diff --git a/app/clients/email/aws_ses.py b/app/clients/email/aws_ses.py
index f9d6e8723..7919a013e 100644
--- a/app/clients/email/aws_ses.py
+++ b/app/clients/email/aws_ses.py
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@ class AwsSesClient(EmailClient):
         # before-call, after-call, after-call-error, request-created, response-received
         self._client.meta.events.register('request-created.ses.SendEmail', self.ses_request_created_hook)
         self._client.meta.events.register('response-received.ses.SendEmail', self.ses_response_received_hook)
+        self._client.meta.events.register('before-call.ses', self.ses_inject_connection_header)
 
     def ses_request_created_hook(self, **kwargs):
         # request created may be called multiple times if the request auto-retries. We want to count all these as the
@@ -77,6 +78,11 @@ class AwsSesClient(EmailClient):
     def get_name(self):
         return self.name
 
+    def ses_inject_connection_header(self, params, **kwargs):
+        # keep underlying TLS connection open, so we do not spend lots of CPU
+        # and network time renegotiating TLS
+        params['headers']['Connection'] = 'Keep-Alive'
+
     def send_email(self,
                    source,
                    to_addresses,
@@ -148,3 +154,4 @@ def punycode_encode_email(email_address):
     # only the hostname should ever be punycode encoded.
     local, hostname = email_address.split('@')
     return '{}@{}'.format(local, hostname.encode('idna').decode('utf-8'))
+
diff --git a/app/clients/sms/firetext.py b/app/clients/sms/firetext.py
index a8b803613..e4e5d3612 100644
--- a/app/clients/sms/firetext.py
+++ b/app/clients/sms/firetext.py
@@ -2,7 +2,8 @@ import json
 import logging
 
 from time import monotonic
-from requests import request, RequestException
+from requests import request, RequestException, Session
+from requests.adapters import HTTPAdapter
 
 from app.clients.sms import (SmsClient, SmsClientResponseException)
 
@@ -69,6 +70,9 @@ class FiretextClient(SmsClient):
         self.name = 'firetext'
         self.url = current_app.config.get('FIRETEXT_URL')
         self.statsd_client = statsd_client
+        # this uses urllib3 under the hood to create a connection pool
+        self.session = Session()
+        self.session.mount('https://', HTTPAdapter(pool_maxsize=32))
 
     def get_name(self):
         return self.name
@@ -103,8 +107,7 @@ class FiretextClient(SmsClient):
         response = None
         start_time = monotonic()
         try:
-            response = request(
-                "POST",
+            response = self.session.post(
                 self.url,
                 data=data,
                 timeout=60
diff --git a/app/clients/sms/mmg.py b/app/clients/sms/mmg.py
index 752ff7792..372ef0959 100644
--- a/app/clients/sms/mmg.py
+++ b/app/clients/sms/mmg.py
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 import json
 from time import monotonic
-from requests import (request, RequestException)
+from requests import (request, RequestException, Session)
+from requests.adapters import HTTPAdapter
+
 from app.clients.sms import (SmsClient, SmsClientResponseException)
 
 mmg_response_map = {
@@ -75,6 +77,9 @@ class MMGClient(SmsClient):
         self.name = 'mmg'
         self.statsd_client = statsd_client
         self.mmg_url = current_app.config.get('MMG_URL')
+        # this uses urllib3 under the hood to create a connection pool
+        self.session = Session()
+        self.session.mount('https://', HTTPAdapter(pool_maxsize=32))
 
     def record_outcome(self, success, response):
         status_code = response.status_code if response else 503
@@ -108,8 +113,8 @@ class MMGClient(SmsClient):
         response = None
         start_time = monotonic()
         try:
-            response = request(
-                "POST",
+
+            response = self.session.post(
                 self.mmg_url,
                 data=json.dumps(data),
                 headers={