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AWS SES free tier changes (bad)
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AWS SES free tier changes (bad)

LeviLevi Member

Received this:

"Hello,

On August 1, 2023, the free tier for the Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) will change. We are adding more features to the SES free tier: it now includes more outbound email message sources, SES’ new Virtual Deliverability Manager, and a higher limit for receiving inbound messages. We are also lowering the free tier limit for outbound messages and reducing the duration of the SES free tier to 12 months.

This may affect your bill starting in August 2023. Since you are already using SES, you will be able to take advantage of the revised free tier for another 12 months (until August 2024). Based on your SES usage in May 2023, this change would not have affected your SES bill.
Note this is an estimate based on your usage, and actual billing impact may vary depending on your usage patterns each month and any discounts you may have.

The revised SES free tier offers you more flexibility. Previously, the SES free tier included up 1,000 inbound email messages per month and up to 62,000 outbound messages per month when sent from AWS compute services such as Amazon EC2. The revised free tier includes up to 3,000 messages each month. You can receive inbound messages, send outbound messages sent from anywhere (not just AWS compute services), or try Virtual Deliverability Manager, which gives you easy access to detailed metrics to explore and monitor your email delivery and engagement rates. For new SES customers, the revised free tier is available for the 12 months after you start using SES; for existing SES customers, the revised free tier is available for 12 months starting August 1, 2023.

The revised SES free tier goes live on August 1, 2023, and your account(s) will be enrolled automatically. As part of this change, you will see the label you see on your SES bill for the pricing unit for inbound messages change from “Message” to “Count” - this matches the same way we label outbound messages. We are not able to offer an option to remain on the previous SES free tier model."

Comments

  • Free means some bad apple screws up for everyone.

    That is why one cannot have good things

  • tr1ckytr1cky Member

    Still think it's pretty cheap, sure, sucks for some people, but if you send less than 60k mails/month I'd consider get yourself a cheap vps and setup either mailcow (x86) or mailu (arm64) (remember docker uses Ram, I would advise at least 1GB Ram + zstd zram or 2GB Ram + lz4 zram or 4GB Ram if you don't want to use zram).

    Or if you just send 10k mails a month or so, maybe Amazon is still cheaper for you and easier to handle (own mailserver means there's a chance you have to contact a few mail providers to get whitelisted).

    I use Oracle Cloud Free tier to send ~500.000 mails/month with a mailu server, no problems at all.

    Thanked by 1ElonBezos
  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

  • LeviLevi Member

    Soon all other similar services will cut down on free tiers. Aws just set precedence. I hate spammers who ruin good things.

  • tr1ckytr1cky Member

    @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    There are providers with free tiers:
    https://www.mailersend.com/pricing 3000 mails / month
    https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ 300 mails / day (so 9000 / month but you can't really burst)
    https://sendgrid.com/pricing/ (100 mails / day so 3000 / month aswell)

    Thanked by 1JasonM
  • @plumberg said:
    Free means some bad apple screws up for everyone.

    That is why one cannot have good things

    same like here: https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/3680404/#Comment_3680404

    a few full dorks molest the service to the maximum and everyone else has to suffer as a result.

    Thanked by 1plumberg
  • tjntjn Member

    @raindog308 said:
    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If you definitely send less than 100 emails a month, you can't beat PostMark.

  • loayloay Member
    edited June 2023

    @tr1cky said: I use Oracle Cloud Free tier to send ~500.000 mails/month with a mailu server, no problems at all.

    500,000 email per month?

  • @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    You should sign up for the next $10 lifetime deal for DirectAdmin email that comes along... (Got mine with myw).

    Thanked by 1raindog308
  • @tr1cky said:

    @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    There are providers with free tiers:
    https://www.mailersend.com/pricing 3000 mails / month
    https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ 300 mails / day (so 9000 / month but you can't really burst)
    https://sendgrid.com/pricing/ (100 mails / day so 3000 / month aswell)

    Thanks. Been using smtp2go for handling old authentication apps and whitelist sender IPs. I'm not close to the 1000/mo limit, but nice to have higher options.

    The delta for free to paid for Mailersender is pretty extreme and I imagine that free tier will get changed in no time once enough people are on it.

  • JasonMJasonM Member

    @TimboJones said: The delta for free to paid for Mailersender is pretty extreme

    even I'm using mailersender free tier and i fear they'll decrease the limit to 1000 or 500 emails per month

    Thanked by 1TimboJones
  • tomletomle Member, LIR
    edited June 2023

    Depends on you use case. Sure, if you send from EC2, then this is a big change towards the worse.
    If you send less than 3000 email per month from outside of EC2, then instead of paying, you now get those for free.
    Edit: but only for 12 months, saw that part now... So definitely worse, especially if sending from EC2.

  • @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    afaik if you use less then 11 cents/month worth of cloud services they don't bill you at all

  • @tr1cky said:

    @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    There are providers with free tiers:
    https://www.mailersend.com/pricing 3000 mails / month
    https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ 300 mails / day (so 9000 / month but you can't really burst)
    https://sendgrid.com/pricing/ (100 mails / day so 3000 / month aswell)

    • SES: flat rate of $0.1/1000 mails sent + $0.12/gb of attachments sent
    • Mailersend: free 3000 mails per month with a rate of $1/1000 email if limit reached
    • Brevo: free 300 mails/day (a maximum of 9000 mails/month)
    • Sendgrid: free 100 mails/day (a maximum of 3000 mails/month)

    AWS SES you can send upto 4000 mails and you would not be charged. (assuming you are below <1gb with your attachments)
    Amazon will just reimburse the fees if its <$0.5 since it will just be more expensive on their end.

    Mailersend is a good choice however can be expensive if you go beyond their free tier limit $1/1000 mails

    Brevo(formerly sendinblue) is probably the best option for a hobbyist or small scale projects. This will not be an option if your mail sends more than the limit specified (but if its a hobby project you would probably use less than 300/day right?).

    Sendgrid is the least viable option here. with the limit closing at 100 mails/day, there might be a chance you would hit this limit but still an option nontheless.


    Thanked by 1loay
  • SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep

    Reminds me of my old $0.03/m bills from Amazon for S3 when I hosted a debian repository there. I'm sure that was worth charging me for.

    Thanked by 1sillycat
  • cochoncochon Member

    @szymonp said:

    @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    afaik if you use less then 11 cents/month worth of cloud services they don't bill you at all

    They do invoice you but seemingly don't collect payment. I have an old test/trial AWS account I no longer use for live, it gets a 2c invoice every month but has no valid card details. I've actually no idea what the recurring 2c 'net charge' is for, seems too small to be for a reserved item like an IP address, and the service is otherwise unused.

  • I've got the notice email on 2 accounts but not on other 3 customer accounts, not sure if they pick out certain accounts that are over or near 62K monthly quota or something.

  • BlaZeBlaZe Member, Host Rep

    Bad for AWS
    Good for @jar (moar custamurs...)

  • @cochon said:

    @szymonp said:

    @raindog308 said:
    I use the free tier to email stuff from home alerts, etc. to my Gmail.

    I send under 100 a month, under 1,000 for an entire year.

    If Amazon wants to bill me a dime for that after August 2024...OK. I think it'd probably cost them less to just not bill me.

    afaik if you use less then 11 cents/month worth of cloud services they don't bill you at all

    They do invoice you but seemingly don't collect payment. I have an old test/trial AWS account I no longer use for live, it gets a 2c invoice every month but has no valid card details. I've actually no idea what the recurring 2c 'net charge' is for, seems too small to be for a reserved item like an IP address, and the service is otherwise unused.

    There needs to be a Superman/Office Space accounting hack to funnel those invoiced pennies somewhere.

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