Amazon SES

Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is Amazon Web Services' transactional and bulk email relay. Operators send through SES via either SMTP credentials or a REST API; SES handles the outbound IP pool, the deliverability tooling (DKIM signing, suppression list, feedback loops), and the FBL processing on the back end. Pricing is pay-as-you-go: see the official AWS SES pricing page for the current per-1,000-messages rate; outbound data transfer is charged separately. Verify all numbers on AWS's site before quoting them — pricing is region-specific and changes over time.

New AWS accounts start in the SES sandbox: you may only send to addresses you have manually verified, and the daily quota is 200 messages with a 1-message-per-second rate limit. To leave the sandbox you submit a "production access" request via the SES console, providing a description of your use case, list-hygiene practices, and bounce-handling plan. Approval typically lands within 24 hours and lifts the 200-message cap to a much higher initial quota that grows automatically with positive sending history.

AcelleMail ships three SES-aware classes under app/SendingServers/Drivers/Vendors/Amazon/: AmazonBaseDriver.php (shared base), AmazonSmtpDriver.php (SMTP transport via app/Library/AmazonSmtpTransport.php), and AmazonApiDriver.php (HTTPS REST). Both drivers support DKIM signing on the SES side, suppression-list management, and the SNS webhook receiver that turns SES bounce / complaint events into AcelleMail BounceLog entries. The SES SMTP driver is the default recommendation on the /pricing page because it minimises moving parts: SES handles IP warming, IP rotation, and FBL — the operator only owns DNS and the AcelleMail layer.

SES is a relay, not a marketing platform — it has no list management, no template engine, no campaign UI. That is exactly why AcelleMail and SES pair well: AcelleMail provides the campaign layer, SES provides the wire. If your business case requires a single all-in-one billed-per-contact platform, SES + AcelleMail is the wrong shape; if you want to decouple list ownership from sending volume and pay only for what you actually send, the pairing is hard to beat. The cost math is laid out in /guide/email-marketing-cost-savings.