SES production access

Every new Amazon SES account starts in the sandbox. Before you can send a campaign to your contacts, you have to ask AWS for production access. AWS reviews each request by hand. A request with real details about your product and your recipients gets through faster.

What the sandbox limits

While your account is in the sandbox, in a given region:

• You can only send to addresses and domains you’ve verified in SES, or to the SES mailbox simulator.
• You can send at most 200 emails per 24 hours.
• You can send at most 1 email per second.

Test sends from Rowsend work in the sandbox, as long as the test address is verified in SES. Campaigns to your contacts won’t.

Sandbox status is per region. Request production access in the region you set as Region in Rowsend.

Before you ask

Get these done first, so your request can say they’re in place:

1. Verify your domain in SES and finish its DNS records (DKIM, plus SPF and DMARC). See From address and domain. AWS approves requests faster when a domain is verified.
2. Set up the sender in Rowsend and click Verify. See Amazon SES.
3. Click Set up bounce tracking. AWS will ask how you handle bounces and complaints, and this is your answer.
4. Add your mailing address in Project settings → Brand.
5. Make sure your website is live and says what your product is. AWS looks at it.

Request access

1. Open the SES console in your sending region.
2. Choose Account dashboard. In the banner that says your account is in the sandbox, choose View Get set up page, then Request production access.
3. For mail type, choose Marketing. Campaigns from Rowsend are marketing email.
4. Enter your website URL.
5. Add up to four contact addresses that you read. AWS sends its questions there.
6. Tick the acknowledgement that you only email people who asked for it and that you handle bounces and complaints.
7. Choose Submit request.

AWS sends a first response within 24 hours. If it needs more detail, it asks in a support case.

What to tell AWS

AWS asks who your recipients are, how they signed up, how often you send, and how you handle bounces, complaints and unsubscribes. Copy this, fill in the brackets, and send it as your reply on the support case:

We send product updates and announcements to people who signed up for [product] at [website].

Recipients: every address comes from our own user database. Someone becomes a contact when they create an account on [website]. We don't buy, rent or import lists. Our sending tool, Rowsend, can only read contacts from our database; it has no way to upload a list.

Volume: about [number] emails per [week/month], to [number] contacts in total. Our largest send would be about [number] emails.

Content: [one or two sentences, e.g. "monthly product updates and announcements of new features"].

Bounces and complaints: we use an SES configuration set that publishes bounce, complaint and delivery events to SNS and then SQS. Our sending tool reads that queue and unsubscribes any address that hard bounces or complains, so it's left out of every later send.

Unsubscribes: every email has an unsubscribe link and List-Unsubscribe headers with one-click unsubscribe (RFC 8058). Recipients can also choose which kinds of email they get. Our sending tool leaves unsubscribed contacts out of every later send.

Every email includes our postal address: [address].

Change anything that isn’t true for you, and use your real numbers.

If AWS says no

If AWS turns the request down, reply on the same support case with more detail:

• How people sign up, with a link to the sign-up page.
• A sample of the email you plan to send.
• Real numbers for list size and how often you send.

If you need to send before AWS approves you, use Postmark or Mailgun for now and switch back later.

After you’re approved

Your account dashboard shows your new quota: how many emails you can send per 24 hours and your maximum send rate. AWS can raise both as you send more mail with low bounce and complaint rates, and you can ask for an increase in the SES console.

Then set Rate limit in Project settings → Sending at or below your maximum send rate. Rowsend starts at 5 per second.

Watch your bounce and complaint rates on the SES account dashboard. AWS puts an account under review at a 5% bounce rate or a 0.1% complaint rate, and can pause sending at 10% or 0.5%. Rowsend stops emailing an address after it hard bounces or complains, but that first bounce or complaint still counts toward your rate.