COMPARISON
MailKaka vs Amazon SES
This isn't really an infrastructure comparison -- MailKaka sends through AWS SES's Mumbai region too. It's a build-vs-buy question: what do you get out of the box versus what you'd have to build yourself on top of raw SES?
| MailKaka | Raw Amazon SES | |
|---|---|---|
| Underlying infrastructure | AWS SES, Mumbai region (ap-south-1) | AWS SES, Mumbai region (ap-south-1) -- same infrastructure |
| Setup | Guided domain verification, SPF/DKIM/DMARC in the dashboard | Manual: IAM policies, sandbox removal request, DNS records by hand |
| Sending limits | Plan-based quotas, no sandbox approval process | New accounts start in a sandbox (verified recipients only) until AWS approves production access |
| Delivery visibility | Dashboard with logs, bounces, and complaints out of the box | Raw event data via SNS/CloudWatch -- you build the dashboard |
| Replies | Real shared team mailbox included | None -- SES is send/receive primitives, not an inbox product |
| Billing | Fixed monthly plans in INR, GST invoicing | Pay-per-email in USD, billed through AWS |
SES figures reflect AWS's published sandbox and pricing documentation as of September 2026 -- account specifics (existing production access, custom rate limits) vary, so confirm on your own AWS console.
WHY TEAMS SWITCH
Four things that actually matter.
No sandbox approval wait. A fresh SES account can only send to verified addresses until AWS approves a production access request -- which can take from hours to a few days and asks you to describe your sending use case. MailKaka accounts send to real recipients from the start, within plan quotas.
Domain auth without the DNS archaeology. SES gives you the records to add; it doesn't check your work. MailKaka's dashboard walks through SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup and verifies each step.
A dashboard instead of raw event streams. SES reports bounces and complaints through SNS notifications -- useful, but it's infrastructure, not a UI. MailKaka turns the same class of delivery events into logs and a dashboard you can actually read.
Replies don't disappear. SES has no concept of a reply inbox -- it's a sending (and raw receiving) primitive. Every MailKaka domain gets a real shared mailbox by default.
MIGRATING
Switching from raw SES.
If you're calling the SES SendEmail API directly (via the AWS SDK), you're replacing an AWS SDK call with a plain HTTPS request -- no AWS credentials or SDK dependency required on the sending side.
await fetch("https://www.mailkaka.in/api/emails", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${MAILKAKA_API_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({
from: "hello@yourdomain.in",
to: ["customer@example.com"],
subject: "Welcome aboard",
html: "<strong>It just works.</strong>",
}),
});Your domain still needs to be verified with MailKaka even if it was already verified in your own SES account -- domain authentication doesn't transfer between AWS accounts.
FAQ
If MailKaka just uses SES, why not use SES directly and save money?
You can, and for teams comfortable managing IAM, sandbox approval, DNS records, and building their own bounce/complaint handling and reply-inbox UI, that's a reasonable path. MailKaka's plans are priced for the setup, dashboard, and shared inbox you'd otherwise spend engineering time building.
Does MailKaka add latency on top of SES?
MailKaka's API layer adds a request hop in front of SES, the same as any hosted email API does. Since both MailKaka and the underlying SES sending happen in the Mumbai region, that overhead is small relative to email delivery times.
MORE COMPARISONS