Intro

This guide walks you through connecting your AWS Simple Email Service (SES) account, including domain verification, SMTP credentials setup, and production access.

✅ Prerequisites

Before getting started, make sure you hav

• An active AWS account: https://aws.amazon.com/
• Access to your domain DNS settings
• AWS IAM permissions to manage SES and IAM users

Step 1 : On MailReach, fill in the first fields

Sender First Name : the first name of your SendGrid sending address

Sender First Name : the last name of your SendGrid sending address

Email address to warm : you get it, your SendGrid sending address

Step 2 : Create your AWS SES SMTP access

1. 🌍 Choose Your AWS Region

SES is region-specific. For best deliverability in Europe, we recommend:

• eu-west-1 (Ireland)
• eu-central-1 (Frankfurt)

Choose one region and stick to it throughout setup.

2. 📥 Verify Your Sending Domain

1. Go to the SES Console
2. Make sure you’re in the correct region (top-right dropdown)
3. Go to Verified identities → click Create identity
4. Select Domain
5. Enter your sending domain (e.g., example.com)
6. Under DKIM, select Easy DKIM (recommended)
7. Click Create Identity

You’ll now get 3 CNAME records to add to your DNS.

Optional: Add a TXT record for SPF:
v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all

Once DNS is set up correctly, verification typically takes 5–15 minutes.

3. 🔐 Create SMTP Credentials

1. Go to the IAM Console
2. Click Users > Add user
3. Name the user something generic like smtp-user-app
4. Under Access type, check Programmatic access
5. Click Next: Permissions
6. Choose Attach policies directly
7. Search for and attach AmazonSESFullAccess
8. Complete the user creation and download the Access Key and Secret

Important: These are not your SMTP credentials yet.

Convert IAM credentials to SMTP credentials:

Go to the official tool:

👉 https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/smtp-credentials.html#smtp-credentials-convert

Paste your Secret Access Key to get:

• SMTP Username
• SMTP Password

These are what you’ll use for actual SMTP sending.

4. 🚀 Configure SMTP in MailReach

5. 🔓 Move SES Out of Sandbox Mode

New SES accounts are in sandbox mode — only verified recipients can be emailed.

To lift this restriction:

1. Go to AWS Support Center
2. Choose:

• • Service limit increase
  • Service: SES
  • Region: (your region)
  • Limit type: SES Sending Limits

3. Fill out the request form:

• • Type of emails (transactional, marketing, etc.)
  • Expected sending volume
  • Website URL
  • Unsubscribe/compliance info

Approval usually takes < 24 hours.

Step 3 : Enter your IMAP credentials (the inbox where the replies of your SendGrid emails land)

Your IMAP information are the credentials of the inbox where the replies from your recipients land.

For example, if you send email campaigns using SendGrid, on which inbox do you receive the replies from your recipients to your SendGrid address?

If that's a Gmail, you'd need to enter the details of this Gmail inbox in the IMAP fields. Same for Outlook / Office 365. It could be another, it depends on what you prefer using.

1. If you don't have yet any inbox to receive the replies of your recipients : you can create a Google or Office 365 inbox and use it to connect with IMAP. We recommend Gmail as it's easier to set up.

2. In all cases, you have to adjust the settings of the mailbox to be able to connect it as IMAP to MailReach :

• For a Gmail / Google Workspace inbox, you need to create an App Password. To do so, please follow the first 3 steps of this guide : Connect a Gmail / Google Workspace to MailReach with an App Password
• For an Office 365 account, use the settings here : Office 365 settings
• For any other IMAP / inbox type : it depends of your inbox provider. You need to check directly with them to get the IMAP credentials needed.

3. Go back to MailReach. Enter the information as following for IMAP :

For a Gmail / Google Workspace inbox :

• IMAP host : imap.gmail.com
• Port : 993
• IMAP username : your Gmail inbox address
• IMAP password : the App Password generated for MailReach (in the previous section). NOT the password of the Gmail account.

For a Outlook / Office 365 inbox :

• IMAP host : imap-mail.outlook.com
• Port : 993
• IMAP username : your Outlook address
• IMAP password : your Outlook password

For any other IMAP / inbox type :

• Get the details from your inbox provider.

Step 3 : On MailReach, fill in the connection form and sign in

It should work. If not please ping us in the chat

Updated on: 04/08/2025