Lumail vs Amazon SES
Lumail
Amazon SES
Cloud email sending infrastructure (API and SMTP)
Lumail and Amazon SES pricing and feature comparison
Free allowance
Lumail
$0
Amazon SES
Free
$0 · 3,000 emails · Unlimited subscribers
Free
Amazon SES: No standing SES-only free sending allotment on the live pricing page
Paid entry
$20/month, 40,000 included, then $0.60/1,000
$0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails (à la carte, no monthly minimum)
Pricing basis
Unlimited subscribers; pricing follows email volume
Per email sent or processed, with optional monthly plan fees and add-ons. Charged per recipient for outbound SES. New accounts default to…
Automation
Graph workflows with triggers, branches, goals, exits, and A/B paths
No visual campaign journeys in SES. Inbound automation via Mail Manager rules and classic receipt rules (Lambda, S3, SNS). Outbound…
AI and developer access
ChatGPT OAuth, MCP, skills, CLI, SDK, REST API, and visual editor
SESv2 MCP Server is an official AWS sample (GitHub), not recommended for production; it exposes public SES v2 API actions. Separate…
Transactional email
Included through API, SMTP, SDK, CLI, and agent tools
Core product. Send via SES API v2 (SendEmail/SendBulkEmail) or SMTP (STARTTLS on 25/587/2587; TLS Wrapper on 465/2465). Same per-email…
Publishing surface
Capture pages and custom web domains; not a general website builder
No hosted newsletter publication, visual campaign editor, or capture pages. Console manages identities, configuration sets, and test…
Choose Lumail if…
- You want a newsletter platform (editor, capture pages, graph workflows, subscribers) rather than a sending API you have to productize
- You want 89 organization-scoped MCP tools plus ChatGPT OAuth, CLI, SDK, and REST so agents operate campaigns and workflows, not only SendEmail
- You do not want AWS sandbox approval, IAM, regional quotas, or to assemble Pinpoint/Lambda/EventBridge for journeys
Choose Amazon SES if…
- Raw delivery cost dominates and you can live with $0.10–$0.16 per 1,000 emails plus AWS operational overhead
- You already build email in application code on AWS and only need API/SMTP, events, and deliverability tooling
- You need inbound gateway, archiving, dedicated IP pools, or multi-region SES features (Global Endpoints, tenants) that Lumail does not sell
Where Amazon SES is strong
A real alternative, not a straw man.
AWS pay-as-you-go email API and SMTP relay for high-volume transactional, marketing, and inbound mail, not a hosted newsletter platform. People pick Amazon SES when they need engineering teams on AWS who need high-volume transactional and bulk sending (and optional inbound processing) at the lowest public per-email rates, and who….
- Among the lowest public send rates: à la carte $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails, no contract or monthly minimum
- SES API v2 plus SMTP, AWS SDKs/CLI, dedicated IPs, Virtual Deliverability Manager, and Mail Manager inbound/archiving
- Designed for extreme volume; AWS positions SES as sending more than a trillion emails a year for customers such as Netflix, Duolingo, and Amazon Retail
Don't trust the table. Run one journey.
Checklists lie by flattening the work. Build one real path: a trigger, a wait, a branch, a goal, an exit. Then open one subscriber and see what actually happened. That tells you more than any feature row.
- 1. Import a small, consented sample. Not the whole list.
- 2. Recreate one campaign and the audience it actually hits.
- 3. Publish one automation with a goal you can measure.
- 4. Fire a test and read every event on one person.
- 5. Compare the weekly work, not the setup afternoon.
Try it on a real send
Keep the whole list. Pay when you send.
3,000 emails free, no card. Rebuild one campaign, one workflow, and one transactional message before you move anyone. If it feels worse than Amazon SES, stay.
The questions people actually ask
Is Lumail cheaper than Amazon SES?
Sometimes. Lumail is $0 for 3,000 emails, then $20 for 40,000. Amazon SES's number only makes sense after you know what they cap: contacts, seats, a daily send limit, or a feature they hide behind a paid plan. Read the honest take above, then price a normal month and a launch month on both pages.
What is the main difference between Lumail and Amazon SES?
Choose Amazon SES when you already run on AWS and only need cheap, scalable sending (and optional inbound gateway) from your own app. Choose Lumail when you want campaigns, graph workflows, capture pages, and agent-operated newsletter tooling in one organization instead of assembling that on top of SES.
Can I migrate from Amazon SES to Lumail?
Yes. Don't move the whole list on day one. Export a small consented sample, rebuild one campaign and one automation, authenticate your domain, then watch one subscriber go through the run. If that feels right, move the rest.