Send your campaigns with Amazon SES in MailerPress

This feature requires MailerPress Pro.

Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is the email sending service of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Connect it to MailerPress to send your campaigns, automation emails and test emails through your AWS account, and to track bounces (emails returned as undeliverable, for example because the address doesn’t exist).

1. Prepare your Amazon SES account

Verify your sending identity

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console. If you don’t have an AWS account yet, create one (AWS asks for a payment method).
2. Open Amazon SES in the AWS region you want to send from, and note this region.
3. Go to Verified identities, click Create identity and verify your domain (recommended) or an email address. For a domain, add the DNS records AWS gives you at your domain provider (settings that prove you own the domain).
4. New SES accounts start in sandbox mode, a test mode where you can only send to verified addresses. To send to any recipient, request production access from the SES Account dashboard.

Create access keys for MailerPress

1. In the AWS Console, open IAM (the AWS service that manages users and permissions) and create a user for MailerPress (for example mailerpress-ses).
2. Attach a policy that allows sending with SES, for example AmazonSESFullAccess.
3. In the user’s Security credentials tab, create an access key for an application running outside AWS.
4. Copy the Access key ID and the Secret access key. AWS shows the secret key only once.

2. Link your site with the Amazon SES API

1. Go to MailerPress > Integrations and open the Email Service Providers tab.
2. In Recommended Providers, click Configure on the Amazon SES card.
3. Paste your keys in AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key.
4. In AWS Region, select the region where your SES identity is verified. The default is US East – Virginia (us-east-1).
5. Fill in Default sender email address and Default sender name. The address must belong to an identity verified in SES. Empty fields show your global default sender as a placeholder.
6. Click Save changes. The button stays disabled until both keys are filled in. The card moves to Configured Providers.
7. Turn on the card’s Enable toggle, then click Set as primary provider. The card shows the Primary badge: only the primary provider sends your emails.

3. Send a test email

1. On the Amazon SES card, open the Actions menu (three dots) and click Send test email.
2. Enter a recipient in Send to and click Send.

You should receive an email with the subject “This is a Sending Method Test”. If SES reports that an address isn’t verified, your account is probably still in sandbox mode: verify the recipient address in the SES console, or request production access.

4. Configure the sending speed

1. Go to MailerPress > Settings > Sending frequency, or click Adjust sending frequency on the Amazon SES card.
2. Under Configuration Mode, choose Profile and select one of the Amazon SES profiles below. You can also choose Automatic to let MailerPress pick a profile, or Manual to set your own values.
3. Click Save settings.

Profile	Emails per batch	Interval	Rate limit	Emails per hour
Prudent (Sandbox/New accounts)	50	5 minutes	10 per second	600
Balanced (Recommended)	75	5 minutes	12 per second	900
Performance (High volume)	150	5 minutes	14 per second	1,800
Maximum (Enterprise – AWS approved increased limits)	200	5 minutes	20 per second	2,400

Use Maximum only if AWS has raised your account’s sending rate above the default.

The sending frequency is saved for the provider that is primary at that moment. Set Amazon SES as primary before you click Save settings. See How to change your sending frequency in MailerPress.

5. Enable bounce tracking

Amazon SES doesn’t call a webhook directly. It publishes bounce notifications to an Amazon SNS topic (SNS, Simple Notification Service, is the AWS notification service), and SNS forwards them to MailerPress.

Copy the SNS endpoint URL

1. On the Amazon SES card, click Configure.
2. Turn on Enable bounce tracking. The setting is saved immediately.
3. Under SNS Endpoint URL, click Copy. The URL looks like https://example.com/wp-json/mailerpress/v1/esp/bounce/amazonses.

Leave Webhook signing secret empty: MailerPress checks the Amazon SNS signature of every notification.

Create an SNS topic and subscription

1. In the AWS Console, open Amazon SNS in the region selected in AWS Region in MailerPress. MailerPress rejects topics from another region or another AWS account.
2. Go to Topics and create a Standard topic (for example mailerpress-ses-bounces).
3. On the topic page, click Create subscription. Choose the HTTPS protocol and paste the SNS endpoint URL as the endpoint. Leave Enable raw message delivery unchecked.
4. Create the subscription. MailerPress confirms it automatically: after a few seconds, refresh the subscriptions list and check that the status is Confirmed.

Send SES bounces to the topic

1. In the SES console, go to Verified identities and open your domain or address.
2. In the Notifications tab, edit the feedback notifications.
3. Set Bounce feedback to your SNS topic and save.

MailerPress only uses bounce notifications: complaint notifications sent to the same topic don’t change your contacts.

Test bounce tracking

1. In MailerPress > Audience, add a contact with the address [email protected]. MailerPress only records bounces for existing contacts.
2. From the Amazon SES card, send a test email to [email protected].
3. After a few moments, the contact appears in the Bounced tab.

6. Track your bounces

Go to MailerPress > Audience and click the Bounced tab of the contact list. Campaigns only go to subscribed contacts, so bounced contacts no longer receive them.

To compare Amazon SES with the other sending services, see Choose and configure your email sending service.

Troubleshooting

• The subscription stays in “Pending confirmation”: your site must be reachable from the internet (not localhost) with a valid SSL certificate, and the SNS topic must be in the region selected in MailerPress. Then request the confirmation again from the SNS console.
• Bounces are not tracked: check that the subscription is Confirmed, that Bounce feedback points to the right topic, and that the bounced address is a MailerPress contact.
• Emails are not sent: check that your identity is verified in SES, whether your account is still in sandbox mode, and that AWS Region matches the region of your SES identity.