Set up your Amazon SES account (and get approved)

Amazon SES is the cheapest way to send, but it asks a little more of you up front: you create it inside AWS, verify your domain, and ask Amazon to "approve" you for real sending. This guide walks through all of it in plain language. Budget about 20–30 minutes (plus DNS wait time).

This article gets your account ready. Once it's approved, follow Connect Amazon SES to plug it into Mailbo.

The 4 stages

1. Create SES and pick a region
2. Verify your domain (prove you own it)
3. Request production access (leave the "sandbox")
4. Keep your account healthy so it's never paused

Stage 1 — Create SES and pick a region

1. Sign in to the AWS Console (create a free AWS account first if needed).
2. Search for SES and open it.
3. In the top-right, pick a Region close to you or your subscribers — e.g. US East (N. Virginia) / us-east-1.

⚠️ Remember your region. SES treats every region as a separate account — your verified domain, approval status, and credentials all live in one region. Pick one and do everything there.

Stage 2 — Verify your domain

This proves you own the domain you'll send from. SES does it with DNS records.

1. Left menu → Configuration → Identities → Create identity.
2. Choose Domain, type your domain (e.g. yourbrand.com), and leave Easy DKIM turned on.
3. Click Create identity. SES shows 3 CNAME records.
4. Add those 3 records at your DNS host (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, etc.), copying each Name and Value exactly.
5. Wait. When the identity status flips to Verified, you're done. (Usually minutes; can take up to 72 hours.)

Recommended while you're here: set up a custom MAIL FROM (an MX record → feedback-smtp.<region>.amazonses.com priority 10, plus an SPF TXT record v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all) and add a DMARC record. This makes you pass the 2024 Gmail/Yahoo rules. See Verify your domain.

Stage 3 — Request production access (leave the sandbox)

Every new SES account starts in the sandbox, which means:

• You can only email addresses you've verified yourself.
• Max 200 emails per day, 1 per second.

To email real subscribers you must request production access:

1. In SES → Account dashboard. You'll see a "Your account is in the sandbox" notice → Request production access.
2. Fill in the form:
   • Mail type: choose Marketing (for newsletters/campaigns) or Transactional.
   • Website URL: your real, live website.
   • Use case description: explain what you send and who you send to.
   • Acknowledgement: tick that you only email people who asked for it and that you handle bounces & complaints.
3. Submit. AWS usually replies within 24 hours.

Tips to get approved fast

• Verify your domain first (Stage 2) — Amazon explicitly favours this.
• Have a real website at the URL you give.
• Describe how people join your list (a signup form, opt-in) and that you honour unsubscribes and remove bounces.
• Don't ask for a huge sending quota on day one — match it to a realistic use case.

Got rejected? It's almost always a vague use case, no real website, or a list that isn't clearly opt-in. Tighten those and reply to the AWS case.

Stage 4 — Keep your account healthy

SES will pause accounts that send badly. Two numbers matter, shown on the SES Reputation dashboard:

How to stay safe:

• Set up bounce & complaint handling before your first campaign — so bad addresses are removed automatically. See Set up bounce handling for Amazon SES. (Amazon even requires you to confirm you do this.)
• Only email opted-in people. Never buy or scrape lists — the #1 cause of pauses.
• Warm up: start with smaller sends and increase gradually over a couple of weeks.
• Honour unsubscribes (Mailbo handles this for you automatically).

New accounts use shared IP addresses by default — that's fine for almost everyone. Dedicated IPs are an optional paid extra for high, steady volume.

Next: Connect Amazon SES to Mailbo · Set up bounce handling