Introduction and Hands-On with AWS SES

Overview

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cloud-based email service designed for sending marketing, transactional, and notification emails. It leverages AWS's infrastructure to ensure high deliverability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, making it a go-to solution for businesses. SES also supports email receiving, enabling applications to process customer inquiries efficiently. Trusted by companies like Netflix and Duolingo, SES handles over a trillion emails annually.

Key Features for Production

SES is built for production environments, offering:

Feature	Description
High Deliverability	Uses DKIM, SPF, and DMARC to ensure emails reach inboxes, not spam folders.
Scalability	Automatically scales to handle any email volume, from small batches to millions.
Cost-Effective Pricing	Pay-as-you-go model: $0.10 per 1,000 emails,$ 0.12 per GB of attachments. Free tier includes 62,000 emails/month for EC2-hosted apps.
Integration	Seamlessly integrates with AWS services like SNS, EC2, Lambda, and S3.
IP Management	Offers dedicated ($24.95/month), shared, or owned IPs for better deliverability.
Analytics	Provides detailed sender statistics and deliverability reports.
SMTP and API Access	Supports sending via SMTP or AWS SES API for flexibility.
Email Receiving	Enables processing of incoming emails with flexible options and Lambda triggers.

Integration with AWS Services

SES enhances email workflows through integration with:

Amazon SNS: Triggers emails based on events (e.g., user sign-ups or order confirmations)
Amazon EC2: Sends emails directly from instances
AWS Lambda: Automates email sending based on application events
Amazon S3: Stores email templates or attachments for efficient management

Sandbox Mode is Default for Users

When you start with SES, your account is in sandbox mode, which restricts sending to verified email addresses and limits you to 200 messages per 24 hours. This mode:

Helps users learn SES functionality safely
Prevents accidental spamming of real users
Protects AWS's sending IPs from being blacklisted
Ensures responsible use before production access

Hands-On: Sending a Test Email in Sandbox Mode

This guide walks you through sending a test marketing email from a custom domain (e.g., "abc@xyz.com") in sandbox mode.

Step 1: Purchase a Domain

Buy a domain from AWS Route 53, GoDaddy, NameCheap or any domain providers. AWS-purchased domains automatically create a hosted zone in Route 53 with DNS records (e.g., Name Server records).

Note: AWS will automatically create 1 hosted zone with records on Route53

Purchase a Domain

Step 2: Verify the Domain in SES

This step is authentication must to have, allows SES to send mails for your domain safely.

In the AWS SES console, choose Region, go to Identities and select Create identity
Fill out the form information, form subdomain if you want address like subdomain@domain (abc.kyf@haxuan.link)

Verify domain in AWS SES

After clicking Create identity, your domain identity will be in pending status

Create identity

Create identity 2

SES will automatically generate DNS records (DKIM, SPF, and optional Custom MAIL FROM domain) for authentication. If domain provider is not AWS, you must add these DNS records to the provider: DNS Configuration Guide

For AWS-purchased domains, Route 53 automatically adds these records. For others, manually add them to your registrar's DNS settings.

AWS Route53 automatically adding CNAME records

Step 3: Check Verification Status

After completing the previous step, we wait some minutes for AWS to process:

In the SES console, check the domain's status under Identity

AWS SES check verification status

Note: Verification typically takes less than 5 minutes for AWS domains. If it takes longer, check for issues like domain expiration (a common mistake) or other problems.

Once verified, SES sends a confirmation email, and the status updates to "Verified."

Step 4: Verify Email Addresses

In sandbox mode (by default), you can only send mails to verified receiver email addresses. So, after sending mails, we must verify the email of the receiver - it's a limitation of sandbox mode but also a safe mode, introductory step for new users.

Go to Identity > Create identity with sender email (e.g., "no-reply.kyf@haxuan.link") and recipient email (e.g., "kyxuan0000@gmail.com")
AWS SES will send verification request to recipient mail. Need to click the link to verify the request
Check on dashboard if verification is successful

Result: Now we can start to send 1 email from verified domain to verified email!

Step 5: Send a Test Email

In the SES console, go to Identities, select the verified domain, click Send test email
Fill in the verified recipient's email and the rest of the form
Check the recipient email

AWS SES send a test email 1

Conclusion

AWS SES is easy for beginners to set up and test manual email sending. Starting in sandbox mode allows safe experimentation before scaling to production. Easy to test with verified domains and verified emails on the console.

In next blogs, we will implement out of sandbox mode, integrate with AWS SNS, AWS Lambda or a webhook endpoint, track user behavior and use AWS SDK for programming.