Using a different Email Host with AWS

Question

For those familiar with Amazon Web Services (AWS), i wanted to know is it possible to use a differnet Mail Server for sending emails via (PHP scripts hosted within Amazon S3). Or am I bound to the SES service they offer?

The reason I'm asking is because I need to do mass emailing and SES has a cap, so I would like to hook up to a different MX server to send these autommated emails.

Answer 1

Yes, you can definitely use an external e-mail/SMTP service. You're not limited to using SES.

I'm assuming that you're running a service on EC2 (or some other service) that allows you to write code in your favorite language and connect to an external SMTP service - this is possible using AWS.

[UPDATE] If you are using PHP on an EC2 instance, you can just use regular PHP with the SMTP server of your choice (Gmail, Mandrill, or any other SMTP service you have to access to really), using something like these two SO answers:

• Sending email with PHP from an SMTP server
• Unable to connect to SMTP server