Amazon SES gives you raw sending - VDM gives you the analytics and recommendations layer that AWS used to charge extra for through third parties. SES deliverability (the lower VDM tier) starts at $0.07 per 1,000 emails and includes a dashboard plus an advisor for authentication and reputation issues (AWS, Amazon SES Pricing, retrieved 2026-09-22). The higher Global deliverability tier adds inbox placement testing across mailbox providers for a flat $1,250 per region per month.
This guide covers what VDM actually does, what the dashboard surfaces, what the advisor recommends, the pricing math, and when VDM is genuinely worth the line item on your AWS bill.
Key Takeaways
- VDM is two separate features under one name: SES deliverability (dashboard + advisor) and Global deliverability (inbox placement + blocklist monitoring).
- SES deliverability is per-email metered; Global deliverability is a $1,250/region/month flat fee.
- The dashboard breaks metrics down by account, ISP, sending identity, and configuration set.
- VDM is opt-in - you enable it explicitly from the SES console or via the
PutAccountVdmAttributesAPI.- For most BYO-SES senders below 100k contacts, the dashboard duplicates what their ESP already shows - the advisor is the part worth paying for.
What VDM actually does
Virtual Deliverability Manager is AWS's managed deliverability layer for SES, split into two complementary capabilities (AWS, VDM documentation, retrieved 2026-09-22). SES deliverability provides insights and recommendations for email sent through your SES account - a dashboard for monitoring deliverability data plus an advisor that flags configuration and reputation issues. Global deliverability extends that visibility beyond SES with inbox placement testing, blocklist monitoring, and campaign analytics across every mailbox provider your domains touch.
VDM doesn't change how SES sends mail. It sits on top of your existing sending stream and aggregates the same event data SES already produces, then presents it in a console UI and exposes it through a query API. Engagement tracking (opens and clicks) inside VDM is independent of your event destinations - turning engagement tracking off in VDM does not stop SES from publishing open and click events to CloudWatch, Kinesis, or SNS (AWS, VDM settings, retrieved 2026-09-22).
VDM Dashboard - the metrics it surfaces
The deliverability dashboard breaks your sending into four scopes: account, ISP, sending identity (domain or email address), and configuration set. For each scope, VDM tracks send volume, delivery rate, bounce rate, complaint rate, open rate, click rate, and (where available) inbox placement signals derived from engagement patterns (AWS, SES deliverability, retrieved 2026-09-22). The ISP breakdown is the part you cannot easily reconstruct from raw event data - it slices delivery and engagement by Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Apple iCloud, and the long tail.
| Dashboard scope | What you see | Most useful for |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Total volume, delivery, bounce, complaint, open, click across all sending | Tracking aggregate reputation trends |
| ISP | Per-mailbox-provider metrics (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) | Spotting one ISP rejecting or filtering before it affects overall numbers |
| Sending identity | Per-domain or per-address engagement and delivery | Comparing transactional vs marketing domain reputation |
| Configuration set | Per-config-set delivery + engagement | Isolating campaigns, lifecycle stages, or product lines |
The dashboard updates continuously as new events arrive. There's no separate ingestion step - if you've enabled VDM and engagement tracking, every send is counted automatically.
VDM Advisor - the recommendations
The advisor flags infrastructure and configuration issues that hurt deliverability and proposes a fix for each one. It runs continuously against your account state and your recent sending patterns, so the recommendation list changes as you ship fixes or as new identities come online. Typical advisor categories include DKIM signing gaps, missing or weak SPF records, unconfigured custom MAIL FROM domains, identities sending without DMARC alignment, and bounce/complaint trends approaching AWS's published thresholds.
Each recommendation in the advisor includes a severity level, the specific identity or configuration set affected, a short explanation of why it matters, and a link to the remediation steps in the SES console. The advisor is the part of VDM that's hardest to replicate elsewhere - reputation dashboards exist in every ESP, but a managed service that watches your authentication posture and tells you what to fix is rarer.
Enabling VDM and pricing
VDM is opt-in. You enable it from the SES console under Virtual Deliverability Manager, or programmatically via the PutAccountVdmAttributes API (AWS, VDM settings, retrieved 2026-09-22). Once enabled at the account level, you can override engagement tracking and optimized shared delivery per configuration set if you want VDM to ignore certain sending streams (transactional pipelines that don't need engagement tracking, for example).
Pricing has two completely different shapes for the two tiers (AWS, SES Pricing, retrieved 2026-09-22):
| Tier | Pricing | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| SES deliverability (volume-metered) | $0.07/1,000 emails (0-10M) $0.05/1,000 emails (10M-100M) $0.02/1,000 emails (>100M) First 5,000 API queries/month free |
Dashboard (account, ISP, identity, config set) + advisor |
| Global deliverability (flat-rate) | $1,250/region/month Includes 5 domains, 12 IPs, 25 seed-list tests Overages metered separately |
Inbox placement testing, blocklist monitoring, campaign analytics across all providers |
The math matters. At 100,000 emails/month, SES deliverability adds $7/month on top of $10 in base SES costs - a small, defensible line item. At 1M/month, it's $70/month. Global deliverability's $1,250/region flat fee only makes sense if you're running multi-domain sending on dedicated IPs and genuinely use the seed-list testing.
When VDM is worth it - and when it's overkill
SES deliverability (the lower tier) is worth turning on when you need ISP-level breakdowns or when you don't already have an advisor-equivalent in your stack. If you're running raw SES through a custom backend with only CloudWatch metrics, the dashboard and advisor together replace a meaningful chunk of bespoke tooling. If you're on an ESP that already breaks delivery down by ISP and warns you about authentication gaps, you're paying twice.
Global deliverability is harder to justify. The $1,250/region/month flat fee bundles 5 domains and 25 seed tests - useful for organizations that genuinely need third-party inbox placement data across Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and a long tail of providers. For a single-product sender with one or two domains, dedicated inbox placement testing tools (250ok, GlockApps, Inboxally) often cost less and integrate independently of AWS.
The honest answer for most BYO-SES senders below 100k contacts: the SES deliverability advisor is the part you're really paying for. The dashboard duplicates what your ESP already shows.
VDM vs your existing monitoring stack
Most senders running SES through a management layer already have:
- Per-campaign open, click, bounce, complaint metrics in their ESP dashboard.
- SES event publishing to CloudWatch (or SNS, or Kinesis) for raw event data.
- A reputation alert hooked to SES's published bounce (5% / 10%) and complaint (0.1% / 0.5%) thresholds - see Amazon SES deliverability for the full threshold breakdown.
- Domain authentication monitoring via DMARC report aggregators (Postmark DMARC, Valimail, etc.).
VDM's incremental value over that stack is the ISP-level breakdown plus the advisor. If your ESP already segments delivery by mailbox provider and your authentication posture is monitored elsewhere, VDM mostly duplicates work. If you're building monitoring yourself or you've never audited your domain authentication, the advisor pays for itself within a month. For the manual version of the same audit, see the Amazon SES best practices checklist.
How Mailblast handles deliverability when VDM isn't used
Mailblast is a hosted management layer on top of your own Amazon SES account (BYO-SES) - Mailblast sends through your SES, not a pooled one. Without VDM, the Mailblast dashboard already reports per-campaign open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, per-link click tracking, and recipient-level event data, all sourced from SES event publishing on your AWS account.
What Mailblast doesn't do that VDM does: ISP-level breakdowns and authentication advisory recommendations. For senders who want both - Mailblast's campaign view plus VDM's deliverability dashboard - the two coexist cleanly. VDM operates at the SES account level, so enabling it covers every Mailblast send automatically without configuration changes inside Mailblast. The total bill becomes Mailblast subscription + SES sending costs + VDM metered cost on top of all SES traffic in the account.
For senders running automation, list-based triggers, double opt-in, and CSV import alongside their SES sending, that combination - hosted management + optional VDM advisor - covers both the campaign side and the deliverability side without rebuilding either from scratch.
FAQ
What is Amazon SES Virtual Deliverability Manager?
Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) is a paid Amazon SES feature that adds a deliverability dashboard and an advisor on top of raw SES sending. It surfaces account, ISP, identity, and configuration-set-level metrics for opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, and inbox placement, and recommends fixes for authentication and reputation issues (AWS VDM documentation, retrieved 2026-09-22).
How much does VDM cost?
SES deliverability (the dashboard plus advisor) is metered at $0.07 per 1,000 emails for the first 10M/month, $0.05 from 10M to 100M, and $0.02 above 100M, with the first 5,000 API queries per month free. Global deliverability is a separate $1,250 per region per month flat fee that bundles 5 domains, 12 IPs, and 25 seed-list tests.
Is VDM enabled by default?
No. VDM is opt-in per account. You enable it from the SES console under Virtual Deliverability Manager, or via the PutAccountVdmAttributes API. Once enabled, both engagement tracking and optimized shared delivery can be toggled on or off at the account level and overridden per configuration set.
Does VDM replace CloudWatch or SNS event publishing?
No. VDM is a managed analytics layer - it does not replace your event destinations. Open and click event publishing to CloudWatch, Kinesis, or SNS continues independently of VDM's engagement tracking setting. Most senders run both: VDM for aggregated deliverability views, event destinations for raw event streams.
Do I need VDM if I use Mailblast?
Mailblast already reports opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, and per-link engagement directly in the Mailblast dashboard - sourced from SES event publishing on your own AWS account. VDM adds ISP-level breakdowns, the advisor's authentication recommendations, and (in the Global tier) inbox placement testing. Many Mailblast customers enable SES deliverability for the advisor alone and skip Global deliverability unless they run dedicated IPs at scale.
Disclosure: Mailblast is a hosted management layer for your own Amazon SES account (BYO-SES). VDM is an optional AWS feature billed by Amazon; enabling it covers every Mailblast send automatically and the metered cost appears on your AWS bill, not your Mailblast subscription.