Can you elaborate on why SES is shit? I've been using it for about 6 months now to run a small newsletter and haven't experienced any issues with deliverability.

We sent few million emails using SES over few weeks, Sendgrid's deliverability was around 12 times better than that of SES.

Don't get me wrong, it might be perfectly fine choice for smaller projects but it is not a solution you would rely for scale. You have to build your own mailservers with warmed up IPs.

SES requires you to know what you’re doing with setup, etc - mailchimp et al hand-hold you through all that.

But if you do know what you're doing - like myself and many other engineers - you don't need hand holding.

I would not consider SES "shit" because it does not baby-sit you throughout the setup process. The documentation was solid, and I had a lot of freedom to customize a solution specific to my use case. Overall working SES has been an enjoyable experience.

But maybe my mind will change 1 billion emails later haha we'll see.

I agree. When testing the various SES was more involved but seemed to work fine. If you follow the standard procedures and aren’t a spammer (even a respectable spammer) it should work fine.