Amazon Simple Email Service (AWS SES) Configuration Guide

Amazon SES is a cloud email solution that enables AWS users to send and receive emails. The service offered by AWS, an affiliate of Amazon, is an innovative technology that relies on Amazon’s infrastructure for its communication purposes.

Let’s answer the question, ‘What is AWS SES?’ We’ll also find out how you can use SES to send your organization’s marketing messages,  transactional emails, and other kinds of communication efficiently and cost-effectively. 

What is AWS SES?

Amazon SES allows you to send and receive a great number of emails using your company’s addresses or domains at a low cost, which could easily be increased if necessary. Your organisation can make use of AWS SES service for marketing email or for transactional email. It eliminates any need to set up and manage your own email servers while offering a set of powerful features that include:It removes any need to set up and manage your own email servers while providing a set of powerful features that include:

• Spam and Phishing Protection: This feature prevents messages with spam and phishing content from reaching the recipient’s mailbox, thus protecting one’s reputation.
• Worldwide Infrastructure: Send messages to receivers in different part of the world.
• In-Transit and At-Rest encryption: Secure all email data, that is data in transit and data in store.
• Monitor and Log: You should definitely monitor one’s SES performance and usage.
• Integration of Lambda Functions: To do this, set SES to invoke a Lamda function whenever you get an email.
• Managing Sender Identities: Control the identities you use to send messages to other people.

Working on Amazon SES

Amazon SES helps you reach consumers positively without having an on-premises SMTP mail server. For this purpose, you can utilize either the Amazon SES API or the SMTP pluggable interface.

Amazon SES offers several key features: Amazon SES provides several key features:

• Sending Emails: SES offers a basic control panel for sending emails. It allows you to send messages in plain text, HTML, or with attachments. If the recipients prefer HTML-formatted messages, you can also send them that way.
• Receiving Emails: Indeed, with Amazon SES, you do not only send out emails; you also receive and process them. You have several flexible ways to retrieve them, and the received messages can be used to perform operations in AWS Lambda.
• Email APIs: SES includes a range of APIs that allow for programmatic control over sending, receiving, and managing your emails.
• High Deliverability: The deliverability rate is a crucial factor when selecting an email sending service. Amazon prioritizes reputation and whitelisting by supporting all three authentication mechanisms: DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. Furthermore, you can monitor your sending activity and manage your reputation effectively.

Understanding Email Sending Limits and Costs

The service has no upfront fees or monthly costs. Instead, AWS SES works on a pay-as-you-go model, which only charges you when you send or receive email messages. However, you get separate billing for incoming and outgoing emails, data usage, or optional features.

Free Tier

As part of the AWS Free Tier, SES provides a flexible option that allows you to explore its email features at no cost. For the first 12 months after you start using SES, free tier customers can send up to 3,000 messages each month without any charges. The following SES products qualify for the free tier message charges:

• Outbound emails
• Inbound emails

Virtual Deliverability Manager Outbound E-mail Processing

Each email you send counts as one message charge, and receiving an email also counts as one message charge. If you activate the Virtual Deliverability Manager for your account, each email sent will count as two message charges.

AWS Simple Email Service Pricing Outline:

Steps to Send Your First Email with AWS SES

This is one of the common AWS interview questions. To get started with sending your first email on SES needs three main steps, which are:

• Verifying an identity (your domain and email address)
• Requesting production access to AWS SES
• Sending the first email message.

Let’s go through each of the steps to send our first email.

Verifying an identity

To confirm an identity, log in to the SES Console then click the link ‘Verified identities’ on the left pane of the interface. This shall show you a list of domain or email addresses that have already been activated on your account. Next to the yellow button labeled ‘Create identity’; if you click it, you will be presented with a new screen in which you can decide to verify either an email address or a domain. If you choose to verify an Email then a dialog will pop up asking for the details required for the verification.

To finish the confirmation of an address for use as the sending identity, you should enter it into the Email address box above, then press Create identity. Upon completion of this action, a verification link is forwarded to the address instantly. You can confirm ownership of the site by clicking the link for it to authorize the new personality that you wanted on SES to carry on sending your emails.

For Amazon SES, one needs to request production access through the Amazon AWS console.

Once you provide your identification, the next step is to request production access. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that this request is geolocated; therefore, one can request production access only if they are located in the appropriate geographical area.

The first step is to navigate to the SES Console and click on ‘Account dashboard’. After getting to that page, you will see a dialog at the top of your desktop.

There is the ‘Request production access’ button, which takes you to the ‘Request details’ page.

Always enter the details in the field; these are the mail type, your website address, and your use case. Do not leave the fact that you have read and agree to the AWS Service Terms and Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) unnoticed.

Click the ‘Request production access’ button to proceed to the ‘Request details’ page.

Please complete each section with the necessary information, including your mail type, website URL, and a description of your use case. Also, remember to acknowledge that you have read and agree to the AWS Service Terms and Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

Send Your First Email

The quickest way to send your first email using AWS Simple Email Service is via the console. To do so, click on the option ‘Verified Identities’ on the ‘Configuration’ drop down menu on the left of the SES console screen. Then, pick the domain or email address you would like to use to send the message and click ‘Send test email.’ Clicking this button opens the screen below:

Fill the form’s ‘Subject’ and ‘Body’ as you would in a standard email client like Outlook and click ‘Send test email’ when done. Congratulations, you have successfully sent an email using the SES Console!

Integrating AWS SES with Other AWS Services

AWS SES works hand in hand with other AWS services, hence creating a great support system for handling email services. Here are a few ways to utilize it: Here are a few ways to utilize it:

Improve other applications by incorporating an email-sending functionality.

You can send emails from Amazon EC2 through an SDK for the AWS, using the SMTP interface of plus the Amazon SES, making a direct call using the API of Amazon SES.

Construct applications that integrate with e-mail, such as a program that delivers newsletters to customers using Amazon SES by utilizing AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Stand up Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to notify you about bounces, complaints, or deliveries. When it comes to email messages received through Amazon SES, their content can be broadcast to Amazon SNS topics.

You can and should use AWS Management Console to simplify the process of establishing Easy DKIM, which enables email authentication. Easy DKIM can be set up with any DNS service, but it’s painless if you use Route 53 to manage your domain.

• The relevant control of email-sending access is AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
• On arrival, the e-mail also must be archived in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
• These need to be integrated to AWS Lambda so that they can take various actions once they receive the emails.
• If necessary, you can encrypt incoming emails using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and store them in your Amazon S3 bucket.
• Enable AWS CloudTrail for Learning Amazon SES API calls made through the console or the API.
• Introduction to maintaining Email Security and Compliance with Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).

Ensuring Email Security and Compliance with AWS SES

Amazon Simple Email Service, abbreviated as Amazon SES, is one of the robust email services out there that can suit your organization’s email requirements for transactional, promotional, and marketing messages for a large number of users at an affordable cost. However, to ensure that you comply with corporate security and compliance policies, the system offers several tools: However, to ensure that you comply with corporate security and compliance policies, the system offers several tools:

For data security during transmission on AWS SES, an industry-standard encryption mechanism has been implemented on the infrastructure to protect confidential information. Simple Email Service utilizes Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt messages so that they are protected from any possible alteration en route.

Additionally, AWS SES provides an option for a dedicated IP address, giving businesses greater control over their email reputation and assisting them in following best practices for deliverability.

By leveraging these security and compliance features in AWS SES, businesses can establish a more secure and trustworthy communication channel with customers while ensuring they comply with regulatory standards.

SES Best Practices

Conformity with best practices means monitoring Amazon Web Services‘ Simple Email Service to ensure your implementation follows the following rules:

• Enable DKIM: To protect your email senders and recipients against phishing attempts, ensure you enable DKIM signing within AWS SES.
• Look out for exposed SES identities: Make sure that all identities you have set up in SES (domains and email addresses) cannot be viewed by unauthorized persons.
• Identify any cross-account access: Confirm that your authorization policies do not allow for unrecognized cross-account access.
• Keep track of the verification status of identities: Ensure that any identities accessing the AWS SES are properly verified. Taking an AWS Tutorial allows you to understand the best practices of SES as a part of AWS services.

Conclusion

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is possibly the world’s most widely used cloud computing platform. Besides features like artificial intelligence services, virtual servers, and numerous kinds of databases, AWS has a simple but powerful email service – the AWS SES service. If you’ve already hosted an Amazon app, you should think of email integration using AWS SES.

If you need more information about how Amazon SES differs from dozens of other email services and how it can be set up and integrated within your infrastructure, check out Edureka’s online AWS training and certification programs.

FAQs

What is Amazon SES used for?

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cost-effective email service that allows users to send and receive emails using their own email addresses and domains. SES is built on the same infrastructure that Amazon uses to serve its customers.

What email tools does Amazon SES offer?

Amazon SES provides various email tools that give you capabilities like configuring email senders, tools for ensuring email deliverability, flexible deployment methods, management of senders and identities, email security features, statistics on email sending, a dashboard for email reputation, and services for inbound emails.

Can I use AWS SES without EC2?

Yes, you can implement Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) without signing up to Amazon EC2 or other AWS services. You may use any application that can access the internet with SES to send your emails.

Can Amazon SES send emails with attachments?

Yes, Amazon SES supports a range of popular content formats, including documents, images, audio files, and videos.

What prevents Amazon SES users from sending spam?

Amazon SES employs proprietary content filtering technologies to examine email content for spam and malware. If an account is sending spam or harmful content, that account’s ability to send further emails is instantly suspended.