# Amazon SES vs Postmark API + MCP

> Amazon SES has a score of 75.1 (BB) against Postmark API + MCP's 66.7 (B). Both do email send. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Amazon SES has a score of 75.1 (BB) against Postmark API + MCP's 66.7 (B). Both do email send. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points.

- Amazon SES: grade BB, 75.1/100, rank #42 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-ses.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-ses.json
- Postmark API + MCP: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #158 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/postmark.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/postmark.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Amazon SES for reliability (+35), security & auth (+24), maintenance & community (+20).

Pick Postmark API + MCP for agent ergonomics (+15), payments & pricing (+20).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon SES | Postmark API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 95 | 60 | Amazon SES +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 81 | Amazon SES +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 64 | 79 | Postmark API + MCP +15 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 87 | 63 | Amazon SES +24 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Postmark API + MCP +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 65 | Amazon SES +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 80 | Postmark API + MCP +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.1 · BB** | **66.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon SES | Postmark API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Postmark (ActiveCampaign) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://email.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/v2` | `https://api.postmarkapp.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 24 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-08-12 |
| Popularity | 5.1M npm/wk | 57 stars, 1.3M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (8) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Amazon SES.** Sending starts at $0.10 per 1,000 emails on the a la carte plan. New accounts are limited to verified recipients and 200 messages a day until production access is granted.

**Postmark API + MCP.** 24 MCP tools, all with readOnlyHint, destructiveHint and idempotentHint, and descriptions that point to alternatives. No OpenAPI spec and no published request-rate limit.

## Before you call either

### Amazon SES

1. Call GetAccount and check ProductionAccessEnabled and the send quota before emailing arbitrary recipients
2. Verify the From domain as an identity first. Sends from unverified identities fail even in production
3. Use the mailbox simulator (success@simulator.amazonses.com) to test bounces and complaints without hurting reputation
4. Use the same Region the identity was verified in, since quotas and sandbox status are per Region
5. On a throttling error, wait and retry the send. SES drops messages over quota rather than queueing them

### Postmark API + MCP

1. Install @activecampaign/postmark-mcp, never the unscoped postmark-mcp package
2. Use the token `POSTMARK_API_TEST` to check a payload without sending
3. Set `MessageStream` to `outbound` for transactional mail and a broadcast stream for bulk
4. Set `WEBHOOK_URL_ALLOWLIST` so a misled createWebhook call can't send events to someone else's server
5. Keep `count + offset` under 10,000 on message and bounce searches

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