When comparing Postmark vs Amazon SES, the Slant community recommends Postmark for most people. In the question“What are the best transactional email services?” Postmark is ranked 2nd while Amazon SES is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Postmark is:
Postmark is designed to send transactional messages. It specifically warns users not to use it to send weekly newsletter -- this way the emails sent by Postmark are less likely to be marked as spam, increasing the likelihood of your messages reaching the users.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Messages are unlikely to be marked as spam
Postmark is designed to send transactional messages. It specifically warns users not to use it to send weekly newsletter -- this way the emails sent by Postmark are less likely to be marked as spam, increasing the likelihood of your messages reaching the users.
Pro DMARC
Supports domain-based message authentication which helps to prevent spammers from using your domain to send email without your permission.
Pro Detailed analytics
Postmark offers very detailed analytics for your emails. For starters, it stores 45 days worth of email logs where you can search to find out which emails were sent, received, who received them, who read them and who marked them as spam.
There are also recipient profiles which keep track of everyone who gets your emails, complete with a list of messages that they have opened, deleted or marked as spam.
Pro Messages are Saved for 45 Days
All outgoing messages are saved for 45 days so you can see what you're sending to who. This is important if you are sending any dynamic content in your emails.
Pro Multiple server locations
Postmark has 5 server locations around the world (3 in the US, 1 in Amsterdam and 1 in SIngapore). This way emails will be sent fast regardless of where your users are.
Pro Highly cost effective
Amazon SES has one of the most competitive pricings on the market with just $0.10 per 1000 emails.
Pro Barebones service
Amazon SES is created to be a simple service for just sending emails through the API. If you need only to send emails and only that, then Amazon SES should at least be a good contender for your service of choice.
Pro Free tier if using EC2
If you are hosting your web application on Amazon EC2, then the first 62,000 emails each month are free.
Cons
Con Expensive
Postmark are one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive) services in the market, at $1.5 per 1000 emails.
Con Poor error handling
When email could not be received by the recipient due to some failure on their side, SES just drops it. No error recovery, reporting is not that great either.
Con Too lightweight
Since SES has been stripped down to do only one thing and do it well (send emails), there will be a lot of things missing which you will have to add on your own if you wish to have them.
Things like analytics, template hosting, design tools etc... are missing from SES. Although there are third-party tools that allow you to use Amazon SES's API to send emails with all the above features added.
