[Solved] Laravel Mail 530 5.7.1 Authentication required with Amazon SES

When trying to send an email using Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) using Laravel's Mail class.

\Mail::send('email', [], function ($message) {
    $message
    ->from('from@gmail.com', 'John Appleseed')
    ->to('to@gmail.com', 'Nono Martínez Alonso')
    ->subject('A sample email')
    ->html('<p>Hello, this is a test email.</p>');
});

I got the following error.

Expected response code "250" but got code "530",
with message "530 5.7.1 Authentication required".

Set up Amazon SES

You need to configure the following environment variables in .env.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=XXXXXXXXXX
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1

And then in config/services.php.

<?php

return [
    // ...
    'ses' => [
        'key' => env('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'),
        'secret' => env('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'),
        'region' => env('AWS_DEFAULT_REGION', 'us-east-1'),
    ],
];

Set up Laravel Mail

Lastly, set Amazon SES as Laravel's default mailer in .env.

MAIL_MAILER=ses

Note that you could also set the default in your config/mail.php in case there's no MAIL_MAILER key in your .env file.

<?php

return [
    // ...
    'default' => env('MAIL_MAILER', 'ses'),

Request to AWS SES API failed

This is the last error I got before everything worked.

Request to AWS SES API failed.
Email address is not verified.
The following identities failed the check in region US-EAST-1.

I was sending from an unverified email address. Changing it to one of my verified accounts fixed the issue.