Leveraging Amazon Simple Email Service as a SaaS solution

May 16, 2023
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Muralikrishna Basa
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SaaS
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In this blog, we will learn how to integrate Amazon Simple Email Service to drive engagement with emails to thousands of users. But first, a brief refresher on SaaS.

What is Saas?

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud-based method of providing software to users. Cloud-based in the sense that instead of installing and maintaining the software, you can simply access it via a service provider over the internet. Also known as on-demand software, it is the provider’s responsibility to manage, secure, and scale the service.

Email Services

With that SaaS explanation, let's introduce email services. There are many variants of email software to choose from, such as Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Sendgrid, and Twilio. They offer a free number of emails that you can send via a trial account, but you need a subscription when it comes to using enterprise-level applications.

I have used all the above four mail services in various enterprise applications that are still running and provide service. This time—even though I was not versed in Amazon SES and there would be a learning curve—the benefits seemed compelling. 

What is Amazon SES?

Amazon SES is an email service provided under the Amazon AWS tree of services. It can integrate into any application for sending bulk emails. Whether you send transactional or marketing emails, you pay only for what you use. Amazon SES provides reports on the usage and statistics that help businesses to understand the overall performance, usage, and costs.

Below are the use cases that we are dealing with and leverage Amazon SES:

  • User Signup: Sending Mail in the signup process is an indispensable part of the application nowadays. Transactional mail when the user signup for the application, we send mail to verify his/her email address. The user clicks on the link received in the mail, it opens in the browser, and the user is verified.
  • Forgot Password: Send a reset password mail link to the user so that users can reset their password anytime and anywhere.
  • Contact Us: Clarifying user queries is the utmost priority for any business application. Every business wants to secure its user base and protect its brand name. When the user has a query, he or she clicks on the contact us link, fills necessary details, and submits the form.

Limitations of Amazon SES

There are various quotas (limits) that apply to Amazon SES resources. Some can be adjusted based on the type of account you have with AWS, and some cannot.

  • Email Sending quotas – Sets the number of emails that can be sent per second and per a 24-hour period.
  • Message quotas – Establishes the attachment size limits.
  • Sender and recipient quotas – Sets the maximum number of recipients per message and identities you verify.

There are other quotas as well, such as quotas relating to email templates and quotas relating to email receiving. You can read more details about these here: Service quotas in Amazon SES - Amazon Simple Email Service.

Conclusion

There are various email service providers that provide a GUI report on transactional email performance. For users looking to make use of a GUI to report on transactional email performance, Amazon SES may not be the right tool. Amazon SES does not offer wide marketing options, but it is not designed for this purpose.

However, if you are looking for a scalable and robust solution with the flexibility to implement messaging your way, then Amazon SES comes highly recommended.

Muralikrishna Basa

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