BREAKING: SendGrid AWS us-west-2 DNS Health Checks Fired – Immediate Workarounds Inside

SendGrid experiencing DNS health check failures in AWS us-west-2 region. We've compiled immediate workarounds and monitoring steps for affected indie hackers.

⚠️ INCIDENT ALERT: SendGrid Partial Outage

Status: Monitoring | Severity: High | Last Updated: Now

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What's Down & Who's Affected

SendGrid's AWS us-west-2 region is experiencing DNS health check failures. This primarily impacts:

Email delivery from projects using SendGrid's us-west-2 endpoint

SMTP relay connections to smtp.sendgrid.net in that region

API requests routed through affected availability zones

Webhook deliveries may experience delays or failures

Your project is likely affected if:

Your SendGrid account is configured for us-west-2 region

You're in North America and didn't explicitly choose a different region

Your infrastructure is also in us-west-2 (cross-region traffic less impacted)

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Immediate Workarounds (Do This Now)

1. Switch to Alternative SendGrid Regions

If your stack allows region flexibility:

Switch to us-east-1 (N. Virginia) endpoint

Or eu-west-1 if you're Europe-based

Update your SendGrid configuration in environment variables

```bash

Change this:

SENDGRID_API_ENDPOINT=https://api.sendgrid.com

Or SMTP host:

SMTP_HOST=smtp.sendgrid.net

Most clients auto-route; verify your SDK isn't hardcoded to us-west-2

```

2. Implement Retry Logic (If Not Already)

Add exponential backoff: ```javascript const maxRetries = 5; const baseDelay = 1000; // 1 second // Retry with 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s delays ```

3. Queue Non-Critical Emails

Don't retry transactional emails immediately:

Critical (password resets, 2FA): 3 retries, 2-minute windows

Marketing/digest: Queue for 30 minutes, attempt once

4. Use SendGrid's Web API Instead of SMTP

If using SMTP, switch to HTTP API—often more resilient: ```bash

Faster, more detailed error responses

POST https://api.sendgrid.com/v3/mail/send ```

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Check If Your Project Is Affected

1. Monitor SendGrid Status Page: https://status.sendgrid.com (refresh every 60 seconds) 2. Check Your Logs: ```bash grep -i "us-west\|dns\|connection timeout" your-app.log | tail -20 ``` 3. Test Connectivity: ```bash curl -v https://api.sendgrid.com/v3/mail/send -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" ``` 4. Review Recent Bounces: Check SendGrid dashboard for spike in DNS failures (not spam bounces)

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Alternative Tools to Consider

If you want redundancy going forward:

| Tool | Setup Time | Cost | Notes | |------|-----------|------|-------| | Mailgun | 10 min | $0.50/1K after free tier | Rock-solid DNS, excellent docs | | AWS SES | 15 min | Cheapest ($0.10/1K) | Requires domain verification | | Resend | 5 min | $0.20/1K | Built for developers, modern API | | Postmark | 10 min | $1.25/1K base | Best deliverability for transactional |

Pro tip: Set up secondary email provider in parallel; route 5% of mail there as canary.

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Monitor Recovery

SendGrid Status Dashboard: Refreshes every 5 minutes

Your Error Logs: Watch for DNS timeout decreases

Test Email Delivery: Send test emails to inbox@maildrop.cc (catchall sandbox)

Regional Health: Use traceroute smtp.sendgrid.net to verify DNS resolution

Expected Resolution: SendGrid typically resolves AWS health check issues within 15-45 minutes. We'll update this post as status changes.

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Have a SendGrid workaround that worked for you? Share in the comments. We're collecting solutions from the community.