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Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

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Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#41

Post by manishsharan »

pembrook wrote: post #30

Email sending is a largely efficient market, and SES is the cheapest sender. Thus, the SES IP pools have the worst IP reputations among all the SMTP-based senders. I would never use them (or an ESP that sends with them) in a million years. The reason why cheap = bad in email is because Spammers have the lowest conversion rates of all senders (their emails are always untargeted), so price is their number 1 considerati…

You are assuming that SES allows for spammers. In my experience, SES has pretty good controls , limits and policies to dissuade from spamming.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#42

Post by albert_e »

pembrook wrote: post #30

Email sending is a largely efficient market, and SES is the cheapest sender. Thus, the SES IP pools have the worst IP reputations among all the SMTP-based senders. I would never use them (or an ESP that sends with them) in a million years. The reason why cheap = bad in email is because Spammers have the lowest conversion rates of all senders (their emails are always untargeted), so price is their number 1 considerati…

Thanks

I never had to use SES or really Email for that matter in my own architecture.

Since we get so immersed in best practices and recommendations of good architecture pushed by these very cloud providers (AWS, Azure, etc) -- this kind of candid information is usually not available unless we burn our fingers and learn through own experience.

I wish there was more efficient way of such practical knowledge to be shared among practitioners. Current discussion forums etc work to an extent but just hope there was much more effective way to spread awsreness.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#43

Post by bdcravens »

We are always trying to trim waste to stay lean, and the SES vs Sendgrid pricing looks nice on paper (we are on the Sendgrid Pro plan with the dedicated IP address, so it's $90/mo). However when I look at our Sendgrid stats (97% reputation; it's pretty much all transactional) I know it's worth well more than what we'd save.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#45

Post by dubcanada »

nomilk wrote: post #12
jeroenhd wrote: post #4

Things like this are to be expected with shared IP addresses for mail services. This sounds like something Amazon should figure out more than anything. There's probably something going on with a customer or theirs (misconfiguration, spammer, vulnerability exploited) that's triggering spam detection rules. At least Google reports the issue back to you instead of silently dropping all of your email like many other mail…

Very useful thread. I recently considered SES for a quick app and didn't discover the purpose of dedicated IPs. They're listed under add ons, but seem somewhat essential if the emails are important. Checking out the pricing page, a dedicated IP costs $24.95 per month, which would be more than the actual cost of emails for many small-medium apps (e.g. 100K emails per month would be about $10). Ooc, do other email prov…

Postmark spends A LOT of effort to keep their shared IPs perfect. Rather complex setup with verification. And lots of stuff in place to prevent anything spam related.

But everyone else doesn't really care much.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#46

Post by bdcravens »

nomilk wrote: post #12
jeroenhd wrote: post #4

Things like this are to be expected with shared IP addresses for mail services. This sounds like something Amazon should figure out more than anything. There's probably something going on with a customer or theirs (misconfiguration, spammer, vulnerability exploited) that's triggering spam detection rules. At least Google reports the issue back to you instead of silently dropping all of your email like many other mail…

Very useful thread. I recently considered SES for a quick app and didn't discover the purpose of dedicated IPs. They're listed under add ons, but seem somewhat essential if the emails are important. Checking out the pricing page, a dedicated IP costs $24.95 per month, which would be more than the actual cost of emails for many small-medium apps (e.g. 100K emails per month would be about $10). Ooc, do other email prov…

Sendgrid's cheapest plan with a dedicated IP is $89/mo.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#47

Post by ds »

I tried to use cloudflare email routing and had the same issue. I simply set it up so any email to @mydomain.com would forward to a gmail.

The worst is that cloudflare did not let me know this was happening until I saw I was missing some emails and went hunting. About 20% of my emails would just get rejected silently with "delivery failed" in the logs. I wouldnt blame cloudflare so much if they kept attempting to redeliver, but they did not. They simply give up.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#48

Post by anamexis »

killerpixler wrote: post #18
anamexis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using SES is buying email delivery from a company who is in that business.

Disagree here. The sendgrid, mailchimp, postmark of the world are in the business of sending emails. They have their dedicated IPs and handle deliverability, anti spam, and whatnot with email providers like Gmail. SES is an email sending infrastructure tool. That's not the same. IMO equating SES with an email company is like saying home depot is a contractor because they sell hammers and lumber. It gives you the tool…

SES, like Mailchimp, Sendgrid, and Postmark, has dedicated IPs as a paid add-on.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#49

Post by betaby »

jeffbee wrote: post #38
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google also silently drops mail in some cases.

Which cases?

Impossible to know. But in my cases from any IP with low volume. I.e. I have a bunch of personal servers for 10+ years, there are rarely outgoing emails from them and google happily just black-hole emails from such low volume IPs.

Re: Tell HN: Gmail rate limiting emails from AWS SES

#50

Post by jeffbee »

betaby wrote: post #49
jeffbee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which cases?

Impossible to know. But in my cases from any IP with low volume. I.e. I have a bunch of personal servers for 10+ years, there are rarely outgoing emails from them and google happily just black-hole emails from such low volume IPs.

I'd be surprised if this was accurate. A low-volume IP might get a temporary failure code 4xx, but that's not silent. If they accept your message they intend to deliver it, or bounce it. Perhaps your return path is defective.
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