XF 1.1 Amazon SES With Xenforo

[TheBigK]

Yesterday, I stumbled upon Amazon SES which now has SMTP gateway. I'm planning to use it with Xenforo to handle all the emails; so that the delivery is always right. I, however have basic questions -

• To the best of my knowledge, I only need to enter the SMTP settings provided by Amazon in 'Email Options' in XF ACP. Is that enough?
• Can I use it to send notifications or monthly newsletter to all the members who have opted to receive emails from administrator? Would that be spamming? We've over 90k members who've opted to receive emails from admins; but my estimate is that 10-20k of them aren't active. We didn't have 'email' verification enabled in our earlier days.

Thank you for your time in advance

 

[MattW]

Hey @MattW, yes, I have full SES access with 50k daily limit.

I'm the same now. My access works fine from both those addresses (testing using Outlook 2013)

 

[Anthony Parsons]

My Sendy works correctly, communicating from my domain to SES:



But this XF SMTP... just no go. Very strange. Looks like I might have to go full fault finding in 12hrs when my site is winding down for the day.

 

[Mike]

I'd note that SES seems to want you to validate your From and Return-Path addresses as mentioned here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-email-addresses.html They do mention that VERP is allowed, so presumably that shouldn't be a problem. That said, it may be simpler to verify the entire domain (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-domain-procedure.html).

If you're still having problems sending through it, you may need to send an email through another SMTP server so you can get a full copy of the entire set of headers and send it to SES support (if they will do that) to confirm the specific failure. Unfortunately, the error is lacking detail for debugging.

 

[MattW]

I'd note that SES seems to want you to validate your From and Return-Path addresses as mentioned here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-email-addresses.html They do mention that VERP is allowed, so presumably that shouldn't be a problem. That said, it may be simpler to verify the entire domain (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-domain-procedure.html).

That's all be done. Individual mails and full domain has been validated. Dkim and spf is also verified.

Sending works from all the other things I've tried (outlook 2013 and my android phone email client).

I'll grab the headers when I send via Mandrill tomorrow.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I'd note that SES seems to want you to validate your From and Return-Path addresses as mentioned here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-email-addresses.html They do mention that VERP is allowed, so presumably that shouldn't be a problem. That said, it may be simpler to verify the entire domain (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/verify-domain-procedure.html).

Thanks Mike... though done all that, both email and domain, as it is required for Sendy.

I have another SMTP and will send via that and see what happens.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Ok... it works via Turbo SMTP, so it is an SES thing, not an XF thing.

 

[Coop1979]

Just wanted to pop in and say that SES is working great for me on 1.4.5. I didn't even see that this was fixed in the changelog, so I didn't make the change until today. No more need for the Contact Thread add-on!

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I wonder if https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/smtp-issues.html is the issue? Though my server uses dovecot and not sendmail, software. I wonder if the issue is that though?

 

[Brent W]

How many emails do you send out per month? We never have used SES for transactional emails, just email newsletters with Sendy. Sendgrid is used for everything else.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

User emails.... wouldn't have a clue, as they've always just gone out via our server. Who subscribes to their content via email... no idea, which is why I want to change to an smtp provider and manage spam requests and such a bit better, than present, being do nothing with zero monitoring.

Our email newsletter is just 20k+ once a month... it works with SES.

There has to be a solution...

 

[Coop1979]

I send between 25k - 35k emails per month through SES and XenForo.

I verified my email addresses that I send from, and my entire domain. Let me know if you need any help troubleshooting settings.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Thanks @Coop1979.

 

[MattW]

Ok... it works via Turbo SMTP, so it is an SES thing, not an XF thing.

I've just got it working!

You also need to make sure that if you have the bounce address populated, that is also validated. I've just removed my bounced address (as it was on a different domain), and they are sending now.

 

[TheBigK]

I'm confused too. I can send mass emails from XF using Amazon SES configured within XF AdminCP. The only issue I'm facing is that the contact us isn't working.

1. If I keep the option ""Sender info in From header on contact emails" unchecked (Default) - Contact us mails don't arrive in my inbox (because sender ID is not verified)
2. If I check the option, the mails are sent, but the 'Reply To' option isn't set to the sender's email.

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Mike]

If I check the option, the mails are sent, but the 'Reply To' option isn't set to the sender's email.

Well, it's possible SES is stripping that header out; you can verify if the header is present in the email. If it isn't, it's been stripped out; if it is and it's not working, then that would be a limit of your email client. (Such as the Gmail caveat I mentioned previously.)

 

[Anthony Parsons]

You also need to make sure that if you have the bounce address populated, that is also validated.

Genius mate... that was exactly the issue. Working now. Verified the bounce back email with SES and all is good.

 

[TheBigK]

Genius mate... that was exactly the issue. Working now. Verified the bounce back email with SES and all is good.

Did you get bounced email handler working with amazon ses? Could you please post a screenshot of settings?

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Did you get bounced email handler working with amazon ses?

I actually had it setup already from using Sendy. Amazon uses SNS for bounce and complaint handling, meaning they notify your listed email/s via email only. Take a look at http://sendy.co/get-started and skip to the setup bounce and complaint handling portions. Its the same thing, and you just add them to each email address you have verified in your SES console.

I know it sounds primitive, and that's because it is. Amazon don't get involved, they simply notify you back per email that bounces or is clicked as spam (complaint). A hard bounce is automatically added to Amazon's global ban list, thus if the email comes round good again, you would need to request to unblock it from Amazon. They have an instant method to do it.

That should help you out. You will then get bounce and complaints back to your email.

 

[TheBigK]

@Anthony Parsons - I have been using SES successfully for months now. I'm also handling all our newsletters via SES. I however have not been able to setup the bounced email handler in XF while routing my mails through SES. I'm wondering if you got XF's bounced email handler working with SES. The only problem is that the XF's bounced email handler requires you to have a catch all email account which is not possible with amazon SES (or is it?).

 

[Andy.N]

I'm also interested in how to use set up XF bounced emails with SES