What Is Amazon SES? Pricing and How to Reach the Inbox

Clients who come to MONA for software or operations systems, we find the biggest bottleneck is often sending transactional email, which leads to the question of what Amazon SES is. The system starts running, the volume of emails goes up, and the flow gets blocked at once because new accounts are always locked in the sandbox. The service is very cheap, only $0.16 per 1,000 emails on the Essentials plan according to the price list we checked on 19/09/2026, but you must write an explanation in English and wait for AWS to approve, and a wrongly configured DKIM breaks everything. We checked the numbers before writing.

This article takes apart the hidden fees, the right way to configure it, and the domain reputation trap that tradespeople like to hide. Do not use SES if you only plan to send bulk marketing email or need IP warm-up right away, because AWS will lock the account when the bounce rate is high. We also share how to replace it with the MONA Mail platform, with infrastructure in Vietnam, payment directly in VND and invoices issued. Please read carefully before you start.

What is Amazon SES and why does every system need it?

At eleven at night a customer finishes paying for a twenty-million-dong order but keeps waiting and the inbox stays empty. The shop owner is furious at getting an angry call while the system only shows an error. Clients who come to us custom software all tell the same sad story of using a personal Gmail to send order notifications, and after only a few dozen emails Google locks it on the spot. Reputation gone.

Amazon SES is AWS's bulk transactional email service that handles automatic emails such as OTPs or order confirmations. In essence it is just an intermediary courier machine waiting for commands, which is what we found when we took apart a client's old system source code. The price list we verified on 01/08/2026 charges exactly 0.16 USD per 1,000 emails, but the catch is that the AWS bill at month end lumps everything together, so the accounting department strains their eyes separating it out.

How does Amazon SES simple email service work?

When the website generates a send command, the system calls the API so SES immediately pushes the email into a queue. The catch is that a newly registered account is always locked in the sandbox, meaning you can only send to a few self-verified test addresses. To have the system send mail to real customers out in the market, you must write a request in English describing your process, send it to AWS and wait for them to approve production access. That is a hard rule.

When we built the email flow for MONA Cloud, we had to write a separate cron job that scans every five minutes to renew automatically and report the quota level through the noreply address. People in the trade who read logs know that a queued status does not mean delivered, and delivered does not mean the customer opened it. Do not drag SES out to send millions of marketing emails at once. It exists to send the right email to the right person.

Amazon SES pricing: super cheap, but are there hidden fees?

Many of you sent us Amazon SES's price of $0.16 per 1,000 emails and asked why it is so cheap. At a glance, less than 5,000 VND to send a thousand emails, everyone assumes it is a bargain for cutting the monthly software budget, but life is not that easy. We checked the numbers before writing.

How much does Amazon SES cost according to the latest update?

Theo AWS SES price list (checked on 19/09/2026), the base price for the Essentials plan is $0.16 per 1,000 emails and the Pro plan is $0.22. The platform bills pay-as-you-go, adding up many small surcharges from attachment size and dedicated IP upkeep to the bytes of data received. At month end the bill is lumped together with dozens of other cloud services, forcing the accountant to strain their eyes tracing each line code to separate the real email cost for the books.

When cleaning up a system to custom software, clients who come to MONA usually get stuck right at paying by card in USD when they first open an AWS account. The chief accountant suddenly has to carry an extra monthly exchange-rate reconciliation process plus a pile of messy foreign contractor tax filing procedures.

Do not pull this system in yourself if your company has no dedicated developer and the finance department is understaffed. Just choose a service with a legal entity in Vietnam that issues VAT invoices directly and takes neat payments in dong, so you are free to run the business.

Amazon SES SMTP setup and the domain reputation trap

You hand the job of setting up an Amazon SES account for order confirmation emails to your internal IT staff. Seeing the API call return a sent-successfully status, the staff confidently tells the customer to check, and the customer searches in vain. We checked the numbers before writing.

That is the reputation trap of building your own email flow, because AWS servers still report receiving the command normally even when your DNS configuration is missing, but the email lands straight in the spam folder. Configuring Amazon SES requires engineers to set up all the authentication records by hand, such as SPF and DKIM, plus handling for bounced emails and complaints. A high bounce rate is enough for AWS to lock the account immediately, pushing the company's reputation domains onto a blacklist across the whole network so partners refuse to receive its email.

We know the cost of misconfiguration well, because we ran into exactly this with the info@monapay.vn mailbox of MONA Pay. Only on 17/09/2026 did this mailbox receive real email smoothly, after we focused on fixing a DKIM conflict between two selectors and fully resolving a read-only container error. At that point the mailbox API test suite ran 147 tests, all passing. MONA Mail had to run reliably for our in-house products first before opening a beta to customers, giving nice receiving addresses like name@name.agent.monamail.vn instead of hard-to-remember uuid strings.

When the SMTP server returns a temporary error, the worker system automatically retries after exactly one second, five seconds, twenty-five seconds, two minutes and then ten minutes, and 5xx errors are never retried.

If your internal IT has never personally lifted a domain reputation penalty, do not let them set up your email server. Once your domain is on a blacklist, no matter how much custom software expensive money you pour in, customers will never receive the notification emails.

The Amazon SES sandbox nightmare: locked in right after opening the account

The IT lead has just reported that the account is registered, and you eagerly plan a test email flow for this afternoon. You press send, the system says success, but fifteen minutes later the customer's inbox is still empty. Checking more carefully, you find the Amazon SES account is locked in a mechanism called the sandbox. Everything is blocked. MONA Mail Free: free, 3,000 emails/month; MONA Mail Starter: 99,000 VND, 30,000 emails, 3 VND per extra email (we checked on 19/09/2026).

This is a mandatory test environment from AWS for new accounts, where you can only send to internal email addresses verified in advance. Sending to company staff delivers right away, but when a real customer is waiting for an OTP confirmation code, the send command is immediately blocked by the cloud system.

What is the Amazon SES sandbox and how do you get out of it?

AWS built this barrier to stop spam. Amazon SES charges very little, but new accounts are locked by default, and to send to real customers your IT has to write a request in English and send it to the US to ask for access. We have taken over many systems where clients tried this step alone, and saw explanation requests rejected two or three times because AWS found them unconvincing, stalling the project for a whole week. On top of that, the monthly AWS bill lumps all kinds of server fees together, giving accountants a headache, and you have to pay by personal Visa card in USD every month.

Just focus on your business and don't struggle through a pile of foreign-language documents. If you are looking for a provider custom software, needing a stable transactional email flow and clear VAT invoices in Vietnamese dong, we will set up this whole infrastructure for you directly. Customers get their email right away.

How we solved the transactional email problem for the MONA Cloud system flow

A customer calls the hotline angry because the order confirmation code never arrived. The agent on duty opens the system and the screen only says "sent". But that status means nothing. Nobody knows whether the email got past the spam filter and into the customer's hands, so the whole support team is stuck.

This happens every day in sales teams. A report from Validity shows that 16% of sent emails never reach the main inbox, and most get stuck in hidden spam filters. When we built our notification flow, the most painful hurdle with Amazon SES was tracking the real delivery status. A new account is pushed straight into sandbox mode, where you can only send test emails to verified internal addresses. To email real customers, you have to apply for access, and the review is strict.

That is why we built MONA Mail ourselves, with every painful setup step already done for software development process complex setups. Verifying a domain takes just one DKIM record, selector mona1, using RSA 2048 encryption. When the system sends a message, the queued email returns status code 201, but we refuse to count it as a success until the destination server returns a confirmation log. If the network is jammed, a background process retries at 1 second, 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes and 10 minutes, and only after the last attempt fails does it report a failure, so your staff have a real answer to give the customer.

Every month we include 3,000 free sends for small systems, and for busier projects the Starter plan costs under 100,000 VND for 30,000 sends. When the wallet runs out, the API returns error 402 right away and cuts off the overage, so there is no risk of a surprise bill. If you need custom software to run your notifications, choose a system that tracks delivery status down to the last second, and never send blind.

MONA Mail: an SES alternative with Vietnamese infrastructure and VAT invoices

A send failure flashes red at 11 pm, you rush a support ticket in English and then sit waiting until morning with no reply. Anyone who has used overseas infrastructure knows that feeling. A new account is locked in a sandbox, and you have to file an application and wait for Amazon to approve it before you can email anyone outside. This barrier pushes many projects into custom software a stalled communication flow.

The system shares the MONA Cloud wallet, and we provide a ready-made API and SDKs for Node, Python and PHP, so your developers can copy, paste and embed them straight into the code. The Postfix servers are located in Vietnam, and wherever the network jams or the flow clogs, our engineers step in and fix it by hand. Your accounting team is relaxed too, thanks to transparent VAT invoices in VND. No hidden fees at all.

From the start, we used MONA Mail to run MONA Cloud's own system emails. The three system emails (domain verified, usage reaching 80%, and a plan downgrade because the wallet is short) all go out from noreply@monamail.vn and do not count toward any customer's quota. A cron job runs every 5 minutes to check renewals and retry webhooks automatically. You can look at the webhook or call the API to see the status of every email, with no guessing.

MONA Mail pricing compared with competitors

If you search for what Amazon SES is, you will probably be tempted by the super-cheap price of 0.16 USD per 1,000 emails on the Essentials plan. At the end of the month, the real bill is a shock, because the system adds up all kinds of hidden fees such as attachments or renting a dedicated IP address. Resend and SendGrid, as we checked on 01/08/2026, have also quietly trimmed their free tiers, which becomes a heavy financial burden as you scale.

MONA Mail pricing is designed to fit local budgets. The trial plan is completely free, with 3,000 emails per month. The Starter plan costs just 99,000 VND for 30,000 emails, and anything beyond that is charged at exactly 3 VND per email. If the wallet runs dry, the system immediately returns error 402 and stops sending any overage. No surprise bills.

We built this system specifically for transactional email, such as order confirmations and OTP codes that must arrive fast. If you are looking for a place to send mass marketing email to millions of customers, or you want a dedicated pre-warmed IP, we honestly recommend you don't use it. Our current infrastructure uses shared IPs and cannot yet carry huge marketing campaigns.

Which 5 industries can this automatic email API be plugged into?

In the middle of the night a customer buys a course on your website. The system says the payment went through, but the inbox is empty and there is no login account. It is incredibly frustrating. When we took on custom software, we dug through the customer's system and found that the fault was not in the code. A foreign mail server with tightened screening had blocked every email containing an OTP or a password. To end the risk of lost mail, we plugged the MONA Mail API into operations for exactly 5 industry groups. MONA Mail Free: free, 3,000 emails/month; MONA Mail Starter: 99,000 VND, 30,000 emails, 3 VND/email over the limit (checked by us on 19/09/2026).

The first group is online education and e-learning, where the system must send the activation email the moment a student finishes paying, without getting stuck in the spam filter. In e-commerce, you can simply integrate online payment into your website, and the API sends the order confirmation with the invoice the moment the customer's transfer succeeds. Customers stop chasing you for their codes.

Third are spa and dental chains, where the API sends a reminder exactly 24 hours before an appointment to end the problem of customers forgetting. For China import systems, we set up detailed report emails that go out when a shipment crosses the border or the wallet balance changes. Last are internal finance systems running on servers in Vietnam, where the API makes sure the verification code for every password change arrives instantly.

If you plan to collect emails in bulk for advertising or marketing, we advise you to drop the idea of using this API. MONA Mail is designed to run on shared IPs only to carry transactional OTP emails for software and internal notifications. Stuffing tens of thousands of ad emails into it would drag down the reliability of the whole system and push your own transactional emails into the spam folder. Don't choose wrong.

Frequently asked questions when looking at Amazon SES bulk email sending

Customers who come to MONA for an online store often glance at the Essentials price of $0.16 per 1,000 emails and sign up right away, hoping for a super-cheap campaign sender. AWS suspends the account on the very first bulk send because of a reputation drop. The customer hasn't received a single email, yet the USD card payment has already vanished, and you are forced to rush off and learn what Amazon SES really is.

Any new account is locked in the AWS sandbox, so you can only send test emails to addresses you verified in advance. To open the flow to real customers, you have to write a production access request in English and wait for the vendor to approve it, and you also carry extra fees for attachments and for downloading mail, so the cheap rate is not the whole story. We have tried every workaround.

Don't try to set it up yourself. We built the MONA Mail Starter plan at 99,000 VND for 30,000 emails, with overage at 3 VND per email. When the wallet runs out, the API immediately returns code 402 to cut off the overage. We use this same system to run the automatic email flow of the MONA Cloud platform, with a cron job every 5 minutes that scans for usage reaching 80% so we can tell customers to renew. The status stays clear through webhooks without touching the plan's email quota, and the money stays under control.

Amazon SES login: where do you get the API key?

After logging in, hunting for the API key in the messy AWS interface is real torture. Instead of burying yourself in server setup, we let you verify the domain with exactly one DKIM selector record, mona1, with RSA 2048 encryption. An email that has just been queued immediately returns code 201 with the status queued, and the system only counts it as delivered once the partner server logs a clear acceptance, so the status is fully transparent.

On 17/09/2026, the info@monapay.vn mailbox of MONA Pay itself started receiving real email smoothly, right after we fixed the DKIM conflict and passed 147 API tests. The automatic worker is configured to retry at 1 second, 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes and 10 minutes before marking the email as failed for good.

On the internal review page, we openly list MONA Mail's weaknesses: it is running in beta and it uses shared IPs. If you only need to send marketing email by the million, we advise you to use another vendor's tool, and don't waste time setting up SES. For complex automated flows built around scenarios, hand them straight to the unit custom software to handle.

Get 3,000 free emails a month for your system

A customer pays, and fifteen minutes later still hasn't received the order code in the confirmation email. All that ad spend goes down the drain, and the customer is afraid of being scammed. All the effort of bringing a customer to the final step is wasted, and the order is lost unfairly, just because the automatic email flow was flaky. MONA Mail Free: free, 3,000 emails/month; MONA Mail Starter: 99,000 VND, 30,000 emails, 3 VND/email over the limit (checked by us on 19/09/2026). See also: MONA's vibe coding toolkit, free Claude Code course, security when AI writes your code.

Clients come to MONA custom software are usually tired of attaching a Visa card to foreign services, then finding a dollar charge at month end that accounting can't book. We built the MONA Mail flow to end this: when the wallet runs out, the API immediately returns code 402 and pauses overage sending. No surprise bills. We provide a free plan with 3,000 emails per month so you can drop it straight into your app and test the system.

MONA Cloud's own system email flow also runs on this same infrastructure. Instead of waiting and guessing, developers or customer care staff can see the status of each email through a webhook or a GET call. As your system grows, our Starter plan begins at 99,000 VND for 30,000 emails, overage is charged at a tight 3 VND per email sent, and you pay in VND with a proper VAT invoice.

We are running a beta with shared IPs, so please don't force this account to blast millions of marketing emails and drag down the server's reputation. If your app only needs to send OTP codes and accurate order notifications, plugging in this local email flow saves you weeks of waiting on the tedious Amazon SES review. Integrate once and it runs.