Hey everyone! I've been using AWS SES on their Free Tier to send transactional emails like account confirmations and notifications for my website. I recently tried to apply for production access to get out of the SES sandbox, but AWS rejected my request without giving any clear reason, just pointing to their lengthy Terms of Service. Has anyone else experienced this? What could be the reason behind the rejection? Additionally, I'm looking for reliable and cost-effective alternatives to SES for a project like mine. Ideally, I'd love something that's beginner-friendly and has straightforward pricing. Thanks in advance for any insights you can share!
4 Answers
If you're mainly focused on transactional emails, I'd recommend giving MXroute a shot. It tends to offer solid service for that purpose.
Yeah, SES can be pretty tough to navigate, especially for beginners. They have a lot of hoops to jump through, and even when you think you've done everything right, they might still reject your application. Many suggest looking into SMTP providers like SendGrid or Mailchimp as reliable alternatives. If you're doing internal emails, some folks just use a Google Workspace or O365 setup for that. I personally just use a simple internal SMTP relay server for my alerts. Good luck with your search!
I had a similar issue when trying to get SES out of the sandbox. I finally switched to Resend, which I found super easy to set up and has clear pricing. Plus, since Resend uses SES under the hood, most of the code I had for handling bounces was reusable. It's been a smooth process since switching!
Are you sure everything's set up correctly? Make sure you have all your Route53 records configured properly. If you’re using Terraform, I can share some code snippets to help you get the DNS settings right. Every time I've done that before requesting access, I've gotten approved without issues.
+1 for Resend! I recently moved over from SendGrid and it's been fantastic.