ZapBounce

ZapBounce and Amazon SES

Amazon SES publishes its reputation thresholds and enforces them automatically. A bounce rate of 5% puts the account under review; at 10% sending can be paused.

Those are not guidelines. They are numbers a system acts on, which makes SES the platform where a pre-send check is easiest to justify.

The thresholds are enforced by a system, not a person

SES computes a bounce rate over a rolling volume of recent sends and acts on it. There is no negotiation and no warning phone call, and a paused account stops all sending including transactional.

Getting out of a pause means an appeal describing what changed. That takes days during which your application cannot send a password reset.

Because SES is often the cheapest sending option, it attracts exactly the high-volume use cases where an unverified list produces the rate that trips it.

How the data moves

  1. Verify before anything enters the sending pipeline

    The threshold is computed on what you send. The only lever is what goes in.

  2. Use SES configuration sets and an SNS topic

    Bounce and complaint notifications go to SNS, which feeds your suppression handling in near real time.

  3. Maintain your own suppression list as well

    SES has an account-level suppression list, and your own gives you control over what re-enters.

  4. Watch the reputation dashboard as an operational metric

    It is in the SES console and it is the number that decides whether you keep sending.

Setting it up

  1. Verify all addresses before they enter the SES sending pipeline.
  2. Create a configuration set with an SNS destination for bounce and complaint events.
  3. Subscribe a handler that adds bounced addresses to your own suppression list immediately.
  4. Enable the SES account-level suppression list as a second layer.
  5. Monitor the reputation dashboard bounce rate as an alertable metric, not a monthly review item.
  6. Verify any imported list as a batch before its first send, without exception.

Amazon SES: common questions

What bounce rate pauses SES?

Amazon publishes 5% as the review threshold and 10% as the level at which sending may be paused. Check the current figures in your own console, since they are theirs to change.

How long does a pause last?

Until an appeal is accepted, which takes days. During that time your transactional mail is not sending either.

Does SES verify addresses?

It verifies your sending identities, which is a different thing. Recipient addresses are not checked.

Reference

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