What is the difference between Amazon SES and SendPorter?

Amazon SES provides raw commodity cloud mail transit at $0.10/1k emails. SendPorter provides the developer application layer: visual template builder, parcel tracking, HMAC webhooks, and IP security on top of SES.

Do I need to choose between SendPorter and Amazon SES?

No! With SendPorter's Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) mode, you connect your existing AWS SES account and get the developer experience of a modern email SaaS with Amazon's low infrastructure costs.

Why shouldn't I build my own email layer on top of SES?

Building an in-house email layer requires setting up SNS topics, SQS bounce queues, Lambda event processors, raw MIME generators, and UI dashboards—costing hundreds of engineering hours to maintain.

Build vs. Buy Architecture

SendPorter vs. Raw Amazon SES

Amazon SES is the world's lowest-cost email engine ($0.10 per 1,000 emails). But building your own webhook consumers, log parsers, template builders, and deliverability dashboards takes months of engineering time. SendPorter gives you the best of both worlds.

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The Amazon SES Dilemma

Every engineering leader reaches the same conclusion when looking at their monthly SendGrid or Postmark invoice: “Why are we paying $600/month when Amazon SES charges $50 for the exact same email volume?”

Then the engineering reality hits. Amazon SES is pure commodity plumbing. Out of the box, it does not include:

No developer dashboard to search for why a customer didn't receive an email.
No automated webhook pipeline without wiring AWS SNS topics to SQS queues and writing serverless Lambdas.
No visual email template editor for non-engineers.
No automated suppression list filtering for hard bounces and spam complaints.

Building and maintaining that in-house application layer requires weeks of senior developer time, ongoing on-call support, and continuous bug fixes. With SendPorter, you don't build it—you plug it in.

Feature & Capability Matrix

Compare raw Amazon SES capabilities against SendPorter's managed application tier.

Capability	SendPorter (with BYOC SES)	Raw Amazon SES
Raw Sending Cost	$0.10 / 1,000 (via BYOC)	$0.10 / 1,000
Developer UI & Log Inspector	✅ Yes (Real-time manifests)	❌ No (CloudWatch logs only)
Parcel-Style Delivery Timeline	✅ Yes (SP-YYYY-XXXX)	❌ No
Turnkey HMAC Delivery Webhooks	✅ Yes (9 events)	⚠️ Requires SNS + SQS + Lambda
Visual & MJML Template Editor	✅ Yes	❌ Raw HTML strings only
Zero-Trust IP Restrictions	✅ Yes (CIDR allowlists)	⚠️ Complex IAM policies
Drop-in SMTP Relay (Port 587)	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Official SDKs (Python, Node, PHP)	✅ Yes (Lightweight)	⚠️ Heavy AWS SDK
Automated Bounce Suppression	✅ Yes (Instant)	⚠️ Manual SNS configuration
Setup Time	5 minutes	3–4 weeks to build app tier

How SendPorter Upgrades Amazon SES

1. Parcel-Style Delivery Manifests

In Amazon SES, tracing an individual message requires querying CloudWatch Logs Insights with complex regex expressions. SendPorter gives every email an instant tracking ID (SP-YYYY-XXXX) and a millisecond-by-millisecond visual timeline.

2. Out-of-the-Box HMAC Webhooks

Skip configuring SNS topics and dead-letter queues. SendPorter delivers cryptographic HMAC-SHA256 signed HTTP POST webhooks for 9 message events directly to your endpoint with automatic jittered retry backoff.

3. Zero-Trust API Key Allowlisting

Lock your SendPorter API credentials to your VPC egress IPs or Kubernetes cluster NAT gateways. Even if a token is accidentally checked into GitHub, unauthorized IPs are blocked at the perimeter.

Get the power of Amazon SES with SendPorter

Start free with 2,500 emails per month, or connect your AWS SES credentials in 5 minutes.

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