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. Cloudflare's own outbound pricing applies above the free tier.
Setup shape
SES lives inside AWS — IAM / SNS / SNS notifications, sandbox mode for new accounts, DKIM via Route 53 or external DNS. Flowmails deploys into your Cloudflare account and uses Email Routing + Email Services.
Best fit
SES: teams already on AWS that want email under the same IAM / VPC story. Flowmails: teams that want email on the same Cloudflare account as their Worker, R2, D1, and Pages deployments.
Feature matrix
Amazon SES vs Flowmails, line by line.
| Feature | Amazon SES | Flowmails |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency | AWS region (multi-tenant) | Your D1 in your Cloudflare account |
| Inbound mailbox | Via SNS notifications only | Stored in your D1 |
| SMTP relay | Yes | No |
| Dedicated IP | Yes (paid) | No (Cloudflare-managed shared IPs) |
| IAM / role-based access | Yes (full AWS IAM) | Single account per Cloudflare zone |
| 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.
Move the domain to Cloudflare
Same prerequisite: zone must be on Cloudflare. Most teams already have a Cloudflare account for Workers / Pages / R2 — this just adds Email Routing and Email Services to it.
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.
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