The nice folks at Amazon contacted me about my post yesterday and pointed out that they are not allowing just anyone to mail through their system. They have a multi step process for qualifying senders.
The first step, as described by their website is:
New users are placed in the Amazon SES sandbox, where they can test and evaluate the service in a restricted mode. As a sandbox user, you have full access to the Amazon SES API; however, the following restrictions are in effect:
- Emails can be sent only to and from verified email addresses.
- You can send a maximum of 200 messages per day.
- You can send a maximum of one message per second.
To lift these restrictions and use Amazon SES in production, we recommend that you request production access at your earliest opportunity.
Production access requires filling out a form with very basic information about your mailing program. Screening customers is a bit of an art form and only time will tell if Amazon got it right.