Setting up Amazon Simple Email Service

Before you start using Amazon SES, you must complete the following tasks.

Sign up for AWS

If you do not have an AWS account, complete the following steps to create one.

To sign up for an AWS account

1. Open https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup.

2. Follow the online instructions.

   Part of the sign-up procedure involves receiving a phone call and entering a verification code on the phone keypad.

   When you sign up for an AWS account, an AWS account root user is created. The root user has access to all AWS services and resources in the account. As a security best practice, assign administrative access to a user, and use only the root user to perform tasks that require root user access.

Set up your SES account

Get started with SES by verifying an email address and sending domain so that you can start sending email through SES and request production access for your account by using the SES account set up wizard.

Using the SES account set up wizard to set up your account

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon SES console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ses/.

2. Select Get started from the SES console home page and the wizard will walk you through the steps of setting up your SES account.

The SES account set up wizard will only be presented if you have not yet created any identities (email address or domain) in SES.

Grant programmatic access (To interact with SES outside of the console)

Users need programmatic access if they want to interact with AWS outside of the AWS Management Console. The way to grant programmatic access depends on the type of user that's accessing AWS.

To grant users programmatic access, choose one of the following options.

Which user needs programmatic access?	To	By
Workforce identity (Users managed in IAM Identity Center)	Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.	Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use. For the AWS CLI, see Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS IAM Identity Center in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For AWS SDKs, tools, and AWS APIs, see IAM Identity Center authentication in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.
IAM	Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.	Following the instructions in Using temporary credentials with AWS resources in the IAM User Guide.
IAM	(Not recommended) Use long-term credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.	Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use. For the AWS CLI, see Authenticating using IAM user credentials in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For AWS SDKs and tools, see Authenticate using long-term credentials in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide. For AWS APIs, see Managing access keys for IAM users in the IAM User Guide.

Download an AWS SDK (For using the SES APIs)

To call the SES APIs without having to handle low-level details like assembling raw HTTP requests, you can use an AWS SDK. The AWS SDKs provide functions and data types that encapsulate the functionality of SES and other AWS services. To download an AWS SDK, go to SDKs. After you download the SDK, create a shared credentials file and specify your AWS access keys.