Amazon SES Features

Amazon SES offers several methods of sending email, including the Amazon SES console, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) interface, and the Amazon SES API. You can access the API using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or by using an AWS Software Development Kit (SDK).

To get started sending email, see Sending Email in the Amazon SES Developer Guide.  

Deliverability, or ensuring emails reach inboxes instead of spam or junk, is a core element of a successful email strategy. Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) offers deliverability features through Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) that make it easier and more automated to improve inbox placement.

SES provides insights into the performance of senders’ emails, makes recommendations on how to improve deliverability, and can even automatically implement email deliverability improvements for senders. SES features three core deliverability components: insights, recommended changes, and automatic implementation

SES’s deliverability insights help email senders understand their deliverability performance. View at-a-glance reports on sending and delivery data in a single interface in the SES console, such as bounce rates, opens, and clicks. You can see breakdowns of these metrics per ISP, sender identity, and configuration set, as well as the delivery and engagement status of each email you send.

SES can notify senders of email deliverability issues and provide actionable recommendations to help improve inbox placement, like reviewing email authentication configuration such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Senders have ongoing visibility if a downgrade in email reputation or improvement opportunity is identified.

Senders have the option to allow SES to automatically implement email deliverability recommendations, like optimizing email delivery patterns. Once SES detects an opportunity for improvement, the system will implement the change without the need for monitoring or manual adjustment.

Mail Manager by Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) provides comprehensive tools that simplify managing large volumes of email communications within an organization. Mail Manager supports better handling of both incoming and outgoing emails, improving security, and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Mail Manager consolidates the reception of external emails into the organizational email system, allowing for controlled processing and routing. This unification helps streamline the management of incoming communications.

This feature centralizes all email traffic through a virtual email infrastructure, providing oversight and control over all outgoing emails.  It ensures efficient email processing and routing, aligning with company protocols. Organizations can also leverage authenticated relay to control and manage internal email communications.

This feature enables organizations to systematically store, secure, and manage their email communications. This feature supports compliance with legal and regulatory requirements for email retention by preserving and indexing emails in an easily accessible format. Email Archiving helps organizations ensure that critical communications are not only safe but also retrievable for audits, legal cases, or compliance checks. This facilitates enhanced governance and continuity in managing email records, essential for maintaining operational standards and legal compliance across all sectors.

Email add ons in Mail Manager allow organizations to enhance their email security and compliance with customizable solutions. These add-ons are powered by verified third- party providers to deliver essential tools, such as sensitive information scanning, archiving, and data loss prevention, tailored to meet specific business needs. This feature helps companies to maintain stringent data protection standards, ensuring secure and compliant email management within a unified system.

By default, Amazon SES sends email from IP addresses that are shared with other Amazon SES customers. Shared addresses are a great option for many customers who want to start sending immediately with established IPs. They are included in the base Amazon SES pricing, and their reputations are carefully monitored to ensure high deliverability.

• Customers can manage their own IP reputations by leasing dedicated IP addresses for use with their Amazon SES account. Customers can use the dedicated IP pools feature in SES console to create pools of those IP addresses, and either send all traffic from these dedicated IPs or use configuration sets to align specific use cases to specific IPs. Tailored for different customer use cases and sending patterns, SES offers two different ways to implement and manage dedicated IP addresses.
• Managed - dedicated IP address that are automatically set up and managed by SES on your behalf to help optimize your cost and usage. Managed dedicated IPs reduce the burden of manual monitoring or scaling of dedicated IP pools, and include performance metrics for IP addresses. Managed dedicated IPs are suitable for customers with a less predictable or non-continuous sending pattern.
• Standard - dedicated IP addresses that you manually setup and manage. SES provides known IP addresses for leases that never change. This standard option is good for customers with continuous, predictable sending patterns.

Amazon SES also supports Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP). This feature lets you use a range of IP addresses that you already own to send email with Amazon SES. This makes leveraging current investments and migrating from other email service providers easy.