Last Updated: 16 December 2018
By Maynard Paton
Increasing Your Initial AWS SES Sending Limit
This page describes how to increase the initial SES email sending limit applied to new Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers.
Requesting an increase to your initial sending limit
Once you have completed my Installing Sendy (and Virtualmin) on AWS guide and have Sendy up and running, you will discover your initial AWS email sending quota will be limited to just 200 emails in any 24-hour period.
AWS calls this limit a ‘sandbox’ and to increase the quota, you have to create a request within AWS.
This video provides a good primer on applying to increase your AWS email sending quota for Sendy. The relevant part starts at 14m28s and lasts for four minutes.
I have provided some screenshots below with the settings you should select for your request in the red boxes.
Here are the steps to follow
1) Sign in to AWS and select Support in the top-right hand corner. Then select Support Center:
2) Click Create case:
3) Fill in the Case form like this:
Make sure you select the appropriate AWS SES region — EU (Ireland) in my case — to match the location of your server.
Your requested quota can be any number, but the initial AWS limit post-sandbox appears to be 50,000. (Within my application, I asked only for 5,000 a day and received 50,000!)
I used the following text for my application:
“I have decided to create a free e-mail newsletter for a personal blog hosted at maynardpaton.com.
General search traffic and Twitter have helped me gain almost 900 Twitter followers @MaynardPaton, which hopefully can one day translate into a few thousand names on my mailing list for an occasional newsletter. Here is an early design: (Note: link omitted)
Bounces and complaints are notified to the software I run that is connected to SES, and the names will be removed. There is an unsubscribe link in the e-mails which prompts an automatic removal from the list.”
And here is my sending limit data following my successful application:
If a small-time blogger such as me can be allowed to send 50,000 emails a day, I am sure you will be allowed to as well.
Your request should be reasonably quick to process. My records show my SES limit increase request was sent at 7:45pm and was approved at 4:11am the next morning.
Once approved, the sandbox message should no longer be shown in your Sendy installation.
If AWS has increased your limit but the sandbox message still appears, double check with Sendy support.
If you have any questions or comments about this page, please let me know so I can keep this website as helpful as possible.
Happy blogging!
Maynard Paton
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