SES (or Simple Email Service) is a service that exposes SMTP endpoints for your application to directly integrate with.
SES Tips
🔹Bounce Handling: Make sure you handle this early enough. Your ability to send emails can be removed if SES sees too many bounces.
🔹Credentials: Many developers get confused between SES credentials and AWS API keys. Make sure to enter SMTP credentials while using the SMTP APIs.
SES Gotchas and Limitations
🔸Internet Access: SES SMTP endpoints are on the Internet and will not be accessible from a location without Internet access (e.g. a private subnet without NAT gateway route in the routing table). In such a case, set up an SMTP relay instance in a subnet with Internet access and configure your application to send emails to this SMTP relay instance rather than SES. The relay should have a forwarding rule to send all emails to SES). ❗If you are using a proxy instead of a NAT, confirm that your proxy service supports SMTP.