Why does AWS SES say my email address doesn't exist when sending emails?

Hello,

The issue you're experiencing with AWS SES (Simple Email Service) returning an error that an email address doesn't exist could be due to the following reasons as your account might be a Sandbox SES account and following restrictions are applied:

1. You can only send mail to verified email addresses and domains, or to the Amazon SES mailbox simulator.
2. You can send a maximum of 200 messages per 24-hour period.
3. You can send a maximum of 1 message per second.
4. For sending authorization, neither you nor the delegate sender can send email to non-verified email addresses.
5. For account-level suppression, bulk actions and SES API calls related to suppression list management are disabled.

Solution:

1. Ensure that all email addresses (sender and recipient) are verified in the SES console. If you need to send emails to unverified addresses, request to move out of the SES sandbox to production.
2. Double-check that the DNS records (TXT, CNAME, MX) are correctly configured and propagated. Sometimes DNS changes take time to propagate, and intermittent issues can occur until they fully propagate.

References:

1. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/request-production-access.html
2. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/creating-identities.html#just-verify-domain-proc
3. https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/ses-resolve-emails-not-delivered