SES Cost Calculator
Price Amazon SES outbound and inbound mail with attachment data, dedicated IPs, and a bounce and complaint rate check.
About SES Cost Calculator
SES prices the message and the payload separately: a flat fee per thousand messages plus a per-GB charge for attachment data, which is why a newsletter with a 2 MB PDF costs far more than its message count suggests. Dedicated IPs are a fixed monthly cost that only pays back at volumes high enough to build and hold a sending reputation. Verify the send, data and dedicated IP prices for your region on the SES pricing page. SES is usually an order of magnitude cheaper than a hosted email service, but that only holds if your bounce and complaint rates stay inside the AWS thresholds — a sending pause costs far more than the bill ever would.
Formulas
SES Cost
cost = emails ÷ 1000 × send price + attachment GB × data price + inbound ÷ 1000 × inbound price + dedicated IPs × monthly IP price.
- attachment GB
- emails × attachment KB ÷ 1,048,576 — billed on top of the per-message fee
- dedicated IP
- Fixed monthly charge, warmed separately from the shared pool
- bounce rate
- Hard bounces ÷ sends; AWS reviews accounts above 5%
Effective unit cost
cost per 1000 emails = total monthly cost ÷ (emails ÷ 1000) — the figure to compare against a third-party ESP.
Worked example
With the default values below, SES Cost Calculator returns Estimated Monthly Cost of $52.29. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.
Inputs used
- Emails sent per monthminimum 0 emails
- 500,000 emails
- Average attachment size per emailaccepts 0–40,960 KB
- 40 KB
- Inbound emails received per monthminimum 0 emails
- 0 emails
- Dedicated IP addressesaccepts 0–50 addresses
- 0 addresses
- Bounce rateaccepts 0–100 %
- 2 %
- Complaint rateaccepts 0–100 %
- 0.05 %
- Price per 1000 emails sentminimum 0 USD
- 0.1 USD
- Attachment data price per GBminimum 0 USD
- 0.12 USD
- Price per 1000 inbound emailsminimum 0 USD
- 0.1 USD
- Dedicated IP price per monthminimum 0 USD
- 24.95 USD
Results
- Estimated Monthly Cost
- $52.29
- Outbound Send Cost
- $50.00
- Attachment Data Cost
- $2.29
- Dedicated IP Cost
- $0.00
- Effective Cost per 1000 Emails
- $0.10
- Reputation Assessment
- Watch closely — approaching the AWS review thresholds
Step by step
- 1Values used
- 2SES Cost
- 3Effective unit cost
- 4Estimated Monthly Cost= 52.29
- 5Outbound Send Cost= 50.00
- 6Attachment Data Cost= 2.29
- 7Dedicated IP Cost= 0.00
- 8Effective Cost per 1000 Emails= 0.10
- 9Reputation Assessment= Watch closely — approaching the AWS review thresholds
Assumptions and limits
- The result is derived only from the 10 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
- In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
- Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.
How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is SES Cost calculated?
cost = emails ÷ 1000 × send price + attachment GB × data price + inbound ÷ 1000 × inbound price + dedicated IPs × monthly IP price. SES prices the message and the payload separately: a flat fee per thousand messages plus a per-GB charge for attachment data, which is why a newsletter with a 2 MB PDF costs far more than its message count suggests. Dedicated IPs are a fixed monthly cost that only pays back at volumes high enough to build and hold a sending reputation. Verify the send, data and dedicated IP prices for your region on the SES pricing page.
Why does SES Cost matter?
SES is usually an order of magnitude cheaper than a hosted email service, but that only holds if your bounce and complaint rates stay inside the AWS thresholds — a sending pause costs far more than the bill ever would.
What values do I need to enter?
This calculator takes 10 inputs: Emails sent per month, Average attachment size per email, Inbound emails received per month, Dedicated IP addresses, Bounce rate, Complaint rate, Price per 1000 emails sent, Attachment data price per GB, Price per 1000 inbound emails, Dedicated IP price per month. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
When is a dedicated IP worth it?
Roughly when you send consistently enough to keep the IP warm — tens of thousands of messages a week, every week. Below that the shared pool has better reputation than an IP you cannot keep active, and a cold dedicated IP actively hurts deliverability.