Aslio vs Amazon SES
Aslio vs Amazon SES — dearer per email, and far less to build.
SES is the cheapest unit price in the market and we are not going to pretend otherwise — our own delivery runs on it. You are choosing between the raw postage and the postage with a product around it.
In short
Amazon SES is cheaper per message than Aslio, and always will be: Aslio sends through SES. Checked 27 August 2026, SES à la carte is $0.10 per 1,000 emails and SES Essentials starts at $0.16; Aslio is ₹0.02 a message, about $0.21 per 1,000, with no monthly fee. You are paying roughly twice the postage for a dashboard, suppression enforced before billing, delivery reporting, idempotent retries, automatic refunds on permanent failure, INR billing and GST invoices — all of which you would otherwise build and maintain on top of SES yourself.
- $0.21
- per 1,000 emails
- ₹0
- monthly platform fee
- 0
- seats to buy
- EU
- app hosted in Frankfurt
Side by side
Side by side
Amazon SES figures were read from aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing on 27 August 2026 and are reproduced as published. AWS changes pricing — check theirs before deciding.
| Amazon SES | Aslio | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per 1,000 emails | $0.10 à la carte · $0.16 on Essentials (0–10M/mo) | ₹20 — about $0.21 |
| Monthly minimum | None à la carte | None |
| Attachment data | $0.12 per GB | Included in the per-message price |
| Free credits | $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, first 6 months (new AWS customers) | No monthly fee to start with |
| Setup | AWS account, IAM, region choice, sandbox exit request | API key and a verified domain |
| Dashboard | AWS console + CloudWatch; you assemble the view | Built in — messages, delivery states, wallet |
| Suppression management | Account-level list, configured | Automatic, and enforced before you are charged |
| Idempotent retries | You implement it | `Idempotency-Key`, enforced by a unique index |
| Refund on permanent failure | You reconcile it | Automatic wallet credit |
| One-click unsubscribe | You add the headers | RFC 8058 headers added for marketing sends |
| Certifications | SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA-eligible, and a long list more | None — stated plainly |
| Support | AWS Support plans, 24/7 available | 09:30–18:30 IST, direct to the engineers |
Aslio's own delivery runs on AWS SES underneath, in Mumbai. We are not hiding that: the extra you pay buys the layer on top, not a different postman. If you are comfortable building that layer, use SES directly — you will spend less.
What you get
What you get either way
None of this is gated behind a higher tier on Aslio.
Idempotency that holds
Send with an Idempotency-Key and retry as often as you like. A duplicate replays the original response instead of sending twice — enforced by a unique index, not a check-then-write race.
Refunded when we fail
If a message is charged and then permanently fails, the wallet is credited back automatically and the key is released so your retry can succeed.
Suppression before billing
Hard bounces and complaints go on your do-not-mail list. Later sends to that address are rejected before you are charged, which protects your sender reputation and ours.
One-click unsubscribe
Marketing sends carry RFC 8058 headers, so Gmail and Yahoo show a native Unsubscribe button — required for bulk senders since 2024.
Delivery pushed to you
Sent, delivered, bounced and complained events arrive on your statusCallbackUrl webhook, on every account from the first message.
Your own sending domain
You verify your domain and sign with your own DKIM, so your reputation stays yours instead of being pooled with every other sender on a shared IP.
Honestly
When Amazon SES is the better choice
- Unit price is what matters most to you. SES is about half our price per message, and if you have the engineering time to build around it, that is the right trade. You are already deep in AWS. If IAM, CloudWatch and Terraform are how your team works, SES is one more resource and Aslio is one more vendor.
- You need SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA eligibility. AWS has them all. We have none.
- You want dedicated IPs and full control of warming. SES exposes that; we manage it for you, which is the opposite of what a large sender may want.
- You send with large attachments — SES charges $0.12/GB for attachment data and gives you fine-grained control over it.
- You need multi-region delivery as a contractual guarantee, or a region we do not operate in.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Aslio cheaper than Amazon SES?
No — SES is cheaper, by about half. Checked 27 August 2026, SES à la carte is $0.10 per 1,000 emails; Aslio is about $0.21 per 1,000 (₹0.02 each). That gap is the price of the tooling. If unit price is your only criterion, use SES directly — we would tell you the same on a call.
Then why use Aslio instead of SES?
Because SES sells primitives. To run production email on raw SES you build the dashboard, the suppression handling, the delivery reporting, the idempotency layer and the refund reconciliation yourself, then maintain them. Aslio ships with all of that for about 11 paise more per hundred emails, plus someone to email when it misbehaves. At 10,000 emails a month the difference is roughly ₹110 — less than an hour of the engineering time you would spend maintaining your own.
Does Aslio just resell SES?
Outbound delivery does run through AWS SES in Mumbai, and we say so rather than implying a mysterious private network. What you are paying for is the wallet, the API contract, the idempotency and refund guarantees, suppression enforced before billing, the delivery UI and the support — not a different set of mail servers.
How hard is it to move from SES to Aslio?
Usually easier than the reverse. Verify your domain, top up the wallet, and swap the send call — the payload shape is from, to, subject, html. If you use SES's SMTP interface rather than the API, keep using SMTP — aslio.asli.one:587 with STARTTLS and your API key as the password.
Do I still need an AWS account?
No. That is part of the point — no AWS account, no IAM policy, no sandbox exit request, no region decision. An API key and a verified domain is the whole setup.
Run both in parallel. Keep the one that wins.
Top up a wallet and send. No monthly platform fee, no seat charge, no minimum commitment — a hundred test emails costs about one rupee.
Asli One Global Private Limited · CIN U62011TN2026PTC190105