AWS SES is bait for indie hackers. A fraction of a cent per email, AWS-grade uptime, no per-seat licensing—it looks like the perfect cold-email infrastructure. Then you ship your first campaign and realize SES is a sending pipe, not an outreach system. Everything the product doesn't do has to live in your code.

What SES actually gives you

SES is a transactional mail service that also handles bulk volume. You get:

SMTP + REST API sending

SPF/DKIM/MAIL FROM authentication