Should I build on Amazon SES directly?

It depends, but for many products, yes—you can build directly on Amazon SES if your needs are mostly sending transactional or simple bulk email at scale.

Build directly on SES if:

• You need low-cost sending
• You already use AWS
• Your email needs are mostly:
  • password resets
  • receipts
  • notifications
  • basic marketing/broadcasts
• You’re comfortable handling:
  • email templates
  • bounce/complaint processing
  • suppression lists
  • deliverability monitoring
  • domain authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC)

Don’t build directly on SES if:

• You need a full email platform with a UI for marketers
• You want built-in:
  • campaign management
  • segmentation
  • A/B testing
  • drag-and-drop editors
  • automated journeys
  • analytics dashboards
• You need to move fast and don’t want to own email ops

In that case, use a product like:

• SendGrid
• Postmark (great for transactional)
• Mailgun
• Customer.io / Braze / Klaviyo for lifecycle + marketing

The main tradeoff

SES is best thought of as infrastructure, not a productized email app.

So the question is really:

• Do you want to own the email system? → SES directly
• Do you want email capability as a ready-made product? → use a higher-level provider

My practical recommendation

• If you’re an engineering team and email is a core backend concern, build on SES.
• If you’re a small team or email is not strategically important, use a managed email platform.

Rule of thumb

• Transactional email only: SES or Postmark
• Transactional + custom workflows at scale: SES directly
• Marketing/email ops needed: not SES directly

If you want, I can also give you a “SES vs SendGrid vs Postmark vs Mailgun” decision table based on your use case.