Amazon SES Expands to US West!

Amazon Simple Email Service users, we are happy to announce the immediate availability of SES in the US West (Oregon) AWS region. This is the third region that SES is present in after US East (N. Virginia) and recently released EU (Ireland), and we’re excited about the improvement this launch will bring to your email-sending experience.

If your application is hosted in the US West region and you want to take advantage of the new SES endpoint there, here’s what you need to do to get yourself set up and ready for sending:

Set up your sending identities

The first thing you need to do is to configure the sending identities you want to send from in the new region. Your verified domains and email addresses are not shared between regions, and neither are identity-related settings (such as DKIM or feedback notifications). You can set them up in the new region while still having your application send from the old one:

• First, switch to the new region on the AWS Management Console. For more information, see Selecting a Region in our developer guide. If you are using the SES API instead, use the endpoint specified in the documentation.
• Then, verify the entities you want to send from. The verification process is just as easy in every region, and only needs to be done once per region! If you want to switch all your sending to the new region, remember not to remove any DNS records pertaining to your existing setup until after you have completed your new setup and started sending with the new endpoint. You could also leave the old region’s DNS records there indefinitely, as there is no extra cost associated with having an active configuration in several regions simultaneously.
• Once you’ve verified your identities, you will have to set each of them up to be ready for sending. If you want to use Easy DKIM you will need to publish three new DNS records per domain in each region, after generating the records using the AWS Management Console or the SES API. Once SES verifies your region-specific DNS records and you enable DKIM signing for your verified identities, SES will take care of the rest. Remember to enable signing for individually verified email addresses as well! Again, as long as you are still sending from your current region, leave the DKIM DNS records there to ensure that your emails are still validated while you’re transitioning. If you have decided to manually sign your emails, you can, of course, use the same key and not worry about this step.
• You will also have to set up your feedback notifications for your sending identities. Remember that if you receive notifications using Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), you will have to set up a new topic in the region you are sending from. The notifications will have the exact same structure, so you won’t need to do any changes other than creating new topics and hooking them up in your application.

Get the quota you need

Once you are satisfied with your setup, it’s time to let SES know you are about to send production traffic using the new region! You will have to request Production Access in each region separately, and then request a quota increase to your desired sending levels, because sending limits apply to each region individually. We generally process each request in one business day, so please plan in advance before scheduling your shift to the new region. Your limits and production access in the region you are already active in will not be affected at any point by the new region setup.

Update and deploy your application and start sending!

Assuming everything went without a hitch so far, you have completed the SES setup needed for you to make the switch to the new region. It’s now time to update your application and start sending frlom your new setup! If you are using the SES API, all you need to do is change the endpoint in the query request to the region-specific HTTPS endpoint. For more information see the SES Regions topic in our developer guide. If you are using the SMTP interface, you need to change the SMTP endpoint to the one of the new region. You can get the exact endpoint for the region you are using from the developer guide as well.  Whichever way you choose to access SES (HTTPS or SMTP), the same AWS and SMTP credentials will work in all regions. If your application is somehow consuming SES feedback notifications you may also need to update the SNS endpoints and topics you are consuming from.

Finally, you are all set up to make the switch and start sending from the new region. Just deploy the changes to your application at your own leisure and watch your emails come out of the new region!

Suppressed email addresses

A final word on handling email addresses on the SES suppression list – If an email address that you know is valid has ended up on the SES suppression list, you only need to remove it once and the change will apply to all regions. For exact steps, check out our developer guide.

You can also see our developer guide for a summary of what you need to know when you use SES in multiple regions.

We’re very happy to have launched SES in this new region and are looking forward to your feedback on how you are using Amazon SES across different AWS regions — just let us know on the SES forum. Happy sending and thank you for choosing Amazon SES!