Besides various virtual services, AI, and numerous databases, AWS (Amazon Web Service) offers AmazonSES or Amazon Simple Email Service. It is the most comprehensive and cheapest platform for securely sending marketing and transactional emails.
Ensuring cyber security and low-cost marketing tactics which are crucial for businesses nowadays, especially for startups. Modern companies have personalized communications to maintain with their prospects and customers, resulting in marketers relying on email marketing. Amazon email service is the best solution, with the cheapest email marketing.
In this article, I will cover things related to AWS SES for better clarification about this valuable email marketing service.
What is Amazon SES?
Amazon SES, or Amazon Simple Email Service, is a cloud-based email-sending service. AWS SES provides transactional and bulk email services in the most secure way. The simple email service will allow you to send emails using Amazon SES SMTP (Amazon Mail Server) and integrate API with your apps, email clients, or any software to automate your email marketing campaign. And AWS SDK will help you implement the SES Amazon into your applications.
You can use AmazonSES to integrate with any application for transactional or mass emailing. Besides the cheapest email marketing opportunities, this platform will allow you to pay only for what you use, resulting in considerable cost reduction for your business. With its best pricing, higher email deliverability, and reputation on its authentication, AWS SES helps marketers worldwide in business communication.
That is, SES Amazon is the best fit for any business that needs to communicate with its clients via email securely.
AmazonSES vs Workmail
AmazonSES is a cloud-based email service that can send transactional and mass-marketing emails, receive inbound emails, and monitor the reputation of your sender identity, including custom domain name emails.
On the contrary, Amazon Workmail is a secure email management and calendar service that collaborates with your mobile or desktop email clients. Amazon workmail aims to keep your business email infrastructure through good governance, allowing you to access AWS regions. You can choose where to keep your data secure in the AWS regions.
Amazon workmail costs $4 per month, and in return, they will give you 50 GB of storage. While AmazonSES maintain the pay-as-you-go approach. The key difference between Amazon Simple Email Service and Workmail is that SES Amazon can exchange emails, and workmail assists you in managing your email marketing.
Another difference is that Simple Email Service aims to integrate with email marketing tools like MailBluster, and other software to send mass emails or automate transactional emails. Amazon workmail collaborates with the email clients (like Outlook) on your device.
Email Marketing Tool and AmazonSES
AWS mail service aims to deliver your emails to the proper recipients.
Moreover, it has a secure email authentication process that ensures its reputation as the best email sender. So, to answer the question “what is Amazon SES” in a word – AmazonSES is an email-sending service via Amazon SMTP, which has the most secure authentication process, higher deliverability, and lowest costs for sending emails.
On the other hand, email marketing tools will help you segment your customers
On the other hand, email marketing tools will help you segment your customers to maintain the most personalized communication, design email templates, automate workflows, A/B Testing, and other helpful features. This tool will also show you the performance of your sent emails with the help of AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service).
MailBluster and AmazonSES together can assist you in running your email marketing campaign at the lowest cost, making every sent email countable.
What is AWS SES Sandbox?
After you create an AWS account, Amazon will place you into the AWS SES Sandbox so that you can test the capabilities of AmazonSES. Your journey in Amazon Simple Email Service will start in the sandbox environment, where you can only send 200 emails per 24 hours to the verified sender identities you proved ownership of.
Running an actual email marketing campaign in the SES Sandbox mode is impossible, as Amazon SES will limit you from sending emails to your subscribers. AWS SES Sandbox is a secure and isolated environment where you can learn, explore, and experiment with email sending.
After your experimental period, AWS will get you out of the SES sandbox to implement your marketing in the real world, allowing you to send 50,000 emails per 24 hours. But, first, it needs a proper identification process to get out of Sandbox AWS.
AmazonSES Verified Sender Identities
In AmazonSES, verified sender identities are the email addresses or domains you want to use to send or receive emails.
A sender’s identity needs to be verified before sending emails using Amazon SES SMTP (Simple Email Transfer Protocol) because a ‘from,’ ‘sender,’ or ‘Return-Path’ address is crucial in email communication. It is also required if your Amazon SES account is in Sandbox, as your testing emails can be sent to the verified identities only, as mentioned before.
There are two types of verified sender identity processes –
- Email address verification
- Domain verification
Email address verification is the fastest way to begin your journey with Amazon Simple Email Service.
On the other hand, domain verification has advantages for businesses worldwide despite the complexity.
AWS SES Verify Domain vs Email
Verifying your email address can take you to the SES Amazon journey in the shortest period, while AWS SES domain verification will require some more steps. When you verify an email address, you can use only that email to send. But, your verified domain identity will allow you to use any subdomain or email address under that domain to send emails.
For example, if you verify a domain called example.com, you will neither have to verify sub-domain identities like x.example.com or x.y.example.com nor separate email identities under that domain like [email protected] or [email protected].
The table below clarifies the differences between AWS SES email verification and AWS SES domain verification.
| Domain Verification | Email Address Verification | Both |
| Parent domain causes all the sub-domains and email addresses under the domain or sub-domains to be verified. | Only individual email addresses can be verified. | Targeted email addresses and all the sub-domains and email addresses under the domain and sub-domains are verified. |
| Limited to direct email sending. | You are allowed to advanced email sending. | Both advanced and direct email sending are available as necessary. |
| Status: Domains or Sub-domains – Verified Email Address – Unverified | Status: Domains or Sub-domains – Unverified Email Address – Verified | Status: Domains or Sub-domains – Verified Email Address – Verified |
So, verifying both email addresses and domains in AmazonSES is the best practice for marketers, as it will open the door to possibilities in getting the maximum advantages.
To send emails from the same verified sender identity, you must create that identity separately for each region. Amazon Simple Email Service will allow you to verify up to 10,000 identities for each region.
AmazonSES Regions with Different Sender Identities
AWS regions are the locations around the globe where Amazon placed their data centers for service delivery and application in AWS Availability Zones. There are 99 availability zones within 31 AWS regions. Amazon is about to announce 15 more availability zones and 5 more AWS regions shortly.
AWS regions aim to make SES Amazon users more specific about the geographical targeting while marketing via email. More specific your regional targeting, the more possibilities to drive you the best results in your email marketing campaign.
The complexity of verifying sender identities for each region is just the price of your higher security, authenticity, and sender reputation.
What is the Amazon SES SMTP?
AmazonSES allows you to send emails using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP is a standard protocol used for sending emails across the internet.
To use Amazon SES SMTP, you must create an AWS SES account and verify the email addresses or domains you want to send emails from. Then, you can configure your email client or application to use the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint to send emails.
To authenticate your email client or application, you must provide your Amazon SMTP credentials, a username, and a password generated by SES Amazon. When sending an email using Amazon SES SMTP, it is sent to SES Amazon, which then sends it to the recipient’s email server at the lowest cost.
Amazon SES IP Addresses
Amazon SES IP addresses refer to the range of IP addresses that AmazonSES uses to send emails on behalf of its users. There are two types of Amazon SES IP addresses: dedicated IP addresses and shared IP addresses.
Dedicated IP Addresses
With a dedicated IP address, you have exclusive access to that IP address and are the only one sending emails from that IP address. It gives you complete control over your sender reputation, allowing you to monitor and manage your email deliverability more effectively. Dedicated IP addresses are recommended for businesses that send a high volume of emails or have specific email deliverability requirements.
Shared IP Addresses
With shared IP addresses, multiple AmazonSES users send emails from the same IP address. That is, the reputation of the IP address is determined by the collective email-sending behavior of all users sending from that IP address. Shared IP addresses are recommended for businesses that send a lower volume of emails and do not require the same level of control over their sender’s reputation.
AmazonSES uses multiple anti-spam measures to ensure that emails are delivered successfully and that sender reputations are maintained. When using the dedicated IP address, you are responsible for maintaining your sender’s reputation. On the contrary, if you are using a shared IP address, AmazonSES monitors and manages the collective email-sending behavior of all users sending from that IP address.
FAQ
What port does sendmail listen to for SMTP traffic?
By default, Sendmail listens on port 25 for SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) traffic. This is the standard port for sending emails as well as receiving them. However, the port for sending emails number can be changed in the Sendmail configuration file if needed.
Do I need to have a website for domain identification in AmazonSES?
No, you do not need to have a website for domain identification in Amazon SES (Simple Email Service). However, you do need to verify your domain ownership in order to send emails using Amazon SES.
Amazon SES provides several ways to verify your domain, including adding a TXT record to your domain’s DNS settings or verifying your domain using an email address that is associated with the domain. After the verification, you can start sending emails from that domain using Amazon Simple Email Service. While having a website can make it easier to verify domain ownership and maintain a good email sender reputation, it is not a requirement for using AmazonSES.
What is the total cost of email marketing using AmazonSES?
The cost of email marketing using AmazonSES depends on several factors, including the number of emails you send, the region you send from, and whether you use any additional AWS services or third-party email marketing tools.
Amazon Simple Email Service offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you pay for the number of emails you send and any additional features you use. Currently, the pricing for Amazon SES is as follows:
- $0.10 per 1000 emails sent.
- Additional charges may apply for using features such as dedicated IP addresses, sending email attachments, and receiving emails.
It’s worth noting that while AWS SES offers the cheapest email marketing service than many others, it is a more technical solution that requires some knowledge of email protocols and infrastructure. Additionally, if you use other AWS services or third-party email marketing tools like MailBluster with AmazonSES, you may incur additional charges.
To see the full pricing details, click here.
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