Day 20: Sending HTML Emails from AWS Lambda using Python & SES.

Beyond Plain Text
Welcome to Day 20. SNS is great for SMS or internal alerts, but for user-facing emails, you need HTML. Enter Amazon SES.

Prerequisites

Verify your email in the SES Console (Identities).

Add ses:SendEmail permissions to your Lambda IAM Role.

The Code (Python)

Unlike SNS which just takes a string, SES expects a dictionary structure for MIME types.

Python
client.send_email(
Source='[e-mail]',
Destination={'ToAddresses': ['[e-mail]']},
Message={
'Subject': {'Data': 'My Subject'},
'Body': {
'Html': {'Data': '

Hello World

'},
'Text': {'Data': 'Hello World'}
}
}
)

Pro Tip: Use inline CSS for email templates, as Gmail and Outlook often strip external stylesheets.