Sending 1 million emails a month costs anywhere from about $100 to over $900, depending on the provider and whether you need a dedicated IP. As of October 2026, Amazon SES charges about $100 for sending alone, Resend $650, Postmark $775 and SendGrid about $799. With a dedicated IP, which most senders want at this volume, the figures become $124.95, $680, $902.50 and about $799 (SendGrid includes one).

This post shows where those numbers come from, what each price includes, and what's missing from the cheapest option. For other volumes, use our email cost calculator.

The numbers at 1 million emails a month

Monthly cost as of October 2026, using the cheapest published option at 1,000,000 emails. Confirm current figures on each vendor's pricing page.

Provider Shared IPs With a dedicated IP How we got it
Amazon SES $100 $124.95 $0.10 per 1,000, + $24.95 per IP
Resend $650 $680 Scale 1M tier, + $30 IP add-on
Postmark $775 $902.50 Basic 1.5M tier; IP needs Pro ($852.50) + $50
SendGrid about $799 about $799 Pro 1.5M tier, IP included
Mailgun quote quote No published price above 100k
OwnMailServer Scale 1M (early access) — $399 Flat, 2 dedicated IPs included

A few things stand out.

Tiers don't line up with 1 million. Postmark and SendGrid have no 1M tier, so you pay for their 1.5M tier. On Postmark, the 700k tier plus overage ($455 + 300 × $1.70 = $965) costs more than simply buying the 1.5M tier. Resend has a 1M tier at exactly $650.

Dedicated IPs aren't always available. Postmark only offers them on Pro or higher and from 300,000 emails a month, which is why its dedicated-IP figure uses the Pro price. Resend sells them on Scale to senders above 3,000 emails a day.

SendGrid's tiers are approximate. SendGrid's own pricing page lists only starting prices; the Pro tiers ($249 at 300k, $499 at 700k, $799 at 1.5M) come from a third-party reading of Twilio's plan list. Get a quote before you rely on them.

Mailgun doesn't publish a price. Its pricing page lists volumes up to 2.5M on a slider but shows no prices above the $90 Scale plan for 100k. The most you'd pay is that plan plus published overage ($90 + 900 × $1.10 = $1,080), but at this volume you'd negotiate.

Why a dedicated IP matters at this volume

At 1 million emails a month, you're sending about 33,000 a day. That's enough steady traffic for Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo to build a reputation for an IP, which is the point of having your own. On a shared IP, your delivery also depends on what other customers send. On a dedicated one, it depends only on you.

The trade-off is warm-up. A new IP has no history, so you start with a few hundred emails a day to your most engaged recipients and build up over 4–6 weeks. Our IP warm-up guide has a schedule. If you send much less than this, say under 200,000 a month, a shared pool usually delivers better. Our post on shared vs dedicated IPs covers that decision in detail.

What the cheapest option leaves out

Amazon SES is clearly the cheapest per email. It's also the most bare. With SES you get a sending engine and an API. You build or buy:

  • Bounce and complaint handling: SES reports them through SNS notifications; you write the code that suppresses those addresses.
  • Logs and search: answering "did this customer get their password reset?" needs your own event storage.
  • Dashboards and alerts: bounce rate, complaint rate and delivery by provider.
  • IP warm-up: with a standard dedicated IP, you plan and run the schedule yourself (managed dedicated IPs cost $15 a month plus $0.08 per 1,000 instead).

AWS also controls your account. New accounts start in a sandbox, sending limits rise on request, and a complaint spike can pause sending. None of this is a reason to avoid SES, which many large senders use happily. It's a reason to count engineering time as part of the price. Our Amazon SES alternative page goes deeper.

The hosted APIs (Resend, SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun) include those parts, which is most of what their higher price buys.

A flat-price option

Per-email pricing means your bill grows with every email. A dedicated server costs the same whether you send 400,000 or 1,000,000 emails.

That's the idea behind our Scale plans, which are in early access: your own server and dedicated IPs, a Resend-style API and SMTP, managed warm-up and daily deliverability monitoring, for a flat monthly price. Scale 1M is $399 a month with two dedicated IPs; Scale 500k is $249 and Scale 250k is $149. There's no payment until your server is live. Details are on the high-volume email page and the pricing page.

To be fair to the alternatives:

  • Choose SES if you have engineers to build the surrounding tooling and want the lowest sending cost.
  • Choose Resend, SendGrid or Postmark if you want a mature, fully self-service product and the per-email cost is fine for your budget.
  • Choose a dedicated server if you send steadily at this volume and want a fixed cost and a reputation of your own.

How the volumes compare

If you're not at a million yet, here's how the same providers look at the other common volumes, with a dedicated IP included where available (as of October 2026):

Volume Resend + IP SendGrid Pro Postmark Pro + IP Amazon SES + IP OwnMailServer Scale
250,000 $230 about $249 not available (<300k) $49.95 $149
500,000 $380 about $499 $550.50 $74.95 $249
1,000,000 $680 about $799 $902.50 $124.95 $399

Our cost comparison from 50k to 2.5M covers shared-IP prices at lower volumes.

Costs at other volumes