AWS SES vs. Google Apps' gmail

Question

I have a website hosted on an AWS instance. I wish to send emails such as a newsletter from the app code (php).

I used Google Apps' gmail for regular emails, and use SwiftMailer for sending emails from the app using the gmail account details.

I recently got a message from Amazon (below) that my instance reached its email sending limit. My question is whether its best to use the new Amazon SES, or request Amazon for a higher limit and continue to use Gmail.

I plan to send thousands of emails a week, and some will be a newsletter, being sent at bulk.

Thanks, Dorian

The message from Amazon reads:

"Dear EC2 Customer, You recently reached a limit on the volume of email you were able to send out of SMTP port 25 on your instance:

Instance ID: i-xxxxxx
* IP Address: xx.xx.xx.xx
* Start date: 2011-02-12 17:48 +0000

In order to maintain the quality of EC2 addresses for sending email, we enforce default limits on the amount of email that can be sent from EC2 accounts. If you wish to send larger amounts of email from EC2, you can apply to have these limits removed from your account by filling out our online request form."

Answer 1

When I got a similar email from Amazon I just applied to have the limits removed. You fill in a simple application and they get back to you in short order. There is a very low limit applied to unapproved accounts I believe.

Answer 2

I personally use SendGrid for all my transactional emails. It is a bit pricier than SES, but it is reliable and I get my own IP address that sends my mail out (which helps for deliverablility). It is dead simple to setup as well. Note that gmail will limit the number of outbound emails as well.

Answer 3

You can try Gmail API for sending mail which provides 1,000,000,000 daily sending limits.

https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/reference/quota