Emaillabs vs Amazon SES – which solution and for whom?

During conversations with our customers we are sometimes asked in what way EmailLabs is better than Amazon SES? Why is it worth using Polish SMTP and Email Restful API tool? The answer is mainly related to comparing the most important guidelines according to which we choose the email infrastructure.

What should you consider before making a choice? The most important are email deliverability, data security (place of data processing), technical mailing aspects and the possibility of detailed email reporting. We may not notice the importance of all these differentiators at first, but when a specific problem occurs, the knowledge of the local email market along with a specific requirements of mailbox providers, know-how and the ability to discuss the issue over the phone is often worth its weight in gold. Foreign solutions are usually global players for whom the Polish market is too small to be able to adjust the service to local needs. Meanwhile, in order to effectively reach WP, O2, Onet or Interia mailboxes, it is necessary to have authorization (signed agreements for premium traffic); to well handle email deliveries to local ISPs in neighboring countries, such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, it is crucial to have good, practical knowledge of specific requirements introduced by those providers, including their sending limits..

We hope that the following text will dispel any doubts and explain, when it is worth using EmailLabs.

1. Feature comparison

Service	EmailLabsTM	Amazon SES
SMTP	Yes	Yes
RESTful API	Yes	Yes
Agreements with Polish providers (email authorization)	Yes	No
Verified and Safe Sender option support	Yes	No
SPF, DKIM, DMARC	Yes	Yes Self-setting based on the documentation
Real-time statistics	Yes	Yes
Clicks	Yes	Yes
Opens	Yes	Yes
Hard and soft bounces	Yes	Yes
Event API	Yes	Yes the ability to set email notifications in Amazon CloudWatch or Amazon Kinesis
Blacklist (automatically created set of inactive e-mail addresses to which the server won’t send messages, protects against possible ISPs blocks in case such mailings appear)	Yes	No
Whitelist (list of trusted addresses to which the system always tries to deliver emails)	Yes	No
Support	phone, online meeting (for paid packages included in the package price), email, chat support for everyone	email, phone support (for paid packages) for developers $ 49 / month
Dedicated IP address	149 PLN	$24,95 Require self-setting
Additional IP address	149 PLN	$30
Best deliverability to global mailbox providers (e.g. Gmail)	Yes	Yes
Flexible pricing model for Enterprise customers	Yes	No
100% GDPR compliance	Yes	No

2. Partnership with Polish ISPs

Despite the constantly growing number of Gmail users, still about 56% of Poles ( according to Megapanel, Wirtualne media 2020 ) are more willing to use services of the largest Polish inbox providers: WP, Onet, Interia, o2.

Unfortunately, each of these service providers has their own sending limits and antispam filters that can negatively affect the effectiveness of email performances, including transactional ones. Therefore, ISPs have provided agreements that grant verified sender status and ensure high priority emails are delivered to appropriate folders (Inbox, Offers). As a Polish company with many years of experience in the business of omnichannel solutions, we have been cooperating with Polish inbox providers on the basis of the above-mentioned agreements since 2005. This gives us an advantage over international solutions which have not established such contracts with mailbox providers.

Thus, in Emaillabs both deliverability and throughput are at the highest level. While comparing services pay attention not only to the percentage share of messages with the “ok” status, but also test to which tab your messages are directed. E-mails placed in the SPAM folder are shown in the statistics as properly delivered, and yet hardly any recipient looks for valuable messages in this folder.

* conversions of our clients’ email recipients are not slowed down by a similar warning

WP and O2 email users see the above warning after clicking the link in the message without an authorization

 

To summarize, we are a Polish company, the whole service was designed from the beginning with the idea of solving email deliverability issues in local markets. Hence, if you send your messages to recipients located in Poland, EmailLabs will work best for you.

Also we provide support for additional sender security features available in Grupa WP, Interia or Onet, such as Verified, Trusted or Safe Sender.

* This message comes from a Verified Sender.

This flag indicates that the message has been verified by our system and comes from a trusted sender.

3. Know-how of 15 years’ proven experience in the email market

Email deliverability becomes more and more difficult issue every year which requires enormous knowledge and experience. Not only Polish market is specific in this respect. It is similar in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Slovakia and Ukraine. In every country in Europe people use also global mailboxes such as Outlook or Yahoo. For each of these inbox providers, you need to configure sending parameters differently, such as throughput, number of simultaneous connections, sending volume or professionally warm up IP addresses. In EmailLabs, you don’t have to do any of these on your own, as our deliverability specialists monitor the quality of your email performance.

For years, we have been helping the largest online businesses, retailers, banks and fintechs which, despite having resources to create a similar on premise solution still use EmailLabs. The Amazon service is dedicated for developers and technical people who should have aquired proper knowledge of ISP’s requirements, and when something goes wrong with e-mailing, the weight of email analytics and contacting with each mailbox provider rests on their shoulders. People from IT who have the SMTP servers under control tend to focus on making the service avaliable. Meanwhile, the main issue is at what time and to which tabs the messages are being delivered.

4. Beyond Data Center located in Poland

In order to ensure the highest level of security, we chose Poznań Data Center Beyond as the data processing center. It guarantees not only the highest standards of data storage, but also good localization, which is very important for many companies. Our Data Center is located in Poland, which allows us to meet even the most stringent requirements for personal data processing. When it comes to international ISPs, in many cases it is difficult to determine the exact localization of the Data Center, and thus the exact place of data processing – however, they are certainly not processed in Poland.

5. Service and support „in Polish”

The issue of email deliverability is not a simple one, sometimes it requires gathering some technical data that has a significant impact on solving the problem. It is much easier to provide them in the native language. In EmailLabs, you can always call us to have a conversation . This way, we can avoid many misunderstandings and fix the problem efficiently. Amazon SES, on the other hand, does not have a dedicated support service for Polish customers.

6. Data security, sender protection

EmailLabs is a fully secure service using its own infrastructure, which is not only compliant with GDPR but also with information security management standards. ISO 27001 certification together with an in-depth know-how in the area of customers’ email security (TLS, DMARC, S/MIME) made our solution more often chosen by banks, fintechs and insurance companies (see our case study). Even software developers don’t always know how to properly configure SPF, DKIM, DMARC or S/MIME, and in EmailLabs we extensively help our customers who need specialized knowledge. If a teleconference is required, we are always open to answer additional questions which could not be found in our documentation.

7. Flexibility and adaptability to client’s needs

Due to the fact that we want to create a service that meets even the highest requirements, we are constantly developing functionality in EmailLabs. What is more, we have a flexible approach and tailor solutions to customers needs. You can count on us even if you need a custom integration, adjustment of configuration processes to your business or just want to implement and maintain additional certificates (CSA or Return Path certificate). That’s not all – in case of any difficulties with email delivery, we contact local providers and solve problems on our customer’s behalf. Our intelligent technology generates real-time delivery data from billions of email messages to automatically adjust email delivery for each and every ISP.

Our flexibility also includes legal provisions. Being less corporate than Amazon SES, we understand that every business has its own rules and cooperation standards. In the situation when a customer wants to adjust them to their business or industry, they have that option.

8. Support of email deliverability specialists

Customers may encounter various problems with email deliverability not only during service configuration, but also during message sending. Apart from configuring the system settings, we test and optimize the throughput together and try to solve each issue proactively instead of referring customers to the documentation. What is more, if neccessary, we contact mailbox providers or RBL admins on behalf of the customer.

* EmailLabs is in no way affiliated with or sponsored by Amazon SES. The Amazon SES logo is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.