I don’t want to run my own mailserver and the application I’m developing at the moment requires emails to be send to users:
- when they register (activation email)
- a cron is run every 3 minutes and checks to see which users recieved a private message during this time and sends an email notification alerting them
- when they request a new password
- weekly newsletter
In all these cases the emails will be composed of just plain text and short in size. So the reasons given by Amazon to use SES over SNS doesn’t apply to me.
Q: How is Amazon SES different from Amazon SNS?
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is for applications that need to send arbitrary communications via email. Amazon SES supports custom email header fields, and many MIME types.
By contrast, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is for messaging-oriented applications, with multiple subscribers requesting and receiving "push" notifications of time-critical messages via a choice of transport protocols, including HTTP, Amazon SQS, and email. The body of an Amazon SNS notification is limited to 8192 characters of UTF-8 strings, and is not intended to support multimedia content.
My main concern is which service will allow me to send as many emails as I need. In the SES tab on AWS console, it says you are limited to sending 200 emails per a 24 hour period.
I need to send emails depending on need. It can be 0 emails or a million (if the app gets popular). Will Simple Notification Service allow that? Which service is right for this use-case? Or will I be better off setting up my own mail server?
You should go with SES, because it’s made for your purpose.
After you’ve verified your email adress or domain you can request production access and start sending up to 10,000 emails per 24-hour period. SES will automatically calculate (and rise) your sending limit once you started sending emails.
Take a look at Amazon Simple Email Service Developer Guide for further information 🙂