Top 25+ AWS SES Interview Questions & Answers

AWS SES Interview Questions

1. What is an easy way to test Amazon SES?

The Amazon SES sandbox is an area where new users can test the capabilities of Amazon SES. When your account is in the sandbox, you can only send emails to verified identities. A verified identity is an email address or domain that you’ve proven that you own.

Additionally, when your account is in the sandbox, there are limits to the volume of emails you can send each day, and to the number of messages, you can send each second.

2. How can I track my Amazon SES usage?

To track your Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) usage, you can use the AWS Management Console or the Amazon SES API.

To use the AWS Management Console:

 

1. 1. Go to the Amazon SES dashboard

1. 1. Click on the “Dashboard” tab.

1. 1. Scroll down to the “Send Quota” section to view your current usage.

To use the Amazon SES API:

 

1. 1. Use the GetSendQuota operation to retrieve your current usage data. This operation returns the maximum number of emails that you can send in a 24-hour period, the number of emails you have sent in the past 24 hours, and the number of emails you are allowed to send per second.

You can also set up Amazon CloudWatch alarms to receive notifications when your usage approaches or exceeds certain thresholds.

3. Can I start sending large email volumes right away?

When you’re ready to start sending emails to non-verified recipients, submit an Amazon SES Sending Limit Increase request through the AWS Support Center.

4. Can I send emails from any email address?

No. You can only use Amazon SES to send emails from addresses or domains that you own.

To prove that you own an email address or domain, you have to verify it. In each AWS Region, you can verify up to 10,000 email addresses and domains, in any combination.

5. Is there a limit on the size of emails Amazon SES can deliver?

Amazon SES v2 API and SMTP accept email messages up to 40MB in size including any images and attachments that are part of the message. Messages larger than 10MB are subject to bandwidth throttling, and depending on your sending rate, you may be throttled to as low as 40MB/s. For example, you could send a 40MB message at the rate of 1 message per second, or two 20MB messages per second.

Amazon SES API v1 accepts messages up to 10MB in size including any images and attachments that are part of the message.

6. Are there any limits on how many emails I can send?

Every Amazon SES account has its own set of sending limits. These limits are:

 

• • Sending quota—the maximum number of recipients that you can send emails to in a 24-hour period.

• • Maximum send rate—the maximum number of recipients that you can send an email to per second.

Sending limits are based on recipients rather than on messages. You can check your sending limits at any time by using the Amazon SES console.

Note: If we determine that the email you send is of poor or questionable quality (for example, if it has high bounce or complaint rates, or if it contains unsolicited or malicious content), we reserve the right to pause your ability to send an email.

7. Does Amazon SES support Sender Policy Framework (SPF)?

Yes, Amazon SES supports SPF. You may need to publish an SPF record, depending on how you use Amazon SES to send emails. If you don’t need to comply with Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) using SPF, you don’t need to publish an SPF record, because, by default, Amazon SES sends your emails from a MAIL FROM domain that’s owned by Amazon Web Services. If you want to comply with DMARC using SPF, you have to set up Amazon SES to use your own MAIL FROM domain and publish an SPF record.

8. Does Amazon SES support Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)?

Yes, Amazon SES supports DKIM. If you have enabled and configured Easy DKIM, Amazon SES signs outgoing messages using DKIM on your behalf. If you prefer, you can also sign your email manually. To ensure maximum deliverability, there are a few DKIM headers that you should not sign.

9. Can emails from Amazon SES comply with DMARC?

Yes, emails sent from Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) can comply with DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance).

DMARC is an email authentication protocol that helps protect against spam and phishing by allowing the owner of a domain to publish a policy in their DNS records that specifies which mechanisms are used to authenticate email messages sent from that domain.

To ensure that emails sent from Amazon SES comply with DMARC, you need to do the following:

 

1. 1. Verify the domain that you want to send email from in Amazon SES.

1. 1. Set up the necessary DNS records, such as SPF and DKIM, to support DMARC.

1. 1. Publish a DMARC policy in your DNS records that allows email sent from Amazon SES to pass DMARC evaluation.

10: What is the difference between a dedicated IP address (standard) and (managed)?

Both Dedicated IP options help you manage your sending reputation through reserved IP addresses. Dedicated IP Addresses (standard) require you to manually set up and manage your IP addresses. Dedicated IP Addresses (managed) reduce the need for manual monitoring or scaling of dedicated IP pools. It also helps you to model warmup status more accurately and prevent over-sending which can impact deliverability.

AWS SES Interview Questions

11. Can I specify a dedicated IP address when I send certain types of emails?

If you lease several dedicated IP addresses to use with your Amazon SES account, you can use the dedicated IP pools feature to create groups (pools) of those IP addresses. You can then associate each pool with a configuration set; when you send emails using that configuration set, those emails are only sent from the IP addresses in the associated pool.

12. Can I test Amazon SES responses without sending emails to real recipients?

You can use the Amazon SES mailbox simulator to test your sending rate and to test your ability to handle events such as bounces and complaints, without sending emails to actual recipients. Messages that you send to the mailbox simulator don’t count against your bounce and complaint metrics or your daily sending quota. However, we do charge you for each message you send to the mailbox simulator, just as if they were messages you sent to actual customers.

13. Does Amazon SES provide an SMTP endpoint?

Amazon SES provides an SMTP interface for seamless integration with applications that can send email via SMTP. You can connect directly to this SMTP interface from your applications, or configure your existing email server to use this interface as an SMTP relay.

In order to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP interface, you have to create SMTP credentials.

14. Can I use Amazon SES to send emails from my existing applications?

Amazon SES allows you to create a private SMTP relay for use with any existing SMTP client software, including software that you develop yourself, or any third-party software that can send email using the SMTP protocol.

15. Can Amazon SES send emails with attachments?

Amazon SES supports many popular content formats, including documents, images, audio, and video.

Note: For your own safety and that of your customers, Amazon SES scans every attachment that you send for viruses and malware.

You can use an email client that supports SMTP to send emails with attachments. When you configure a client to send outgoing emails through Amazon SES, the client constructs the appropriate MIME parts and email headers before sending the message.

You can also send emails with attachments programmatically. To include an attachment in your email, construct a new multipart email message. In the message, include a MIME part that contains an appropriate Content-Type header, along with the MIME-encoded content. Next, use the Content-Disposition header to specify whether the content is to be displayed inline or treated as an attachment.

Once you’ve composed your message, you can use the SendRawEmail API operation to send it.

AWS SES Interview Questions

16. How does Amazon SES help ensure reliable email delivery?

Amazon SES uses content-filtering technologies to scan outgoing email messages. These content filters help ensure that the content being sent through Amazon SES meets the standards of ISPs. In order to help you further improve the deliverability of your emails, Amazon SES provides a feedback loop that includes bounce, complaint, and delivery notifications.

17. Does Amazon SES guarantee receipt of my emails?

Amazon SES closely monitors ISP guidelines to help ensure that legitimate, high-quality email is delivered reliably to recipient inboxes. However, neither Amazon SES nor any other email-sending service can guarantee delivery of every single email. ISPs can drop or lose email messages, recipients can accidentally provide the wrong email address, and if recipients do not wish to receive your email messages, ISPs may choose to reject or silently drop them.

18. How long does it take for emails sent using Amazon SES to arrive in recipients’ inboxes?

Amazon SES attempts to deliver emails to the Internet within a few seconds of each request. However, due to a number of factors and the inherent uncertainties of the Internet, we can’t predict with certainty when your email will arrive, nor can we predict the exact route the message will take to get to its destination.

For example, an ISP might be unable to deliver the email to the recipient because of a temporary condition such as “mailbox full.” In these cases, Amazon attempts to redeliver the message. If the error is permanent, such as “mailbox does not exist,” Amazon SES doesn’t try to deliver the message again, and you receive a hard bounce notification. You can set up delivery notifications to alert you when Amazon SES successfully delivers one of your emails to a recipient’s mail server.

19. Can my email deliverability affect by bounces or complaints that are caused by other Amazon SES users?

Typically, when other Amazon SES users send messages that result in bounces or complaints, your ability to send email remains unchanged.

An exception to this rule occurs when a recipient’s email address generates a hard bounce. When a recipient’s email address generates a hard bounce, Amazon SES adds that address to a global suppression list. If you try to send an email to an address that is on the global suppression list, the call to Amazon SES succeeds, but Amazon SES treats the email as a hard bounce instead of attempting to send it.

Emails that you send to addresses on the global suppression list count toward your sending quota and your bounce rate. An email address can remain on the suppression list for up to 14 days.

20. Can I encrypt the email messages that I receive?

Amazon SES integrates with AWS Key Management Service (KMS), which provides the ability to encrypt the mail that it writes to your Amazon S3 bucket. Amazon SES uses client-side encryption to encrypt your mail before it sends the email to Amazon S3. This means that it is necessary for you to decrypt the content on your side after you retrieve the mail from Amazon S3. The AWS Java SDK and AWS Ruby SDK provide a client that is able to handle the decryption for you.

21. Does Amazon SES send an email over an encrypted connection using Transport Layer Security (TLS)?

Amazon SES supports TLS 1.2, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.0 for TLS connections.

By default, Amazon SES uses opportunistic TLS. This means that Amazon SES always attempts to make a secure connection to the receiving mail server. If Amazon SES can’t establish a secure connection, it sends the message unencrypted.

You can change this behavior so that Amazon SES only sends the message to the receiving email server if it can establish a secure connection.

22. How does Amazon SES ensure that incoming mail is free of spam and viruses?

Amazon SES uses a number of spam and virus protection measures. It uses block lists to prevent mail from known spammers from entering the system in the first place. It also performs virus scans on every incoming email that contains an attachment. Amazon SES makes its spam detection verdicts available to you, enabling you to decide if you trust each message. In addition to the spam and virus verdicts, Amazon SES provides the DKIM and SPF check results.

23. How is Amazon SES different from Amazon SNS?

Amazon SES is for applications that need to send communications via email. Amazon SES supports custom email header fields and many MIME types.

By contrast, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is for messaging-oriented applications, with multiple subscribers requesting and receiving “push” notifications of time-critical messages via a choice of transport protocols, including HTTP, Amazon SQS, and email. The body of an Amazon SNS notification is limited to 8192 characters of UTF-8 strings and isn’t intended to support multimedia content.

24. Do I need to sign up for Amazon EC2 or any other AWS services to use Amazon SES?

Amazon SES users do not need to sign up for any other AWS services. Any application with Internet access can use Amazon SES to deliver email, whether that application runs in your own data center, within Amazon EC2, or as a client software solution.

25. Can Amazon access the emails that I send and receive?

We use in-house anti-spam technologies to filter messages that contain poor-quality content. Additionally, we scan all messages that contain attachments to check for viruses and other malicious content

26. What prevents Amazon SES users from sending spam?

Amazon SES uses in-house content filtering technologies to scan email content for spam and malware.

If we determine that an account is sending spam or malicious content, we will pause that account’s ability to send an additional email.

FAQ’S

Q1. What is SES service in AWS?

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a fully managed email service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables you to send and receive email messages. With SES, you can send transactional emails, such as order confirmations and password reset instructions, as well as bulk email, such as marketing emails and newsletters.
SES is designed to be highly scalable and highly available, so it can handle large volumes of email with high delivery rates. SES can also be integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon SNS for event-driven email, and Amazon Lambda for custom email handling.
SES features includes:
Email Sending: With SES, you can send email using the SMTP interface or the AWS SDKs. You can also use SES to send large volumes of email, such as marketing email or newsletters, using the AWS Management Console, the AWS SDKs, or the SES API.
Email Receiving: SES also allows you to receive email using incoming email addresses, bounce and complaint notifications, and email-receiving domains.
Email sending domains: you can verify your domain and customizing the emails sent from your domain
Feedback Loops: SES allows you to handle bounce and complaint notifications, so you can update your email list and improve your email deliverability.
Reputation monitoring: SES allows you to view your sending IPs and domains reputation metrics
Email sending reports: SES provides detailed sending statistics, including delivery rates, bounce rates, and complaint rates, allowing you to monitor and improve your email deliverability.
Overall, SES is a highly-scalable, reliable and cost-effective service, which allows you to send and receive email message securely, at high delivery rate and with feedback mechanism to improve your email deliverability.

Q2. What is the difference between SNS and SES?

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) are both messaging services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), but they have different use cases and message delivery patterns.
SNS is a messaging service that allows you to send messages to multiple recipients, using a publish-subscribe messaging pattern. With SNS, you can create topics, which represent channels of communication, and subscribers, which can be any endpoint that can receive messages (such as an HTTP/S endpoint, an email address, an SQS queue, a Lambda function, etc.). SNS supports a variety of protocols and message formats, including HTTP, HTTPS, email, and SMS, and it can be used to send messages to multiple recipients in parallel. The main use case for SNS is to send notifications to multiple recipients and to create an event-driven architecture where changes to data in one system trigger actions in another system.
SES, on the other hand, is a fully managed email service that enables you to send and receive email messages. With SES, you can send transactional emails, such as order confirmations and password reset instructions, as well as bulk email, such as marketing emails and newsletters. SES is designed to be highly scalable and highly available, and it can handle large volumes of email with high delivery rates. SES can also be integrated with other AWS services, such as Amazon SNS for event-driven email. The main use case for SES is to handle high volume, high-throughput email sending and receiving.
In summary, while both SNS and SES can be used for sending messages, SNS is mainly used for sending notifications and triggering actions in multiple recipients, while SES is mainly used for sending and receiving emails at a high volume and high-throughput rate. SNS allow you to send different types of notifications like SMS, HTTPS, SQS, Lambda, etc., while SES is restricted to Email messaging.

Q3. What is SES used for?

SES is mainly used for:
1.Sending and receiving large volume of emails
2.Transactional and bulk email messaging
3.Customizing email sending domains
4.Handling email bounce and complaints
5.Monitoring email reputation
6.Providing detailed sending statistics
7.And being able to integrate with other AWS services.

Q4. Is AWS SES deprecated?

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is not deprecated. It is a fully managed email service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables developers to send and receive email using their own email addresses and domains, without having to maintain their own email servers.