I'm hosting a personal website on an AWS EC2 instance and I want to add email functionality. My goals are to receive emails at various addresses like [email protected] and forward them to my Gmail, use the Gmail "Send mail as" feature for those addresses, and send emails directly from my PHP code using PHPMailer to notify me about website status updates. I want to avoid running my own email server due to deliverability issues and am considering using Amazon SES, but I'm unsure about the setup needed and the costs involved. Specifically, do I need to pay for the SES Dedicated IP option and the Open ingress endpoint, or is there a more cost-effective solution? Also, I've found the email setup to be more complicated than other aspects of the site, so any guidance would be really helpful!
3 Answers
Email setup can definitely get tricky! I suggest using a dedicated service for email handling instead of trying to set up everything through SES. SES works for sending and receiving emails, but it can be complicated to get out of the sandbox environment and there might be unexpected issues with DKIM if you forward emails. I've had success with Forwardemail.net, which could help you forward emails to Gmail just the way you want. For sending notifications, consider using AWS SNS, although it's a bit limited in sending detailed emails directly.
That's a solid point! Maybe combining SNS with hosted pages could help you format your notifications better.
If you're looking for a straightforward solution, I use Microsoft 365 for my email with AWS. It's pretty cheap and they integrate well using Power Automate for sending emails. You might find it’s worth considering if you want an easy setup.
While SES is mainly for sending promotional type emails, you might want to explore AWS WorkMail for receiving and sending personal emails. Regarding the Dedicated IPs, you don’t need them unless you want to manage specific DKIM settings. Also, keep in mind that AWS might throttle outgoing traffic on port 25, so contacting AWS Support about that would be wise.
Great advice, I'll check out AWS WorkMail. And thanks for the heads up about port 25!
Thanks for the tip! Forwardemail.net looks promising, but I'm a bit worried about customizing my emails with PHP. I might have to think of a different workaround.