Until now, sending email using Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) required writing code or using software that specifically supported SES. That’s changed with SES now supporting the ubiquitous SMTP protocol.
SMTP is used by most email clients, such as Outlook, Apple Mail and Thunderbird, to send email. By supporting the SMTP protocol, SES can be used directly by those email clients. More significantly though, it means that developers no longer have to code against SES directly but can instead code against the well-understood SMTP protocol. This will allow developers to easily switch from existing email sending providers to SES, or to develop knowing that SES can be switched out, should the need arise.
AWS states that it has had a lot of requests for SMTP support. The Amazon Simple Mail Service Developer Guide has been updated to reflect the newly added protocol.