Last updated: Nov 04, 2023

How to Send an Email with Attachments using Amazon SES in Python Example

Amazon SES is short for Amazon Simple Email Service. It is a low-cost, scalable email service that allows developers to send email from any application. Amazon SES can be quickly configured to support a variety of email use cases, such as transactional, marketing, or mass email communications. Amazon SES allows us to send email securely, globally, and at scale.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to send email with attachments using Amazon SES in Python.

Install the Boto3 SDK for Python

Boto3 SDK is a Python library for AWS. First, install the latest version of Boto3 SDK using the following command:

pip install boto3

Verifying Email Address

Before you can send email using SES, you will need to verify the sender email address so as to ensure that you do not abuse it by sending spam to others. Only verified email addresses or domains can send email through SES. By verifying an email address, you prove that you are the owner of that email address and that you want SES to send email from it.

When you verify an email address using the example code below, SES sends an email to the specified address. The email address is verified when the link is clicked in the email.

import boto3

# Create SES client
ses_client = boto3.client('ses')

response = ses_client.verify_email_identity(
  EmailAddress = 'sender@example.com'
)
print(response)

Sending Simple Email without Attachment

To send a simple email without attachment, you can use the send_email function provided by the boto3 SES client library. For example:

import boto3

ses_client = boto3.client('ses')

response = ses_client.send_email(
    Source='sender@domain.com',
    Destination={
        'ToAddresses': ['receiver@domain.com', 'receiver2@domain.com'],
        'CcAddresses': ['ccreceiver@domain.com'],
        'BccAddresses': ['bccreceiver@domain']
    },
    Message={
        'Subject': {
            'Data': 'Hello Buddy',
            'Charset': 'UTF-8'
        },
        'Body': {
            'Text': {
                'Data': 'This is simple text email.',
                'Charset': 'UTF-8'
            },
            'Html': {
                'Data': '<html><head><title>Hello Buddy</title></head><body><h1>Hello Buddy</h1><p>This is html based email.</p></body></html>',
                'Charset': 'UTF-8'
            }
        }
    },
)

Sending Raw Email with Attachments

To send an email with multiple attachments using Amazon SES, we can use the send_raw_email function provided by the boto3 SES client library:

import os
import boto3
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.mime.application import MIMEApplication

ses_client = boto3.client('ses')

SENDER = "sender@domain.com"
RECEIVER = "receiver@domain.com"
CHARSET = "utf-8"
msg = MIMEMultipart('mixed')
msg['Subject'] = "Register Today"
msg['From'] = SENDER
msg['To'] = RECEIVER

msg_body = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
# text based email body
BODY_TEXT = "Dear,\n\rPlease using the given link to register today."
# HTML based email body
BODY_HTML = "<html><head><title>Hello Buddy</title></head><body><h1>Hello Buddy</h1><p>This is html based email.</p></body></html>"
textpart = MIMEText(BODY_TEXT.encode(CHARSET), 'plain', CHARSET)
htmlpart = MIMEText(BODY_HTML.encode(CHARSET), 'html', CHARSET)

msg_body.attach(textpart)
msg_body.attach(htmlpart)

# Full path to the file that will be attached to the email.
ATTACHMENT1 = "path/to/registration_form.pdf"
ATTACHMENT2 = "path/to/prospectus_form.pdf"

# Adding attachments
att1 = MIMEApplication(open(ATTACHMENT1, 'rb').read())
att1.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment',
                  filename=os.path.basename(ATTACHMENT1))
att2 = MIMEApplication(open(ATTACHMENT1, 'rb').read())
att2.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment',
                  filename=os.path.basename(ATTACHMENT2))

msg.attach(msg_body)
msg.attach(att1)
msg.attach(att2)

try:
    response = ses_client.send_raw_email(
        Source=SENDER,
        Destinations=[
            RECEIVER
        ],
        RawMessage={
            'Data': msg.as_string(),
        },
        ConfigurationSetName="ConfigSet"
    )
    print("Message id : ", response['MessageId'])
    print("Message send successfully!")
except Exception as e:
    print("Error: ", e)