Amazon SES Setup

Connect your Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) account to Optail.

Prerequisites

• An AWS account
• Amazon SES configured in your desired region
• Your SES account moved out of the sandbox (for production sending)

1. Create IAM Credentials

Create a dedicated IAM user with the minimum required permissions.

IAM Policy

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ses:SendEmail",
        "ses:SendRawEmail",
        "ses:GetAccount",
        "ses:GetSendQuota",
        "ses:GetSendStatistics"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Create the user

1. Go to the IAM Console
2. Click Users > Create user
3. Name it optail-ses (or similar)
4. Attach the policy above
5. Create an Access Key (select "Application running outside AWS")
6. Copy the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key

2. Connect in Optail

Via Dashboard

1. Go to Providers > Connect Provider
2. Select Amazon SES
3. Enter a display name (e.g., "AWS SES us-east-1")
4. Enter your Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, and Region
5. Click Connect

Via API

curl -X POST https://api.optail.io/v1/providers \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ms_live_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "providerType": "SES",
    "displayName": "AWS SES us-east-1",
    "credentials": {
      "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE",
      "secretAccessKey": "wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY",
      "region": "us-east-1"
    }
  }'

3. Verify Your Sending Domain

SES requires domain verification via DNS:

1. In the SES Console, go to Verified identities
2. Click Create identity > Domain
3. Enter your domain
4. SES provides DNS records to add:
   • CNAME records for DKIM (3 records)
   • TXT record for domain verification
   • Optional MX record for MAIL FROM domain
5. Add the records to your DNS provider
6. Wait for verification (usually under 72 hours, often much faster)

Move Out of Sandbox

New SES accounts are in sandbox mode, which limits sending to verified addresses only. To send to any address:

1. In the SES Console, go to Account dashboard
2. Click Request production access
3. Fill out the form with your use case
4. AWS typically approves within 24 hours

4. Configure SNS Webhooks (Optional)

To receive delivery events in Optail, set up Amazon SNS notifications:

Create an SNS Topic

1. Go to the SNS Console
2. Create a new topic: optail-ses-events
3. Create an HTTPS subscription pointing to: https://webhooks.optail.io/v1/ingest/ses
4. Confirm the subscription (Optail auto-confirms SNS subscription requests)

Configure SES Event Destinations

1. In SES, go to Configuration sets > Create a configuration set
2. Add an Event destination:
   • Destination type: Amazon SNS
   • SNS topic: Select optail-ses-events
   • Events: Send, Delivery, Bounce, Complaint, Open, Click
3. When sending through Optail, the configuration set is automatically applied

Credential Reference

Field	Description
accessKeyId	AWS IAM Access Key ID (starts with AKIA).
secretAccessKey	AWS IAM Secret Access Key.
region	AWS region where SES is configured (e.g., us-east-1, eu-west-1).

SES Regions

SES is available in a limited set of AWS regions. Common options:

Region	Location
us-east-1	N. Virginia
us-west-2	Oregon
eu-west-1	Ireland
eu-central-1	Frankfurt
ap-south-1	Mumbai
ap-southeast-2	Sydney

Use the region closest to your users for the lowest latency.