Alternative to Amazon SES

Amazon SES is a solid choice for high-volume outbound email. relay adds inbound mail, reputation monitoring, and EU hosting in one service.

Best for high-volume outbound only: Amazon SES

Best for sending, receiving, and monitoring in one EU-hosted service: relay

Quick comparison

Feature	relay	Amazon SES
SPF	Auto-served	Manual record
DKIM	RSA-1024, RSA-2048, Ed25519	RSA only
DMARC	Auto-served	Manual record
MTA-STS	Auto-served	Self-hosted
TLS-RPT	Auto-served	Manual record
Return-Path	Auto-served	Manual CNAME
Reputation monitoring	DMARC + TLS-RPT parsed	Forwarded, no UI
Incoming mail	MX + webhooks	Not available
EU data sovereignty	EU, GDPR	US-owned
Free test domain	Yes	No
Pricing	Flat per message	Per message + AWS infra

What Amazon SES does well

Amazon SES is reliable and cheap at scale. It fits teams that already run DNS on Route 53 and want one AWS account for everything. As of 2025, it stays one of the lowest-cost outbound relays for very high volume.

The trade-off is scope. SES is outbound-only. You bring your own DNS, rotate DKIM keys by hand, and handle inbound mail and report analysis elsewhere.

Where relay is different

All-in-one monitoring

SES sends aggregate and forensic DMARC reports to an address you choose. You parse them yourself. relay ingests DMARC and TLS-RPT reports, parses them, and shows reputation and failure trends in a dashboard.

Sending without DNS busywork

With SES, you publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records yourself. relay automates this. You delegate NS and set one DMARC record. relay then serves MX, SPF, DKIM, Return-Path, PTR, and TLS-RPT for you. relay signs mail with DKIM keys in RSA-1024, RSA-2048, and Ed25519, and it serves the MTA-STS policy over HTTPS. The built-in nameserver is the mechanism. You do not touch a DNS dashboard after the initial delegation.

Incoming mail

SES does not receive mail. For inbound, you need a separate service or AWS Lambda with S3. relay runs an MX server that receives incoming email. It dispatches each message to your webhooks with an Ed25519 signature, per the Standard Webhooks spec.

EU data sovereignty

SES is an AWS product. AWS is a US company, and US law applies to the data. AWS offers European regions, but the provider stays US. relay is hosted in the EU under the GDPR, with no US data path.

Free test domain

SES requires a verified domain before you send. relay gives you a free sender domain. You can test deliverability and integrations before you delegate a real domain.

When Amazon SES makes sense

You already run DNS on Route 53 and want one AWS account.
You send very high volume and need the lowest per-message cost.
You have a team that manages DKIM rotation and DMARC parsing.

The bottom line

Amazon SES is a strong outbound relay. relay is the better fit when you want inbound mail, reputation monitoring, and EU hosting in one service, without manual DNS work.

Migrating from Amazon SES to relay

Add a domain in relay. Delegate NS to the relay nameservers.
Publish the DMARC record that relay gives you.
Point your app at relay with a per-org credential.
Set up webhooks for any inbound mail you handled with S3 or Lambda.