Blocked addresses

Addresses this account will not send to again. Bounces and complaints fill this in automatically.

Why it exists

SES judges you on your bounce and complaint rates. Above 5% bounces or 0.1% complaints it starts warning, and it will suspend an account that keeps going. Continuing to send to an address that hard-bounced is the fastest way there.

So a hard bounce or a spam complaint adds the address here, and sends to it stop.

List

GET /api/v1/suppressions

Scope: suppressions:read

Filter
q	Substring of the address
limit, cursor	See Pagination

{
  "object": "suppression",
  "id": "sup_…",
  "address": "gone@example.net",
  "reason": "Hard bounce: smtp; 550 5.1.1 user unknown",
  "created_at": "2026-09-14T11:20:03.000Z"
}

Block one by hand

POST /api/v1/suppressions

Scope: suppressions:write

{ "address": "unsubscribed@example.net", "reason": "Asked to stop" }

Returns 201 when it is new and 200 when it was already blocked — blocking an already-blocked address is not an error, it is the state you asked for.

Useful for honouring an unsubscribe from your own application, so the block lives in one place rather than two.

Unblock

DELETE /api/v1/suppressions/:id

Scope: suppressions:write

Takes the address as well as the id:

curl -X DELETE "https://mail.yourdomain.com/api/v1/suppressions/gone%40example.net" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer mk_live_..."

Think before you do

The address is on this list because mail to it bounced or was reported as spam. Sending again risks the account's own sending reputation, and the reputation is shared by every domain on it.

Unblocking is right when the address was blocked by mistake, or the mailbox has genuinely been fixed. It is not a way to retry a bad list.

{ "object": "suppression", "id": "sup_…", "address": "gone@example.net", "deleted": true }