AWS Lightsail – Email Challenges
Summary:
With AWS Lightsail for WordPress hosting (on Ubuntu), I wish I had known about the bureaucracy involved in gaining simple email functionality through the Simple Email Service.
> By default, port 25 is turned off for sending or receiving any emails. You will have to submit a permission form to gain port 25 functionality at Request to remove email sending limitations
The form submitted contained this information (urls excluded):
Amazon will then reply with a request for use cases. (Even if you supplied them in the previous request form)
At this point, you may have to remind them that you are using AWS Lightsail and not AWS to move forward. You will also be asked to provide use cases. Having a contact form on your website that you need to reply to seemed like an obvious one, so that is what I presented again.
Text of my email response (urls excluded):
These are the use cases for email from this website:
Case 1) When a site visitor sends a message through this email contact form, WordPress will need to send that message to our administrators.
Case 2) When a site visitor sends a message through this email contact form, in order to reply to them directly, we will need to be able to send messages from this domain.
The security measures being implemented include the use of Captcha verification on the Contact page.”
Their response indicates we are not going to get there quickly…
We do agree on one point…that Simple Email Service is where we are trying to go!
To which I replied:
> It won’t be obvious that port 25 is now available, but email will begin functioning.
But, not so fast! You are now in a sandbox, and only allowed to send messages to “verified users”.
What does this mean? Well, if someone sends you an email, you won’t be able to reply to them without having them go through a process of verifying their email address first. I can’t imagine the frustration of someone who contacts a business having to do something like that.
> It may not be obvious on how the sandbox/verification limit is lifted, but go to https://us-east-2.console.aws.amazon.com/ses/home?region=us-east-2 .
Then, clicking on sending statistics will show the sandbox warning at the top:
> Selecting Edit your account details will show a form where you are once again, entering use cases. Starting to see a pattern? 🙂
> I submitted the Production Access Request form with the following details (url excluded):
Subject: SES: Production Access
Severity: Normal
Correspondence: Production access request
Service: SES Sending Limits
Region: us-east-1
Please enable production access
————
Use case description: Case 1: When a site visitor sends a message through the email contact form at this website, our Administrators will need to be able to reply to that email directly without verifying each email address. This website is used to book musical events.
Mail Type: TRANSACTIONAL
> Received a response from Amazon, which I believe puts me in a catch-22 situation.
text version:
“Hello,
Thank you for submitting your request to increase your sending limits. We are unable to grant your request at this time because we do not have enough information about your use case.
If you can provide additional information about how you plan to use Amazon SES, we may be able to grant your request. In your response, include as much detail as you can about your email-sending processes and procedures.
For example, tell us how often you send email, how you maintain your recipient lists, and how you manage bounces, complaints, and unsubscribe requests. It is also helpful to provide examples of the email you plan to send so we can ensure that you are sending high-quality content.
You can provide this information by replying to this message. Our team provides an initial response to your request within 24 hours. If we’re able to do so, we’ll grant your request within this 24-hour period. However, if we need to obtain additional information from you, it might take longer to resolve your request.
Thank you for contacting Amazon Web Services.
We value your feedback. Please share your experience by rating this correspondence using the AWS Support Center link at the end of this correspondence. Each correspondence can also be rated by selecting the stars in top right corner of each correspondence within the AWS Support Center.
Best regards,
SES Messaging Team | AWS Trust & Safety
Amazon Web Services”
>At this point, I was close to giving up.
However, I proceeded with another round and added the following to the correspondence link they provided:
– Recipient Lists: These have traditionally been stored in google contacts
– Unsubscribe Request: We do not have any type of subscription service, and do not send out updates to users, so there is no service they can subscribe to. The performance schedule that was planned is available on the website for users to view.
– There currently aren’t any musical events being scheduled in Texas while the area is locked down due to Covid, so I cannot provide examples at this time.
As mentioned in other communications, the booking request form is at [url]/booking-info/
And Amazon replied with:
So, the story does have a happy ending with getting approval. However, this process is more painful than necessary.
