whether yesterday's mail arrived.
A new SES account can only send to addresses it has verified until you request production access and explain your use case to AWS. That is a sound abuse control, but it means a weekend project cannot send its first real email on the same day it was started.
The pricing page lists $0.10 per 1,000 à la carte or $0.16 on Essentials, $0.12 per GB of attachments, and managed dedicated IPs at $15 a month per account plus per-email fees. None of that is the cost that matters: the suppression store, the webhook consumer, the template renderer and the reporting are engineering hours that do not appear on the AWS bill.
Every SES figure was read from AWS's own pages on 2026-09-13; the date sits under the table. If a number has changed since, the page is wrong and we would like to know.
| Criterion | Amazon SES | Notix |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $200 in AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts, valid for 6 months; new accounts start in a sandbox | 5,000 emails a month, 200 a day, no card, no end date |
| Entry paid plan | Pay as you go, $0.10 per 1,000 emails à la carte | Pro $15 a month |
| Included on that plan | None: $0.16 per 1,000 on the Essentials plan, $0.12 per GB of attachments | 50,000 units on Pro, with optional pay-as-you-go past that; Scale $35 for 100,000 and Business $75 for 300,000 units |
| SMTP relay | Yes, an SMTP interface and an API | Yes, on every plan |
| SDKs | Every AWS SDK language | TypeScript, Python, PHP |
| Webhooks | Through SNS event destinations, which you wire yourself | Yes, signed, for email, contact and domain events |
| OTP / verification API | No | Yes, email and SMS codes |
| Deliverability check before sending | No | Yes, a pre-send check API |
| Billing outside USD | USD, on the AWS bill | USD by card; naira and shillings from a prepaid wallet |
| SLA | AWS SES service level agreement | 99.9% on paid plans, credits on the pricing page |
| Prices and limits read from the vendors' own pages: aws.amazon.com on 2026-09-13. Notix figures are from its own pricing page. | ||
On price per email, nothing here competes: a million emails a month is about $100 on SES à la carte, and Notix does not try to match that. If your team already lives in AWS, SES slots into IAM, CloudWatch, SNS and Lambda you have, and the mail leaves from your own account under your own reputation, which some compliance teams require. SES also offers every AWS SDK language, dedicated IP pools you manage yourself, and the Virtual Deliverability Manager for teams that want to tune reputation by hand. If you have the engineers to build the layer above it and the volume to make the per-1,000 rate the deciding number, stay on SES.
Both take a JSON send and an SMTP submission, both verify a sending domain with DNS records, both report bounces and complaints, and both require you to stop mailing addresses that reject you. The difference is who keeps that state and who draws the chart. The migration below shows how little of your sending code changes.
Delivery, bounce and complaint analytics per domain and per message, searchable, without an SNS topic or a database of your own.
Bounces, complaints and unsubscribes suppress across transactional and marketing mail automatically, and you can import the list you already have.
Email, contact and domain events posted to your URL with a signature you verify, instead of an SNS subscription you confirm and parse.
A template editor, contact books with double opt-in, and domain verification that tells you which SPF, DKIM and DMARC records to add and checks them for you.
One call sends a code by email or SMS and one checks it; a separate call scores a message before you send it. See the transactional email API.
The send has the same four fields. Replace the AWS SDK call or the SMTP endpoint, verify your domain with Notix, bring your suppression list, and delete the code that used to consume SNS.
import { SESv2Client, SendEmailCommand } from "@aws-sdk/client-sesv2";
const ses = new SESv2Client({ region: "eu-west-1" });
await ses.send(
new SendEmailCommand({
FromEmailAddress: "receipts@acme.com",
Destination: { ToAddresses: ["customer@example.com"] },
Content: {
Simple: {
Subject: { Data: "Your receipt" },
Body: { Html: { Data: "<p>Thanks for your order.</p>" } },
},
},
}),
);
import { Notix } from "notix-js";
const notix = new Notix(process.env.NOTIX_API_KEY);
const { data, error } = await notix.emails.send({
from: "receipts@acme.com",
to: "customer@example.com",
subject: "Your receipt",
html: "<p>Thanks for your order.</p>",
});
# Before (SES SMTP interface, region-specific endpoint)
SMTP_HOST=email-smtp.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USER=<SES SMTP username>
SMTP_PASS=<SES SMTP password>
# After
SMTP_HOST=smtp.usenotix.dev
SMTP_PORT=465
SMTP_USER=notix
SMTP_PASS=<your Notix API key>
Add the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records Notix gives you. They sit beside the ones SES asked for, so both can send during the switch. The quickstart walks through it, and the dashboard checks the records for you.
Replace @aws-sdk/client-sesv2 with notix-js and an API key in your environment, or point your mailer at the SMTP relay: host smtp.usenotix.dev, port 465 or 587, user notix, password your API key.
Export the SES account-level suppression list and upload it under Suppressions in the dashboard, one address per line. Then retire the SNS topic, the queue and the function that turned events into rows; Notix keeps that state and posts signed webhooks if you still want it in your own system.
| Emails a month | Amazon SES | Notix |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | About $1 à la carte, plus your build and ops time | Pro, $15 (Free stops at 5,000) |
| 50,000 | About $5 à la carte, plus your build and ops time | Pro, $15 |
| 100,000 | About $10 à la carte, plus your build and ops time | Scale, $35 |
SES wins the per-email column at every row, and the gap widens with volume; the figures above use the $0.10 à la carte rate and exclude attachments, dedicated IPs and the six-month credits a new AWS account gets. What SES does not include is the suppression store, the event consumer, the template renderer and the reporting you build and run yourself. Notix charges a flat $15 for those, and meters usage past 50,000 at the per-unit rate on the pricing page. Prices read on 2026-09-13.
SES is billed in US dollars on your AWS account. Teams in Nigeria and Kenya can fund a Notix wallet in naira or shillings through local payment methods and have Pro charged from that balance each month, with no dollar card and no AWS account at all. The free plan is the same everywhere; the local price per email is on the pricing page when opened from either country.
What SES gives you, what you build yourself, and when an email API is the cheaper choice.
NotixA free plan with no card, and Pro at $15 a month for 50,000 emails. Only sent volume is metered.
AlternativesFive times the included volume at the same $15, with the marketing side and an OTP API in the same account.
AlternativesSame $15 entry, 50,000 emails instead of 10,000, and a suppression list shared across transactional and marketing.
ProductOTPs, receipts and alerts with idempotency keys, a deliverability pre-check and a shared suppression list.
AlternativesHonest switch pages for the email APIs people move away from, with the vendor's own numbers and read dates.
5,000 emails a month on Free. When you outgrow it, Pro is $15 for 50,000, with the dashboard, suppression and webhooks included.