Amazon SES

[Chuckman]

I just learned about the Amazon SES email sending service. It seems like a perfect way to avoid the delivery problems and restrictions of sending through a regular web host.

Has anybody here successfully integrated ListMailPro with Amazon SES?  Are you having any problems using the service?

It would be great if someone could share the settings they used on the ListMail configuration page send mail through SES.

Thanks!
Chuck

[DW]

I had a look at Amazon SES.

It looks like they support SMTP-based sending, so it might work with ListMailPRO if ListMailPRO is hosted on a capable web server and configured to send using the Amazon SES SMTP server.

A current (v1.88) limitation of such a configuration might be that some ListMailPRO messages, such as Welcome, Confirmation and some system emails are not sent with SMTP, even if it is configured, but the internal PHP mail() function.  That function will send based on server settings, which if one is in full control of a web server might be able to be configured to Amazon SES as well, but could be tricky or cause problems.    This may change in a future update, when SMTP might be able to be configured to be used for everything.

SES appears to be limited to 10,000 messages per day to start, with increasing limits as time goes on and as your messages are judged to be of high quality.  Pricing appears to be $0.10 per thousand emails.  So at 10,000 per day you'd be spending $30/mo.  Some email-friendly web hosts offer the same amount of email for less, and in my experience deliverability is not usually poor from a well-configured server without a bad reputation.

With larger lists your costs will be more, i.e. for 100,000 per day you're looking at $300/mo.  For such volume I would normally recommend a dedicated server, such as from 1and1.com, which can be had for as low as ~$60/mo.

All total, I am skeptical that deliverability with Amazon SES is much better than can be achieved by a responsible publisher from a normal web host or dedicated server, or is worth the potential additional cost.  However, I am always open to further feedback.

Regards

[Chuckman]

Thanks for your quick reply, Dean.

My list is less than 2000. I'm currently using HostGator.
Maybe I'll consider switching to DreamHost.  Do they
have less restrictions on sending email than HostGator?

Chuck

[DW]

I notice Amazon SES does mention they allow up to 2000 emails per day free, however I'm not sure if SMTP is supported with that offer, which would be required for use with ListMailPRO.

DreamHost allows 100 per hour and HostGator allows 500 per hour.  For each of these I would recommend disabling SMTP in ListMailPRO and instead using the PHP mail() option, as this feature allows delays to be set to stay under the limits.  For HostGator I might recommend a delay of 7500 ms (7.5s) per message, which equals 480 per hour, or a little higher to provide room for system messages, signup welcome emails, email sent from your email client, etc.  It would also be important to not send around the same time as the Dailymail scheduled task if you have any followups or scheduled messages configured.  A host with no such limitations is best, however is a little harder to come by these days.  I might suggest finding a smaller, newer web hosting company as they are less likely to have been plagued with abuse which would encourage such limits.

Looks I need to update the email hosting page and search around to find some more email-friendly web hosts.

[poppiebrooks]

Hi Dean
It's been awhile, I am on HostGator and having trouble getting SMTP to work, does PHP mailing work fine for a small list and does it send test emails? Thanks in advance

[DW]

It is recommended to use PHP mail for hosts with limits as the required delays can be set.  I might recommend setting for 480 per hour.  The calculation would be 1/(480/60/60) so 7.5s or 7500ms per email. Currently PHP mail is not included in the Test Mail Settings feature as it doesn't commonly fail.  To test it you might manually Add a User on the User Database page with the Welcome Message enabled.  If you receive the welcome message after adding the user, it's working.  You might check the source/headers of the message to find the Return-path header.  If this does not show your bounce address set on the Configuratoon page, setting $phpmailf=1; in config.php could fix the problem.

Regards

[BGSWebDesign]

Dean,

All total, I am skeptical that deliverability with Amazon SES is much better than can be achieved by a responsible publisher from a normal web host or dedicated server, or is worth the potential additional cost.  However, I am always open to further feedback.

I've been doing some testing on my own.  The one primary advantage of Amazon SES is that you can get emails delivered much faster then trying to 'throttle' LMP.  With my large lists (over 200,000 and sending 60,000 daily), it would often take 10-16 hours just to get one mail through throttled down to about 4,000-6,000/hour. 

Therein lies the problems I've encountered running my own LMP mail server, if you do not throttle, you have many emails blocked at the host (AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc), so you have to throttle.  You cannot run LMP wide open, as the host will block incoming emails that arrive to quickly - even with proper SPF, reverse IP, DKIM, and everything else in place.  I'd be curious if anyone else is able to run LMP wide open successfully, as I've found it cannot be done, there is too much blocking going on, and to try to get added to all the proper and correct webmaster sender locations, and keep up with that is brutal.   

With Amazon SES, you start with a lower level - in production I think it was 10,000/day, but if you are a responsible sender they quickly ramp you up significantly, I am now at 220,000/day, and 70/second=4,200/minute or the entire 220,000 in about 1 hour.   But, you need to be setup properly at Amazon SES, and you need to be using SNS (notification messages) for bounces/complaints, and have software that removes those and does not send to them again.  DW - I will PM you with details on that.

DW, If you could get a similar sending framework setup in LMP (which should not be that hard), you would find a much more eager audience to setting up/using LMP for handling larger lists and would make considerably more sales, I'm certain of that.