Testing your connection to the Amazon SES SMTP interface using the command line - Amazon Simple Email Service
PrerequisitesTesting your connection to the SMTP interfaceUsing the command line to send email

Testing your connection to the Amazon SES SMTP interface using the command line

You can use the methods described in this section from the command line to test your connection to the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint, validate your SMTP credentials, and troubleshoot connection issues. These procedures use tools and libraries that are included with most common operating systems.

For additional information about troubleshooting SMTP connection problems, see Amazon SES SMTP issues.

Prerequisites

When you connect to the Amazon SES SMTP interface, you have to provide a set of SMTP credentials. These SMTP credentials are different from your standard AWS credentials. The two types of credentials aren't interchangeable. For more information about obtaining your SMTP credentials, see Obtaining Amazon SES SMTP credentials.

Testing your connection to the Amazon SES SMTP interface

You can use the command line to test your connection to the Amazon SES SMTP interface without authenticating or sending any messages. This procedure is useful for troubleshooting basic connectivity issues. If your test connection fails, see SMTP issues.

This section includes procedures for testing your connection using both OpenSSL (which is included with most Linux, macOS, and Unix distributions, and is also available for Windows) and the Test-NetConnection cmdlet in PowerShell (which is included with most recent versions of Windows).

Linux, macOS, or Unix

There are two ways to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP interface with OpenSSL: using explicit SSL over port 587, or using implicit SSL over port 465.

To connect to the SMTP interface using explicit SSL

  • At the command line, enter the following command to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP server:

    openssl s_client -crlf -quiet -starttls smtp -connect email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:587

    In the preceding command, replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the URL of the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint for your AWS Region. For more information, see Regions and Amazon SES.

    If the connection was successful, you see output similar to the following:

    depth=2 C = US, O = Amazon, CN = Amazon Root CA 1
verify return:1
depth=1 C = US, O = Amazon, OU = Server CA 1B, CN = Amazon
verify return:1
depth=0 CN = email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
verify return:1
250 Ok

    The connection automatically closes after about 10 seconds of inactivity.

Alternatively, you can use implicit SSL to connect to the SMTP interface over port 465.

To connect to the SMTP interface using implicit SSL

  • At the command line, enter the following command to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP server:

    openssl s_client -crlf -quiet -connect email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:465

    In the preceding command, replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the URL of the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint for your AWS Region. For more information, see Regions and Amazon SES.

    If the connection was successful, you see output similar to the following:

    depth=2 C = US, O = Amazon, CN = Amazon Root CA 1
verify return:1
depth=1 C = US, O = Amazon, OU = Server CA 1B, CN = Amazon
verify return:1
depth=0 CN = email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
verify return:1
220 email-smtp.amazonaws.com ESMTP SimpleEmailService-d-VCSHDP1YZ A1b2C3d4E5f6G7h8I9j0

    The connection automatically closes after about 10 seconds of inactivity.

PowerShell

You can use the Test-NetConnection cmdlet in PowerShell to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP server.

Note

The Test-NetConnection cmdlet can determine whether your computer can connect to the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint. However, it doesn't test whether your computer can make an implicit or explicit SSL connection to the SMTP endpoint. To test an SSL connection, you can install OpenSSL for Windows to send a test email.

To connect to the SMTP interface using the Test-NetConnection cmdlet

  • In PowerShell, enter the following command to connect to the Amazon SES SMTP server:

    Test-NetConnection -Port 587 -ComputerName email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com

    In the preceding command, replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the URL of the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint for your AWS Region, and replace 587 with the port number. For more information about regional endpoints in Amazon SES, see Regions and Amazon SES.

    If the connection was successful, you see output that resembles the following example:

    ComputerName     : email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
RemoteAddress    : 198.51.100.126
RemotePort       : 587
InterfaceAlias   : Ethernet
SourceAddress    : 203.0.113.46
TcpTestSucceeded : True

Using the command line to send email using the Amazon SES SMTP interface

You can also use the command line to send messages using the Amazon SES SMTP interface. This procedure is useful for testing SMTP credentials and for testing the ability of specific recipients to receive messages that you send by using Amazon SES.

Linux, macOS, or Unix

When an email sender connects to an SMTP server, the client issues a standard set of requests, and the server replies to each request with a standard response. This series of requests and responses is called an SMTP conversation. When you connect to the Amazon SES SMTP server using OpenSSL, the server expects an SMTP conversation to occur.

When you use OpenSSL to connect to the SMTP interface, you have to encode your SMTP credentials using base64 encoding. This section includes procedures for encoding your credentials using base64.

To send an email from the command line using the SMTP interface

  1. Enter the following at the command line and replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the URL of the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint for your AWS Region. For more information, see Regions and Amazon SES.:

    #!/bin/bash

# Prompt user to provide following information
read -p "Configuration set: " CONFIGSET
read -p "Enter SMTP username: " SMTPUsername
read -p "Enter SMTP password: " SMTPPassword
read -p "Sender email address: " MAILFROM
read -p "Receiver email address: " RCPT
read -p "Email subject: " SUBJECT
read -p "Message to send: " DATA

echo

# Encode SMTP username and password using base64
EncodedSMTPUsername=$(echo -n "$SMTPUsername" | openssl enc -base64)
EncodedSMTPPassword=$(echo -n "$SMTPPassword" | openssl enc -base64)

# Construct the email
Email="EHLO example.com
AUTH LOGIN
$EncodedSMTPUsername
$EncodedSMTPPassword
MAIL FROM: $MAILFROM
RCPT TO: $RCPT
DATA
X-SES-CONFIGURATION-SET: $CONFIGSET
From: $MAILFROM
To: $RCPT
Subject: $SUBJECT

$DATA
.
QUIT"

echo "$Email" | openssl s_client -crlf -quiet -starttls smtp -connect email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:587

  2. At the prompt for each variable, enter your values.

    • To send using implicit SSL over port 465, use:

      openssl s_client -crlf -quiet -connect email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:465

    If the message was accepted by Amazon SES, you see output that resembles the following example:

    250 Ok 01010160d7de98d8-21e57d9a-JZho-416c-bbe1-8ebaAexample-000000

    The string of numbers and text that follows 250 Ok is the message ID of the email.

    Note

    The connection closes automatically after about 10 seconds of inactivity.

PowerShell

You can use the Net.Mail.SmtpClient class to send email using explicit SSL over port 587.

Note

The Net.Mail.SmtpClient class is officially obsolete, and Microsoft recommends that you use third-party libraries. This code is intended for testing purposes only, and shouldn't be used for production workloads.

To send an email through PowerShell using explicit SSL

  1. In a text editor, create a new file. Paste the following code into the file:

    function SendEmail($Server, $Port, $Sender, $Recipient, $Subject, $Body) {
    $Credentials = [Net.NetworkCredential](Get-Credential)

    $SMTPClient = New-Object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($Server, $Port)
    $SMTPClient.EnableSsl = $true
    $SMTPClient.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($Credentials.Username, $Credentials.Password);

    try {
        Write-Output "Sending message..."
        $SMTPClient.Send($Sender, $Recipient, $Subject, $Body)
        Write-Output "Message successfully sent to $($Recipient)"
    } catch [System.Exception] {
        Write-Output "An error occurred:"
        Write-Error $_
    }
}

function SendTestEmail(){
    $Server = "email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
    $Port = 587

    $Subject = "Test email sent from Amazon SES"
    $Body = "This message was sent from Amazon SES using PowerShell (explicit SSL, port 587)."

    $Sender = "sender@example.com"
    $Recipient = "recipient@example.com"

    SendEmail $Server $Port $Sender $Recipient $Subject $Body
}

SendTestEmail

    When you finish, save the file as SendEmail.ps1.

  2. Make the following changes to the file that you created in the previous step:

    • Replace sender@example.com with the email address that you want to send the message from.

    • Replace recipient@example.com with the email address that you want to send the message to.

    • Replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the URL of the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint for your AWS Region. For more information, see Regions and Amazon SES.

  3. In PowerShell, enter the following command:

    .\path\to\SendEmail.ps1

    In the preceding command, replace path\to\SendEmail.ps1 with the path to the file that you created in step 1.

  4. When prompted, enter your SMTP user name and password.

Alternatively, you can use the System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail class to send email using implicit SSL over port 465.

Note

The System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail class is officially obsolete, and Microsoft recommends that you use third-party libraries. This code is intended for testing purposes only, and shouldn't be used for production workloads.

To send an email through PowerShell using implicit SSL

  1. In a text editor, create a new file. Paste the following code into the file:

    [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Web") > $null

function SendEmail($Server, $Port, $Sender, $Recipient, $Subject, $Body) {
    $Credentials = [Net.NetworkCredential](Get-Credential)

    $mail = New-Object System.Web.Mail.MailMessage
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver", $Server)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport", $Port)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl", $true)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername", $Credentials.UserName)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword", $Credentials.Password)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpconnectiontimeout", $timeout / 1000)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing", 2)
    $mail.Fields.Add("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate", 1)

    $mail.From = $Sender
    $mail.To = $Recipient
    $mail.Subject = $Subject
    $mail.Body = $Body

    try {
        Write-Output "Sending message..."
        [System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail]::Send($mail)
        Write-Output "Message successfully sent to $($Recipient)"
    } catch [System.Exception] {
        Write-Output "An error occurred:"
        Write-Error $_
    }
}

function SendTestEmail(){
    $Server = "email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
    $Port = 465
    
    $Subject = "Test email sent from Amazon SES"
    $Body = "This message was sent from Amazon SES using PowerShell (implicit SSL, port 465)."

    $Sender = "sender@example.com"
    $Recipient = "recipient@example.com"

    SendEmail $Server $Port $Sender $Recipient $Subject $Body
}

SendTestEmail

    When you finish, save the file as SendEmail.ps1.

  2. Make the following changes to the file that you created in the previous step:

    • Replace sender@example.com with the email address that you want to send the message from.

    • Replace recipient@example.com with the email address that you want to send the message to.

    • Replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the URL of the Amazon SES SMTP endpoint for your AWS Region. For more information, see Regions and Amazon SES.

  3. In PowerShell, enter the following command:

    .\path\to\SendEmail.ps1

    In the preceding command, replace path\to\SendEmail.ps1 with the path to the file that you created in step 1.

  4. When prompted, enter your SMTP user name and password.