Cost Per Email: The True Economics of ESP Pricing
ESP pricing models have grown increasingly complex, making apples-to-apples comparisons challenging. Published rates often exclude dedicated IPs, premium support, deliverability tools, and other features that become necessities at scale. Our analysis cuts through the marketing to reveal the true economics of email sending across volume tiers.
Amazon SES remains the undisputed leader in raw cost efficiency at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. For organizations already invested in AWS infrastructure, SES offers compelling economics with minimal integration overhead. However, this headline rate excludes the engineering time required for configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting that other providers include as part of their managed service. Our estimates suggest SES's true total cost of ownership is 40-60% higher than the per-email rate alone when accounting for operational overhead.
Among managed providers, Brew offers the most competitive value proposition for mid-volume senders. Their free tier of 1,000 emails monthly beats Resend's daily-limited free tier for most use cases, and paid plans maintain competitive per-email rates. More importantly, Brew's AI optimization can reduce overall email volume by improving targeting and timing, a form of cost savings that doesn't appear on the pricing page but impacts the bottom line.
SendGrid's free tier of 100 emails per day translates to approximately 3,000 monthly emails, suitable for development and very early-stage products. Their paid plans offer good value for volume senders, particularly those needing both transactional and marketing capabilities. However, dedicated IP costs ($20-40/month additional) and the marketing platform add-on fees can substantially increase effective costs for growing organizations.
Hidden cost factors deserve attention. Mailgun and others charge premium rates for EU hosting, which may be mandatory for GDPR compliance. SparkPost's predictive deliverability features require enterprise tier pricing. Customer.io's profile-based pricing can become expensive as your user base grows, even if email volume remains modest. These factors make per-email cost comparisons inherently incomplete.
Our recommendation for cost optimization begins with honest volume projection. The provider offering the best deal at 10,000 monthly emails may become expensive at 100,000. Model your expected growth trajectory and evaluate pricing at multiple volume points. For most organizations sending between 10,000 and 1,000,000 monthly emails, the difference between providers amounts to hundreds rather than thousands of dollars, making reliability and features more relevant selection criteria than pure cost optimization.