Amazon Offers A New Simulator For Developers To Test Email In Apps

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is the kind of service that Amazon Web Services (AWS) does so well. It automates the manual task of adding email to apps so developers can focus on doing what they do best.

Today, AWS added a new way to simulate in Amazon SES what it is like to send emails fron an app so developers can test more easily and not have it count toward the bill.

With Amazon SES, developers can send individual, bulk or transactional emails. For example, a customer might get an auto email reply to a customer service request that comes from Amazon SES. For bulk mail, Amazon SES gives developers a way to deliver an email newsletter. Amazon SES also has applications with transactions such as an email receipt.

To test the emails in Amazon SES, developers have had to set up the process manually. They would test for bounces and other common scenarios. However, Amazon SES monitors the number of bounces and complaints generated by the emails that developers send and uses this information to control sending quotas.

The simulated emails alleviate the issue. According to AWS:

Today we are introducing the Amazon SES Mailbox Simulator to allow you to test your application without affecting your sending quota or the bounce and complaint metrics that drive it. You can now send test emails to specific email addresses hosted by the mailbox simulator. Each address has a specific, defined response. You can send email to these new addresses even if you are still running in the Amazon SES sandbox.

Funny thing – setting up email is not well understood by the younger set, but APIs are part of their every day work.  That’s why programming email into apps makes so much sense.

Other companies are addressing this market, too. For example, in August, Rackspaceacquired Mailgun, a startup that developed an API for creating and managing online email inboxes for apps and websites.  The service is similar to Amazon SES.

Related articles, courtesy of Zemanta:

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• MailChimp Integrates with Amazon SES Providing Enhanced Transactional Email Support

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