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After I complained about disappeared "Bounces" and "Complaints" graphs, Amazon SES team brought them back.
Customer support at Amazon
Sep. 8th, 2017 02:16 pmWe are using Amazon SES to send over 10M emails per month.
This is cheap and reliable service, and overall I like it.
However customer support is poor.
Recently, Amazon SES team removed 2 important graphs from their SES dashboard: "Bounce rate" and "Complaints".
Apparently, Amazon SES team decided that customers would be happier to build their own reports on buggy CloudWatch instead of using already prepared report.
I complained that "development" on AWS forum, and here is the reply:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=803845#803845
The proposed solution - does NOT work.
To add an insult to the injury, AWS forum does not allow me to reply yet with a message: "Your message quota has been reached. Please try again later."
Here is my forum reply that I am NOT able to post on AWS forum yet:
Accidentally, few days ago I received email from SendGrid rep that suggested me it may be a time to switch away from Amazon SES to SendGrid in order to get a superior customer support.
I asked SendGrid rep what kind of support I may need, got no clear reply. But Amazon SES team seems to be happy to prove their competitors right.
See also: https://dennisgorelik.dreamwidth.org/tag/amazon+ses
This is cheap and reliable service, and overall I like it.
However customer support is poor.
Recently, Amazon SES team removed 2 important graphs from their SES dashboard: "Bounce rate" and "Complaints".
Apparently, Amazon SES team decided that customers would be happier to build their own reports on buggy CloudWatch instead of using already prepared report.
I complained that "development" on AWS forum, and here is the reply:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=803845#803845
The proposed solution - does NOT work.
To add an insult to the injury, AWS forum does not allow me to reply yet with a message: "Your message quota has been reached. Please try again later."
Here is my forum reply that I am NOT able to post on AWS forum yet:
=============== @AWSBrentM 1) Thank you for trying to help. I followed your steps and this produced two graphs to me. Both graphs have constant horizontal lines at 1.00 level. So, pretty much, both graphs are totally useless. https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/home?region=us-west-2#dashboards:name=ForumTip Should I use instead different "metrics" instead of "Bounce" and "Complaint"? "Reputation.BounceRate" and "Reputation.ComplaintRate" perhaps? 2) Do you know why Amazon SES Team decided to make us (its customers) to jump through the hoops of creating these awkward custom reports instead of just keeping already existing functionality? This exercise is time-consuming, and while I am troubleshooting cloudwatch app - I am NOT building my own app that pays the bills for all of us. 3) "Your message quota has been reached. Please try again later. " ... this is my second message (and the first message in ~12 hours). It looks like Amazon SES Team is not eager about receiving feedback... ===============
Accidentally, few days ago I received email from SendGrid rep that suggested me it may be a time to switch away from Amazon SES to SendGrid in order to get a superior customer support.
I asked SendGrid rep what kind of support I may need, got no clear reply. But Amazon SES team seems to be happy to prove their competitors right.
See also: https://dennisgorelik.dreamwidth.org/tag/amazon+ses
Tags:
Marking email as spam
Jul. 28th, 2016 05:06 amWhen PostJobFree user marks our email as spam in their email inbox (e.g. on yahoo, gmail or aol) - we delete that user account from PostJobFree.
In addition, we blacklist such email and do not allow creating another account with such email.
The reason behind it is to improve email deliverability to the inboxes of users who actually want to receive our emails.
So, when PostJobFree visitor is trying to create new account with blacklisted email, PostJobFree shows:
-------
We blacklisted your johndoe@aol.com email because on 2015-11-30 16:28:27 UTC you marked email PostJobFree sent to you as spam in your @aol.com inbox.
Could you please let us know at support@postjobfree.com why you marked our email as spam?
Meanwhile you may try using another email.
-------
Yesterday I received angry email from blacklisted user:
=====
I tried to apply to a job today. The posting was from Beyond. I got an ugly message from you that said 8 months ago I listed one of your e-mails on AOL as spam and you blacklisted my e-mail address. You wanted to know why I listed you e-mail as spam. Since the incident you supposedly listed was 8 months ago I have no idea what you are talking about, nor would I remember any information.
I made a complaint to AOL.
=====
How should I reply to that angry blacklisted user?
Update 1:
How to get spam reports feedback
Update 2:
====================
From: Dennis Gorelik <support@postjobfree.com>
To: johndoe <johndoe@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Jul 28, 2016 8:33 am
Subject: Re: Your e-mail
Could you please forward your AOL complaint (and their reply, if any) to me?
My concern is that if you randomly marked our email as spam in the past - it will keep happening in the future.
====================
From: johndoe <johndoe@aol.com>
To: support@postjobfree.com
Date: Thursday, July 28, 2016, 10:20:47 AM
Subject: Your e-mail
1. No reply from AOL, did not expect one.
2. If I had listed your site as spam none of your other e-mails, including this one, would have made it to me.
3. If you blacklisted my e-mail 8 months ago, why have I not seen anything until yesterday.
4. Remove my name from your system.
====================
Bottom line: it rarely makes sense to deal with angry users.
The only real benefits from such communications are learning and entertainment.
In addition, we blacklist such email and do not allow creating another account with such email.
The reason behind it is to improve email deliverability to the inboxes of users who actually want to receive our emails.
So, when PostJobFree visitor is trying to create new account with blacklisted email, PostJobFree shows:
-------
We blacklisted your johndoe@aol.com email because on 2015-11-30 16:28:27 UTC you marked email PostJobFree sent to you as spam in your @aol.com inbox.
Could you please let us know at support@postjobfree.com why you marked our email as spam?
Meanwhile you may try using another email.
-------
Yesterday I received angry email from blacklisted user:
=====
I tried to apply to a job today. The posting was from Beyond. I got an ugly message from you that said 8 months ago I listed one of your e-mails on AOL as spam and you blacklisted my e-mail address. You wanted to know why I listed you e-mail as spam. Since the incident you supposedly listed was 8 months ago I have no idea what you are talking about, nor would I remember any information.
I made a complaint to AOL.
=====
How should I reply to that angry blacklisted user?
Update 1:
How to get spam reports feedback
Update 2:
====================
From: Dennis Gorelik <support@postjobfree.com>
To: johndoe <johndoe@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Jul 28, 2016 8:33 am
Subject: Re: Your e-mail
Could you please forward your AOL complaint (and their reply, if any) to me?
My concern is that if you randomly marked our email as spam in the past - it will keep happening in the future.
====================
From: johndoe <johndoe@aol.com>
To: support@postjobfree.com
Date: Thursday, July 28, 2016, 10:20:47 AM
Subject: Your e-mail
1. No reply from AOL, did not expect one.
2. If I had listed your site as spam none of your other e-mails, including this one, would have made it to me.
3. If you blacklisted my e-mail 8 months ago, why have I not seen anything until yesterday.
4. Remove my name from your system.
====================
Bottom line: it rarely makes sense to deal with angry users.
The only real benefits from such communications are learning and entertainment.
Sending emails through Amazon SES
Nov. 12th, 2014 08:24 pmMy business is sending out over 4 million emails per month.
Mostly these are job search alerts.
Typically it is not a problem to send 4M emails, but it IS a problem to make them end up in users inbox.
There are multiple steps that we had to do in order to improve email deliverability (SPF records, easy unsubscribe link, automatic unsubscribe bounced emails).
But that is not enough.
Some users do not care about "Unsubscribe" link in emails and simply click "spam" in their email provider.
The only way to unsubscribe users like that is to get feedback about it from email provider.
Unfortunately every email provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Live/Hotmail/Msn, AOL, etc) has their own interface for such spam reports and it is a pain to implement and maintain.
So we never did that last step.
End result - we are getting enough complaints to have mediocre email deliverability.
With some providers, such as AOL it was getting so bad, that our emails could not land even in spam folder. Our emails simply disappeared.
Users complained that they cannot get our confirmation emails and we could not do anything to help.
Amazon Simple Email Service to the rescue.
Since Amazon is sending so many emails, they have feedback loop implemented with most of email server providers.
So now we are getting all that complaints data and can stop sending emails to all these complainers.
If user reports our email as spam - we blacklist that email so we would never send anything to them again (so they would not report our email as spam again).
The reason for such harsh treatment is that penalty for us are pretty harsh too.
If we are getting more than 0.1% complaints from users (1 complaint per 1000 emails sent) - then it is considered suspicious.
It's interesting that it takes time to switch to Amazon SES.
Initially Amazon allowed us to send no more than 10000 email per 24 hours period.
When we started sending emails - Amazon SES gradually increased our sending limit (~50% increase every day).
Obviously sending limit increases only if number of complaints and bounces is low.
Now we are sending about 60,000 emails every day and keep increasing that number
How much does sending email through Amazon SES cost?
0.01c per email or $1 per 10000 emails.
In order to send 4M emails we have to pay $400.
Update:
Ban for reporting our emails as spam
Mostly these are job search alerts.
Typically it is not a problem to send 4M emails, but it IS a problem to make them end up in users inbox.
There are multiple steps that we had to do in order to improve email deliverability (SPF records, easy unsubscribe link, automatic unsubscribe bounced emails).
But that is not enough.
Some users do not care about "Unsubscribe" link in emails and simply click "spam" in their email provider.
The only way to unsubscribe users like that is to get feedback about it from email provider.
Unfortunately every email provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Live/Hotmail/Msn, AOL, etc) has their own interface for such spam reports and it is a pain to implement and maintain.
So we never did that last step.
End result - we are getting enough complaints to have mediocre email deliverability.
With some providers, such as AOL it was getting so bad, that our emails could not land even in spam folder. Our emails simply disappeared.
Users complained that they cannot get our confirmation emails and we could not do anything to help.
Amazon Simple Email Service to the rescue.
Since Amazon is sending so many emails, they have feedback loop implemented with most of email server providers.
So now we are getting all that complaints data and can stop sending emails to all these complainers.
If user reports our email as spam - we blacklist that email so we would never send anything to them again (so they would not report our email as spam again).
The reason for such harsh treatment is that penalty for us are pretty harsh too.
If we are getting more than 0.1% complaints from users (1 complaint per 1000 emails sent) - then it is considered suspicious.
It's interesting that it takes time to switch to Amazon SES.
Initially Amazon allowed us to send no more than 10000 email per 24 hours period.
When we started sending emails - Amazon SES gradually increased our sending limit (~50% increase every day).
Obviously sending limit increases only if number of complaints and bounces is low.
Now we are sending about 60,000 emails every day and keep increasing that number
How much does sending email through Amazon SES cost?
0.01c per email or $1 per 10000 emails.
In order to send 4M emails we have to pay $400.
Update:
Ban for reporting our emails as spam
