Codeigniter SMTP Email with Amazon SES

Question

I think yesterday Amazon announced SMTP support for SES (Simple Email Service).

I tried to send SMTP email with Codeigniter with no luck.

I have a verified sende

Answer 1

You need to do 3 things to get CI to work with Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)

1. Need to set newline = \r\n or you will get a timeout.
2. Need to set smtp_crypto to something. (New requirement)
3. Need to make sure "from" email address is approved in Amazon SES. I made my "from" email address "no-reply@mydomain.com"

Additionally, you should set up DKIM for your "from" email address to prevent emails from getting put in spam folders. This involves going into Amazon SES -> Identity Management -> Email Addresses -> DKIM, hitting the enable button, and adding 3 DNS entries to your website's DNS.

No need to do anything special to set up SPF. The envelope domain amazonses.com passes SPF.

Finally, make sure to use "reply-to" if you want users to be able to reply to an e-mail address different from your approved "from" e-mail address.

Example working code:

$obj = &get_instance();

$config['protocol'] = 'smtp';
$config['smtp_host'] = 'email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com';
$config['smtp_user'] = 'USER';
$config['smtp_pass'] = 'PASS';
$config['smtp_port'] = '587';
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";
$config['smtp_crypto'] = 'tls';
$obj->email->initialize($config);

$obj->email->set_mailtype('html');
// don't html_escape email header variables
$obj->email->from(MV_FROM_EMAIL, $from_name);
$obj->email->reply_to($from_email, $from_name);
$obj->email->to($to);
$obj->email->subject($subject);
$obj->email->message($obj->load->view($path, html_escape($data), true));
$obj->email->send();