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by kunwon1 1034 days ago
Amazon SES is not a good choice for sending critical email notifications. Their 'global suppression list' [1] has caused no end of headaches for me and my clients.

If you and I are both using SES to send to the same person, and my message results in a hard bounce, then your messages to that person will start to silently fail.

[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/sending-email-glob...
2 comments
johanneswu 1034 days ago
You can now use a account-level suppression list to override the global suppression list though.

> If an address is on the global suppression list, but not on your account level suppression list (which means you want to send to it), and you do send to it, Amazon SES will still attempt delivery, but if it bounces, the bounce will affect your own reputation

[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/lists-and-subscrip...

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kunwon1 1034 days ago
Interesting. I've worked with vendors (Including VMWare/Carbon Black) that told me they couldn't override the global list. Maybe the product is evolving to address these (past?) flaws
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messutied 1034 days ago
Would you happen to know of better alternatives for sending critical email notifications? We're just now working on moving away from Mailgun into SES. This thread is making me reconsider.
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mprovost 1034 days ago
"Critical" and "email" don't generally go together.
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kunwon1 1034 days ago
To echo the other reply, I don't rely on email for critical comms.

If I had to rely on email for critical comms, I would use a product that lets me see the SMTP logs, and alert on failures. I would have some backup provider that I could then quickly shift to

But I'm still an on-prem email administrator, so my entire paradigm is pretty much obsolete. I may not be the best source of info in this space

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