Amazon SES (Simple Email Service)

Overview

What is Amazon SES?

Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is an email service provider (ESP) that handles sending infrastructure, IP reputation management, and delivery feedback for email campaigns, transactional messages, or both. Their sending reputation and your domain's authentication configuration are the two primary drivers of inbox placement when using Amazon SES.

Amazon SES automatically signs email with DKIM when you set up Easy DKIM (2048-bit keys) by adding CNAMEs SES provides. SPF requires adding include:amazonses.com to your domain's SPF record. SES verifies sending identities before allowing sending.

Technical Details

How It Works

When you send through Amazon SES, messages leave via their SMTP servers or API. The receiving server sees Amazon SES's sending IPs in the Received headers. For your domain to pass DMARC, you must configure Amazon SES's DKIM keys and SPF include: in your DNS. Without this, email sent through Amazon SES fails authentication for your domain.

New SES accounts start in sandbox mode — limited to verified email addresses only. Production access requires a support request. SES provides SNS notifications for bounces, complaints, and deliveries, which should be configured to update your suppression list. SES has a built-in Suppression List that honours global opt-outs.

Deliverability Impact

Why It Matters

Your ESP affects deliverability through their shared IP pool quality, feedback loops and bounce handling, and ease of authentication configuration. Amazon SES delivers strong deliverability with dedicated IPs available at additional cost. Its low cost and AWS ecosystem integration make it popular for transactional email at scale.

Regardless of ESP, the fundamentals are yours to control: domain authentication, list hygiene, engagement rates, and complaint rates have more long-term deliverability impact than the ESP choice itself.

EmailExacto

How EmailExacto Helps

Monitor Your Amazon SES Domain with EmailExacto

EmailExacto Intelligence monitors your sending domain independently of your ESP — giving you visibility into authentication, blacklist status, and inbox placement regardless of which platform you send through.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC monitoring — verify Amazon SES's authentication is correctly configured for your domain
Blacklist monitoring — detect if your domain or IP has been listed
Inbox placement testing — see where your email lands at Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo
Daily deliverability score — track domain health independently of your Amazon SES dashboard

See EmailExacto Intelligence →

Best Practices

What to Get Right

✓Request SES production access promptly — sandbox mode severely limits legitimate sending.

✓Set up SNS notifications for bounces and complaints to maintain your suppression list.

✓Configure Easy DKIM (2048-bit) via the SES console for stronger signing.

✓Use configuration sets to track bounce and complaint rates per sending stream.

✓Generate SES SMTP credentials from the SES console — IAM secret keys are not valid for SMTP auth.

✓Use dedicated IPs for high-volume sending to a consistent domain segment.

Keep Learning