AWS SES Bounce and Complaint Handling: Setting Up SQS and SNS

Maintaining a bounce rate under 2% is critical for keeping your AWS SES account active. If your bounce rate exceeds 10%, AWS will suspend your sending capabilities entirely.

Setting up automated listeners using Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) and Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is the enterprise-grade solution to handle bounces and complaints.

1. The Feedback Loop Architecture

Using a webhook directly from SES works, but SQS provides a queue buffer. If your app goes down for maintenance, SQS stores the bounce event and redelivers it when your app goes back online.

[AWS SES Bounce] ---> [SNS Topic] ---> [SQS Queue] ---> [Laravel App Worker]

2. Creating the SNS Topic and SQS Queue

A. AWS SNS Configuration

Go to the Amazon SNS Console.
Click Topics -> Create topic.
Select Standard, name it ses-bounce-topic, and click create.

B. AWS SQS Configuration

Go to the Amazon SQS Console.
Click Queues -> Create queue.
Select Standard, name it ses-bounce-queue.
After creation, select the queue, click Queue Actions, and select Subscribe queue to SNS topic. Select ses-bounce-topic.

3. Mapping AWS SES Notifications

Now link your verified SES domain to the SNS topic:

Open the AWS SES Console.
Select your verified domain under Verified identities.
Under Feedback notifications, click Edit.
Set Bounces, Complaints, and Deliveries to target your newly created SNS Topic (ses-bounce-topic).

4. Setting Up the Laravel Listener Job

Install the AWS SDK via composer:

composer require aws/aws-sdk-php

Create a command php artisan make:command ProcessEmailBounces to poll the SQS queue:

public function handle()
{
    $sqs = new SqsClient([...]);
    $result = $sqs->receiveMessage([
        'QueueUrl' => env('AWS_SQS_BOUNCE_URL'),
        'MaxNumberOfMessages' => 10,
    ]);

    if (!empty($result->get('Messages'))) {
        foreach ($result->get('Messages') as $message) {
            $body = json_decode($message['Body'], true);
            $notification = json_decode($body['Message'], true);

            if ($notification['eventType'] === 'Bounce') {
                foreach ($notification['bounce']['bouncedRecipients'] as $recipient) {
                    // Save to local blocklist database table
                    SuppressionList::create(['email' => $recipient['emailAddress']]);
                }
            }
            // Delete message from queue
            $sqs->deleteMessage(['ReceiptHandle' => $message['ReceiptHandle']]);
        }
    }
}

Schedule this command to run every minute in routes/console.php to clean your mailing lists in real-time.

AWS SES Bounce and Complaint Handling: Setting Up SQS and SNS