An OpenSend alternative you install, not rentYour SES quota stays yours, with a platform on top instead of a middleman.

The logic of paying for a hosted layer on top of your own SES quota is understandable: SES alone gives you a sending API and a console, not a dashboard, campaigns, or a way to manage a list. Something has to fill that gap. The question worth asking is why that something should be a second vendor with its own subscription, sitting between your app and infrastructure you already pay for and already own the reputation on.

There is a real case for a rented layer, and it is worth naming rather than dismissing. A fully managed ESP means someone else's team is responsible for the dashboard, the uptime of that dashboard, and any support when it misbehaves.

• Stay if you refuse to use AWS SES directly under any circumstance and want the sending infrastructure itself managed by a vendor.
• Stay if you want a fully managed dashboard and are comfortable with the subscription that comes with it.
• Move if you already think in terms of your own SES quota and reputation, and the rented layer's only real job is a dashboard, campaigns and lists that an owned install can do just as well inside your own account.

1. Confirm which AWS account and region your SES quota actually lives in.
2. Buy SendBunny and complete the one-click AWS install into that same account.
3. Verify your sending domains and import any lists the rented layer was holding for you.
4. Move campaigns and transactional traffic onto the new platform.
5. Cancel the rented layer once the SES-backed install is carrying live traffic.

What carries over cleanly: your SES sending quota and domain reputation, since neither ever left your account. What does not: any dashboard-only history or reporting the rented layer kept on its own servers, which needs a fresh export before you cancel.

What does not change: the account sending the mail is still governed by AWS's own rules either way, since the SES quota was never the rented layer's to control. Removing the rented layer removes its subscription and its policy team, not Amazon's review of bounce and complaint rates on the account.

SendBunny installs with one click as a CloudFormation stack directly in the AWS account that already holds your SES quota, so nothing about your sending reputation has to move. It is a single $199 purchase, with optional $99 yearly updates after the first year, and there is no rented-layer subscription stacked on top of your own SES bill of roughly a tenth of a cent per email. The install includes a dashboard, campaigns, automations, a transactional API, a shared inbox, analytics and a template editor. We never hold your AWS credentials.

If your account is still in the SES sandbox, the dashboard shows that status directly and links to AWS's production-access form, so setup can proceed while approval is pending.