How to Use Amazon SES and EasyMail to Send Bulk Email Newsletter
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a highly scalable and cost-effective bulk and transactional email-sending service for businesses and developers. Subscription is quick and is on pay-as-you-go basis. You can read more about Amazon SES here.
You can use Amazon SES if you:
- don't have your own SMTP server
- can't send emails because your ISP blocks the port 25 (you are forced to use the ISP SMTP server which often has strict limitations on sent emails )
- can't use your ISP mail server due to restrictions on sent emails
- don't have enough knowledge how to setup your own SMTP server on VPS
Another advantage of using Amazon SES is that they care about feedback loops. You don't need to signup for feedback loops with many ISP. Amazon SES will send you an email once someone of your recipients reports your message as spam.
Watch this video to learn how you can setup G-Lock EasyMail to send the messages through Amazon SES.
To send emails with G-Lock EasyMail using your Amazon SES account, do this:
Select the "Send via Amazon SES" Delivery Option in G-Lock EasyMail Account Settings.
Paste your Access Key and Secret Key.
If you don't have an account on Amazon SES yet, sign up now. After you sign up, you will be provided with your Access Key and Secret Key.
As a new user, you will be in the Amazon SES sandbox — an environment where you can evaluate Amazon SES in a nonproduction mode. In the sandbox, you can send email only to addresses that you have verified. While this should be sufficient for testing purposes, we recommend that you request production access to Amazon SES as soon as possible.
include:amazonses.com
Amazon recommends that all AWS Email Service users publish both SPF and Sender ID records to their DNS. For more information, go to the Amazon Simple Email Service Developer Guide.
SPF DNS record example: v=spf1 a mx include:amazonses.com -all
Many domain registrars provide self-service tools for administering DNS records. You can use these tools to modify your domain's DNS records, or contact your registrar for assistance.
Click on "Get Verified Email List" button to display your verified sender emails.
If you don't have any verified emails yet, click on "Verify Sender Email" button. Amazon SES will verify your From and Return email addresses used in G-Lock EasyMail Account by sending an email to those emails. You must click on the link in the verification email. After this, those emails will be added to your verified email list. Now you can click on the "Get Verified Email List" button to show those emails.
Click on the "Get Quota info" to show your quota on Amazon SES.
If you have recently been granted production access to Amazon SES, you should be able to send up to 1,000 emails per 24-hour period. Your sending quota should increase as follows:
Desired Quota (Per 24-Hour Period) | Approximate Time Required |
| 1,000 | Immediately |
| 10,000 | 3 days |
| 100,000 | 10 days |
| 1,000,000 | 2 weeks |
You can read more information about the sending quota and rate limit here.
From our own exprerience, we got our 24-hour quota increased to 10,000 emails in 5 days after we started using Amazon SES.
After you enter the account information in G-Lock EasyMail, click OK to create the account.
Create the email and select your Amazon SES account in the From field.
In addition to using Amazon SES API as described in this tutorial, you can use Amazon SES SMTP interface to send email messages.
If you need help with Amazon SES, check out these resources:
Amazon SES Getting Started Guide (provides instructions for using the service for the first time)
Support Center (the home page for AWS Technical Support, including access to Developer Forums, Technical FAQs, Service Status page, and Premium Support (if you are subscribed to this program)).
Premium Support Information (the primary web page for information about AWS Premium Support, a one-on-one, fast-response support channel to help you build and run applications on AWS Infrastructure Services).
Contact Us (a central contact point for inquiries concerning AWS billing, account, events, abuse, etc).
Conditions of Use (detailed information about copyright and trademark usage at Amazon.com and other topics).
Comments (4)
Two things: Can I use Glock Easy on more than one machine? Also do you know of a place where I can find testimonials from Amazon SES users?
Hi Ray,
You can install and use G-Lock EasyMail on two machines, for example, on your desktop and on your laptop.
As to testimonials from Amazon SES users, you can look for testimonials at Amazon SES forums. Here is the link to the results I found:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/search.jspa?objID=f90&q=easymail&x=0&y=0
Will SES tell me which emails bounced and will your sofware handle removal of such bounced emails after a pre-set number of bounces?
Yes, if you send emails with G-Lock EasyMail using the Amazon SES settings, bounce emails will arrive at the email address you typed in the “Return email address” in G-Lock EasyMail Account settings. Then you can process bounce emails using the Bounced Manager module in G-Lock EasyMail. The Bounced Manager will extract the email addresses from bounced messages and save them to a file. Then you can remove those emails from your groups in G-Lock EasyMail address book or add bounce email addresses to the exclusion list in the address book.
If you want to delete bounce email addresses directly from your database, you can use our G-Lock Email Processor software instead of the Bounced Manager module in G-Lock EasyMail.