What Is the AWS SES Docs Site and What Resources Does It Offer for Getting Started?

Updated

The AWS SES docs site at sendwithses.com is an unofficial, simplified documentation resource for Amazon Simple Email Service. It collects step-by-step guides and articles covering the practical tasks you face when adopting SES: getting out of the sandbox, understanding pricing, sending transactional and marketing email, warming up a new account, and designing templates. It is most useful if you already know you want to use SES and need a plain-language walkthrough of the setup path, rather than the exhaustive API reference that AWS's own documentation provides.

What the site is

Send With SES describes itself as "a repository of articles and step-by-step guides for getting started with AWS SES" and "the unofficial and simpler documentation site for AWS Simple Email Service." Its stated purpose is to lower the barrier to entry for SES, which is powerful but has a reputation for a steep initial setup.

The site is also tied to SENDUNE (formerly Send With SES), an open-source email platform for AWS SES whose core is an HTML email editor and no-code designer. That means some articles double as onboarding material for that tool, so read them with that context in mind.

What resources it offers

The homepage groups its content into a set of getting-started topics. Each is a standalone article:

Resource What it covers
Getting Production Access to AWS SES The process for leaving the SES Sandbox, including the 2024 change requiring SPF, DMARC, and DKIM on your domain before you can request production access
AWS SES pricing breakdown How SES pricing works, including the reduction of the free tier from 62,000 to 3,000 emails per month as of August 2023, and the site's argument for why that change is reasonable
Transactional emails with AWS SES How SES can improve deliverability for expected emails such as signups and password resets
Marketing emails with AWS SES Using SES for promotional sends — new products, offers, and audience engagement
Warm up new AWS SES email account Why you send small batches first to engaged recipients and ramp up gradually, to build a positive sending reputation
What is Email Deliverability? A discussion of deliverability claims by ESPs, framed around the site's own comparison to SENDUNE
Open source email platform for AWS SES The SENDUNE HTML email editor and no-code designer for building templates you send manually or via the API

There is also a GitHub demo linked from the site.

How to use it to get started

The articles map onto a rough sequence, and following that order avoids the most common dead end:

  1. Read the production access guide first. As of early 2024, AWS changed the process for moving out of the SES Sandbox — you now need a domain with SPF, DMARC, and DKIM in place before you can request production access. The site provides a step-by-step guide for this. Doing this before anything else prevents you from building a sending workflow you cannot actually use.
  2. Set up your domain authentication. SPF, DMARC, and DKIM are prerequisites in that guide, so treat them as part of the same task rather than a separate one.
  3. Understand the cost model. Read the pricing breakdown so you know what the free tier now covers (3,000 emails per month since August 2023) and what you will pay beyond it.
  4. Decide what kind of mail you are sending. Transactional and marketing email have different deliverability considerations, and the site treats them in separate articles.
  5. Warm up your account before volume sending. Follow the warm-up guidance: small batches to engaged recipients first, ramping up over time, so future mail lands in inboxes rather than spam folders.
  6. Build templates if you need them. The SENDUNE editor lets you design and save HTML email templates for manual or API sending.

Expected result: after working through these, you should have an authenticated domain, production access, a realistic cost expectation, and a sending plan matched to your email type.

How it differs from AWS official documentation

The two are complementary rather than competing:

  • AWS official docs are the authoritative reference — complete API coverage, service limits, and configuration options. Use them when you need exact parameters or behavior.
  • sendwithses.com is a curated, opinionated walkthrough. It explains why steps exist and what order to do them in, and it includes commentary (for example, its argument that the free-tier reduction was a good move). It is also a vendor-adjacent resource, since it promotes SENDUNE.

A practical approach: use this site to understand the getting-started path and the reasoning behind each step, then verify specifics against AWS's own documentation before you rely on them.

Common sticking points

  • Requesting production access too early. Without SPF, DMARC, and DKIM configured on your domain, the request will not go through under the post-2024 process.
  • Assuming the old free tier. The 62,000-emails-per-month allowance is gone; plan around 3,000 per month unless your usage says otherwise.
  • Skipping warm-up. Jumping straight to volume sending on a new account is the classic route to spam-foldering.
  • Treating the site as neutral. It is unofficial and connected to a commercial product, so weigh its product comparisons accordingly.