Amazon SES
A cloud email service for sending transactional and marketing emails at scale with high deliverability
Overview
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cloud email service for sending transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets) and marketing emails (newsletters, campaign notifications) at scale. It supports both SMTP and API interfaces, making migration from existing email systems straightforward. Built-in features for domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), automatic bounce and complaint handling, and sending reputation monitoring maximize email deliverability. At $0.10 per 1,000 emails, it scales to hundreds of millions of emails per month.
How Domain Authentication Protects Deliverability
Maintaining deliverability with SES requires proper domain authentication. SES automatically applies DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) signatures, and Easy DKIM can be enabled by simply adding CNAME records to Route 53. SPF is automatically configured for the default SES sending domain (amazonses.com), but setting up a custom MAIL FROM domain lets you authenticate with your own domain's SPF record and pass DMARC alignment. For reputation management, monitor bounce rate (recommended below 5%) and complaint rate (recommended below 0.1%) on the SES reputation dashboard, and pause sending to investigate if thresholds are exceeded.
Sandbox Removal and Bounce Handling Automation
The first hurdle in SES production use is sandbox removal. New accounts are in sandbox mode, which restricts sending to verified addresses only. Production use requires a sandbox removal request that describes your sending use case and how you handle bounces and complaints. Bounce and complaint handling should be automated by receiving notifications via SNS topics and using Lambda to automatically add bounced addresses to a suppression list. Neglecting this automation risks bounce rate escalation that can result in account-wide sending suspension. At $0.10 per 1,000 emails, SES scales to hundreds of millions of emails per month at low cost. Email marketing books on Amazon provide systematic coverage of deliverability improvement techniques.
Building a Transactional Email Platform with Lambda
For transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets), a serverless architecture combining SES with Lambda is the standard approach. You can build a pipeline that detects order data changes via DynamoDB Streams triggers and invokes the SES API from Lambda to send emails. Enabling Virtual Deliverability Manager provides automatic sending reputation optimization and deliverability improvement recommendations. For high-volume sending, dedicated IP address allocation and automated IP warm-up are critical - sending large volumes suddenly from a new IP will trigger spam filters on receiving mail servers, so you need to gradually increase sending volume to build reputation.