Flowmails vs Amazon SES
AWS-managed bulk + transactional email. This page is a side-by-side on the parts that matter when you're considering a switch — data residency, pricing, and the parts of each stack that show up in a real migration.
At a glance
Three sentence compare.
Pricing shape
SES charges per email sent (typically $0.10 per 1,000 from EC2, $0.12 per 1,000 from the API). Flowmails' Base plan is $0; Pro is $9.9 / month and Enterprise is $39.9 / month. Your chosen outbound provider's own pricing applies above its free tier.
Setup shape
SES lives inside AWS — IAM / SNS notifications, sandbox mode for new accounts, DKIM via Route 53 or external DNS. Flowmails connects your domain provider over OAuth and provisions Email Routing plus your choice of outbound provider.
Best fit
SES: teams already on AWS that want email under the same IAM / VPC story. Flowmails: teams that want inbound mail and route tables next to their outbound, without adding an AWS relationship.
Feature matrix
Amazon SES vs Flowmails, line by line.
| Feature | Amazon SES | Flowmails |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency | AWS region (multi-tenant) | Flowmails' own storage, scoped by domain id |
| Inbound mailbox | Via SNS notifications only | Stored in Flowmails' own storage |
| SMTP relay | Yes | No |
| Dedicated IP | Yes (paid) | No (Cloudflare-managed shared IPs) |
| IAM / role-based access | Yes (full AWS IAM) | Per-account roles, per-domain API keys |
| Per-email pricing | Yes (per-thousand) | No |
Integration parity
SDK and runtime compatibility.
SES exposes SMTP, an HTTP API, and the AWS SDK. Flowmails is REST-only. SDK-wise, the Surface area is smaller (send + receive + stats) but covers what most apps actually call.
Migrating
How to switch from Amazon SES to Flowmails.
Confirm you're not blocked by AWS-internal requirements
If your team depends on SES-specific features (IAM cross-account access, VPC endpoints, SNS-driven fan-out), map those before you migrate. SES's breadth is a real advantage when you need it.
Connect the domain's provider
Same prerequisite: the zone must be on a supported routing provider. Cloudflare is the one we support today, with the provider SPI open to others.
Replace SES SDK calls
Replace AWS SDK SES calls with Flowmails SDK calls. Templates and message bodies are plain — no SES-specific features to migrate. Repoint any SNS subscriptions on inbound to your Flowmails webhook.
Other comparisons