Quickstart

Create your SES Mailbox account

Go to app.sesmailbox.com/register and sign up with your email address. Verify your email via the confirmation link we send, then log in.

You start on the Free plan — no credit card required. The Free plan lets you send 1 campaign per month with unlimited contacts, which is enough to get through this quickstart.

Create an IAM user and connect AWS SES

SES Mailbox sends email through your own AWS account. You need to create an IAM user with SES permissions and paste the credentials into SES Mailbox.

Create the IAM user in AWS

1. Open the AWS console → search IAM → Users → Create user
2. Username: sesmailbox (or anything you like)
3. Select Attach policies directly → Create policy
4. Switch to the JSON tab and paste the policy below
5. Name the policy SESMailboxPolicy and create it
6. Attach the policy to the user and create the user
7. On the final screen, click Create access key → use case: Third-party service → copy the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
      "ses:SendEmail",
      "ses:SendRawEmail",
      "ses:GetSendQuota",
      "ses:GetSendStatistics",
      "ses:VerifyDomainIdentity",
      "ses:VerifyDomainDkim"
    ],
    "Resource": "*"
  }]
}

Paste credentials into SES Mailbox

1. In SES Mailbox, go to Settings → AWS Credentials
2. Enter your Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, and AWS region (e.g. us-east-1)
3. Click Test connection — we'll verify the credentials and fetch your sending quota

Verify your sending domain

To send email from @yourcompany.com, AWS needs to confirm you own the domain. SES Mailbox generates the DNS records — you add them to your DNS provider (Cloudflare, Route 53, Namecheap, etc.).

1. In SES Mailbox: Settings → Sending Domains → Add Domain
2. Enter your domain and click Generate records
3. Add the SPF TXT record, three DKIM CNAME records, and the DMARC TXT record to your DNS
4. Click Check verification — DNS propagation usually takes 5–30 minutes, sometimes up to 24 hours

See the full Domain Verification guide for exact record values and troubleshooting.

Import your subscribers

Go to Contacts → Import CSV. Your CSV needs at minimum an email column. Optional columns: first_name, last_name, and any custom fields you want to use for personalisation.

email,first_name,last_name,plan
ada@example.com,Ada,Lovelace,pro
grace@example.com,Grace,Hopper,free

Column headers are flexible — SES Mailbox auto-detects common patterns (email, EMAIL, Email Address, etc.) and lets you manually map any column.

Send your first campaign

1. Go to Campaigns → New Campaign
2. Choose a name (internal only), subject line, and from address
3. Write your email in the HTML editor or paste raw HTML
4. Select your recipient list (or a segment)
5. Click Send test to preview in your inbox
6. Click Send campaign to send to all recipients

After sending, the Analytics tab shows opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes — usually updating within a few minutes of delivery.