Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) vs. Customer.io

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon SES
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is an outbound-only email-sending service useful for marketing and transactional email, relying on the infrastructure of Amazon. Amazon SES provides the requisite statistics and built-in notifications for bounces, complaints, and deliveries for optimization of campaigns. Emails are sent via SMTP or the Amazon SES API. Amazon's pricing is per usage, presently at $.10 per thousand sends. The service is free for users of Amazon EC2 (up to 62,000 messages),…
$0.10
for emails after the first 1,000
Customer.io
Score 8.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Customer.io is a customer engagement platform that enables marketers to build sophisticated automated messaging campaigns. With access to real-time behavioral data, users can create personalized and relevant messages to engage and retain customers. This includes sending emails, push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and more through a visual building experience. Built for scale, Customer.io boasts users among over 5,300 companies, sending over 17 billion messages per year.
$100
per month
Pricing
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)Customer.io
Editions & Modules
Sending Emails from an Application Hosted in Amazon EC2
$0.10 ($0.12)
for every 1,000 emails after 62,000 (for each GB of storage)
Sending Emails from Another Email Client or Software Package
$0.10 ($0.12)
for every 1,000 emails (for each GB of storage)
Receiving Email
$0.10
for emails after the first 1,000
Sending Emails from an Application Hosted in Amazon EC2
Free
for first 62,000 emails
Receiving Email
Free
for the first 1,000 emails
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon SESCustomer.io
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details—Essentials: For startups and small teams engaging customers on their mobile and web apps. - Up to 5,000 profiles*, Send Emails, Push, In-App, and SMS, Visual Workflow Builder, Segmentation, Two Workspaces, Email Support, Customer Community Premium: For high-growth companies looking for greater control over their messaging outcomes. - Everything in Essentials, Custom Data + Message Volume, Premium Product Features, Additional Workspaces, 90-day Onboarding Program, Premium Email & Chat Support, Managed Deliverability, Dedicated IPs, Parcel Pro Licenses, HIPAA Compliance Enterprise: For at-scale companies looking to create world-class customer experiences. - Everything in Premium, Managed Infrastructure*, Customer Success Manager, Quarterly Success Reviews, Technical Account Manager*, Audit Logging & Data Governance*, Parcel Business Licenses, Migration Support*, *Available by consultation.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)Customer.io
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)Customer.io
Small Businesses
Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)
Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)
Score 7.5 out of 10
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)
Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)
Score 7.5 out of 10
Bright Pattern Contact Center
Bright Pattern Contact Center
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

Conversica
Conversica
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)Customer.io
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(21 ratings)
9.8
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)Customer.io
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Amazon Simple Email Service comes with the bundle of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and it also offers a limited number of emails per month for free. One who has a technical background and wants to send custom emails with custom domains in a professional way can go with Amazon Simple Email Service. If you have no technical background or tech team, it might not be useful for you.
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Customer.io
This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Amazon Simple Email Service is a much lower cost than most other solutions and truly makes cost a non-factor in most situations where we consider implementing it.
  • The API is so well documented that implementing Amazon Simple Email Service in nearly any application or codebase is achievable with basic coding knowledge.
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Customer.io
  • Managing users, attributes and events. You are easily able to modify any user, based on their ID, and add or remove attributes, assign events to them. That makes it very easy to segment later and to assign them to several campaigns based on behavior. Just a warning: this integration isn't so easy (at least it wasn't for us).
  • Creating workflows of campaigns is very easy. You can quickly create behavioral campaigns based on attributes, segments and add elements to the workflow. You can send an email, then wait, then send another, then exit the campaign if they converted, etc. The workflow is easy to configure and very powerful for automation.
  • We don't use many email templates (we make them in MJML) but it's very easy to add senders, to change templates and in general to test designs.
  • Deliverability works very well, at least for us. It sends emails pretty fast and without issues.
  • Exporting is very quick and easy. Importing wasn't a feature until recently, but it works well too.
  • Seeing activity it's also useful. In general, logs are awesome (be it of a customer, of activity on the site, email sends, etc.).
  • We don't use environments, but it might be very useful for a bigger company.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Even if you do not want to spam, you cant send an email to the unverified users.
  • Integration with other services is a bit tricky. To watch the trail, handle bounced emails, save emails on S3 are not straightforward to implement.
  • When you want to send a lot of emails (in bulk), it takes a significant amount of time.
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Customer.io
  • Push notifications are very rudimentary. Everything has to be done by hand unless you're sending an extremely simple message.
  • A bit too email centric.
  • Lacks an ability to schedule messages on a daily, weekly, etc. basis.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
We did not have the need of contacting Amazon for support. The documentation they provide is of great quality. Examples are easy to follow. One thing to have into consideration is we didn't have the premium support for AWS, so I can't provide details on how good or bad this service is, but in general, the basic support I had was great.
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Customer.io
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Mailchimp has a fixed monthly price, and with the number of emails that we sent, it's pretty expensive. Since our mailings are quite infrequent, using Mailchimp didn't make financial sense for us, even though Mailchimp is a more polished, packaged solution for email marketing. We evaluated other email delivery solutions as well and didn't find anything that matches Amazon SES on reliability and pricing.
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Customer.io
Customer.io was really the first pure, full-featured drip email program on the market and as far as I know, it's still the simplest and best overall for that specific function. SendGrid has also added drip campaign features, but I would seriously evaluate Customer.io against any other drip email provider because they really have all the key elements you need to make it work.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • SES is still more cost effective than other email services like Mailgun.
  • Unless we have a high-traffic month, staying within the free tier is very nice for our bottom line.
  • Not having to spend time worrying about SES reliability saves us frustration and money.
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Customer.io
  • Fast testing for new products to specific groups. It saves a lot of time and money.
  • Removed workload from marketing = more time to make it better.
  • Better contact with specific groups, seeing a increase in sales because of this.
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ScreenShots

Customer.io Screenshots

Screenshot of account performance visible at a glance from the Dashboard view.Screenshot of Drag and drop messages, time delays, and branches where desired, to build cross-channel campaigns.Screenshot of Localization for global audiences. One message delivered in multiple languages.Screenshot of Triggered campaigns based on forms submissions, customer attributes, customer actions, and dates.Screenshot of Data-driven or manual segments that can be created in the no-code builder for recipient lists, campaign triggers, filters, and conversion goals.Screenshot of the code editor for email, that helps navigate code and iterate.