7 teams that moved to Amazon SES
7 teams moved to Amazon SES. Most left Mailchimp (4) or Kit (1). The typical team cut 94% of its bill. Each team's old bill, running cost and net saving.
Amazon SES appears here as the sending service under self-run newsletters, and this page runs back to 2015. Wes Bos left Mailchimp that year, about $2,500 a year for his list, for a $65 Sendy licence on SES, and put the saving at $2,400 a year. Four of the seven leavers came from Mailchimp.
None of them use SES on its own. Each pairs it with sending software: Sendy, Listmonk, Plunk or something written in-house. Yasoob Khalid and Haskell Weekly went to Listmonk. Jonas Scholz at Sliplane moved from Mailchimp or Customer.io to Plunk at about €2 a month. Alejandro Medina of Legendsverse saw a Kit bill reach almost $200 a month and built BYOMailer, which costs about $3. Sandipan Kundu built his own delivery system to replace Resend, cutting about $90 a month to about $5. Marc Lou's MailCheap left Beehiiv; its old cost is a range from the $1,000 first-year bill to a projected $4,000.
Where costs are given, the cuts are between 88% and 98%, but the bills are small. The page totals about $900 a month saved. Two stories give no running cost.
Written from these stories, updated Nov 2026. Numbers as each team reported them. How this ledger works
- Website
- aws.amazon.com
What they left for Amazon SES
Left Mailchimp4 teams · median $109/mo saved · cut 93%–96% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wes BosSendy on Amazon SES · AWS Wes Bos left Mailchimp, about $2,500 a year for the list, for a $65 Sendy licence on Amazon SES, and put the saving at $2,400 a year. | Jul 2015 | $208/mo | $8/mo | $200/mo | 96% |
| Haskell WeeklySelf-hosted listmonk on Amazon SES Taylor Fausak moved Haskell Weekly from Mailchimp, about $140 a month, to self-hosted listmonk on Amazon SES. | Sep 2024 | $140/mo | not disclosed | $140/mo | — |
| Yasoob KhalidSelf-hosted Listmonk on Amazon SES Yasoob Khalid replaced Mailchimp, $78 a month, with self-hosted Listmonk on Amazon SES. | Mar 2021 | $78/mo | not disclosed | $78/mo | — |
| SliplaneSelf-hosted Plunk on Amazon SES Jonas Scholz replaced Mailchimp or Customer.io, €30 to €80 a month, with self-hosted Plunk on SES at about €2. | Apr 2025 | $33/mo | $2/mo | $31/mo | 93% |
Left Kit1 team · $197/mo saved · cut 99% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LegendsverseOwn BYOMailer on Amazon SES · AWS Alejandro Medina of Legendsverse saw their Kit bill reach almost $200 a month. They moved their newsletters to Amazon SES with their own tool, BYOMailer, and put the cost at about $3. | May 2026 | $200/mo | $3/mo | $197/mo | 99% |
Left Beehiiv1 team · $183/mo saved · cut 88% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marc LouMailCheap, own open source newsletter platform Marc Lou built MailCheap, a newsletter platform on AWS SES and MongoDB, to leave Beehiiv. The first Beehiiv bill was $1,000 a year and the next would have been $4,000. The new setup costs under $300 a year. | Oct 2026 | $83–$333/mo | $25/mo | $58–$308/mo | 88% |
Left Resend1 team · $85/mo saved · cut 94% of the bill
| Team and what they built | Since | Old bill | Running cost | Net saved | Bill cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sandipan KunduOwn email delivery on AWS SES · AWS Sandipan Kundu replaced Resend with a self-built delivery system on AWS SES, taking the bill from about $90 a month to about $5. | Oct 2026 | $90/mo | $5/mo | $85/mo | 94% |