Warming up dedicated IP addresses (standard)

When determining whether to accept or reject a message, email service providers consider the reputation of the IP address that sent it. One of the factors that contributes to the reputation of an IP address is whether the address has a history of sending high-quality email. Email providers are less likely to accept mail from new IP addresses that have little or no history. Email sent from IP addresses with little or no history might end up in recipients' junk mail folders, or might be blocked altogether.

When you start sending email from a new dedicated IP address, you should gradually increase the amount of email that you send from that address before using it to its full capacity. This process is called warming up the IP address.

The amount of time that's required to warm up an IP address varies between email providers. For some email providers, you can establish a positive reputation in around two weeks, while for others it may take up to six weeks. When warming up a new dedicated IP address, you should send emails to your most active users to ensure that your complaint rate remains low. You should also carefully examine your bounce messages and send less email if you receive a high number of blocking or throttling notifications. For information about monitoring your bounces, see Monitoring your Amazon SES sending activity.

Automatic warmup for dedicated IPs (standard)

When you request dedicated IP addresses (standard), Amazon SES automatically warms them up to improve the delivery of emails that you send. The automatic IP address warmup feature is enabled by default. SES automatically warms up your dedicated IPs by gradually increasing the number of emails you send through your dedicated IPs based on a predefined warmup plan. This gradual increase helps your IPs build a positive reputation with internet service providers (ISPs).

The steps that happen during the automatic warmup process depend on whether you already have dedicated IP addresses.

After you warm up a dedicated IP address, you should send around 1,000 emails every day to each email provider that you want to maintain a positive reputation with. You should perform this task on each dedicated IP address that you use with SES.

You should avoid sending large volumes of email immediately after the warmup process is complete. Instead, slowly increase the number of emails you send until you reach your target volume. If an email provider sees a large, sudden increase in the number of emails that are sent from an IP address, they may block or throttle the delivery of messages from that address.

Disable the automatic warmup process on dedicated IPs (standard)

When you purchase new standard dedicated IP addresses, Amazon SES automatically warms them up for you because the automatic IP address warmup feature is enabled by default for your account. If you prefer to warm up dedicated IP addresses yourself, you can disable the automatic warmup feature at the account level for all of your IP addresses.

If you disable the automatic warmup feature, any subsequently leased dedicated IPs will be added to your account with a warmup status of Complete which makes them available for use without having been warmed up—this means you are responsible for ensuring these IPs are properly warmed up before using them for regular sending. Any IPs that were currently in the middle of warmup at the time you disabled the automatic warmup feature will not be effected.

Manually warm up dedicated IPs (standard)

You can manually increase or decrease your dedicated IPs (standard) current sending volume by editing its warmup percentage, end its warmup process prematurely, and set its current sending volume to 0% and restart the warmup process.