If you’re running Mautic connected to AWS SES, you might be wondering whether to send emails in bulk directly or stick with queue-based sending through cron jobs. It’s a common question popping up in the Mautic community, and for good reason. Understanding what’s going on under the hood can save you headaches with deliverability, throttling, and server performance.
Here’s the scoop. Mautic offers two main ways to send emails when using an email delivery service like AWS SES. The traditional method is queue sending: Mautic batches emails and sends them gradually via cron jobs. The alternative is bulk sending, which triggers immediate delivery to all recipients right away.
In theory, bulk sending sounds great for quick blasts. But AWS SES has its own sending limits and throttling rules that can trip you up if you’re not careful. Users in the Mautic forums are rightly cautious because sending too many emails all at once may cause SES to reject or throttle your requests, leading to delivery delays or failures. There’s also a risk of overloading the server, especially if your Mautic host isn’t beefy enough to handle spikes.
Queue sending naturally throttles your email output, helping you stay under SES rate limits and smoothing out server load. This tends to be the safer, more reliable choice for large or ongoing campaigns. It also gives you more control over pacing and error handling. For small campaigns or test sends, bulk might be fine—especially if your SES limits are high enough and your contact list isn’t huge.
Unfortunately, there’s no hard-and-fast “always one or the other” rule here. What matters most is matching your sending method to your campaign size, SES limits, and server capacity. Many experienced Mautic users recommend defaulting to queue sending in production because it aligns better with how SES expects traffic and how Mautic manages email workflows under load.
There’s no official fix or change pending in Mautic regarding this topic, and AWS SES’s own documentation stresses the importance of respecting sending limits regardless of how you trigger emails. So keep an eye on your SES quotas, monitor bounce rates, and test cautiously if you try bulk sending.
Bottom line? Bulk sending isn’t inherently unsafe with AWS SES, but queue sending is generally the smarter way to keep your campaigns flowing smoothly when using Mautic in production. For those juggling deliverability and limits without wanting to babysit cron jobs and queues, a managed platform like Mailertizer can take this complexity off your plate.
Check out the full forum discussion here if you want to dive deeper into the nuances and community tips.
And if handling email queues and SES limits sounds like a pain, remember Mailertizer offers hosted Mautic that manages all this technical stuff so you can focus on your marketing.
