Amazon is getting into the email business.

That could be good news if they do it right. Even if a person doesn't want to move their list, it could drive prices down at other services.

Very cool!!!

Hmmmmm I like it . I also agree that this should get prices to drop hopefully

Thomas,

The guy in charge there says they're going to be very vigilant with outbound spam filtering. How effective that will be remains to be seen, but they do have the right intentions, and a solid person at the helm.

One thing that most people I've seen discussing this seem to have missed is the feedback loop that's included. If I'm reading that right, it means you'll get notified of "this is spam" complaints from providers who have FBLs available, and can remove those people from your lists.

The big ESPs already handle this, but it looks like the first time the option will be available to smaller mailers.


Paul

IF - a developer creates a script that does what Aweber does? Amazon is very developer friendly so I'm sure there will be a ton of them clamoring to create apps for this service. For the cost of the app plus a few bucks ( if that ) a month you could run a pretty hefty list.

Thomas, thank you for sharing this great info. Did they, by chance, include any links for more details in the e-mail that you could pass on? I tried to search on this, but couldn't find much more info. I am not currently an Amazon customer, but would like to find out what it would take to get this service.

Yes, this might be great news for IMers. Thanks again.

The first thing that I thought when I got that email was this is going to drive prices down, like others have mentioned... but then I started to think about Amazon's history and I just don't think that they will present their service without a big learning curve. They have a habit of over-complicating their explanations of what their services can offer.

This is a very interesting news... more choice with better pricing for us

This sounds very cool. First I'm hearing of it. Will have to look more into it. Thanks for sharing

What they DON'T tell you, is that there is no list or any other management.

So, they don't have an application you can log into, manage your lists, run AutoResponders, have signup forms, or ANYTHING to that effect.

It is PURELY a sending service.

So, smaller email service providers will be able to send through Amazon's service, instead of maintaining their own infrastructure.

Will it drive ESP prices down? Maybe some of the TOP tier senders who charge per message yes, but, companies like Aweber, GetResponse and Imnica Mail.... Highly unlikely.

Well, that's interesting.

But I agree, it doesn't seem comparable to what the good autoresponders do, from what I've read. And I love what a good autoresponder company does from providing the sign-up boxes to taking care of the storage of my subscribers to sending my emails.

if amazon is able to offer good deliverability and the shopping cart / membership script providers make the script compatible with amazon simple email service that would be really cool.. only time will tell...

Price point is not an argument.

These folks will create scripts and charge you for access. Nobody is able to say if it would be cheaper.

Simple math:
15 sends per month from 20000 list is 300000 emails.
Amazon price is $0.10 per 1000, which equals to $30 charged to script owner. But how much script owner would charge you?

If you send 2 times a day, this number will grow to $120 per month, plus fees from script creator...

I can see real potential for third-party service providers using this as a backbone.

As you have mentioned, deliverability will be key.

I've been looking at this today and learning the technical details. I plan to run a delivery trial soon. If you want to play an active part, I'll be tweeting about it soon.

Cheers,

Neil

I've been thinking about this a bit, and I'm not sure it's going to go well for them in the beginning. I know they'll try to do things the right way, but the team there will have quite a learning curve ahead of them.

No matter how experienced they are, and the guy in charge is no newbie, every system has quirks and holes that will need to be patched. The biggest one for most places like this would usually be fraudulent credit card charges. (Stolen cards used by spammers.) Amazon may have a head start on that, due to their huge retail experience. Still, that's going to be an issue.

I expect some places to extend the blocks on mail from the cloud service to their new offering, too, at least until they prove they're better at preventing outbound spam with this system than they are with the EC2 product. That's proven to be something of a problem for them.

As far as people creating paid services that operate through AmazonSES, I'm not so sure. It's a very safe bet that some software will be designed and sold with hooks into the API, and fairly quickly at that. But basing a company on that extra 3rd party who can just cut you off... That's a risky move. It will happen, but I'm not so sure it will be anything big, unless Amazon itself enters the ESP game.

By the way... When figuring the pricing, don't forget the bandwidth charges, both ways.


Paul

Very interesting... It would be great if poeple will test this out!

Don't forget to share your experience

The following blog post put it into perspective a bit more. You can't start sending mail by the thousand straight away, there a few hoops to jump through before you get to that stage:

Amazon Web Services Blog: Introducing the Amazon Simple Email Service

There is still a lot of holes in the service. I am SURE they will fix it in time, but for now...

How do they handle, and let YOUR software know of bounces and FBL's?

A bounce can be one of 2 types...

1. Hard Bounce. The address does not exist, or something to that effect. Basically, it's dead, and you'll never be able to deliver to it. Now, with ESP's, these are automatically removed from your list. With Amazon, right now from what I can tell, there is no way for them to notify you of this, which means you will continue to try and send to a dead address. This will waste money and bandwidth, AND, it will get their sending servers in trouble. Too many continuous hard bounces .... Blacklist.

2. Soft Bounce. Mailbox full, and others like this. Usually removed after 3 soft bounces over a 7 day period. Again, no way for them to notify your software, so, they continue to send to an address that will ALSO get the blacklisted in the long run.

FBL (Feed Back Loop). When someone hit's the "This is spam" button. If you're properly registered with the ISP's, they send you a special email, which needs to be automatically processed by your software, and the person immediately removed from your list. This is a requirement of CAN SPAM.

I'm sure FBL's CAN be done with the Amazon service, but, you will need to go and register with all the ISP's providing FBL's.

Next, we have SPF records. This basically tells the receiving server that a specified range of IP's is allowed to send email on your behalf. Going to be VERY interesting to see how they handle this. This is setup in DNS, and THEY will need to set it up for YOUR sending domain name.

Next, we have DKIM and DomainKeys. These two are KEY in authenticating email as sent from you. A whole bunch of stuff needs to be done with generating the keys, loading them into your DNS, signing all outgoing emails with the keys, etc. Again, THEY need to load it into their DNS for YOUR sending domain!

No offense to ANYONE here, but, most people have difficulty setting up a simple script. Now imagine having to jump through all the hoops of getting all the things mentioned above sorted.

SPF and Bounces are the 2 main ones that I don't know how Amazon will handle. This is interesting, but, I think they may not have COMPLETELY thought this one through.

BTW: You can send without SPF, ReverseDNS, DKIM and DomainKeys. Just don't expect your messages to land in Inboxes for more than a couple of days.