AWS SES TXT Record Content

Question

I need to get AWS SES setup for a domain. The registrar's DNS tool only allows me to put in a block of text for the TXT/SPF records (one block per record). I'm not sure how to format the TXT record as a single block of text vs. a key/value pair.

Amazon Says

Record Type: TXT (Text)
TXT Name: _amazonses.the-domain.org
TXT Value: the-very-special-key

The registrar in this case is iPage, here's what it looks like:

So, how do I format this record as a block of text?

Answer 1

It sounds like what they expect you to add is a record like the following (as written in the normal master file format):

_amazonses IN TXT "the-very-special-key"

You don't specify what this management tool that you refer to offers in terms of UI but the name where you want to add the record is _amazonses (if specified as relative to the zone), the type is TXT and the value is the-very-special-key

Answer 2

According to http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/dns-txt-records.html there is the following passage:

If your DNS provider does not allow DNS record names to contain underscores, you can omit _amazonses from the TXT record name. In that case, for the preceding example, the TXT record name would be example.com instead of _amazonses.example.com. To make the record easier to recognize and maintain, you can also optionally prefix the TXT record's value with amazonses:. In the example above, the value of the TXT record would therefore be amazonses:pmBGN/7MjnfhTKUZ06Enqq1PeGUaOkw8lGhcfwefcHU=.

And so without saying it directly, it seems as though the following TXT record content may suffice:

amazonses:pmBGN/7MjnfhTKUZ06Enqq1PeGUaOkw8lGhcfwefcHU=

Answer 3

It looks like your domain registrar does not allow you the flexibility to name your text records, or place them into subdomains.

You should contact their support team to either see if they can name the record for you.

Alternatively, you could set up your own DNS server, or utilize a free DNS hosting service on the net (you can find some quickly by Googling) so that you can have more control over your DNS records. Registrar portals can be limited sometimes.

Amazon Web Services also has Route53 which you could consider, however there is a cost associated with how many zones you host, plus the number of queries you receive.