The full platform,
not just delivery.
Amazon SES is raw email infrastructure — no contacts, no campaigns, no dashboard. Plunk is the complete email platform built on top of SES. Open-source, self-hostable, and available managed at $0.001 per email.
The Real Cost Comparison
SES is cheap per email — but you still have to build everything else yourself
Complete platform, managed
Everything included. Or self-host and pay SES rates directly.
- ✓Contact management, campaigns, automation
- ✓Bounce & complaint handling built in
- ✓Self-host for near-SES pricing
Delivery infrastructure only
Cheap delivery — but everything else is your problem to build.
- No contacts, no campaigns, no dashboard
- You must handle bounces and complaints yourself
- Significant engineering cost to build the rest
What Plunk Provides
Everything SES doesn't — ready to use, not to build
Contact Management
Store and manage your subscribers. Track events, manage unsubscribes, and build dynamic segments. SES has no concept of contacts.
Marketing Campaigns
Send one-time broadcasts, schedule campaigns, track opens and clicks. SES delivers bytes — Plunk runs your entire email program.
Workflow Automation
Multi-step sequences triggered by events. Onboarding flows, drip campaigns, re-engagement. None of this exists in SES — you'd build it yourself.
Open Source
AGPL-3.0 licensed. Inspect the code, contribute, and self-host. You get all the benefits of SES deliverability with full control over the platform layer.
Self-Hostable
Run Plunk on your own infrastructure. Your SES account handles delivery — you get full-platform functionality at SES prices, nothing more.
Bounce & Complaint Handling
Automatic processing of SES bounce and complaint notifications. Plunk keeps your sender reputation clean without any code on your end.
Feature comparison
Frequently asked questions
When should I use raw Amazon SES instead of Plunk?
Use raw SES if you have an existing email platform and only need a delivery layer, or if your engineering team wants full control over every part of the stack and has the capacity to build contact management, unsubscribe handling, bounce processing, and analytics themselves. Plunk is built on SES — when you self-host Plunk, you get the full platform at near-SES prices.
Is Plunk more expensive than Amazon SES?
SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 emails ($0.0001/email) for delivery alone. Plunk's managed service is $0.001/email — 10x more, but that includes contact management, campaigns, automation, segmentation, bounce/complaint handling, an admin dashboard, and unsubscribe management. If you self-host Plunk on your own infrastructure, you pay SES rates directly plus your hosting costs.
Does Plunk use Amazon SES under the hood?
Yes. Plunk uses AWS SES for email delivery. That means you get the same deliverability infrastructure as SES, plus the full platform layer on top. When you self-host Plunk, your SES account handles delivery directly — giving you SES pricing with Plunk functionality.
How hard is it to migrate from SES to Plunk?
If you're currently sending through SES directly, migrating to Plunk means switching your sending code to use Plunk's API instead of the SES SDK. Your existing SES domain verification and DKIM configuration can carry over. The benefit: you immediately gain contact management, bounce handling, unsubscribe lists, campaign tools, and a dashboard — without building any of that yourself.
Try Plunk free
1,000 emails/month free. No credit card required. Add marketing and automation when you need it.