Scaleway Transactional Email is the European SES: cheap per email, hosted only in the fr-par region in France, and capped at a documented 10,000 emails per month on a new account until support raises it. The Scale plan bundles 100,000 emails plus a managed dedicated IP for a fixed monthly fee, with overage at EUR 0.20 per 1,000. It beats a dedicated server below roughly 300,000 emails a month. Above that, and any time you need more than one IP or a marketing stack, a dedicated SMTP server is cheaper and less restricted.
I have run mail through both. The interesting part of this comparison is not the price, it is the quota and who owns the IP.
The headline comparison
| Factor | Scaleway TEM | Dedicated SMTP server |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per email, or fixed Scale plan | Flat, one-time or monthly |
| Free tier | 300 emails/month (Essential) | None |
| New account quota | 10,000 emails/month, documented | Whatever the hardware does |
| Region | fr-par only | Anywhere you pick |
| Dedicated IP | Scale plan only, Scaleway managed | Yours, 3 to 15 of them |
| IP ownership | Scaleway's, not portable | Yours, or leased to you |
| Warm-up | Automatic, generic curve | Tuned to your list |
| Campaign builder | None | None, bring MailWizz or Mautic |
| Suspension risk | Real, shared pool rules apply | None, it is your server |
| Support scale | Small team, ticket based | Depends on the provider |
Scaleway's own numbers here come from their transactional email docs. The pricing figures move, so treat any euro figure you read anywhere, including here, as needing a check against Scaleway's pricing page before you commit a budget.
What Scaleway TEM actually charges
Two plans, and the difference between them is bigger than the price gap suggests.
| Plan | Included emails | Dedicated IP | Overage | Webhooks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | 300/month | No | Per email, pay as you go | 1 per domain |
| Scale | 100,000/month | Yes, managed | EUR 0.20 per 1,000 | Unlimited per domain |
Essential is a hobby tier. Three hundred emails a month is a contact form, not a product. The moment you have real users you are on Scale or paying per email.
The number that matters for planning is the EUR 0.20 per 1,000 overage on Scale, because that is your marginal cost once you pass 100,000. It is cheaper per email than Amazon SES à la carte at $0.10 per 1,000 only after currency and only at some volumes, which is why the cost table below matters more than either headline rate.
I am deliberately not quoting the fixed Scale monthly figure. Scaleway's pricing page sits behind a bot check and I could not verify the current number, and a wrong monthly fee wrecks every calculation built on it. Pull it from Scaleway's pricing page yourself and drop it into the table below.
The quota is the real constraint
This is the part people find out the hard way. Scaleway documents a default service quota of 10,000 emails per month for a new account, plus 10 recipients per message and 10 attachments. Every CC counts as a separate email against that quota.
Ten thousand a month is 333 a day. If you signed up planning to move a 200,000 a month newsletter across, you cannot, not on day one. Quota increases are granted case by case by Scaleway support based on your usage pattern, sender reputation and how well you follow their sending practices. Established accounts do send millions a month, but you get there by asking, waiting, and proving yourself.
Compare the three approaches to that first wall:
| Provider | Starting limit | How you get more |
|---|---|---|
| Scaleway TEM | 10,000/month documented | Support ticket, case by case |
| Amazon SES | Sandbox, verified addresses only | Production access request, then quota raises |
| Dedicated server | None imposed | Warm the IPs, 4 to 8 weeks to full volume |
Scaleway and SES both gate you behind a human decision. A dedicated server gates you behind physics and reputation instead: nobody is deciding whether to let you send, but cold IPs still need a warm-up schedule of roughly 30% every two days before they carry real volume.
Which gate you prefer depends on whether you would rather wait on a support queue or do the work yourself. Neither is free.
Cost at 100K, 500K and 1M a month
The comparison that decides most purchases. SES figures are from the AWS pricing page: $0.10 per 1,000 à la carte, dedicated IPs at $24.95 per month each.
| Monthly volume | Scaleway TEM | Amazon SES (1 dedicated IP) | Dedicated SMTP server |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100,000 | Scale plan fee, IP included | ~$35 | Flat, from $549 one-time |
| 500,000 | Scale fee + EUR 80 overage | ~$75 | Same flat cost |
| 1,000,000 | Scale fee + EUR 180 overage | ~$125 | Same flat cost |
Read the shape, not the absolute numbers. Scaleway TEM and SES climb with volume. A dedicated server does not: your cost curve goes flat the day you own the infrastructure.
The other thing the table hides is the IP count. SES at 1,000,000 emails with one dedicated IP is a stretch, and the second IP is another $24.95. Scaleway gives you one managed IP on Scale, and adding capacity means talking to them. On a dedicated setup you start with 3 IPs and can go to 15, which is the difference between 25,000 and 200,000 emails a day of headroom.
For the full per-provider breakdown at each tier, see cost per 1,000 emails across every provider and the detailed 500,000 emails a month costing.
EU data residency: when it actually matters
Scaleway's differentiator versus SES is not price, it is jurisdiction. TEM runs only in fr-par, Paris. Your message bodies, recipient addresses and logs stay in France, at a French company.
Be honest about when that matters legally, because the checkbox gets oversold.
| Situation | Does EU residency matter |
|---|---|
| B2C SaaS with EU users | Not by itself, SCCs and the EU-US framework cover US transfer |
| Public sector, health, defence | Yes, procurement rules often mandate it |
| Bank or insurer under local rules | Often yes, national regulators go further than GDPR |
| Enterprise deal with a residency clause | Yes, it is contractual, not legal |
| You want to avoid US CLOUD Act reach | Yes, and this is the strongest case |
GDPR itself does not ban sending personal data to the US. Chapter V allows transfers under an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses, and the text of the regulation sets out the general principle. Amazon also offers eu-west-1 in Ireland and eu-central-1 in Frankfurt, so if residency is your only requirement, SES in an EU region satisfies it.
The genuine Scaleway argument is corporate jurisdiction, not geography. Scaleway is French owned and outside the reach of US disclosure law in a way an AWS EU region is not. If your procurement team asks that question, Scaleway is a real answer and SES is not. If nobody has asked, you are paying attention to a checkbox.
A dedicated server settles it differently: pick a data centre in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris or London and the mail never leaves that jurisdiction, with no third-party processor in the path at all. That is the cleanest data-processing story of the three, because there is no processor agreement to negotiate.
What Scaleway TEM does not do
Every product has a shape. TEM's shape is narrow, and going in expecting more is how people get frustrated.
- No campaign builder. No templates UI worth the name, no segmentation, no A/B testing, no list management. You bring Mautic, MailWizz or your own application code.
- Thin deliverability tooling. Blocklist management is a Scale plan feature. Scaleway states plainly it cannot commit to resolving reputation incidents because it does not own your domain or control your traffic.
- One region. No failover to a second region, because there is no second region.
- Small support surface. Scaleway is a fraction of AWS's size and TEM is a small product inside it. Ticket response is fine, but there is no dedicated deliverability team to call at 2am.
- Shared pool below Scale. On Essential you share sending reputation with every other TEM customer, with the same complaint-rate exposure as any shared relay.
That is fine for a commodity relay. It is a problem if you expected an email platform.
The dedicated IP question
Scaleway offers a managed dedicated IP on the Scale plan, and their docs give useful thresholds: worth it above roughly 1,000 emails a day, not recommended below 10,000 emails a month. Those match reality, since an IP sending too little never builds enough signal to hold a reputation.
But "managed dedicated IP" means Scaleway's IP, allocated to you, warmed on their generic curve. Three consequences:
- You cannot take it with you. Leave Scaleway and the reputation you spent 8 weeks building stays behind.
- The warm-up is not tuned to your list. A generic curve ignores that 70% of your recipients might be Microsoft addresses, which throttle differently to Gmail.
- One IP is the plan. Scaling to several IPs and rotating them is not what the product is for.
On a dedicated server you get 3 IPs at the entry tier, warmed against your actual list and destination mix, and they stay yours. Whether you need one at all is covered in dedicated IP or shared.
Where the crossover sits
Rough boundaries from running both.
| Your situation | Pick |
|---|---|
| Under 50,000/month, transactional only, EU buyer | Scaleway TEM |
| Under 50,000/month, no residency requirement | Amazon SES, cheaper and more mature |
| 100,000 to 300,000/month, transactional | Scaleway TEM Scale, watch the overage |
| Above 300,000/month | Dedicated server, the cost curve flattens |
| Marketing or newsletter sending | Dedicated server plus MailWizz or Mautic |
| Need 2+ dedicated IPs | Dedicated server |
| Cold outreach | Dedicated server, shared pools ban it |
| Procurement demands non-US jurisdiction | Scaleway TEM, or a dedicated server in an EU DC |
The crossover is roughly 300,000 to 500,000 emails a month, similar to where SES stops making sense. Below it, per-email pricing is genuinely hard to beat and the operational load sits with the vendor. Above it you are paying a growing bill for infrastructure you could own outright, while still living inside somebody else's quota.
One more factor that does not appear in any price table: the quota itself is a business risk. A campaign that doubles unexpectedly hits a monthly cap set by someone else, and the fix is a support ticket, not a config change. On your own server, doubling volume is a warm-up problem you can plan for.
How BulkEmailSetup helps
We build dedicated SMTP infrastructure you own: your own server, your own IPs, full SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR setup, MTA tuning, bounce handling and a warm-up plan matched to your actual list. No monthly quota anyone can decline to raise, no shared pool, and you choose the data centre, so an EU residency requirement is satisfied by geography rather than by a processor agreement.
Basic is $549 one-time, covering 1 SMTP server, 3 dedicated IPs, 25,000 emails/day and unlimited contacts. Higher tiers scale to 15 IPs and 200,000 emails/day. See pricing, or read Amazon SES vs a dedicated SMTP server for the same comparison against the US incumbent.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Scaleway Transactional Email cost?
Scaleway TEM runs two plans. Essential is pay as you go with 300 emails a month included, and Scale is a fixed monthly fee that includes 100,000 emails plus a managed dedicated IP, with extra emails billed at EUR 0.20 per 1,000 according to Scaleway's own plan docs. Scaleway's pricing page is the only place with the current fixed monthly figure, so check it before you budget.
How many emails can a new Scaleway TEM account send?
Scaleway's documented default quota is 10,000 emails per month, with a limit of 10 recipients and 10 attachments per message. Hourly quotas were removed on 1 December 2023. Higher limits are granted case by case by support after they look at your usage and sender reputation, so a new account cannot simply start sending 500,000 a month.
Does Scaleway TEM offer a dedicated IP?
Yes, on the Scale plan only, and Scaleway manages it including automatic warm-up. Their docs say a dedicated IP helps above roughly 1,000 emails a day and is not recommended below 10,000 emails a month. You do not own the IP and cannot take it to another provider.
Is Scaleway TEM better than Amazon SES for GDPR?
For data residency, yes, because TEM runs only in the fr-par region in France while SES defaults to US regions unless you pick an EU one. But SES has EU regions such as eu-west-1 in Ireland and eu-central-1 in Frankfurt, so residency alone is not a reason to switch. The real difference is corporate control: Scaleway is a French company outside US cloud jurisdiction.
When should I move off Scaleway TEM to a dedicated SMTP server?
Around 300,000 to 500,000 emails a month, or sooner if you need more than one dedicated IP, marketing sending rather than transactional, or full control of the MTA. At 1,000,000 emails a month Scaleway TEM costs roughly EUR 180 in overage above the Scale plan while a dedicated server stays flat.
Can I send marketing campaigns through Scaleway TEM?
It is built for transactional mail: receipts, password resets, notifications. There is no campaign builder, no list management, no segmentation and no A/B testing, so you need Mautic, MailWizz or your own app on top. Bulk marketing on a shared TEM pool also carries the same complaint-rate risk as any shared relay.
Does Scaleway TEM handle blacklist removal and deliverability?
Only partly. Scaleway states it will work to improve domain reputation but cannot commit to resolving incidents because it does not own your domain or control your traffic. Blocklist management is a Scale plan feature. Compare that to a dedicated server where the operator monitors Spamhaus, UCEPROTECT and Barracuda and files delisting for you.
