Do you know what is AWS Simple Email Service (SES)? Find out in this AWS SES Tutorial the numerous benefits it offers your business.
Ever since the inception of paper & pen, the mail has been a method people have preferred to communicate. As time advanced, it transformed into an email; now, even businesses use them in the form of a Simple Email Service.
Amazon Simple Email Service is one of the many email services you can currently avail yourself for your business. Do you know what makes it so unique that everyone prefers to use them instead of other alternatives?
If you don’t, fret not because this is what you will learn. We will be discussing in detail what Amazon Simple Email Service is, where you can use it, along with its benefits and drawbacks.
What is AWS Simple Email Service (SES)?
Amazon Web Services offers 175+ services, and out of them, Amazon Simple Email Service is one of their most prominent services. This service has helped many brands & businesses spread their message.
This service does it all, whether it is communication or marketing of your brand/business, internal or external communication, or mail information to your clients regarding their transactions.
The job of Amazon Simple Email Service
Essentially, AWS Simple Email Service is a budget-friendly, practical, scalable, and automated email service.
- Using this service, you spread any message you want globally on behalf of your business.
- If you wish to curate and execute an advertising strategy, address your company policy change, or any other major news, Amazon Simple Email Service allows you to perform all this on a budget.
- You can send up to 62,000 free emails from your application to your customers using this service.
- Informing them regarding the latest happenings of your brand, new campaigns, or the progress of their order.
Functions Simple Email Service Can Perform For Your Business or What Tasks Can You Perform With Amazon Simple Email Service?
The following are the functions Simple Email Service can perform for your brand’s business.
| Functions Simple Email Service Can Perform |
| Send Email For Your Application On Mass Scale |
| Provide A to Z Billing & Order Tracking Cycle To Your Client |
| Execute A Masterful Email Marketing Plan |
| Internal Company Announcements |
| Address Internal & External Company Issues Simultaneously |
Why Does Your Application Needs AWS Simple Email Service?
You might have developed and designed the best application in the world. It would be just what the world needs; however, the world won’t know about it unless it’s not marketed to the right people.
This is the exact purpose the Simple Email Service serves your application, opening up avenues to be presentable to your customers/users. It can share marketing, announcement or news, and more.
Ways You Can Use Simple Email Service
Amazon Simple Email Service has made brands realize their true potential; therefore, in our opinion, their uses are incredible.
1. Financial Activity Email
AWS Simple Email Service allows your application to inform your customers about every single detail of your transactional operation. When they are charged, t the amount they are charged, and why.
It even provides tips and tricks which can help improve your business experience with you. Examples like saving money and getting better deals are sent through emails.
2. Advertising Email
The second most prominent method you can use Simple Email Service to benefit your application is by implementing advertising/marketing emails through them.
Every application is based on a business model. Using this method, you can market that business unlike ever before. This service allows you to spread word of mouth far and wide.
Plus, the best benefit Simple Email Service provides you is that it can market your brand on a budget. It is cheaper and still the most effective.
3. Mass Communication Email
The final method you can use the Simple Email Service is by sending mass communication emails through your application.
Benefits of Using Simple Email Service
Amazon Simple Email Service is the most used mass email service because it serves its users with numerous benefits. The following are the best of them.
1. Seamless Integration with Your Application
For the Simple Email Service, it doesn’t matter what type of your application it is, which frame it is built or distributed, or which niche it targets. It can seamlessly integrate with your application to serve you.
2. Enhances Your Email Deliverability
This service allows your emails to be delivered to as many registered users as possible. Its deliverability is remarkable, as this service is designed to ensure it gets delivered.
Other mass email services usually fail because they are detected by email servers as spam. However, this isn’t the case with the Simple Email Service because it is renowned for not being detected as spam.
3. Invaluable Statistics Insights of Your Email Campaign
Another benefit you gain when you use the Simple Email Service from Amazon is that you receive invaluable insight into the campaign you are trying to run.
Whether it is an informational, marketing, or financial campaign. You can get insight into what got delivered, what didn’t, and most importantly, why it did or didn’t, so you can work on improving it for the future.
4. State the Art Data Protection
Amazon Simple Email Service is covered under the services of Amazon Web Services; hence you can expect your data to be as safe as possible. Amazon has a remarkable reputation for being safe & secure.
5. Budget-Friendly Proven Marketing Service
The final benefit, in our opinion, you gain when you utilize AWS Simple Email Service for your application is the amount of money you can save. This is by far the most budget-friendly email service.
They offer you up to 62,000 free emails on AWS’s free tier account, and after that, you have to pay $0.10 for every 1,000 emails sent.
Check out the details of AWS SES Pricing here.
Drawbacks of Using Simple Email Service
Like most Amazon Web Services, Simple Email Service is also a remarkable service. Still, it is nowhere perfect as it can be. Therefore the following are the drawbacks that we have identified:
1. Email Receiving Capability Could Be Improved
When it comes to sending a mass email of whatever nature, Simple Email Service from Amazon is a genuine market leader. However, the same cannot be said about their email-receiving capability.
2. Lack of Awareness Regarding Bounced Emails
Email gets bounced, and not knowing which got bounced and why is a problem most email services suffer from. Unfortunately, this service is no different in this manner.
3. Does Not Send Emails to Unverified Users
According to us, the most significant drawback Simple Email Service has is that it does not send emails to unverified users. You need to register them; then, only through your application can you email them.
Brands That Use AWS Simple Email Service
The proof that AWS Simple Email Service is successful is because the following mega brands use them to serve their application.
- Netflix
- Duolingo
Regions You Can Serve With Simple Email Service?
Simple Email Service allows you to serve your customer globally. However, the accounts are distributed region-wise. In a specific region, you cannot have more than 10,000 registered accounts at once.
Amazon Web Services takes these precautions to ensure the delivery of every email. Sending a large volume of emails without control can easily get it flagged as spam and reap nil campaign results.
AWS SES vs SNS
| SES | SNS |
| SES is designed to send bulk mail. | This is also a service for sending emails or push notifications to bulk users |
| We can send bulk emails to users and we don’t need to have the user’s consent. | We can only send emails or notifications to users only after users subscribe to it. This basically works on Pub/Sub model. |
AWS Simple Email Service Terraform
Terraform gives us the flexibility of creating the Infrastructures in AWS. This is an Infrastructure as a Code tool.
Just to remind you this is the code to create the SES and EMail template only. You have to write the terraform code to create the Email Template, Roles, and Policy along with the Email Sending Configuration.
AWS Simple Email Service Template
Here we define the template for how we would like our emails to be sent using the SES. Below is the sample format of the mail with terraform code.
AWS Simple Email Service SMTP or How to set up AWS Simple Email Service SMTP?
So, now the question is how will you set your email transfer protocol, the below code snippet will configure your email transfer capabilities using Terraform.
AWS Simple Email Service Logs
Logs in AWS are by default captured in CloudWatch and CloudTrail logs and so is the case with SES as well.
We can create a log group and keep our logs in that group for better traceability.
AWS SES send email
We have to set up SES to send the emails. We need to set the policy as well as the quota for sending the mail. For more details on that, you have to refer to the EMAIl setup of SMTP.
AWS SES receive Email
We can also configure SES to receive email on your behalf. You can set up rules for receiving the email and scan and take appropriate action on those emails.
Also, have the option to filter the mail based on the IP address.
What Is AWS Simple Email Service FAQs
The following are the most FAQs of Simple Email Service:
Q: What Is AWS Simple Email Service?
Simple email service is an email service from Amazon Web Services which allows your application to contact its registered users in a mass capacity.
Q: Pricing For Simple Email Service?
Simple Email Service offers you up to 62,000 free emails on AWS’s free tier account, and after that, you have to pay $0.10 for every 1,000 emails sent.
Q: Is AWS Simple Email Service Available On Free Tier, Or Is It A Premium Service?
This AWS service is available on both tiers. For details, look at the answer above.
Q: Can I Just Send Word Email, Or Does Simple Email Service Supports Multimedia Email?
Simple Email Service supports multimedia email. Hence you can send graphics, videos, pictures, etc., in your email through your application.
Q: What Are The Number Of Emails Addresses I Can Register Per Region In the Simple Email Service?
You can register 10,000 email addresses per region.
Q: How Can I Track My Billing In Simple Email Service?
Tracking your billing in this service is very easy and convenient.
All you need to do is visit your billing dashboard, and through there, you will be able to track how much of this service your application has consumed.
It even tells you if you are still on the free tier or do you now have to pay.
You may also like to explore below AWS Blogs.
- What Is AWS EKS
- What Is AWS Cognito
- What Is AWS Aurora
- What Is AWS Batch Processing
- Top 15 AWS Security Audit Guidelines
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of mass email services available in the market. However, Amazon Web Services Simple Email Service is widely regarded as the best.
Therefore, in this What Is AWS Simple Email Service article, we have discussed why that is the case. From what it is to its benefits, drawbacks, who uses them, how you can use them, and everything has been discussed.
Please go through it and let us know if you think this AWS service is worth it or not?
I am an Amazon Web Services Professional, having more than 11 years of experience in AWS and other technologies. Extensively working in various AWS tools like S3, Lambda, API, Kinesis, Load Balancers, EKS, ECS, and many more. Working as a Solution Architect and Technology Lead for Architecting and implementing the same for different clients. He provides expert solutions around the world and especially in countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Check out the complete profile on About us.
