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Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#71

Post by bradleyland »

jonknee wrote: post #4

If it works like they say, this is a godsend. Email is a royal pain and the pricing of SES is well below market rate. Postmark ( http://postmarkapp.com/ ) is similar and is $1.50 per thousand, compared to $.10 per thousand from Amazon.

I haven't seen SES yet, but if it's anything like the rest of the AWS suite, they're not entirely comparable. Amazon's products are complex, and their statistical reporting focuses on the bottom line numbers, rather than detailed, action-based reporting. For example, Postmark app provides a nice interface for managing bounce emails. From the SES FAQ, it appears that they simply forward bounces on to an address that you specify. One could build a Postmarkapp-like service on top of SES, but SES is not a direct replacement for Postmarkapp.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#72

Post by plusbryan »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

I love what Amazon is doing with AWS, and I like this new service a lot. Plus I'm a happy customer. But damn this is all getting very complicated. First they turn off email, so you have to find a provider, then they turn it back on, but you have to pay them. Looking at my AWS console, I've got 8 or 9 tabs on there -- each representing a little piece of what I might want in an app. Each has it's own help section with…

You think that's complicated? Boy, back in my day, we didn't have no fancy "management console" or "tabs". Why, you had to play with your AWS services by hand! And you liked it.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#73

Post by ajju »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

I love what Amazon is doing with AWS, and I like this new service a lot. Plus I'm a happy customer. But damn this is all getting very complicated. First they turn off email, so you have to find a provider, then they turn it back on, but you have to pay them. Looking at my AWS console, I've got 8 or 9 tabs on there -- each representing a little piece of what I might want in an app. Each has it's own help section with…

Seriously, the lack of a flat fee model is the main thing that has kept me away from AWS.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#74

Post by taylorbuley »

devicenull wrote: post #56
pilif wrote: post #48

I wonder who's going to be the first to announce a SMTP proxy for this? More seriously: While I can kind of understand that Amazon has their API and probably wants this to work similarly, but there is already a wide-spread protocol for sending out email (SMTP) and I just can't understand why they can't provide an endpoint for that. Many applications which I really see making use of this already have built-in SMTP sup…

If they use SMTP, they run the risk of a compromised server sending spam through them. With the API, it makes it a bit more difficult for a compromised machine to start spamming, unless it already has API keys for this service.

Makes sense to me. Those gradual rate increases show they're pretty wary of the spammer threat.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#75

Post by eli »

megaman821 wrote: post #42
eli wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I use Silverpop for high-volume sends even though I pretty sure they're just a front-end for PowerMTA

We used to use SilverPop but then we just bought a PowerMTA license and wrote our own front end. If you are a small company with a large list, SilverPop is too expensive. Amazon is cheap but it doesn't look like it has any mailmerge (email personalization) capabilities.

If you don't mind my asking, how much of a pain is it dealing with spam complaints and deliverability issues on your own versus through Silverpop?

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#76

Post by plusbryan »

markessien wrote: post #7

Sendgrid & other such senders will be shaking in their shoes now. Personally, as soon as I have more time, I'll switch to the amazon service. Also, any new app I make will use Amazons service by default. Sending email out is quite important for growth, and such services really help businesses. What impresses me about amazon is that they are not looking at what the competition is charging or trying to charge high base…

The thing is, Sendgrid et al will continue to innovate in terms of feature set, and AWS never will. And that's a good thing: They focus on the absolute core of a product need - and let providers like heroku or dropbox grow like a vine on top of them, providing things people want.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#77

Post by [deleted] »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

I love what Amazon is doing with AWS, and I like this new service a lot. Plus I'm a happy customer. But damn this is all getting very complicated. First they turn off email, so you have to find a provider, then they turn it back on, but you have to pay them. Looking at my AWS console, I've got 8 or 9 tabs on there -- each representing a little piece of what I might want in an app. Each has it's own help section with…

[deleted]

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#78

Post by rst »

devicenull wrote: post #56
pilif wrote: post #48

I wonder who's going to be the first to announce a SMTP proxy for this? More seriously: While I can kind of understand that Amazon has their API and probably wants this to work similarly, but there is already a wide-spread protocol for sending out email (SMTP) and I just can't understand why they can't provide an endpoint for that. Many applications which I really see making use of this already have built-in SMTP sup…

If they use SMTP, they run the risk of a compromised server sending spam through them. With the API, it makes it a bit more difficult for a compromised machine to start spamming, unless it already has API keys for this service.

Unless the compromised server already has sendmail or postfix configured to use Amazon's perl script as a transport (according to the directions in Amazon's own help files). In that case, the attacker doesn't have to even bother looking around for the API keys --- everything's already set up.

Re: Introducing Amazon Simple Email Service

#79

Post by tybris »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #36
retube wrote: post #9

> Start sending email in minutes through Amazon SES using the AWS software development kits for Java and .NET I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the java ecosphere in terms of libraries and resources is unparalled.

Perl/CPAN wins hands down. And I am both a Perl and a Java programmer.

Well, except in code quality.
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