Amazon SES account under review

How-to guide

For:: Workspace admins
Needs permission:: providers:view, deliverability:view, providers:managesensitive
In the app:: Sending providers

An Amazon SES account under review is not an SMTP error: it is AWS telling you that the mail your account sends has an issue, usually too many bounces or complaints, and that you have a review period to fix it. Your mail still goes out during the review. If the issue isn’t fixed in time, AWS can pause the account’s sending.

What AWS means

AWS describes the status on its reputation metrics page:

Under review – Your account is under review. If the issues that caused us to place your account under review aren’t resolved by the end of the review period, we might pause your account’s ability to send email.

Sending paused – We’ve paused your account’s ability to send email. While your account’s ability to send email is paused, you won’t be able to send email using Amazon SES.

For bounces and complaints AWS publishes the levels:

Rate	Account placed under review	Sending might be paused
Bounce rate	5% or greater	10% or greater
Complaint rate	0.1% or greater	0.5% or greater

AWS calculates both over a representative volume of your mail, not a fixed period, and its bounce rate counts only hard bounces to domains you haven’t verified. Other causes include reports from anti-spam organizations, spam traps, listbombing and links to blocklisted domains.

Sources: Reputation metrics messages and Amazon SES sending review process FAQs, Amazon SES Developer Guide. Checked October 2026.

Where ReputeCast shows it

ReputeCast reads the account’s enforcement status from the SES API (GetAccount, field EnforcementStatus) in its provider health check, every 5 minutes:

SES status	Account status in ReputeCast
`HEALTHY`	`Production ·` no enforcement
`PROBATION`	`Production ·` under review (probation)
`SHUTDOWN`	`Production ·` sending paused by AWS

Sending providers shows it on the SES card, under Account status.
Deliverability, then Health, in Account health per sending provider, adds it to the SES badge and draws the SES bounce and complaint rates against the same review and pause levels.
Send Readiness has a check per sending provider in its Sender reputation group. For SES it warns when the bounce or complaint rate is close to or over the review level, and blocks the send at the pause level (10% bounces or 0.5% complaints).

ReputeCast’s rates cover the last 7 days of mail it sent through that SES account. AWS uses its own representative volume, so the numbers can differ from the SES console.

When AWS pauses sending, SES refuses every send. ReputeCast marks the provider down once half of its calls fail over 3 minutes (at least 5 calls) and handles it as an outage; see provider health and outages.

Before you begin

providers:view and deliverability:view to see the status and the rates.
providers:manage to change routes.
Access to the AWS account, to reply to the review case in AWS Support Center.

Respond to the review

Read the notification AWS sent to the email address of your AWS account, and the case it opened in AWS Support Center. It names the issue, for example bounces or complaints.
Find the cause in ReputeCast. On Deliverability, then Health, compare the SES rates with the review levels. In recent campaign reports, look at the Hard · unknown user row and the complaints, and note which lists or imports they came from.
Lower the risk while you work. AWS advises you to stop sending until the problem is fixed if you can. In ReputeCast, don’t schedule new campaigns to the affected lists, or move Broadcasts to another sending provider with a route so that only System and Transactional mail keeps using SES.
Fix the cause. For bounces, verify old lists before you mail them (verify email addresses) and let the list health tiers stop mail to inactive contacts. For complaints, send only to contacts with consent and keep one-click unsubscribe in every message. For listbombing, check the spam protection of your signup forms.
Reply to the AWS case. AWS asks for the root cause, the changes you have already made, and how they prevent the issue from happening again.

Check that it worked

The SES card’s Account status goes back to Production · no enforcement.
Send Readiness’s SES check in Sender reputation passes.

Troubleshooting

The status shows sending paused by AWS. Sending through SES has stopped. Route the mail to another sending provider, finish the steps above and request a review in the AWS case.
ReputeCast’s rates look fine, but SES is under review. AWS counts a longer representative volume and other signals, such as spam traps or reports from anti-spam organizations. Read the AWS notification for the reason.
The account is still in the sandbox. That is a different status; see move Amazon SES out of the sandbox.