What Amazon SES is
Amazon Simple Email Service, SES, is the email service of Amazon Web Services. Applications use it to send transactional and marketing email through an API or SMTP, from shared, dedicated or their own IP addresses, and it runs in AWS Regions around the world, Europe and the Middle East included.
It fits naturally into an AWS setup: access runs through AWS identities and permissions, and sending events flow into other AWS services. That is why it is one of the email providers our notifications module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Notifications
Sends the platform's email from your own domain: receipts, security alerts, statements and, for customers who opted in, campaigns. Deliveries, bounces and complaints come back to the module, so every message is tracked and your team sees what happened to it.
How the connection works
One connector in the notifications module talks to the SES API in the AWS Region you choose. Your apps never hold AWS credentials: only the platform sends email.
A payment is made
The module picks the receipt template your team edited in the backoffice, in the customer's language.
SES sends it
The module calls SES with the message and a configuration set, from an address on your verified domain.
Your domain signs it
With Easy DKIM, SES adds a DKIM signature for your domain to every message, so mailbox providers can tell it really comes from you.
Events are published
The configuration set publishes deliveries, bounces, complaints and delays to Amazon SNS, which posts each one to the platform as a signed message.
The module keeps track
It checks each signature, updates the message's status in the backoffice and records bounces and complaints against the address.
A fallback for what matters
If a critical alert cannot be delivered, the module sends it through a second channel or provider.
Next to other providers
Each channel runs on the provider you prefer, with a second one standing by for critical messages. SES can be your main email provider with another one, such as Postmark or Mailgun, ready for security alerts, or the backup behind another provider.
Templates, preferences and delivery history belong to the module, not to SES. Switching email provider later does not change your apps or your templates.
When Amazon SES fits best
A strong fit when
- Your platform already runs on AWS, and you want email inside the same accounts, permissions and monitoring.
- You want to send from a specific region, in the EU or the Middle East for example.
- You want the choice between shared, dedicated and your own IP addresses as your volume grows.
Also worth a look
- Postmark, when you want a service built around transactional email.
- A provider your team already uses: its account becomes a connector too.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your AWS account and agreement in place, with SES approved for production sending in the Region that suits your customers.
Your domain
We verify your sending domain with you and publish the DNS records for DKIM, so every message is signed for your domain.
The keys
The AWS credentials go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else, and SNS messages are only accepted when their signature checks out.
A full test run
Every template goes to SES's mailbox simulator, which plays out deliveries, bounces and complaints, and to your team's own inboxes before your first customer email.
