Why am I unable to receive emails from Amazon SES?
Last updated: 2020-09-22
I sent an email using Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) but I can't find the message in my inbox. Or, I tried sending an email using Amazon SES, but I got an error.
Resolution
Check for sending issues within your Amazon SES account
- Check if your sending account is in the Amazon SES sandbox. Then, check if the recipient that you're trying to send the email to is a verified email address or domain. If your sending account is in the sandbox, then you can send emails only to email addresses or domains that are verified for use with Amazon SES. You can open a request to move your account into production mode. If Amazon SES approves your request, then you can send emails to any recipient.
- Check if your account's sending ability is paused. If Amazon SES put your account under a sending pause, you must resolve the issues that led to the pause and then request a review of your account.
Check for sending issues from the email client to Amazon SES
- Review your email client for any error messages returned by Amazon SES.
- If Amazon SES is returning "Maximum sending rate exceeded" or "Daily sending quota exceeded" error messages, then you must review your account's sending rate.
- If you're using an email template (SendTemplatedEmail operation), then verify if your template data has invalid or missing variables. If the template data has invalid or missing variables, then Amazon SES can't deliver the email. This is called a Rendering Failure. For more information, see How can I find out why my Amazon SES email using the SendTemplatedEmail operation fails to get delivered?
- If you're experiencing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) timeout or connectivity issues, then troubleshoot the TCP connection and the SSL/TLS negotiations.
- Review and debug your email-sending application for any client-side errors that might be causing the sending issues. To identify whether you might have client-side issues, you can test your connection to the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint. If your email client can't reach the endpoint, then proceed with troubleshooting your network.
Check for sending issues from Amazon SES to the recipient domain
- Verify if your email is resulting in soft bounces or hard bounces from the recipient domain. To do so, set up bounce notifications using Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Within a bounce notification, review the bounceType and bounceSubType fields to get more information about what caused the bounce.
- Verify if there's a delay in the delivery of your email. To do so, you can configure Amazon SES event publishing to Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, or Amazon SNS. To set up notifications for delivery delays, you must run the UpdateConfigurationSetEventDestination call using the Amazon SES API V2.
- Check the bounce notification for an SMTP response with the status code 554 and a message that says the sending IP address is part of an IP blocklist. This means that your email was rejected because the sender IP address is part of an IP blocklist that the recipient email provider uses. Be sure to review the policies for removing Amazon SES IP addresses from IP blocklists. To avoid using a sending IP address that's on an IP blocklist, consider using dedicated IP addresses so that you have control over the sender reputation.
Important: Bounces from issues on the recipient end can still impact your sending account's deliverability rate. As the sender, it's important that you monitor your bounce rate and prevent further bounces. If your account's bounce rate is 5% or greater, then Amazon SES can place your account under review. If your bounce rate is 10% or greater, then Amazon SES might pause your account's ability to send emails.
Check for sending issues from the recipient domain to the user's inbox
- Check the recipient's spam folder for the email that you sent using Amazon SES. Several factors can lead to a recipient's mail server flagging an email as spam, such as content filters or the lack of email authentication. For more information, see Why are the emails that I send using Amazon SES getting marked as spam?
- Confirm that your emails follow the guidelines at Complying with DMARC using Amazon SES.
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