How to Get Started with Amazon SES

There are two things you'll need to do to make SES work with Zapier:

  1. Add a verified sender to your SES account (if you already use SES you probably already have this, if not, directions are below as well).
  2. Add a new Zapier user via IAM with only permission to use SES and give those AWS Security Credentials to Zapier.

Add a Verified Sender to SES

This is fairly simple! Just click the SES logo from your AWS dashboard and click Verified Senders on the left hand side. At the top of the page is a Verify a New Email Address:

Click that button and fill out the form:

You will receive an email at that inbox with a verification link. Just click that and you are in business!

Create Security Credentials by Adding a New Zapier User to IAM

When creating users in AWS it is always wise to restrict that user to as little as possible. In this case we're going to create a user that only has access to SES. Go to the IAM dashboard in your AWS dashboard, click the Users tab on the left and click the Create New Users button up top:

You'll see a popup like this, just name a single user however you like and continue:

Note the security credentials and copy them into another window (or download them). Don't paste them into Zapier quite yet because we do some checks to ensure we have access, which we haven't set up yet. Be careful, if you leave this page you can't re-download the credentials!

Find the user you just created, select it and chose the permissions tab. Then click Attach User Policy:

Now scroll down to find the Full SES permission set (highlighted below). Select that one! If you like, you can customize this permission to be even more restrictive, but this default is a good balance.

Now, open up Zapier and add your SES account to Zapier like normal!

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