Why is my Amazon SES sending account under review or paused?

Short description

You can still send emails through Amazon SES if your sending account is under review. However, you must resolve the issue that led to the review and take action to prevent the issue from occurring again. Issues that might lead to an account review include:

• A bounce rate of 5% or greater
• A complaint rate of 0.1% or greater
• Problems detected by a manual investigation of the account

If your account's ability to send email is paused, then you can't use Amazon SES to send emails until you resolve the issue. Your Amazon SES account uses a set of IP addresses that's shared with other users. Your account's ability to send additional emails might get paused to protect the reputation of the shared IP addresses.

Issues that might cause your Amazon SES sending account to pause include:

• The Amazon SES account was placed under review and the issue wasn't corrected before the end of the review period
• A bounce rate of 10% or greater
• A complaint rate of 0.5% or greater
• The Amazon SES account was placed under review several times for the same issue
• Emails sent from the account violated AWS Service Terms

Important: An Amazon SES sending pause doesn't impact other AWS services in your AWS account. However, service quota increases for any AWS service that sends outbound communications might get denied until the sending pause is lifted.

Resolution

If your Amazon SES sending account is under review or paused, then identify the problem, request a new review, and respond to any follow-up questions.

Identify the problem

Read the email from the Amazon SES team that summarizes the issues that led to the review or pause on your sending account. These issues can include bounces, complaints, and spamtraps.

For more information on how to reduce the risk of these issues, review the following FAQs:

• Bounce FAQ
• Complaint FAQ
• Spamtrap FAQ

Request a new review and respond to follow-up questions from the Amazon SES team

After you identify the problems with your sending account and take steps to fix them, request a new review from the Amazon SES team.

To request a new review on your sending account, open the AWS Support Center. Then, reply to the case that Amazon SES opened on your behalf with the following items:

• A list of changes that you made to fix the problem
• An explanation of how these changes prevent the problem from occurring again

After the Amazon SES team receives your new review request, they decide whether to uphold or remove the review or pause your sending account. If your new review is unsuccessful, then the Amazon SES team contacts you with follow-up questions. Be sure to respond to the Amazon SES team with the requested follow-up information.

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