Amazon SES is a great system that is low cost and can handle a lot of emails either by submitting them using SMTP or by using their API. One of the problems with SES is that if you get into any trouble with bad reports they can shut you down instantly, so it is important if you use AWS SES that you are careful about your email content and how you deal with bounces and unsubscribes.
One of the issues we run into from time to time is the fact that by default SES want to handle all of the bounces because it uses those statistics to monitor your sending activities. At one point they were not allowing anyone to change the return-path of their emails so any return-path you did would be replaced by theirs. Now, SES is allowing good senders to retain their return-path, which is critical for bounce processing, and it is described in this article below. In order to be allowed to retain your return-path AWS is requiring the user to setup all the property DNS and configuration settings so you can handle these bounces.
Campaign Enterprise constructs it's own return-path using VERPS (Variable Envelope Return Path System) so that when the email bounces that the recipient can be identified 100% and then processed appropriately. If you find that your bounce system is not recording anything in Campaign Enterprise when using the SES system send an email to yourself and look for the return-path in the email header. You will probably find it has been replaced and the bounces are actually going back to AWS instead of your system.
If you have any questions on this subject please email us at sales@arialsoftware.com
Campaign Enterprise is a scaleable enterprise-level email distribution system that runs on your own in-house computers connecting directly to your database or CRM in real-time, and using your own mail server. Visit http://www.arialsoftware.com for more information.