Amazon SES Bounces Support 2021-03-19

[snoopy5]

There is no branding whatsoever in emails. I would not use it if there was. I did edit the email components according to my liking.

That is good to know. And you use DragonByte Mail addon in combination with Amazon SES and everything is working fine?

Does it differentiate between hard bounces and softbounces of Amazon SES?

 

[Alpha1]

Yes, it works fine with amazon SES SNS topics. Hard and soft bounces are differentiated. Complaints are handled as hard bounces.

 

[snoopy5]

We've been using this addon with SES. We're looking at upgrading to XF 2.3 but seems this addon isn't supported/updated.

I tried it now with one of my forums. It was an old XF 2.2.15 forum with this Amazon SES addon already installed. I upgraded from 2.2.15 to 2.3.7.

So far the emails get through. No errors.

I then tried to register a new user with a fake gmail account. The addon delivered a hard bounce within seconds as expected.

This free addon seems to work also with Xenforo 2.3.7

I can not tell you how it is with a fresh Xenforo installation. Maybe it would be smart to install first a Xenforo 2.2.x version, install this addon and then do an upgrade to XF 2.3.7 afterwards?

The PDF-manual I have written for this addon years ago, you will find in this thread on page 6. Download the latest one (22.6.2023, 8 am).

 

[snoopy5]

Yes, it works fine with amazon SES SNS topics. Hard and soft bounces are differentiated. Complaints are handled as hard bounces.

That is good to know. I will watch my upgraded 2.3.7 forum with this SES addon for a few days first and then I will decide whether I need to switch to dragonbyte mail.

 

[Alpha1]

Its much more than AWS SES alone. A major one for me is:
The email validation services in DBT Mail are very useful and will drastically lower bounce rate.

 

[snoopy5]

Do you have that many false registrations?

My main problems are rather full mailboxes and invalid emails after a few years - even while the same users are active in the forum on a daily basis.

It is also a question of costs. With around 40 different forums, the solution of DragonByte mail is a costly element for me.

If I go that route longterm, it has to create additional value vs. this free addon.

Since several years I asked for throtteling as a new feature for DB Mail. Many people asked for it at Xenforo. But no progress in this direction. THAT would be an important feature for my use cases.

I can not see what kind of important features have been added over the last 3 years which would save me money, time or make daily task easier for me to keep my old users in the forum. If you pay almost 40 USD each year for this addon, I would expect more innovation and more open mind for user's suggestions.

History has shown that DB Mail is what it is and you can not expect that within the next 3 years important features for my use cases will be added. So why should I spend my money there?

There are other email options like Sendy or Andy's addons or phplist etc., which I could check again too.

I do not say that I will never give DB Mail a try again, but my past experience does not motivate me to try it out asap, if I am not forced to do it right now

Maybe new developers see this as an opportunity to offer better Newsletter addons at a reasonable price with a roadmap for features over the next 12 months. Or an app for Xenforo.... who knows...

 

[Alpha1]

My main problems are rather full mailboxes and invalid emails after a few years - even while the same users are active in the forum on a daily basis.

I think you may misunderstand what email validation is. Its exactly for invalid mailboxes and similar bounces.

Thread 'Anyone have an easy way to sync invalid emails back from one of the mail checkers?'

Jun 2, 2025

I'm trying to clean my email list and then sync the status of bounced users back into xf. Is there an easy way to do that?

• fly
• Replies: 26
• Forum: Server configuration and hosting

AWS has reputation limits. If you breach them your account will be frozen. If you have a large old userbase then sending to old accounts is risky as you can easily hit those limits. By clearing your userbase (by email validation/verification) you are able to send to more users without hitting those limits.

 

[snoopy5]

Then this was a misunderstanding. I verified my old email addresses already years ago, when I started with Amazon SES.

Since then I have no problems with Amazon SES. Everything works fine including soft and hard bounces within XF, thanks to this SES addon. I do not see an added value of DB Mail regarding this point for me.

If this addon works with XF 2.3 longterm, I do not see what DB Mail offers me on top, which would be worth 40 US per year per forum.

I still have to send out over Amazon SES with DB Mail. So what is the advantage?

I use the Xenforo template, I have a header logo in my Emails and all unsubscribe links at the right place within the email.

If you look at phpList.org, there you can get really good ideas for valuable features!

 

[Alpha1]

PHPList... Now that's a blast from the past. I used this with vbulletin 3. They were slow with implementing suggestions back then.

But yeah, DBT Mail is not CRM nor a newsletter builder. That could be added to it by custom development. It does have list management, digests, inactivity mails.