Using dedicated IP addresses with Amazon Pinpoint
When you create a new Amazon Pinpoint account, your emails are sent from IP addresses that are
shared with other Amazon Pinpoint users. For an additional monthly
charge
| Benefit | Shared IP addresses | Dedicated IP addresses |
|---|---|---|
| Ready to use with no additional setup | Yes | No |
| Reputation managed by AWS | Yes | No |
| Good for customers with continuous, predictable sending patterns | Yes | Yes |
| Good for customers with less predictable sending patterns | Yes | No |
| Good for high-volume senders | Yes | Yes |
| Good for low-volume senders | Yes | No |
| Additional monthly costs | No | Yes |
| Complete control over sender reputation | No | Yes |
| Isolates reputation by email type, recipient, or other factors | No | Yes |
| Provides known IP addresses that never change | No | Yes |
Important
If you don't plan to send large volumes of email on a regular and predictable basis, we recommend that you use shared IP addresses. If you use dedicated IP addresses in use cases that involve sending low volumes of mail, or if your sending patterns are highly irregular, you might experience deliverability issues.
Ease of setup
If you choose to use shared IP addresses, then you don't need to perform any additional configuration. Your Amazon Pinpoint account is ready to send email as soon as you verify an email address and move out of the sandbox.
If you choose to lease dedicated IP addresses, you have to determine how many dedicated IP addresses you need, submit a request, and optionally create dedicated IP pools.
Reputation managed by AWS
IP address reputations are based largely on historical sending patterns and volume. An IP address that sends consistent volumes of email over a long period of time usually has a good reputation.
Shared IP addresses are used by several Amazon Pinpoint customers. Together, these customers send a large volume of email. AWS carefully manages this outbound traffic in order to maximize the reputations of the shared IP addresses.
If you use dedicated IP addresses, it's your responsibility to maintain your sender reputation by sending consistent and predictable volumes of email.
Predictability of sending patterns
An IP address with a consistent history of sending email has a better reputation than one that suddenly starts sending out large volumes of email with no prior sending history.
If your email sending patterns are irregular—that is, they don't follow a predictable pattern—then shared IP addresses are probably a better fit your needs. When you use shared IP addresses, you can increase or decrease your email-sending patterns as the situation demands.
If you use dedicated IP addresses, you have to warm up those addresses by sending an amount of email that gradually increases every day. The process of warming up new IP addresses is described in Warming up dedicated IP addresses. After your dedicated IP addresses are warmed up, you must then maintain a consistent sending pattern.
Volume of outbound email
Dedicated IP addresses are best suited for customers who send large volumes of email. Most internet service providers (ISPs) only track the reputation of a given IP address if they receive a significant volume of mail from that address. For each ISP with which you want to cultivate a reputation, you should send several hundred emails within a 24-hour period at least once per month.
In some cases, you may be able to use dedicated IP addresses if you don't send large volumes of email. For example, dedicated IP addresses may work well if you send to a small, well-defined group of recipients whose mail servers accept or reject email using a list of specific IP addresses, rather than IP address reputation.
Additional costs
The use of shared IP addresses is included in the standard Amazon Pinpoint pricing. Leasing
dedicated IP addresses incurs an extra monthly cost beyond the standard costs that are
associated with sending email using Amazon Pinpoint. Each dedicated IP address incurs a separate
monthly charge. For pricing information, see the Amazon Pinpoint pricing page
Control over sender reputation
When you use dedicated IP addresses, your Amazon Pinpoint account is the only one that is able to send email from those addresses. For this reason, the sender reputation of the dedicated IP addresses that you lease is determined by your email-sending practices.
Ability to isolate sender reputation
By using dedicated IP addresses, you can isolate your sender reputation for different components of your email program. If you lease more than one dedicated IP address for use with Amazon Pinpoint, you can create dedicated IP pools—groups of dedicated IP addresses that can be used for sending specific types of email. For example, you can create one pool of dedicated IP addresses for sending marketing email, and another for sending transactional email. To learn more, see Creating dedicated IP pools.
Known, unchanging IP addresses
When you use dedicated IP addresses, you can find the values of the addresses that send your mail in the Dedicated IPs page of the Amazon Pinpoint console. Dedicated IP addresses don't change.
With shared IP addresses, you don't know the IP addresses that Amazon Pinpoint uses to send your mail, and they can change at any time.
