I guess I could always use some third party SMTP service that I don't care about and just spray out emails to my user list that hasn't been cleaned in years. But that doesn't seem like a very nice thing to do to a provider.
Thanks. I do own that plugin, but am not actually sure on how to use it. TBF, I've never taken more than a cursory look, but many of his plugins seem to be very dense in options but light of documentation.
For #2, I always just added the CF IPs as the only ones that could connect to the ELB. Obviously AWS specific, but would work for other providers that have a firewall that sits in front of your network.
I prefer SES, but its really not going to make a difference. If cost is an issue, make sure you understand pricing for both. For most people, cost is a rounding error though.