Listmonk FAQs
Amazon SES × Listmonk FAQ
Practical answers to the questions our team asks every day about managing newsletters with Listmonk and Amazon SES.
How do I get the unsubscribed / bounced / complained people from SES and add them to Listmonk's blocklist?
SES automatically maintains a Suppression List — it contains every email address that has hard-bounced or been marked as spam. You need to periodically sync this list into Listmonk's blocklist so that Listmonk also stops sending to these addresses.
Where to find the Suppression List in SES:
SES Console → Suppression List → Suppression list tab
- Open the Amazon SES Console and make sure you're in the correct region (Asia Pacific — Mumbai).
- Go to Suppression List in the left sidebar. You'll see all email addresses that SES has suppressed, along with the reason (Bounce or Complaint) and the date added.
- Export or note down the suppressed email addresses. You can filter by reason if you only want bounces or only complaints.
- In Listmonk, go to Subscribers → All Subscribers. Search for each suppressed email, select it, and mark it as Blocklisted. For bulk actions, you can use Listmonk's import feature with the blocklist flag set to
true. - After blocklisting in Listmonk, optionally remove the address from SES's suppression list only if you've confirmed the address is now in Listmonk's blocklist — this avoids double-handling next time.
How do I identify the truly active subscribers of my newsletter?
For us, an "active subscriber" is someone who has received at least 9–10 newsletters/campaigns and has opened at least one of them (i.e., open rate > 0%). This filters out both new subscribers who haven't had enough exposure and long-time subscribers who never engage.
Conversely, to find inactive subscribers — people who received enough campaigns but never opened a single one — use the query below in Listmonk's subscriber search:
Listmonk → Subscribers → Query Subscribers → Advanced
Listmonk SQL — Inactive Subscribers
-- Subscribers who received ≥ 9 campaigns but opened ZERO
EXISTS(
SELECT 1
FROM campaign_lists cl
INNER JOIN subscriber_lists sl
ON cl.list_id = sl.list_id
WHERE sl.subscriber_id = subscribers.id
GROUP BY sl.subscriber_id
HAVING COUNT(DISTINCT cl.campaign_id) >= 9
)
AND NOT EXISTS(
SELECT 1
FROM campaign_views cv
WHERE cv.subscriber_id = subscribers.id
)What this query does:
- The first
EXISTSblock finds subscribers who belong to lists that have been targeted by at least 9 distinct campaigns — meaning they've had enough exposure to your content. - The
AND NOT EXISTSblock filters to only those who have zero entries in thecampaign_viewstable — meaning they never opened a single email. - The result is your inactive segment: people who've had plenty of chances to engage but haven't. You can then decide whether to re-engage them with a special campaign or blocklist them.
To find active subscribers instead, flip the second condition: change AND NOT EXISTS to AND EXISTS. This gives you everyone who received ≥ 9 campaigns and opened at least one.
What are safe bounce and complaint rate thresholds, and where do I check them?
Your bounce and complaint rates directly determine your SES account health. If they go too high, AWS will put your account under review or suspend it entirely.
Where to check:
SES Console → Reputation metrics → Summary
| Metric | Safe | Warning | Dangerous |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bounce rate | Below 2% | 2% – 5% | Above 5% |
| Complaint rate | Below 0.08% | 0.08% – 0.1% | Above 0.1% |
| Account status | Healthy | Under Review | At Risk |
Key point: The "historic bounce rate" shown in SES is calculated over a representative volume — it's your account's long-term health indicator, not a real-time number. Check it at least weekly, and always after large campaign sends.
How do I check how many emails I've sent today and how many I have left?
The SES account dashboard shows your daily sending usage at a glance.
You'll see three numbers:
- Emails sent — how many you've sent in the current 24-hour window.
- Remaining sends — how many more you can send before hitting the daily quota.
- Sending quota used — percentage of daily limit consumed.
Our current limits: 80,000 emails per 24 hours with a maximum send rate of 14 emails per second. If you're approaching the limit before a large campaign, request a limit increase through the SES console.
Tip: Always check this before scheduling a large campaign in Listmonk. If your remaining quota is less than your subscriber count, the campaign will partially fail silently.
What should I review in SES after every campaign send?
After each newsletter or campaign, do a quick post-send review using these SES sections:
- Sending Statistics — Check the charts for the last 1 day. Look at successful sends, rejections, bounces, and complaints. If bounces or complaints spike, investigate immediately.
- Reputation Metrics — Confirm account status is still Healthy. Check that bounce rate and complaint rate haven't crossed into warning thresholds.
- Suppression List — Check for newly added addresses. Sync any new entries into Listmonk's blocklist (see FAQ 01).
- VDM Dashboard — Review open rate and click rate for the campaign period. Compare against your baseline to see if engagement is trending up or down.
Pro tip: Use the "View in CloudWatch" buttons on the sending statistics charts to set up alarms for bounce/complaint rate spikes. This way you get notified automatically instead of checking manually.
How do I find out which emails permanently bounced so I can clean my list?
There are two types of bounces in SES:
- Permanent bounces — Invalid or non-existent email addresses. These will never succeed and should be removed from your list immediately. They show up in the SES Suppression List with reason "Bounce".
- Transient bounces — Temporary failures (full mailbox, server down). These may succeed on retry and don't necessarily need removal.
To clean your list:
- Go to the SES Suppression List and filter by reason = Bounce.
- Export or note the permanently bounced addresses.
- In Listmonk, blocklist these subscribers to prevent future sends.
You can also check the VDM dashboard's Metrics pane — look at the Permanent bounces line in the time-series graph for date ranges around your campaign sends.
How do I check if my sending domain/identity is still verified and healthy?
You can only send emails from verified identities. If verification lapses or DNS records change, your sends will fail.
SES Console → Identities
- Open the Identities page and confirm that your domain (e.g.,
emails.tinybridge.org) shows a Verified status. - If any identity shows Unverified, you cannot send from it. Re-verify by updating DNS records as prompted by SES.
- A domain-level identity covers all email addresses under that domain — it's more robust than verifying individual email addresses.
Check this when: You notice unexpected delivery failures in Listmonk, you've recently changed DNS records, or as part of your monthly infrastructure review.
What does the Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) dashboard tell me and when should I use it?
The VDM dashboard is your high-level view of how well your emails are actually performing — not just whether they were sent, but whether they were delivered, opened, and clicked.
Key metrics to focus on:
- Total Send Volume — Your baseline. Track weekly to spot unexpected drops or spikes.
- Delivered rate — Emails accepted by the recipient's mail server. Should be consistently high. A drop here means delivery issues.
- Open Rate — Percentage of delivered emails that were opened (tracked via a tiny invisible pixel). This tells you if your subject lines and content are working.
- Click Rate — Of those who opened, how many clicked a link. This is your engagement quality metric.
- Complaints vs. Transient vs. Permanent bounces — Time-series graphs let you spot trends. Use the "Select metrics" dropdown to toggle these on/off.
Use the Date range selector (Relative or Absolute) to compare different campaign periods. The Metrics pane shows daily-aggregated time-series graphs with volume on the left axis and rates on the right.
When to use VDM: After every campaign for a quick health check, and weekly for trend analysis. If you notice open rates declining over time, it may be time to run the active subscriber query (FAQ 02) and clean your list.