Set up your emails (Amazon SES or Resend)

Your site sends the order email with the download links, your free gift, the follow-ups after a sign-up, checkout reminders and your campaigns. Without email everything else still works; buyers just don't get emails.

Which one? Resend is the quickest start (free up to 100 emails a day). Amazon SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails and suits anything past about 15 sign-ups a day. When both are set up, SES is used.

Amazon SES

1. Make an AWS account at aws.amazon.com (a card is needed; emails are billed as they go).
2. Pick a region close to your buyers (for example us-east-1, or eu-west-1 for Europe) and tell your agent. Do every SES step in the console in that region (top right).
3. Make a user for your site. Ask your agent for the policy; it prints it with the clicks: IAM → Users → Create user (no console access) → Attach policies directly → Create policy → JSON → paste → attach. Then on the user: Security credentials → Create access key → "Application running outside AWS".
4. Put the two values in .secrets as AWS_SES_KEY_ID=… and AWS_SES_SECRET=…. Not in the chat.
5. Let your agent connect it. It adds your domain to SES and lists the DNS records with ✓ or ✗.
6. Add each ✗ record in Cloudflare: your domain → DNS → Records → Add record, with Proxy status: DNS only (the grey cloud). In the Name field put only the part before your domain (for example abc123._domainkey). Your agent checks again until every line is ✓.
7. Ask AWS for production access. A new SES account is in a "sandbox": it only sends to addresses you've verified, at most 200 a day. In the SES console: Account dashboard → Request production access. Your agent gives you what to write. AWS usually answers within a day.

Resend

1. Sign up at resend.com and add your domain. If the domain is on Cloudflare, Resend can add its DNS records for you (Auto configure).
2. Create an API key with sending access and put it in .secrets as RESEND_API_KEY=….
3. Tell your agent the address to send from (for example hello@yourdomain.com). It switches email on and redeploys.

After it's connected

• Delivery in your admin (Email Automations → Delivery) shows the service, today's sending against your limit, and opens, clicks and bounces.
• Order emails always go first. Follow-ups come next and campaigns last, so a big campaign never delays someone's download link.

FAQ

My emails go to spam.

Check that every DNS record shows ✓ (ask your agent to run the email check), add DMARC, and send from your own domain, not a Gmail address.

SES says I'm in the sandbox.

That's normal for a new account. Request production access (step 7). Until AWS approves it, test with your own address: ask your agent to verify it in SES.

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