I was using the Cognito Default messaging for registration related cognito emails.
I wanted to shift to Amazon SES for emailing purpose on Cognito as it is the suggested approach.
I created a verified identity on AWS SES, moved out of sandbox account and configured cognito to use the same AWS SES identity.
However, currently I observe that I am not able to send emails using this configuration to major domain emails such as yahoo, gmail, etc.
No error is returned, but I cannot see the email neither on inbox nor spam
Weirdly when I use mailinator I am able to get the email on the mailinator inbox. How can I resolve AWS SES to send emails to all domains?
I have bought a domain,then I have created domain identity in SES and verified it successfully, now comes the email part. I have created email address in identity management that is user#example.com (assume that example.com is my domain), documentation states that I need to go to the email inbox and click on the email but what inbox they mean? How can I access this inbox of this address that I've just created? If I have to use my own email here then what's the point of adding a domain If I can use gmail smtp straight away? Can someone please clarify this?
Here is the clear answer:
At first, you need to purchase and verify your domain in SES(you've done this already, it's good to go for next step)
You need to write a support ticket to move your SES account out from sandbox mode as it's in sandbox mode by default(You need to provide all info AWS requires in detail)
moving out from sandbox mode
This might take 1 day around, finally you can get production SES status and check in your statistics section from SES console.
Next, you need to go AWS WorkMail service console and create your email accounts to be used for sender or receiver in your platform by your purchased domain(i.e, if your domain is abc.com, info#abc.com or support#abc.com).
When I say creating email accounts, it says you need to create email address, username and password for each email account.
Finally, If you need to check out the inbox for above created accounts, WorkMail provides a cool web client for it.
Here is the WorkMail web client documentation from AWS
It says this:
The web client URL looks like this: https://alias.awsapps.com/mail. Replace alias with the alias you received from your site administrator.
Here, alias is configured by you when you create your organization in WorkMail console.
The reason why SES requires to verify domain is something like ID verification of email sender, and verification of 3rd party email addresses gives us a flexibility to work with any other email addresses not registered in SES, also allow development and test before registration of domain in sandbox mode.
Cheers
The email address you want to verify must have existing mail service, before you can validate the address in SES.
From AWS docs, about receiving email
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/receiving-email.html
When you receive email, Amazon SES processes it according to instructions you provide. For example, Amazon SES can deliver incoming mail to an Amazon S3 bucket, publish it to an Amazon SNS topic, or send it to Amazon WorkMail.
If you need an inbox service, use Amazon WorkMail.
Creating a IAM user doesn't create an inbox. And SES has no inbox capability at all. The point of validation is to allow sending in behalf of the service. In certain use cases, you can process inbound email via Lambda, store attachments on S3 etc. but there is no POP3/IMAP inbox-like service included in the SES.
Creating an IAM user is not required to validate your email. That is only for authentication purposes for accessing AWS account services.
AWS SES can receive emails and mostly this is used for automated email processing.
If you have verified in identity that you own the domain(by adding txt record in your domain DNS table) then by default you have verified all emails that fall in that domain.
You don't have to follow the steps to verify individual emails by clicking the link received on the emails.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-domains.html
From your example: since the domain examaple.com is verified, you don't have to again verify emails(user#example.com) that fall under same domain.
Individual email verification is for scenarios where you cant verify domain by placing dns records. Here you will not be able to receive emails, but if you still want to send emails from an address then you can verify it by clicking the link you receive on your inbox. This can be done with gmail or other mail providers.
I have a question about the security of the emails in the amazon ses.
According to their docs and verification here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/send-email-authentication-spf.html
and
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/send-email-authentication-dmarc.html
They advise to publish the record to consisting of this:
"v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all"
However, doesnt that make Your domain to be accessible for all of the accounts using the AWS SES? Isnt this a bit of a security issue?
This validates that emails are allowed to be sent from SES. Its primarily you acknowledging that Amazon is allowed to send emails on your behalf.
Additionally a username/password via SMTP or IAM credentials via AWS api are used to send the email, these are the validation step from the AWS perspective.
See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
I have setup Amazon Simple Email Service account on one my my domains. Lets say it example.com
I am not able to send emails to that same domain I have verified.
meaning sending email from noreply#example.com to myemail#example.com is not happening.
I even tried in AWS console's send test email but couldn't send the email.
I couldn't find in AWS SES documentation saying we can't send emails to same domain.
Can we send emails to same domain in AWS SES? If not is it documented in AWS SES?
If yes how can I send them?
I don't see in AWS SES documentation that it doesn't support sending to the same domain name.
I finally got to know that the domain I'm using is configured with Office 365 email provider, the admin have configured Spam filters such a way that it doesn't even enter user's inbox if they recognized it to be sending automated emails from same domain.
Conclusion: its not an issue from Amazon AWS SES but in-house spam filtering.
I have an AWS SES application, which sends an email when an event happens. The mail deliver is successful when I send it to gmail. But, if I want to use my company domain address which is also verified by SES, I do not see any emails in my account. The confusion part is, the sender email (FROM) is my company domain address.
Simple way is to create a SNS subscription and a topic from Amazon console, if you are trying to send e-mails from you application you might have to see if your corporate SMTP server is able to recieve e-mails.
Another simple route is to use "sendgrid" service, this is a paid subscription and it is very easy to use.