• Next steps (p. 28)
Step 1. Verify your domain
Before you can use Amazon SES to send email, you have to verify the identities that you plan to send email from. In Amazon SES, an identity can be an email address or an entire domain. When you verify a domain, you can use Amazon SES to send email from any address on that domain. For more information about verifying a domain, see Creating and verifying a domain identity (p. 147).
Step 2. Request production access
When you first start using Amazon SES, your account is in a sandbox environment. While your account is in the sandbox, you can only send email to addresses that you've verified. Additionally, there are restrictions on the number of messages that you can send per day, and the number that you can send per second. For more information about requesting production access, see Moving out of the Amazon SES sandbox (p. 28).
Step 3. Configure domain authentication systems
You can configure your domain to use authentication systems such as DKIM and SPF. This step is technically optional. However, by setting up either DKIM or SPF (or both) for your domain, you can improve the deliverability of your emails, and increase the amount of trust that your customers have
Step 4. Generate your SMTP credentials
in you. For more information about setting up SPF, see Authenticating Email with SPF in Amazon SES (p. 192). For more information about setting up DKIM, see Authenticating Email with DKIM in Amazon SES (p. 170).
Step 4. Generate your SMTP credentials
If you plan to send email using an application that uses SMTP, you have to generate SMTP credentials.
Your SMTP credentials are different from your regular AWS credentials. These credentials are also unique in each AWS Region. For more information about generating your SMTP credentials, see Obtaining Amazon SES SMTP credentials (p. 39).
Step 5. Connect to an SMTP endpoint
If you use a message transfer agent such as postfix or sendmail, you have to update the configuration for that application to refer to an Amazon SES SMTP endpoint. For a complete list of SMTP endpoints, see Connecting to an Amazon SES SMTP endpoint (p. 43). Note that the SMTP credentials that you created in the previous step are associated with a specific AWS Region. You have to connect to the SMTP endpoint in the region that you created the SMTP credentials in.
Next steps
At this point, you're ready to start sending email using Amazon SES. However, there are a few optional steps that you can take.
• You can create configuration sets, which are sets of rules that are applied to the emails that you send.
For example, you can use configuration sets to specify where notifications are sent when an email is delivered, when a recipient opens a message or clicks a link in it, when an email bounces, and when a recipient marks your email as spam. For more information, see Using configuration sets in Amazon SES (p. 248).
• When you send email through Amazon SES, it's important to monitor the bounces and complaints for your account. Amazon SES includes a reputation metrics console page that you can use to keep track of the bounces and complaints for your account. For more information, see Using reputation metrics to track bounce and complaint rates (p. 383). You can also create CloudWatch alarms that alert you when these rates get too high. For more information about creating CloudWatch alarms, see Creating reputation monitoring alarms using CloudWatch (p. 396).
• Customers who send a large volume of email, or those who simply want to have full control over the reputations of their IP addresses, can lease dedicated IP addresses for an additional monthly charge.
For more information, see Dedicated IP addresses for Amazon SES (p. 263).
Moving out of the Amazon SES sandbox
To help prevent fraud and abuse, and to help protect your reputation as a sender, we apply certain restrictions to new Amazon SES accounts.
We place all new accounts in the Amazon SES sandbox. While your account is in the sandbox, you can use all of the features of Amazon SES. However, when your account is in the sandbox, we apply the following restrictions to your account:
• You can only send mail to verified email addresses and domains, or to the Amazon SES mailbox simulator (p. 245).
• You can send a maximum of 200 messages per 24-hour period.
• You can send a maximum of 1 message per second.
Moving out of the sandbox
When your account is out of the sandbox, you can send email to any recipient, regardless of whether the recipient's address or domain is verified. However, you still have to verify all identities that you use as
"From", "Source", "Sender", or "Return-Path" addresses.
Complete the procedures in this section to request that your account be removed from the sandbox.
NoteIf you're using Amazon SES to send email from an Amazon EC2 instance, you might also need to request that the throttle be removed from port 25 on your Amazon EC2 instance. For more information, see How do I remove the throttle on port 25 from my EC2 instance? in the AWS Knowledge Center.
To request that your account be removed from the Amazon SES sandbox using the AWS Management Console
1. Open the Amazon SES console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ses/.
2. In the warning box at the top of the console that says, "Your Amazon SES account is in the sandbox", on the right-hand side, choose Request production access.
3. In the account details modal, select either the Marketing or Transactional radio button that best describes the majority of mail you'll be sending.
4. In Website URL, enter the URL of your website to help us better understand the kind of content you plan on sending.
5. In Use case description, explain how you plan to use Amazon SES to send email. To help us process your request, you should answer the following questions:
• How do you plan to build or acquire your mailing list?
• How do you plan to handle bounces and complaints?
• How can recipients opt out of receiving email from you?
• How did you choose the sending rate or sending quota that you specified in this request?
6. In Additional contacts, tell us where you want to receive communications about your account. This can be a comma-separated list of up to 4 email addresses.
7. In Preferred contact language, choose whether you want to receive communications in English or Japanese.
8. In Acknowledgement, check the box that you agree to only send email to individuals who've explicitly requested it and confirm that you have a process in place for handling bounce and complaint notifications.
9. Choose the Submit request button - a banner will display to confirm your request was submitted and is currently under review.
Once you submit a review of your account details, you can’t edit your details until the review is complete.
The AWS Support team provides an initial response to your request within 24 hours.
In order to prevent our systems from being used to send unsolicited or malicious content, we have to consider each request carefully. If we're able to do so, we'll grant your request within this 24-hour period.
However, if we need to obtain additional information from you, it might take longer to resolve your request. We might not be able to grant your request if your use case doesn't align with our policies.
Optionally, you can also submit your request for production access using the AWS CLI. Submitting your request using the AWS CLI is helpful when you want to request production access for a large number of identities, or when you want to automate the process of setting up Amazon SES.
To request that your account be removed from the Amazon SES sandbox using the AWS CLI 1. Prerequisite: you have to install and configure the AWS CLI. For more information, see the AWS
Command Line Interface User Guide.
Moving out of the sandbox
2. At the command line, enter the following command:
aws sesv2 put-account-details \ --production-access-enabled \ --mail-type TRANSACTIONAL \
--website-url https://example.com \
--use-case-description "Use case description" \
--additional-contact-email-addresses [email protected] \ --contact-language EN
In the preceding command, do the following:
a. Replace TRANSACTIONAL with the type of email that you plan to send through Amazon SES.
You can specify either TRANSACTIONAL or PROMOTIONAL. If more than one value applies, specify the option that applies to the majority of the email that you plan to send.
b. Replace https://example.com with the URL of your website. Providing this information helps us better understand the type of content that you plan to send.
c. Replace Use case description with a description of how you plan to use Amazon SES to send email. To help us process your request, you should answer the following questions:
i. How do you plan to build or acquire your mailing list?
ii. How do you plan to handle bounces and complaints?
iii. How can recipients opt out of receiving email from you?
iv. How did you choose the sending rate or sending quota that you specified in this request?
d. Replace [email protected] with the email addresses where you want to receive communications about your account. This can be a comma-separated list of up to 4 email addresses.
e. Replace EN with your preferred language. You can specify EN for English or JP for Japanese.
Once you submit a review of your account details, you can’t edit your details until the review is complete.
The AWS Support team provides an initial response to your request within 24 hours.
In order to prevent our systems from being used to send unsolicited or malicious content, we have to consider each request carefully. If we're able to do so, we'll grant your request within this 24-hour period.
However, if we need to obtain additional information from you, it might take longer to resolve your request. We might not be able to grant your request if your use case doesn't align with our policies.
Managing your Amazon SES sending limits
Your Amazon SES account has a set of sending quotas that regulate the number of email messages that you can send and the rate at which you can send them. Sending quotas benefit all Amazon SES customers because they help to maintain the trusted relationship between Amazon SES and email providers. Sending quotas help you to gradually ramp up your sending activity and decrease the likelihood that email providers block your emails because of sudden, unexpected spikes in your email sending volume or rate.
The following quotas apply to sending email through Amazon SES:
• Sending quota—The maximum number of emails that you can send in a 24-hour period. This quota is calculated on a rolling time period. Every time you try to send an email, Amazon SES determines the number of emails that you sent in the previous 24 hours. As long as the total number of emails that you have sent in the past 24 hours is less than this daily maximum, your send request is accepted and your email is sent.
If sending a message would exceed the daily maximum for your account, your call to Amazon SES is rejected.
• Sending rate—The maximum number of emails that Amazon SES can accept from your account each second. You can exceed this quota for short bursts, but not for sustained periods of time.
Note
The rate at which Amazon SES accepts your messages can be less than the maximum send rate for your account.
• Maximum message size (MB)—The maximum email size that you can send. This includes any images and attachments that are part of the email after MIME encoding. For example, if you attach a 5MB file, the attachment size in the email after MIME encoding will be ~6.85MB (about 137% of the original file size).
NoteWe recommend you upload your attachments to cloud drives and include the URL of cloud drive attachment to reduce email size and improve deliverability. SES cannot guarantee that large emails will end up in the recipient mailbox as different mail servers will have varying size based policies.
Your Amazon SES sending quotas are separate for each AWS Region. For information about using Amazon SES in multiple AWS Regions, see Regions and Amazon SES (p. 2).
When your account is in the Amazon SES sandbox, you can only send 200 messages per 24-hour period, and your maximum sending rate is one message per second. When you submit a request to have your account removed from the sandbox, you can also request that your quotas are increased at the same time. For more information about having your account removed from the sandbox, see Moving out of the Amazon SES sandbox (p. 28).
When your account has been removed from the sandbox, you can request additional quota increases at any time by creating a new case in the AWS Support Center. For more information, see Increasing your Amazon SES sending quotas (p. 33).
Monitoring your sending quotas
NoteSending quotas are based on recipients rather than on messages. For example, an email that has 10 recipients counts as 10 against your quota. However, we don't recommend that you send an email to multiple recipients in a single call to the SendEmail API operation, because if the call fails, the entire email is rejected. We recommend that you call SendEmail once for every recipient.
• To increase your sending quotas, see Increasing your Amazon SES sending quotas (p. 33).
• For information about the errors your application receives when you reach your sending quotas, see Errors related to the sending quotas for your Amazon SES account (p. 37).
• To monitor your sending quotas by using the Amazon SES console or the Amazon SES API, see Monitoring your Amazon SES sending quotas (p. 32).
Monitoring your Amazon SES sending quotas
You can monitor your sending quotas by using the Amazon SES console or through the Amazon SES API, whether by calling the Query (HTTPS) interface directly or indirectly through an AWS SDK, the AWS Command Line Interface, or the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell.
Important
We recommend that you frequently check your sending statistics to ensure that you are not close to your sending quotas. If you are close to your sending quotas, see Increasing your Amazon SES sending quotas (p. 33) for information about how to increase them. Don't wait until you reach your sending quotas to consider increasing them.
Monitoring your sending quotas using the Amazon SES console
The following procedure shows you how to view your sending quotas using the Amazon SES console.
1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon SES console at https://
console.aws.amazon.com/ses/.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Account dashboard. Your sending quotas are shown under Sending Limits. Total emails sent and percentage of sending quota used is displayed under Daily email usage.
Monitoring your sending quotas using the Amazon SES API
3. To update the display, select the refresh icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Daily email usage box.
Monitoring your sending quotas using the Amazon SES API
The Amazon SES API provides the GetSendQuota action, which returns your sending quotas. When you call GetSendQuota action, you receive the following information:
• Number of emails you have sent during the past 24 hours
• Sending quota for the current 24-hour period
• Maximum send rate
NoteFor a description of GetSendQuota, see Amazon Simple Email Service API Reference.
Increasing your Amazon SES sending quotas
Your account has the following quotas per your current region that can be increased.
Automatically increased sending quotas
Resource Default
quota Description
Sending quota 200 Maximum number of emails that you can send in
a 24-hour period for this account in the current AWS Region.
Sending rate 1 Maximum number of emails that Amazon SES can
accept each second for this account in the current AWS Region.
Maximum message size (MB) 10 The maximum message size that you can send.
This includes any images and attachments that are part of the email after MIME encoding. For example, if you attach a 5MB file, the attachment size in the email after MIME encoding will be
~6.85MB (about 137% of the original file size).
Automatically increased sending quotas
When your account is out of the sandbox and you're sending high-quality production email, we might automatically increase the sending quotas for your account. Often, we automatically increase these quotas before you actually need them to be increased.
To qualify for automatic rate increases, all of the following statements have to be true:
• You send high-quality content that your recipients want to receive –Send content that recipients want and expect. Stop sending email to customers who don't open your email.
• You send actual production content – Sending test messages to fake email addresses can have a negative effect on your bounce and complaint rates. Also, sending messages only to internal recipients makes it difficult to determine if you're sending content that customers want to receive. However, when you send your production messages to non-internal recipients, we can accurately assess your email-sending practices.
• You send near your current quota – To qualify for an automatic quota increase, your daily email volume should regularly approach the daily maximum for your account without exceeding it.
• You have low bounce and complaint rates – Minimize the number of bounces and complaints that you receive. Having a high number of bounces and complaints can have a negative impact on your sending quotas.
User requested increased sending quotas
If your current sending quotas aren't adequate for your needs and we haven't automatically increased them, you can request an increase. The following AWS resources can be use to submit the request depending on the type of sending quota you want to increase:
• Sending quota or Sending rate – Increase requests for either of these can be submitted through the AWS Service Quotas console (recommended for its more direct and easier process of requesting quota increases; however, we will continue to support these types of requests through Support Center until it is depreciated). Choose the AWS Service Quotas console tab below for instructions.
• Maximum message size – Increase requests for this are currently only supported via Support Center.
Choose the Support Center tab below for instructions. Amazon SES can accept messages larger than 10MB at a maximum rate of 40MB per second. For example, if you send messages that are 20MB each, SES can accept those messages at a maximum rate of 2 messages per second.
User requested increased sending quotas
AWS Service Quotas console
To request an increase on your Amazon SES sending quotas using the Service Quotas console.
1. Open the Service Quotas console.
2. Select the region that you want the increase for by using the dropdown in the upper right-hand corner of the console (next to your account number).
3. In the navigation pane, choose AWS services.
4. Choose Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).
4. Choose Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).