AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) — Question 402

An ecommerce company is experiencing an increase in user traffic. The company’s store is deployed on Amazon EC2 instances as a two-tier web application consisting of a web tier and a separate database tier. As traffic increases, the company notices that the architecture is causing significant delays in sending timely marketing and order confirmation email to users. The company wants to reduce the time it spends resolving complex email delivery issues and minimize operational overhead.

What should a solutions architect do to meet these requirements?

Answer options

• A. Create a separate application tier using EC2 instances dedicated to email processing.
• B. Configure the web instance to send email through Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES).
• C. Configure the web instance to send email through Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS).
• D. Create a separate application tier using EC2 instances dedicated to email processing. Place the instances in an Auto Scaling group.

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a fully managed service designed specifically for sending transactional and marketing emails, which significantly reduces operational overhead and simplifies delivery management. Managing email delivery on EC2 instances (Options A and D) requires the company to handle IP reputation, mail server configuration, and scaling, which increases operational effort. Amazon SNS (Option C) is intended for pub/sub messaging and mobile push notifications rather than bulk or transactional marketing emails.