GETTING STARTED
EMAIL SENDING

To send emails using mydigitalstructure's shared email sending service, the from email address needs to be verified.  You can also set up mydigitalstructure to use your own email sending service.

Note, there are no restrictions on receiving emails.

Verification requires you to put a unique key (TXT record) into the DNS servers managing your domain.

The sending email server can then look it up and see if the keys match.

At a general level, this dramatically reduces SPAM emails 

If you own your domain, we can verify the whole domain - effectively verifying all sending ("from") email addresses.  Otherwise, if you don't own the domain (eg gmail.com) - we can verify the single email address.

VERIFICATION

Once verified, we will send you the keys for your whole domain (that you need to get setup in your domains DNS) or an email will be sent to specific email address, that can be clicked on to get verified.

 
IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Most likely you will only need to enter "_amazonses" - as the DNS zone is already yourdomain.com
  
  
• If you can't use a leading "_" with your DNS, then you can use "amazonses".
  
  
• When entering the value, make sure "=" is the last character and there are no trailing spaces.
  
  
• The email address must be associated with a real mailbox - as during sending, the email from address is checked and delivery will fail if it can't find the mailbox (user) on the sending domains mail server.
  
  
• Direct email address verification emails will have a from email address will be "no-reply-aws@amazonaws.com" and the subject will be "Amazon SES Address Verification Request".
  
  
• Direct verified email addresses are case sensitive.
  
  
• You can only send email file attachments with known MIME types (extensions) - as a list.
  
  
• You must leave the DNS verification keys in place - else after 5 days of the keys being missing, you will be set to unverified.
  
  
• If you send an email from an unverified email address, you, as the sender, will get a "Delivery Failed" message from noreply@mydigitalstructure.com.
  
  
• You can check the DNS setting by using Domain Internet Groper (dig) - ie "dig TXT _amazonses.[your domain]" or use this online tool - replacing .ibcom.biz with your domain. 

It's worth reading this overview of DMARC.

DKIM

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) keys can be created for your domain.  Please advise when requesting verification or post verification, if you want to add later.

The bigger email providers @gmail.com etc - will be picking up that the SMTP is different to the MX record for the email host [where email sent to you is held] and working out if the email being sent is a legitimate.

Having the DKIM keys in the email [our system automatically puts them in] and also in the DNS goes away to solving this - as the receiving SMTP server can do a cross check.

More about DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

SPF

Sender policy framework

"v=spf1 include:amazonses.com -all"

More about enabling SPF with Amazon SES

Testing SPF records

no-reply-aws@amazonaws.com

Amazon SES Address Verification Request

Dear Amazon Simple Email Service Customer,

We have received a request to authorize this email address for use with Amazon SES. If you requested this verification, please go to the following URL to confirm that you are authorized to use this email address:

https://email-verification.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/?AWSAccessKeyId=AK....

Your request will not be processed unless you confirm the address using this URL. This link expires 24 hours after your original verification request.

If you did NOT request to verify this email address, do not click on the link. Please note that many times, the situation isn't a phishing attempt, but either a misunderstanding of how to use our service, or someone setting up email-sending capabilities on your behalf as part of a legitimate service, but without having fully communicated the procedure first. If you are still concerned, please forward this notification to ses-enforcement@amazon.com and let us know in the forward that you did not request the verification.

To learn more about sending email from Amazon SES, please refer to the Amazon SES Developer Guide at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/Welcome.html.

Sincerely, 

The Amazon SES Team

EMAIL DELIVERY

The ibCom SMTP service uses a 1min/2min/5min/1hour/2hour/4hour policy when attempting to get a message to the "agent".

Once the agent has the email message, it then attempts to delivery it to the end recipient, which is then out of the control of the ibCom platform.

AWS-SES:

There is a limit of 50 recipients per email - this is the total count of to:, cc: & bcc: - if there are more than 50 recipients only the first 50 will be sent.

If you need to send more than this, you can use the NEWS endpoint or configure to send using your own SMTP server (eg smtp.gmail.com).

The total size of the message cannot exceed 10 MB.