Email verification for Amazon SES

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Amazon SES

This guide only applies to projects using Amazon SES

If your project is using Xtremepush's email delivery platform, please review our dedicated guide.

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Quick start

This guide explains all the necessary details for email verification, which is done in five steps:

1. Choose your from address and its domain.
2. Choose a sub-domain for the custom send domain.
3. Give the support team these details and we will provide you with the required DNS records that you need to add to configure DKIM and SPF.
4. Add the DNS records provided by the support team and let us know about it.

The support team will verify the correct DNS records and authentications are in place, and add the necessary configuration on your Xtremepush project.

5. Once that the support team confirms DKIM has been correctly configured, add your from addresses following our dedicated guide.

Verification is important because email inherently allows the ability to choose any from address. This allows senders to spoof their from address. Verification is done by applying DKIM configuration to the domain. Amazon SES also requires verification to ensure that you are authorised to use that domain.

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Configuration of domains is done by adding DNS records. Typically a DNS administrator would be responsible for this. Larger organisations may have their own in-house IT person responsible for this, whereas smaller organisations may rely on their web-hosting provider or other outsourced administrator.

From address vs. sender

As noted above, an email's from address can be set to any value, allowing it to be easily spoofed. This is the problem that DKIM solves.

But email has a second address, known by several names: sender, return-path, mail-from, mailed-by, envelope-from. They all refer to the sender of the email, which for emails sent by Xtremepush, is always Xtremepush. This address is where bounces are sent, so the send address domain (which can be customised) must always point to Xtremepush.

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Choosing a from address

You may choose your from address to be a mailbox at your company domain, for example [email protected], or instead using a sub-domain, for example [email protected].
If using a sub-domain or if the mailbox on your corporate domain doesn't exist, it's important to use a reply address when sending your email campaigns, so that replies sent by your customers can be handled.
Out-of-office auto-responders are sent to the from address, not the reply address.

If you are migrating from a different provider, the most important thing is to use the same email addresses that had been used previously, to give continuity and for the best deliverability results.

Custom send domain

Since Amazon SES is the sender, the return-path email address (which is used by Amazon SES to track bounces) uses a default domain.

For improved deliverability, the from address and sender address should be aligned. Alignment means that they use the same domain or a sub-domain variation.

Setting up a custom send domain would change the sender address, for example to email.oxfordstones.co.uk, which now aligns with the from address.

The chosen custom send domain should be set up with DNS records that the support team will provide you with once that you choose your desired custom send domain.