SES only sends to 3000 emails but i have increased sending quota to 50,000

The issue you're experiencing with only about 3000 emails being opened out of your 7000 sent emails is likely not related to your SES sending quota or Free Tier status. Since you've already increased your sending quota to 50,000 emails per day, your account should be out of the sandbox and in production mode (sandbox accounts are limited to 200 emails per 24-hour period).

There are several potential reasons for your low open rates:

1. Email deliverability issues: Your emails might be getting caught in spam filters or being silently discarded by recipient email providers. This can happen even if your SES account is marked as "Healthy."

2. Email list quality: Your email list may contain outdated or incorrect email addresses. Even though you might not see bounces, some ISPs might silently discard emails to invalid addresses.

3. Reputation issues: If your sending IP or domain has a poor reputation with recipient ISPs, it could lead to low delivery rates.

4. Content issues: The content of your emails might be triggering spam filters.

To improve your situation:

1. Verify the quality of your email list and ensure all addresses are valid and obtained through proper opt-in processes.

2. Check your sender reputation by monitoring your bounce and complaint rates in the SES console.

3. Review your email content to ensure it doesn't contain spam-like elements.

4. Implement authentication methods like SPF and DKIM if you haven't already.

5. Monitor your delivery metrics over time.

Changing your AWS Access Key ID is unlikely to resolve this issue, as it's more likely related to email deliverability factors rather than authentication or quota limitations.
Sources
Low delivery rate (1.46%) to email list on AWS SES; why only 39 of 2669 emails delivered? | AWS re:Post
Managing your Amazon SES sending limits - Amazon Simple Email Service
Increasing your Amazon SES sending quotas - Amazon Simple Email Service

Thanks for the details. Based on what you've shared, your SES sending quota of 50,000/day is not the issue, the real problem is likely email deliverability, not volume limits.

Here’s what’s likely happening:

SES is sending the emails, but many of them are not being delivered to inboxes, they might be going to spam, getting blocked, or suppressed due to bounces/complaints.

SES silently suppresses emails to addresses that previously bounced or complained, unless you're monitoring that (via CloudWatch or the suppression list), you won’t know.

That’s why you’re consistently seeing ~3000 opens, even when you send to 7000+ recipients.

What to check and fix: Check SES global suppression list:

aws sesv2 list-suppressed-destinations Or check it via the SES Console.

Verify domain settings:

Make sure SPF and DKIM are configured and verified.

Use a custom MAIL FROM domain if possible (improves deliverability)

Ensure you’re using a verified sender domain, not just a single email.

Enable bounce/complaint tracking in Sendy.

Make sure Sendy is logging delivery, bounce, and complaint events from SES

You may be sending to a large portion of inactive or blocked addresses

You do not need to rotate or update your AWS Access Key, unless it was revoked. if SES is still sending, the key is working fine.

Let me know if you need help checking your suppression list or domain config, happy to walk through it.

Thank you for your answer! I just checked that in SES>Get set up, "Verify sending domain" has a notification: No domain identities found. I will verify the domain and email and see if this works. SENDY does not send new emails to previously bounced email addresses as far as i know, so this is probably not the case.

Thank you!