WP Offload SES Lite

Contributors: wpengine, deliciousbrains, ianmjones, eriktorsner, kevinwhoffman, mattshaw, bradt, SylvainDeaure
Tags: amazon ses,smtp,email delivery,gmail smtp,newsletter
Requires at least: 5.3
Tested up to: 6.6
Requires PHP: 7.4
Stable tag: 1.7.1

Fix your email delivery problems by sending your WordPress emails through Amazon SES's powerful email sending infrastructure.

Description

Are your WordPress site emails not being delivered? That's pretty common. Over 20,000 sites trust WP Offload SES Lite to send their site email.

WordPress' default email sending functions just don't cut it these days. You absolutely need to set up something more.

Some folks set up an SMTP plugin to use their existing email provider (e.g. Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, etc) to send their WordPress emails but then find out the hard way (i.e. emails not getting delivered) that there's a daily hard limit on the number of emails they can send. Sending WordPress emails through SMTP is simply not worth the risk.

Other folks try sending services like Postmark, Mailgun, Sendgrid, etc but realize that they're expensive and their WordPress plugins are subpar (check out our reviews for details).

With WP Offload SES Lite, you get the high deliverability, powerful managed infrastructure, and low cost of Amazon SES but with the support of a quality WordPress plugin that's easy to set up and lets you know when there are sending failures.

With WP Offload SES Lite, you can:

• Effortlessly configure your site to send all email via Amazon SES with our step-by-step setup wizard
• Configure the default email address and name that WordPress uses for notifications
• Verify sending domains and email addresses
• Send a test email to make sure everything is working before enabling site-wide email sending
• View a list of all emails sent from your site
• View statistics on your Amazon SES send rate
• Set up a custom "Reply To" and "Return Path" address
• Weekly health report in your inbox gives you confidence your emails are sending
• Configure multisite subsites to use different email settings, or enforce the same settings for your whole network
• Integrate with your favorite form and newsletter plugins, including Ninja Forms, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Email Subscribers & Newsletters, and more

Upgrade to WP Offload SES

Get email open and click reporting and more with an upgrade to WP Offload SES:

Open & Click Reporting

It's important to be able to measure the engagement of your site emails. Are people actually opening certain emails? Are they clicking links? With that information, you can try to update an email's subject line and see if the open rate improves. Or update the email copy and see if more people click on the links. With WP Offload SES, you can access all of this instantly, from your WordPress dashboard.

Auto-Retry Email Sending Failures

Every Amazon SES account has a max send rate. If you try to send more emails per second than your account rate, Amazon SES will return an error and refuse to send the email which could result in dropped emails if not handled properly. WP Offload SES is aware of your SES account's send rate and will stay within the limit, but in the event of a failed send (e.g. a networking issue) the robust queue system will retry sending those emails and keep track of failures.

Manually Retry Email Sending Failures

Let’s say there was a networking issue that prevented your site from connecting to Amazon SES to send your email. WP Offload SES will automatically retry sending a few times before giving up and calling it a failure. If that happens, you can simply retry those failures once connectivity to Amazon SES is restored. With WP Offload SES none of your emails will get dropped into the ether because of a failure.

Manually Resend Any Sent Emails

Let’s say that one of your users accidentally deleted a message that was sent to them. You can find that email in WP Offload SES and resend it in just a few clicks. No more manually assembling the pieces of the email you think they need because you don’t have a copy of the original email.

Search for Any Email

Amazon SES doesn’t log emails sent on its own, let alone allow you to search for a sent email. WP Offload SES logs every email sent and allows you to filter by date and search by recipient and/or email subject.

View a Specific Email

WP Offload SES saves the full content of every email sent through your WordPress site, allowing you to view exactly what your customers were sent.

Analyze Engagement for a Specific Email

Would you like to know if a customer has viewed a specific email they’ve been sent? Or maybe you want to know if they’ve clicked the links in the email? Simply search for the email, click View Email and you can see how many times they opened that particular email and how many times they clicked on the links. No more time consuming back-and-forth with the customer, asking if they’ve received an email or not.

PriorityExpert™ Email Support

PriorityExpert™ email support guarantees that a developer will handle your support request. A developer will reply to your very first email and a developer who works on the software will see it through to conclusion. It also means that your request will be assigned the highest priority in our queue.

Compare WP Offload SES Lite and WP Offload SES →

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUH3fMlrU10&rel=0

Installation

Basic Setup

1. Install and activate the plugin
2. Go to Settings > WP Offload SES in the WordPress dashboard menu
3. Follow the steps in the setup wizard to configure your AWS account and WP Offload SES Lite

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I get support for the plugin?

If you upgrade to WP Offload SES, we will gladly provide you with email support. We take pride in delivering exceptional customer support. We do not provide email support for the free version.

What are the minimum requirements?

• Latest version of WordPress or the one previous
• PHP 7.4+ compiled with the cURL extension
• MySQL 5.5+
• Apache 2+ or Nginx 1.4+
• Amazon Web Services account

What about SMTP plugins?

Unfortunately, sending emails through your existing email provider over SMTP is prone to hitting rate limits, as standard email services like Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, etc aren’t designed for the large number of emails that are sent when sending out invoices, password reset emails, support requests, etc. SMTP is also missing some key features like an email queue which means emails that don’t send successfully on the first try just get dropped.

Will it work with Postmark, Mailgun, Sendgrid, and other email sending services?

At the moment WP Offload SES only supports Amazon SES. We're considering supporting additional services like Mailgun, Sendgrid, Postmark, etc in the future. If this is something you'd like to see, let us know.

Does this plugin auto-retry email delivery failures?

While you can see a list of all emails sent from your site with this plugin, WP Offload SES Lite does not auto-retry failures (nor does Amazon SES). If you’d like a plugin that will auto-retry for you, upgrade to WP Offload SES.

Can you help me about... (an Amazon concern)

We are not otherwise linked to Amazon or Amazon Web Services. Please direct your specific Amazon questions to Amazon support.

How does this work on WordPress Multisite?

You can configure the entire network to use the same settings by configuring the plugin via the Network Admin settings screen. If a subsite should have different settings, you can override some or all of the network settings by going to the WP Offload SES Lite settings page for that subsite.

You can also use the WPOSES_SETTINGS constant to define settings that will be applied to all subsites and can’t be overridden via the UI:

define( 'WPOSES_SETTINGS', serialize( array(
	// Send site emails via Amazon SES.
	'send-via-ses'          => true,
	// Queue email, but do not send it.
	'enqueue-only'          => false,
	// Enable open tracking.
	'enable-open-tracking'  => true,
	// Enable click tracking.
	'enable-click-tracking' => true,
	// Amazon SES region (e.g. 'us-east-1' - leave blank for default region).
	'region'                => 'us-east-1',
	// Changes the default email address used by WordPress
	'default-email'         => '[email protected]',
	// Changes the default email name used by WordPress.
	'default-email-name'    => 'Your Name Here',
	// Sets the "Reply-To" header for all outgoing emails.
	'reply-to'              => '[email protected]',
	// Sets the "Return-Path" header used by Amazon SES.
	'return-path'           => '[email protected]',
	// Amount of days to keep email logs (e.g. 30, 60, 90, 180, 365, 730)
	'log-duration'          => '30',
	// Enable instantly deleting a successfully sent email from the log.
	'delete-successful'     => false,
	// Enable instantly deleting successfully re-sent failed emails from the log (Pro only).
	'delete-re-sent-failed' => false,
) ) );

See our documentation on this for more information.

Do you have a hook that is fired when an email is sent?

Yes, the wposes_mail_sent hook could be used to log emails, or post email info to an API or database:

function myMailSentHook( $to, $subject, $message, $headers, $attachments ) {
	// Your code here.
}
add_action( 'wposes_mail_sent', 'myMailSentHook', 10, 5 );

Can I create a translation for your plugin?

Yes, please do! It's easy.

1. Visit translate.wordpress.org
2. Choose your locale
3. Click on Plugins
4. Search for WP Offload SES Lite
5. Click on WP Offload SES Lite
6. Translate!

Will WP Offload SES Lite work with other plugins that send email?

Yes, WP Offload SES should be compatible with any plugin that uses the standard wp_mail() function for sending email. If you’ve found a plugin that isn’t using that function for sending mail, you may want to reach out to the plugin developer and see if that can be changed.

Why aren't my AWS access keys working?

Please double check the credentials match up with the credentials you received when creating your IAM user, and that your IAM user has the AmazonSESFullAccess permission.

Screenshots

1. Setup wizard

2. Main settings page

3. Verified senders

4. Activity tab

Changelog

1.7.1 - 2024-10-04

• Security: The plugin now uses its own update mechanism from WP Engine servers
• New: Amazon SES regions Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Asia Pacific (Osaka), and Israel (Tel Aviv) are now selectable
• New: AWS PHP SDK has been updated to v3.319.4
• New: PHP and JS dependencies have been updated

1.7.0 - 2024-07-01

• New: Logs of successfully sent emails can now be instantly removed
• New: Logs can now be bulk deleted via new "Purge Logs" functionality
• New: Emails can now be enqueued in the local database without being sent to Amazon SES via the new "Enqueue Only" mode
• New: "Enqueue Only" mode can now be programmatically configured via the enqueue-only key in WPOSES_SETTINGS
• New: PHP 7.4 or later is now required
• New: AWS PHP SDK has been updated to v3.308.6
• Bug fix: Accessing the settings page is now much faster when there are millions of logged emails
• Bug fix: URLs with encoded parameters generated by third parties are now compatible with click tracking
• Bug fix: "Cron not running" emails are no longer sent for every subsite during a multisite network upgrade
• Bug fix: The admin notice regarding failed emails now links to the correct network settings page when multisite is enabled and subsite settings are disabled

1.6.8 - 2024-02-09

• Bug fix: Using the WPOSES_SETTINGS define no longer causes a fatal error

1.6.7 - 2024-02-08

• Security: Unserializing an object related to plugin settings now passes 'allowed_classes' => false to avoid instantiating the complete object and potentially running malicious code
• Security: Processing of the email queue now restricts the type of data allowed to ensure stored queue items meet requirements

1.6.6 - 2023-08-24

• New: WordPress 6.3 compatible
• New: PHP 8.2 compatible
• New: AWS PHP SDK has been updated to v3.279.0
• New: Links to plugin documentation, support, feedback, and changelog are now available in the footer of WP Admin
• New: Returning an empty array from the 'wp_mail' filter will stop the email from being queued and sent
• New: Delete from logs after 1 day and 3 days options added
• Bug fix: "Warning: is_readable(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(~/.aws/config) is not within the allowed path(s)" is no longer logged to debug.log
• Bug fix: Settings sub-menu in a multisite subsite no longer wraps incorrectly
• Bug fix: Settings tooltips are now displayed in their correct position

1.6.5 - 2023-06-05

• Bug fix: Apostrophes in email addresses no longer prevent sending
• Bug fix: More than 25 Verified Senders can now be managed

1.6.4 - 2023-05-18

• Bug fix: WP Offload SES now works with PHP 8.2
• Security: Updated AWS SDK to address a vulnerability in guzzlehttp/psr7 as reported in CVE-2023-29197

1.6.3 - 2023-04-12

• Bug fix: WP Offload SES is once again compatible with sites using PHP 7 and WordPress 5.3–5.8

1.6.2 - 2023-03-31

• Improvement: Instructions for creating an IAM user on AWS are now up to date

1.6.1 - 2023-03-15

• Bug fix: Emails sent from a verified domain no longer result in an unverified email address notice

1.6.0 - 2023-02-15

• Release Summary Blog Post
• New: Maximum message size has been increased from 10 MB to 40 MB
• New: Amazon SES API has been updated from v1 to v2
• New: PHP 7.2 or later required
• New: WordPress 5.3 or later required
• New: WordPress 6.1 compatible
• New: WP_Queue has been updated to v2.0
• New: AWS PHP SDK has been updated to v3.258.3
• Bug fix: Spelling corrected
• Bug fix: Invalid Content-Type headers no longer stop emails from being sent

1.4.6 - 2021-05-26

• New: Added Milan and Cape Town as available regions
• New: Added wposes_ses_regions filter for adding regions manually
• Bug fix: Undefined constant DeliciousBrains\WP_Offload_SES\Aws3\GuzzleHttp\IDNA_DEFAULT

1.4.5 - 2021-04-01

• Bug fix: Some fields of the Activity tab are not properly escaped which is an XSS risk
• Bug fix: Emails occasionally failing due to "WorkerAttemptsExceededException"
• Bug fix: Passing CC/BCC in CSV format not working correctly
• Bug fix: Upgrade routines can be run more than once during an upgrade

1.4.4 - 2020-12-14

• New: WordPress 5.6 and PHP 8 compatible
• New: Added North California, Paris, Stockholm, and Bahrain as available regions

1.4.3 - 2020-08-05

• New: Added Ohio, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo as available regions
• New: Compatibility with WordPress 5.5
• Bug fix: Queue not running when PHP memory limit is over 1G
• Bug fix: Fatal error when deleting a job that no longer exists

1.4.2 - 2020-06-19

• Improvement: Health Report no longer includes the Health Report in email summaries
• Bug fix: Email queue getting stuck if there is a fatal error while processing an email
• Bug fix: Missing mbstring module causes fatal error

1.4.1 - 2020-04-27

• New: Added London, central Canada, and São Paulo as available regions
• New: Added 7 day log duration
• New: Added wposes_send_cron_error_email filter for disabling cron error emails
• Improvement: Reduce interval between cron health checks to reduce false-positives
• Bug fix: Cron health check not working properly on multisite installs
• Bug fix: Cron health check email being sent twice in some situations
• Bug fix: Cron health check still runs when sending via SES is disabled

1.4 - 2020-03-11

• New: Added email queue to handle bulk email sending
• New: Store a copy of attachments to prevent conflicts with other plugins
• Improvement: Health report no longer center aligned
• Bug fix: Health report not being sent in some situations
• Bug fix: Invalid headers causing email to fail
• Bug fix: Index on email log table too large for some MySQL servers
• Bug fix: Filter for infinite log duration no longer working
• Bug fix: Open tracking image missing alt attribute
• Bug fix: Activity tab UI controls not aligned since WordPress 5.3
• Bug fix: "From name" wrapped in quotes in some situations

1.3 - 2019-12-11

• Release Summary Blog Post
• New: Weekly/monthly health report in your inbox gives you confidence your emails are sending
• New: Added Frankfurt, Mumbai, and Sydney as available regions
• Bug fix: Click tracking improperly encodes anchor links

1.2.2 - 2019-09-11

• Bug fix: Broken link to plugin settings page if subsite settings are disabled
• Bug fix: Undefined index SERVER_NAME in some environments

1.2.1 - 2019-08-07

• Bug fix: Plugin no longer working as an mu-plugin
• Bug fix: Activity tab doesn't properly handle multiple recipients
• Bug fix: "Tags" step missing from Setup wizard
• Bug fix: Missing SimpleXMLElement module causes fatal error
• Bug fix: Error when adding email headers in some situations

1.2 - 2019-07-16

• Release Summary Blog Post
• New: List of sent and failed emails in the new Activity tab
• New: Notice when an email fails to send
• Bug fix: PHP notice logged in some multisite installs

1.1 - 2019-05-07

• New: Multisite network level setting to enable subsite settings
• New: Multisite subsite level setting to override network settings
• Improvement: Increase default log retention to 90 days

1.0 - 2019-04-17

• New: Redesigned UI
• New: Setup wizard
• New: Codebase rewritten from the ground up
• New: Verify any domain or email address
• New: Requires PHP 5.5+

0.8.2 - 2019-01-09

• Add discount for launch of WP Offload SES

0.8.1 - 2018-06-06

• Added dismissable admin notice that WP SES will soon require PHP 5.5+

0.8 - 2017-12-28

• WP SES has been acquired by Delicious Brains Inc (big improvements on the way including a pro upgrade)
• Refreshed UI to be consistent with the latest WordPress styles
• Updated in-plugin instructions to be much clearer
• Updated set up documentation
• Now works with translate.wordpress.org

0.7.2.1

• Fix for stats report, thanks to @Ange1Rob0t

0.7.2

• Fix for use as "must use plugin" in a wpmu setup, thanks to @positonic

0.7.1

• fix deprecated get_currentuserinfo()

0.7.0

• PHP 7.0 Compatibility

0.4.8

• Experimental support for cc: and Bcc: in custom header
• Domain verification is ok

0.4.0

• Serbo-Croatian Translation by https://webhostinggeeks.com/
• Fixed Reply-to: extraction Regexp
• fixes from hbradleyiii https://wordpress.org/support/topic/bug-with-force-plugin-activation-option
• better handling of custom headers
• removed ListVerifiedEmailAddresses deprecated api call, now using ListIdentities.
• added wpses_mailsent hook
• several minor fixes.

0.3.58

• Tries to always auto-activate in answer to https://wordpress.org/support/topic/the-plugin-get-inactive-after-a-few-minutes
• small fixes

0.3.56

• fixed sender name format
• fixed regexp for some header recognition
• now supports comma separated emails in to: header

0.3.54

• bad ses lib include fixed
• Added "force plugin activation" for some use case with IAM credentials

0.3.52

• Warning if Curl not installed
• Attachments support for use with Contact Form (finally !)
• Notice fixed

0.3.50

• Notice fixed, setup documentation slightly tweaked

0.3.48

• Experimental "WP Better Email" Plugin compatibility

0.3.46

• Maintenance release - fixes some notices and old code.

0.3.45

• Maintenance release - fixes some notices.

0.3.44

• Added Amazon SES Endpoint selection. EU users can now select EU region.

0.3.42

• Added Spanish translation, thanks to Andrew of webhostinghub.com

0.3.4

• Auto activation via WP_SES_AUTOACTIVATE define, see FAQ.

0.3.2

• Tweaked header parsing thanks to bhansson

0.3.1

• Added Reply-To
• Added global WPMU setup (To be fully tested)

0.2.9

• Updated SES access class
• WP 3.5.1 compatibility
• Stats sorting
• Allow Removal of verified e-mail address
• Added wp_mail filter
• "Forgotten password" link is now ok.
• Various bugfixes

0.2.2

Reference Language is now English. WP SES est fourni avec les textes en Francais.

0.2.1

Added some functions

• SES Quota display
• SES Statistics
• Can set email return_path
• Full email test form
• Can partially de-activate plugin for intensive testing.

0.1.2

First public Beta release

• Functionnal version
• Internationnal Version
• fr_FR and en_US locales

0.1

• Proof of concept

Upgrade Notice

0.4.8

Domain verification is ok

0.4.2

Experimental support for cc: and Bcc: in custom header

0.4.0

Removed deprecated SES call, several bugfixes, added sr_RS translation.

0.2.9

Pre-release, mainly bugfixes, before another update.

0.2.2

All default strings are now in english.

0.2.1

Quota and statistics Integration

0.1.2

First public Beta release