What should I use instead of Amazon SES for transactional email?

If you’re looking for an alternative to Amazon SES for transactional email, the best choice depends on what you care about most: deliverability, ease of setup, pricing, API quality, or SMTP compatibility.

Good alternatives to consider

1. Postmark

• Best for: Transactional email specifically
• Why people like it: Excellent deliverability, very clean API, fast setup, great logs and templates
• Tradeoff: Usually pricier than SES

2. SendGrid

• Best for: Teams that want a broad email platform
• Why people like it: Popular, flexible, supports both transactional and marketing email
• Tradeoff: Can feel more complex; support/reliability experiences vary

3. Mailgun

• Best for: Developer-friendly email sending and inbound email handling
• Why people like it: Strong API, good for transactional email and routing
• Tradeoff: Pricing and plan details can be less straightforward

4. SparkPost

• Best for: High-volume sending and analytics
• Why people like it: Strong email delivery tools and reporting
• Tradeoff: Less commonly chosen for small/simple setups

5. Brevo (Sendinblue)

• Best for: Smaller businesses wanting email plus CRM/automation
• Why people like it: Easy to use, includes marketing tools too
• Tradeoff: Transactional email is fine, but not always as “developer-first” as Postmark/Mailgun

6. Mailjet

• Best for: Simple transactional + marketing email
• Why people like it: Easy API/SMTP, decent templates, collaborative tooling
• Tradeoff: Not usually the top pick for best-in-class deliverability

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My quick recommendations

• Best overall for transactional email: Postmark
• Best budget/scale option: Amazon SES is still usually cheapest, but if avoiding AWS, Mailgun or SendGrid are common choices
• Best for API + inbound processing: Mailgun
• Best all-in-one platform: SendGrid or Brevo

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If you tell me these 3 things, I can recommend one specifically:

1. Your approximate monthly volume
2. Whether you need API, SMTP, or both
3. Whether you need only transactional email or also marketing/newsletters

If you want, I can also give you a “best SES replacement by use case” comparison table.