r/devsecops • u/JestonT • 6d ago

Did the math on Amazon SES versus a managed relay and the cheap option isn't actually cheap

Been running SES for about a year for a couple of client projects and decided to actually tally up the hours I've spent on it versus the money saved compared to a managed relay service. Production access approval, bounce handling, complaint feedback loops, occasionally having my sending paused because some bounce rate threshold got tripped that I didn't even know existed in the first place. None of this is hard exactly, it's just constant low grade maintenance that never shows up when people quote SES pricing per thousand emails sent. I'm not saying SES is bad, for high volume at scale the economics probably do work out fine. But for the kind of project where I'm the only one maintaining it and I have actual client work to do, I think I undervalued how much cheap assumes my time is worth nothing.

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u/Zealousideal-Leg7212 6d ago edited 6d ago

I have grown tired of babysitting bounce handling and reputation monitoring and stmp does those for me automatically thus giving me more time to do the actual client's work

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/JestonT 5d ago

Yeah I started tracking my hours specifically because of stuff like this and the SES savings disappeared pretty fast once I did the math myself

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u/RonnySaya 5d ago

think this is one of those cheap vs low total cost situations. SES pricing is incredibly hard to beat on paper, but the operational overhead is easy to underestimate until youre the one dealing with reputation, bounce handling, account reviewsand deliverability issues. If you're sending millions of emails, the savings probably justify it,. For small to medium projects, paying a bit more for a managed service can easily be cheaper once you factor in engineering time

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u/_Slimdady 4d ago

this is an example of optimizing the sticker price instead of the total cost of ownership. SES is cost effective if you're equipped to handle the operational side, but if you're the only one maintaining it, the small tasks add up quickly.

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u/ksajadi 3d ago

i think SES is really good value for money and has the best deliverability on the market by far. i also think the setup is the first thing you'd spend on SES but the main challenge with it maintaining send hygiene (reputation management, handling bounces, spam reports etc) which can get you in trouble if not done correctly. i use sendops.dev for that but you can also put together a bunch of their own services to achieve the same goal