New: Mailbox Warmup is now available
→→Amazon SES Alternative
Compare Keplars and Amazon SES on setup, sandbox restrictions, pricing, and features. No AWS account, no production access request, no IAM. Built for developers, marketers, and product teams sending transactional and marketing email.
Amazon SES is cheap and reliable at scale, but it was built as raw AWS infrastructure, not a product. Teams and individual developers often hit friction with the sandbox approval process, the lack of native templates and analytics, and having to learn AWS just to send an email.
Every new Amazon SES account starts in a sandbox: you can only send to verified email addresses, capped at 200 emails per 24 hours and 1 per second, until AWS manually reviews and approves a production access request. Keplars has no such gate. Connect via OAuth and send to real inboxes immediately.
SES requires signing up for a full AWS account, configuring IAM users and policies, and picking a region just to send an email. Keplars connects through OAuth with Gmail, Google Workspace, or Outlook, no cloud infrastructure account needed.
SES is raw sending infrastructure only. There is no visual template editor, no campaign scheduler, and no analytics dashboard unless you wire up CloudWatch and SNS yourself. Keplars includes all of it natively from day one.
A side-by-side look at setup, restrictions, features, and pricing.
| Feature | Keplars | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| Getting Started | Sign up and start sending in minutes | AWS account, IAM setup and SES configuration required |
| OAuth Email Sending | Gmail, Google Workspace & Outlook supported | Not supported |
| First Email Experience | Send immediately with OAuth or verify your domain | Sandbox restrictions until production access is approved |
| Production Access | No production approval workflow | Production access request required |
| SMTP Support | SMTP with STARTTLS & REST API | SMTP & REST API |
| Transactional Emails | Included | Included |
| Marketing Campaigns | Built-in campaign platform | Not included |
| Visual Email Builder | Drag & drop editor with code mode | No visual editor |
| AI Email Templates | Built-in AI template generation | Not available |
| Workflow Automation | Visual workflow builder with conditions, delays, actions & webhooks | Build using AWS services or custom code |
| Audience & Contact Management | Built-in contacts, audiences, tags & custom attributes | Not included |
| Email Health & Deliverability Checks | Built-in content & deliverability analysis | Not included |
| Mailbox Warmup | Built-in mailbox warmup | No integrated mailbox warmup |
| Real-Time Tracking | Opens, clicks, deliveries, bounces & event timeline | Event publishing requires configuration |
| Analytics Dashboard | Built-in campaign & delivery analytics | Monitoring tools require AWS configuration |
| Event Notifications | Webhooks included | SNS/EventBridge/Event destinations require configuration |
| Domain Authentication | Guided SPF, DKIM & DMARC setup with OAuth support | Manual DNS configuration |
| Deliverability Features | Reputation monitoring, warmup & health insights | Infrastructure tools only |
| Developer Experience | Unified dashboard, API, SMTP & SDKs | API & SMTP focused |
| Pricing | Simple usage-based pricing | Usage-based pricing with optional paid AWS services |
| Support | Responsive support across all plans | Documentation, community and optional AWS Support plans |
Send from Gmail, Google Workspace, or Outlook. No AWS credentials, IAM policies, or region configuration to manage.
Start sending to real recipients immediately. No production access request, no waiting on an AWS review that can take 24 hours or more.
Generate polished, responsive email templates with AI. SES only accepts raw HTML through the API.
Drag-and-drop and code editing in one unified tool. There is no visual builder for SES templates.
Real-time opens, clicks, bounces, and delivery events out of the box. SES requires manually wiring up CloudWatch and SNS to get the same visibility.
Run broadcast campaigns and lifecycle flows alongside your product emails. SES has no native marketing or audience management product.
Automatically warm up new sending domains and mailboxes to build reputation before sending at full volume.
One flat usage-based rate. SES layers on separate charges for dedicated IPs, data transfer, and Virtual Deliverability Manager.
Every email type your product needs, handled from one platform.
Welcome emails and account setup sequences delivered reliably from day one.
Secure, branded password reset links delivered instantly to your users.
One-time password codes that arrive in under 5 seconds, every time.
Email address confirmation flows that complete fast and land in the inbox.
Passwordless login links sent and received in seconds for frictionless auth.
Invoices and receipts as HTML or PDF delivered straight to customer inboxes.
Trial expiry, renewal reminders, and subscription change confirmations.
Broadcast campaigns and drip sequences sent from the same platform as your product emails.
Amazon SES sends email. Keplars is a complete email platform. Manage everything from a single dashboard, no other AWS services required.
APIs and SMTP for OTPs, resets, invoices, and all product-critical email.
Broadcast campaigns and lifecycle email flows from the same platform.
AI-generated, drag-and-drop, and code editor. All in one unified interface.
Trigger-based email workflows with branching logic and delay controls.
Open time, delivered time, click time, and full event timelines per email.
Manage sending domains, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and a live analytics dashboard in one place.
No AWS account, no sandbox, no IAM policies. Most migrations take under 30 minutes.
Sign up at dash.keplars.com and create a new project. Takes under a minute.
Authenticate via OAuth with Gmail or Google Workspace, or add your custom domain with auto-managed DNS records.
Swap out the AWS SDK SES client for the Keplars SDK and update your API key. No more IAM credentials to rotate.
Copy your existing HTML templates or rebuild them with the AI-powered Keplars editor and visual designer.
Point Keplars webhooks at your existing event handler instead of maintaining SNS topics and subscriptions.
Before vs After
import { SESClient, SendEmailCommand } from "@aws-sdk/client-ses";
const ses = new SESClient({ region: "us-east-1" });
await ses.send(
new SendEmailCommand({
Source: "[email protected]",
Destination: { ToAddresses: ["[email protected]"] },
Message: {
Subject: { Data: "Welcome!" },
Body: { Html: { Data: "<h1>Welcome aboard</h1>" } },
},
}),
);import { Keplars } from '@keplars/sdk';
const keplars = new Keplars({
apiKey: process.env.KEPLARS_API_KEY,
});
await keplars.emails.sendInstant({
to: ['[email protected]'],
subject: 'Welcome!',
html: '<h1>Welcome aboard</h1>',
is_html: true,
});Event notification mapping
Amazon SES publishes events through SNS topics. Keplars fires the same events as webhooks, no SNS topics or subscriptions to maintain.
Templates, contact lists, and domain settings all carry over. Full details in the migration guide.
Keplars combines reliable email infrastructure with everything needed to build, send, automate, and optimize email communications. Instead of stitching together multiple AWS services and third-party tools, you get campaigns, automation, templates, analytics, mailbox warmup, deliverability insights, and developer APIs, all in a single platform.
Perfect for startups, SaaS products, agencies, and growing businesses that want enterprise-grade email infrastructure without enterprise complexity.
Built to grow with your product. Start free, scale to millions of emails without re-architecting your email stack.
Clean REST APIs and clear documentation for engineering, plus a no-code editor and campaign tools for marketers. No AWS console to learn.
Stop running separate tools for product emails and marketing campaigns. Keplars handles both from a single dashboard.
Real-time open rates, click rates, delivery timelines, and bounce tracking. No CloudWatch dashboards to configure.
Trigger-based email workflows, drip sequences, and re-engagement flows are included. No additional tool or tier required.
APIs, SMTP, webhooks, templates, automations, tracking, domains, and analytics in one place. No AWS service sprawl.
Disclaimer: Comparisons are provided for informational purposes only and are based on publicly available AWS documentation and pricing at the time of publication.