SES GetSendStatistics has a drifting timestamp?

Question

I've started using SES recently and I'm trying to keep track of the usage using the GetSendStatistics API call (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/APIReference/API_GetSendStatistics.html). I thought that I could store the received SendDataPoints and use the Timestamp information as a unique key as the result of the API call can overlap in periods. I noticed that the Timestamp changes per API call. This makes it impossible to rule out duplicate SendDataPoints when I do a daily or hourly call to the GetSendStatistics API.

How do others track their SES usage via an API? (including the bounces, complaints, etc.. )

Accepted Answer

Good Question!

One AWS-native way to do this is to publish metrics to CloudWatch.  This would require SES Event Publishing and a Configuration Set (along with message/auto-tags) to categorize them.  That can provide more granular metrics past the GetSendStatistics API call or Amazon SES console.

You can publish to Kinesis Data Firehose or SNS as well.

More information here:
* Set up event publishing: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/monitor-sending-using-event-publishing-setup.html
* Specify a Configuration Set: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/event-publishing-send-email.html

Answer

The CloudWatch option does give me insight in the usage as you indicated. This solves the biggest problem I had of getting proper insight in usage.

I still think there is an issue with the GetSendStatistics API which in my opionin isn't suited for its intended purpose. I hope someone can shed some light on its use case because I don't understand it.

Answer

Thank you for your answer I will need to give this a try and see if this solves my problem. Give me a few days...

Several questions bug me: 
- Why is the GetSendStatistics API not useable for this? What's the use case that this API solves. 
- Why do I need to build my own scaffolding to monitor usage? AWS needs these internally as well, why not expose this. How can we verify the numbers in any other way...

SES GetSendStatistics has a drifting timestamp?

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