Account Dashboard / Rep Metrics

When you're seeing bounces and complaints in your Amazon SES account despite only sending emails to yourself, there could be several explanations for this situation.

First, it's important to understand that Amazon SES actively tracks metrics like bounce and complaint rates to maintain sender reputation. Even when sending to yourself, these metrics can be triggered under certain circumstances.

If you're seeing bounces, this could happen if:

• Your email provider (Gmail in this case) is temporarily rejecting messages
• There might be configuration issues with your sending setup
• You're hitting sending limits or throttling from your email provider

For complaints, this could occur if:

• You or someone with access to your email account is marking the messages as spam
• Your email provider's automated systems are flagging the messages

Since your account is still showing as "Healthy," these metrics haven't reached a concerning threshold yet. Amazon SES categorizes account health as "Healthy," "Under review," or "Paused" depending on the severity of reputation issues.

To address this issue:

1. Make sure you have processes in place to capture and manage bounces and complaints
2. Consider implementing a more diverse testing strategy by sending to multiple email addresses
3. Check if your test emails contain content that might trigger spam filters
4. Verify that your sending domain and email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) are properly configured

Sending only to a single email address repeatedly could potentially trigger rate limiting or filtering mechanisms at the receiving mail server, which might explain what you're experiencing.
Sources
Monitoring your Amazon SES sender reputation - Amazon Simple Email Service
Monitoring your Amazon SES sender reputation - Amazon Simple Email Service
Monitoring your sending statistics using the Amazon SES console - Amazon Simple Email Service
Reputation metrics messages - Amazon Simple Email Service