Using Amazon SES as Your SMTP for Bulk Email Campaigns

Connect Amazon SES to RAPID SMTP for the cheapest bulk email stack possible — domain verification, SMTP credentials, and campaign setup.

If you want the cheapest, most deliverable bulk email stack in 2025, the answer is almost always the same: Amazon SES as your SMTP, RAPID SMTP as your campaign manager. SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails. RAPID SMTP starts at $0.59/month for the dashboard. That is roughly a tenth of what Mailchimp charges at the same volume.

Why Amazon SES?

Price. $0.10 per 1,000 emails. Sending 100,000 emails/month costs $10.
Deliverability. SES IPs are reputable and warm; major inbox providers trust them.
No per-contact fee. Unlike Mailchimp, SES does not care how big your list is — only how many emails you actually send.
Free tier. 3,000 messages/month free for the first 12 months when sent from EC2.

Step 1 — Verify your sending domain in SES

Open the AWS console → Simple Email Service → Verified identities.
Create a new identity → Domain → enter your domain (e.g. yourcompany.com).
Enable Easy DKIM and copy the three CNAME records AWS gives you.
Add those CNAMEs to your DNS provider. Add an SPF record: v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all.
Wait ~15 minutes for verification to turn green.

Step 2 — Request production access

New SES accounts start in the sandbox, which only allows sending to verified addresses. Open Account dashboard → Request production access, describe your use case (transactional or bulk marketing), and AWS usually approves within 24 hours.

Step 3 — Create SMTP credentials

SES → SMTP settings → Create SMTP credentials.
AWS gives you a username and an SMTP password (different from your AWS access key — keep it).
Note your region's SMTP endpoint, e.g. email-smtp.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com.

Step 4 — Connect SES to RAPID SMTP

In RAPID SMTP → SMTP Accounts → Add account:

Host: your SES SMTP endpoint
Port: 587
Encryption: STARTTLS
Username and password: from step 3
From email: any address on your verified domain

Send a test email. If it arrives, you are done — schedule your first campaign.

Throttling tips

SES gives every account a sending rate (emails per second) and a daily quota. Check yours in the SES dashboard and set your RAPID SMTP campaign throttle slightly below it. For most accounts, 14 emails/second translates to roughly 50,000 emails/hour — far more than any Gmail or Workspace ceiling.

When SES is overkill

If you only send a few hundred emails a week, stick with Gmail SMTP. The setup is faster and the price difference is negligible at that volume. For everything above that, SES wins.