Ensuring that essential communications reach your inbox reliably is vital for efficient support management. One way to achieve this is by whitelisting IP addresses for your Desk365 Support Email. Whitelisting involves prioritizing emails from specific IP ranges, guaranteeing their direct delivery to your inbox. By configuring these IP ranges, you prioritize emails from trusted sources, ensuring they’re delivered directly to your inbox and not flagged as spam. This article delves into the process of how to whitelist support emails within the Desk365 platform using Amazon SES, empowering you to optimize email deliverability and streamline communication processes.
Amazon SES allows Desk365 to send emails on behalf of its users, ensuring high deliverability rates and minimizing the risk of emails being marked as spam. By integrating with Amazon SES, Desk365 gains access to a pool of dedicated IP addresses and maintains a positive sender reputation, enhancing the likelihood of emails reaching recipients’ inboxes. Additionally, Amazon SES offers features such as DKIM and SPF authentication, further enhancing email security and trustworthiness. Through this partnership, Desk365 ensures that critical communications are prioritized and reliably delivered, fostering seamless interactions between businesses and their customers.
Whitelist Support Emails using Amazon SES IP Addresses
Let us start by understanding how to find the outgoing IP addresses that Amazon SES uses by querying the SES SPF records in the DNS.
There are two major entities involved, Amazon SES and the ISP. When Amazon SES connects with an ISP to deliver an email, a connection is established between the Amazon SES’s MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) and the ISP’s MTA. SES MTA sends out the email and the ISP MTA receives it.
The MTAs have an IP address associated with them. Understanding the SES i.e., the sender’s MTA is important to whitelist IP addresses.
Finding Addresses Amazon SES uses for Sending Emails
The AWS SES maintains a list of IP addresses from which you can send emails. This list can be accessed by querying the SES SPF record in the AWS SES domain or using other online tools to perform the DNS query.
Open a terminal window (Linux) or Command Prompt (Windows).
Enter the following command to query the SES SPF record in the AWS SES domain.
For Linux:
$ dig TXT amazonses.com +short| grep 'v=spf1'
"v=spf1 ip4:199.255.192.0/22 ip4:199.127.232.0/22 ip4:54.240.0.0/18 ~all"
For Windows:
C:>nslookup -type=TXT amazonses.com | find "v=spf1"
"v=spf1 ip4:199.255.192.0/22 ip4:199.127.232.0/22 ip4:54.240.0.0/18 ~all"
Note down the IP address blocks listed in the result. Let’s take the Windows Command prompt for example:
- 199.255.192.0/22
- 199.127.232.0/22
- 54.240.0.0/18
When an email is sent through the AWS SES it passes through one of the IP addresses listed in the record. Each block is considered as an IP address which is then followed by “/” and then the number of bits.
The 199.255.192.0/22 block designates all IP addresses that have the first 22 bits equal to the first 22 bits of 199.255.192.0, with the remaining bits taking all possible value combinations. Therefore, that block designates all addresses in the interval 199.255.192.0 – 199.255.195.255.
The block 199.127.232.0/22 designates all IP addresses in the interval 199.127.232.0 – 199.127.235.255 and, finally, the 54.240.0.0/18 block designates all IP addresses in the interval 54.240.0.0 – 54.240.63.255.
Note: Make sure that you have the latest list of IP addresses because if SES adds or removes any IP address the SPF record will be updated.
There is no guarantee on which particular SES IP address of the list of IP addresses, your email will be sent through. If you need to perform a whitelisting process for the emails you’re sending through SES you will have to whitelist all SES IP address blocks.
If you wish to verify the region from which the AWS SES email was received you can use the dig command.
$ dig -x 23.251.240.50 +short
e240-50.smtp-out.eu-north-1.amazonses.com.
Ensure important communications are delivered directly to your inbox by whitelisting support emails using Amazon SES IP addresses.
