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We tried SES first, but despite doing all the required stuff (SPF, DKIM), our delivery was very poor, especially to corporate emails. Used Mandrill and it's better now. Although, the biggest benefit we saw was switching to text-only emails. That improved delivery on several corporate networks.

Delivery is an ongoing issue though.

For a nice compromise - much cheaper per-mail costs with a WYSIWYG editor, give SendGrid a shot. I'd say we occupy the middle ground between the historically marketing-focused MailChimp and the no-frills (not very marketer friendly) Amazon SES.

Disclosure: I'm an engineer there. Let me know if you have questions.

Mailchimp's a lot more than the editor, though. Comparing it to SES is comparing apples to oranges. Mailchimp's now-neutered offering Mandrill is more akin to SES. Until recently it was quite comparable to SES in pricing and still more fully featured.

I should be clear that I use AWS SES with https://Sendy.co.