Support for Amazon AWS SES

[jaeitee]

18 minutes ago, bfarber said:

I was just saying we've had Sendgrid integration longer available within our software.

True, and I was just drawing your attention to the fact that it has been out for nearly a decade 🙂 
Perhaps it'll make the roadmap before 2030? 😜

Edited September 4, 2020 by jaeitee

[AlexWebsites]

I was using sparkpost when it was free but once costs went up, I moved to SES on 4 of my forums. I'm not aware of anything that is as cost effective for 3rd party emailing. I suppose it also depends on where you are located.

https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/

 

[Chris027]

Be careful with SES though. There's a reason it's so cheap. When things go wrong, you'll be left hanging for weeks at a time by the Amazon "support" staff. 

[AlexWebsites]

On 9/4/2020 at 10:23 AM, Chris027 said:

Be careful with SES though. There's a reason it's so cheap. When things go wrong, you'll be left hanging for weeks at a time by the Amazon "support" staff. 

I've been using it for a couple of years and I don't see any issues. Here's the thing with Amazon AWS, you need to read docs and have a general understanding how to set these services up because you'll be on your own. If you need a support staff ready to answer tech questions, stick with sendgrid or other in my opinion. AWS can be confusing but when it works it just works and is very cost effective.

On another note, if it wasn't for the way IPS handles email notifications, I would be fine sticking with SMTP and SES. Its just that when a user clicks reply, that triggers the notifications and hangs up the actual posting of the reply within a topic. So either use Amazon SES API or come up with a way that notifications get batched out with a task or something instead of instant and let the reply get posted instantly first. I don't know enough about how it works but there's a big difference when replying to topics and how the reply is posted. I've had them hang for up to 10 sec sometimes using 3rd party SMTP sending methods.

Edited September 6, 2020 by AlexWebsites

[Chris027]

49 minutes ago, AlexWebsites said:

I've been using it for a couple of years and I don't see any issues. Here's the thing with Amazon AWS, you need to read docs and have a general understanding how to set these services up because you'll be on your own. If you need a support staff ready to answer tech questions, stick with sendgrid or other in my opinion. AWS can be confusing but when it works it just works and is very cost effective.

On another note, if it wasn't for the way IPS handles email notifications, I would be fine sticking with SMTP and SES. Its just that when a user clicks reply, that triggers the notifications and hangs up the actual posting of the reply within a topic. So either use Amazon SES API or come up with a way that notifications get batched out with a task or something instead of instant and let the reply get posted instantly first. I don't know enough about how it works but there's a big difference when replying to topics and how the reply is posted. I've had them hang for up to 10 sec sometimes using 3rd party SMTP sending methods.

None of my issues were tech issues. It was all Amazon communication issues. 

[jaeitee]

On 9/5/2020 at 12:23 AM, Chris027 said:

Be careful with SES though. There's a reason it's so cheap. When things go wrong, you'll be left hanging for weeks at a time by the Amazon "support" staff. 

Submitted ticket to SendGrid August 17 2020, still no response. 
Good luck to anyone attempting to migrate an existing active community to SendGrid 🙂 

[AlexWebsites]

3 hours ago, Chris027 said:

None of my issues were tech issues. It was all Amazon communication issues. 

I’m pretty surprised at that since AWS services are so widely used.

[Chris027]

16 minutes ago, AlexWebsites said:

I’m pretty surprised at that since AWS services are so widely used.

They are widely used because they are cheap, not because the company has good service. 

[AlexWebsites]

4 minutes ago, Chris027 said:

They are widely used because they are cheap, not because the company has good service. 

I don’t really agree based on my own experiences with all my websites but can understand if you haven’t had good experiences with AWS to feel that way. Fits my needs quite well.

[bfarber]

On 9/6/2020 at 10:47 AM, AlexWebsites said:

On another note, if it wasn't for the way IPS handles email notifications, I would be fine sticking with SMTP and SES. Its just that when a user clicks reply, that triggers the notifications and hangs up the actual posting of the reply within a topic. So either use Amazon SES API or come up with a way that notifications get batched out with a task or something instead of instant and let the reply get posted instantly first. I don't know enough about how it works but there's a big difference when replying to topics and how the reply is posted. I've had them hang for up to 10 sec sometimes using 3rd party SMTP sending methods.

Quickly to address this - if the thing being followed has more than NOTIFICATIONS_PER_BATCH followers (which defaults to 30), the notifications are queued and send in the background.

[jaeitee]

On 9/7/2020 at 5:29 AM, Chris027 said:

They are widely used because they are cheap, not because the company has good service. 

SendGrid is hardly a stellar alternative https://www.facebook.com/SendGrid/ just look at the complaints all similar, no response from support.

Here's the status of 1 SendGrid account linked to a community with around 4,000 members.  1 day to go and still unable to upgrade an account, stellar service 🙂  /s

 

@bfarber it really is time to reassess SendGrid as being the sole API integrated mail platform for Invision. 
Here's something that's now affecting the experience with the core Invision product. 🙂 

[jaeitee]

The laughs just keep on coming.
August 17th lodged a Support Ticket to try and upgrade our account due to hitting limits.

Yesterday.... 

 

Today... 😂

 

[AlexJ]

Just use your own mail server like Postfix. I do same when Amazon SES gives trouble. Switching takes only 2 minutes. 

[AlexWebsites]

On 8/19/2020 at 9:14 AM, bfarber said:

There is interest in SES integration (although you can already use SES via SMTP presently anyways). I think the main catch is that they have stricter requirements for handling bounces which would necessitate new functionality being built in, not just slapping in another email gateway and calling it a day. That said, we're monitoring feedback/support for topics requesting SES integration.

Any chance this makes it into 4.5.X roadmap?

[Morgin]

On 9/12/2020 at 4:08 PM, AlexJ said:

Just use your own mail server like Postfix. I do same when Amazon SES gives trouble. Switching takes only 2 minutes. 

It’s easy, but man, I would never recommend to anyone who values their time and having a secure server to run their own mailserver. It is not low maintenance. 

[_Vault_]

I’m switching to SES now as well, because the email costs at Sendgrid and others are too high for a non-profit community.

IPS should really look into supporting SES via API. Right now I’ll use my own VPS/Postfix Relay to get it running and to keep latency low.

[jair101]

Just keep your fingers crossed that one of the enterprise customers will request this, thats the way to get this implemented.

A bit tongue in cheek, but lately I believe this is the main driver of IPS roadmap.

[SC36DC]

Does anyone have a guide, tips or can state how hard or easy it is to configure SES with IPS? I also need to move away from Sendgrid, as I've been getting emails from people saying how they never received their Password reset emails or others from the forum. 100 a day is just not enough on the free account.

Thanks guys!!

[AlexWebsites]

15 hours ago, SC36DC said:

Does anyone have a guide, tips or can state how hard or easy it is to configure SES with IPS? I also need to move away from Sendgrid, as I've been getting emails from people saying how they never received their Password reset emails or others from the forum. 100 a day is just not enough on the free account.

Thanks guys!!

Currently since there is no API connectivity native to IPS as a sending method, you need to use SMTP https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/send-email-smtp.html

[AlexJ]

I was flip flopping between postfix and amazon SES but after using SES, screw postfix! 

[SC36DC]

41 minutes ago, AlexJ said:

I was flip flopping between postfix and amazon SES but after using SES, screw postfix! 

I'm currently trying to set up SES with my Wordpress/WooCommerce website.

[jaeitee]

On 11/16/2020 at 6:25 PM, jair101 said:

Just keep your fingers crossed that one of the enterprise customers will request this, thats the way to get this implemented.

A bit tongue in cheek, but lately I believe this is the main driver of IPS roadmap.

I've been from Ikonboard pre 1, through to when @Matt & co switched away from Perl to PHP and so fourth over to Invision Board then the transition from free to paid etc.  Over the 20 or so years there's been a small handful of decisions I look at and just wonder WTF were they thinking, this is one of them.  To tie an entire customer base to quite literally a junk rated service (just ask the receiving mail servers what they think about SendGrid's reputation! They'll quite literally share their opinion with a bounce back message 😉 ) is one of those WTF moments over the past two decades.  

Not implementing SES is so many levels of stupid it's beyond even trying to understand. Essentially here's something that could make a significant difference to many communities as email is Invision's default outbound communication method, instead of improving that experience for the end user it is actively ignored/avoided.  Don't get upset, some things in the world  need to be so ridiculous they're unbelievable just to create intrigue.

Edited December 15, 2020 by jaeitee

[Chris027]

I think we all need to keep in mind that the view from the top is always best. I’m willing to bet there are good reasons SES hasn’t been implemented via API. 

[AlexJ]

14 hours ago, Chris027 said:

I think we all need to keep in mind that the view from the top is always best. I’m willing to bet there are good reasons SES hasn’t been implemented via API. 

Just educate other folks so we also see that view?

Here is another though: To completely unsubscribe from emails, you need to unfollow each topic. That makes stop all email notification for a user, useless. 

[Jon Erickson]

I've developed an integration application that will allow your IPB community to send emails via the AWS SES API. I will release it to the marketplace however looking for some folks to test it. Please send me a PM if interested.