Amazon SES sends from shared IP addresses by default and offers two kinds of dedicated IP for a fee. Standard dedicated IPs cost $24.95 per IP per month as of October 2026: fixed addresses you request from AWS Support, which SES warms up automatically over 45 days. Managed dedicated IPs cost $15 per account per month plus $0.08 per 1,000 emails: SES decides how many you need, scales them and warms them up per mailbox provider. AWS's own recommendation is to stay on shared IPs unless you send large volumes on a regular, predictable basis.
Everything below comes from AWS's SES pricing page and the SES dedicated IP documentation, checked in October 2026. Both change, so confirm before you commit.
Shared vs standard vs managed: the three options
AWS publishes a comparison in its developer guide. The parts that matter most:
| Shared IPs | Standard dedicated | Managed dedicated | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ready to use immediately | Yes | No | No |
| Reputation isolated from other SES customers | No | Yes | Yes |
| Capacity grows automatically with traffic | No | No | Yes |
| Good for unpredictable sending patterns | Yes | No | Yes |
| Good for low-volume senders | Yes | No | No |
| Known IP addresses that never change | No | Yes | No |
| Extra monthly cost | No | Yes | Yes |
Two rows are worth dwelling on. First, AWS rates neither dedicated option as good for low-volume senders. Second, only standard IPs give you fixed addresses, which matters if a partner allow-lists your sending IPs.
What does an SES dedicated IP cost?
Standard IPs are a flat fee per address. Managed IPs are a flat fee per account plus a per-email charge, on top of the normal $0.10 per 1,000 sending rate. The managed per-email rate falls with volume: $0.08 per 1,000 up to 10 million a month, $0.04 from 10 to 50 million, $0.02 from 50 to 100 million.
Monthly SES sending cost with each option, as of October 2026, before data charges:
| Monthly emails | Shared IPs | 1 standard IP | 2 standard IPs | Managed IPs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 | $10 | $34.95 | $59.90 | $33 |
| 250,000 | $25 | $49.95 | $74.90 | $60 |
| 500,000 | $50 | $74.95 | $99.90 | $105 |
| 1,000,000 | $100 | $124.95 | $149.90 | $195 |
The arithmetic for managed IPs at 500,000 emails is 500 × $0.10 for sending, plus $15, plus 500 × $0.08, which comes to $105. Standard IPs get cheaper per email the more you send; managed IPs don't, because the per-email fee scales with you. What managed buys is automation.
Standard IPs have no minimum commitment, and if you release one partway through a month, AWS prorates the fee by the days used. AWS's bundled Pro and Enterprise plans include managed dedicated IPs; our Amazon SES pricing explainer covers when those plans pay off.
How to get a dedicated IP on SES
Standard: open the Dedicated IPs page in the SES console and choose to request dedicated IPs. That opens an AWS Support case for a service quota increase, where you choose the Region and how many IPs you want. AWS evaluates the request and confirms in the case. Releasing an IP is the same process in reverse, and it can't be undone. Once leased, you can group IPs into pools, for example one for transactional and one for marketing mail, and pick a pool per message through a configuration set.
Managed: create a managed IP pool from the same console page. No support case is needed. Associate the pool with a configuration set and send with it, or make that configuration set the default for a sending identity. SES allocates your first dedicated IP once you've sent hundreds of emails over a few days, then adds or removes IPs as your traffic changes. Deleting the pool releases the IPs and stops the charges.
You can have up to 50 IP pools per Region, standard and managed combined. Like everything else in SES, dedicated IPs are per Region.
How warm-up works on SES
A new IP has no history, and mailbox providers are cautious with mail from addresses they don't know. Warm-up is sending a gradually rising share of your mail from the new IP so they can build a reputation for it. AWS's documentation says this can take about two weeks at some providers and up to six at others. Our general IP warm-up guide covers the principles; here's how SES applies them.
Standard IPs: automatic, time-based, 45 days
Automatic warm-up is on by default. When you get your first standard IPs, SES splits your sending between them and the shared pool, and shifts the share toward your new IPs over time. If you already have warmed IPs, the split is between old and new. The schedule is time-based: it rises steadily over 45 days regardless of how much you send.
You can override it. In the console you can set a warm-up percentage by hand, mark warm-up complete early, or reset an IP to 1% and start again. You can also turn automatic warm-up off for the whole account, in which case new IPs arrive marked complete and warming them is entirely your job. AWS warns that skipping warm-up can mean poor delivery rates.
After warm-up, AWS suggests sending around 1,000 emails a day to each mailbox provider you want to keep a good reputation with, from each dedicated IP, and growing toward your target volume gradually rather than jumping straight to it.
Managed IPs: adaptive, per mailbox provider
Managed IPs track warm-up separately for each provider. If you've only been sending to Gmail, your IPs are warm for Gmail and cold for Outlook, and SES ramps Outlook traffic slowly. Early in warm-up, anything beyond the current capacity goes out through the SES shared pool; later, excess is slowed and retried.
Two consequences are worth knowing. Even once warm, AWS doesn't guarantee that all of your mail goes through your dedicated IPs: a sudden spike can trigger a new IP and send some traffic through the shared pool while it warms. And if your volume drops too low to sustain an IP, SES may remove it and route you through the shared pool.
What warm-up on SES doesn't do
Both warm-up schemes manage how much mail goes through an IP. Neither one stops you sending a bad list. A list with old addresses produces bounces whatever IP it goes through, and on a dedicated IP those bounces land on your reputation alone. AWS places accounts under review at a 5% bounce rate or 0.1% complaint rate, and may pause sending at 10% or 0.5%.
When a dedicated IP on SES is worth it
- You send steadily and at volume. AWS says most providers only track an IP's reputation once they see significant volume from it, and suggests several hundred emails within 24 hours at least once a month to each provider. In practice, a dedicated IP wants daily traffic, not a monthly burst.
- You want your reputation to be yours. On shared IPs, SES manages reputation across many customers. On a dedicated IP, it reflects only your sending practices, good or bad.
- You want to separate streams. Pools let you keep password resets on one IP and newsletters on another, so a marketing problem doesn't slow transactional mail.
- A partner needs fixed IPs. Standard IPs are static; managed ones aren't.
When a shared pool is better
- Your volume is low or irregular. A dedicated IP that sends a big batch once a month and little else looks erratic to mailbox providers. AWS recommends shared IPs here, and says if your pattern is irregular but you still want dedicated IPs, managed is the better choice.
- You're new to sending. A shared pool with an established reputation usually delivers better than a fresh IP with none.
- Your real problem is elsewhere. If mail goes to spam, check SPF, DKIM, DMARC and list quality first. A dedicated IP isolates your reputation; it doesn't repair it. Our guide to why emails go to spam covers the usual causes.
Standard or managed: how to choose
| If you... | Choose |
|---|---|
| Send steady, predictable volume and want the lowest cost per email | Standard |
| Need IP addresses that never change | Standard |
| Have spiky or growing volume and don't want to manage IP counts | Managed |
| Send unevenly across Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo | Managed |
| Send under a few hundred emails a day | Neither: stay on shared |
On cost alone, one standard IP is cheaper than managed IPs above roughly 125,000 emails a month at the first-tier rate, because $24.95 is less than $15 plus $0.08 per 1,000 from that point. Below that, managed is marginally cheaper, but at that volume AWS's advice points to shared IPs anyway.
What a dedicated IP doesn't cover on SES
Whichever kind you pick, AWS is clear that "managed" means managed infrastructure, not managed reputation. According to its documentation:
- Blocklists are your job. If a dedicated IP lands on a blocklist, you request removal from the list operator yourself. SES won't rotate the IP for a new one.
- Bounce rates are your job. SES doesn't watch your dedicated IP's bounce rate and swap it out when things go wrong.
- Monitoring is your job. AWS suggests tracking bounce notifications and SMTP responses to spot blocks; SES delivery events include the outgoing IP, so you can tie a bounce to a specific address.
That's the same list of work as on shared IPs, with higher stakes, because nobody else's good sending is diluting your mistakes.
A dedicated IP without the build
If you'd rather not assemble this on SES, our dedicated IP email service includes a dedicated IP from 200,000 emails a month; below that, you send from our shared pool, for the same reasons AWS gives. Pricing is $0.20 per 1,000 emails, with a $10 monthly minimum that includes 50,000 emails and a $10 one-time setup fee, so 250,000 emails is $50 a month, about the same as SES with one standard IP ($49.95). At 500,000 and above, SES is cheaper on sending: $74.95 against our $100.
What differs is the work. Our warm-up adapts to results: your daily limit rises about 25% after each clean day and holds after a bad one, usually reaching full volume in three to five weeks while your current provider carries the rest. Hard bounces and complaints suppress automatically, sending pauses if hard bounces pass 5% or complaints 0.3% over 24 hours, and blocklists are checked hourly. The full trade-off is on our Amazon SES alternative page.
Want to see whether it fits your volume? See pricing, or run your numbers in the email cost calculator.