Amazon Web Services announced today the launch of Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), a bulk e-mail delivery service. The e-mail marketing service gives customers the ability to send mass e-mail campaigns without having to worry about messages being caught in spam filters. According to the company’s announcement “Amazon SES provides a built-in feedback loop, which includes notifications of bounce backs, failed and successful delivery attempts, and spam complaints.” The service will compete with services like SendGrid, and is charging much less than most of its competitors.
Amazon.com will charge $.10 per 1,000 e-mails sent. EC2 customers will get 2,000 free e-mails per day. Here’s what the competition charges:
- CloudSMTP: $.50 per 1,000 e-mails
- CritSend: $.21 to $1 per 1,000 e-mails
- Postmark $1.50 per 1,000 e-mails
- Sendgrid: About $.80 – $1 per 1,000 e-mails
Only one competitor has comparable prices: Google App Engine. It’s probably no coincidence that Amazon.com’s pricing is identical to Google’s.
For competitors, support will likely be the core differentiation moving forward. We looked at how Amazon Web Services support costs compared with its competitors here.
