Once you hit the magical 20.000 subscribers by Mailchimp or aWeber you might forwn on your monthly bill, and start looking for other options. It doesn’t take too much time to discover Amazon SES as an option. Before you go ahead with Amazon SES, let me list you the PROs and CONs of this decision.
PRO: Amazon SES is cheap. You pay only $1 for 10.000 emails. It needs a little investment to start, since you need a software to send out your newsletters and other communication. You heard it right. Amazon SES is not a newsletter software. Its just means to deliver newsletter. In the developer’s world it’s called an endpoint. So you will need a software to send via Amazon SES. Just imagine, that Amazon SES is the engine in your car, but you still need a car to use that engine. Sort of.
PRO: Most of Email applications (like Sendy or Mailwizz) work great with Amazon SES. They are cheap, $45-$60 price range.
Want more info? Read the article about Sendy and Mailwizz requirements
PRO: Amazon lets you track bounces and complaints, so you can keep your list clean a tidy.
PRO: Once you set up your newsletter sending software, it will be just like using aWeber or Mailchimp.
CON: Its not so easy to register an Amazon SES account. First you will granted a sandbox access, with a daily limit of 200 emails. Later this can be raised to 50.000 / day if you pass Amazon’s manual review of your website, and you convince them, that you won’t send any spam or unwanted email.
CON: Affiliate traffic is not welcome. You have to prove, that your subscribers especially requested emails from you. Amazon will check your Terms & Conditions page, optin page and unsubscription methods. You can’t send third party offers, even if your customers would agree with it.
CON: You have to make sure you have really good lists. If (even) your first campaign has over 5% bounce rate or 1% complaint rate, you will be suspended. Once your account is terminated, you won’t be able to re-register for that particular domain.
CON: You probably need someone who can set up your email sending operation. This is a 2-3 hour job. Make sure you choose someone, who can config your DNS as well. Deliverability depends greatly on DNS settings.
