I need to run a script on an ec2 instance once a day, and I'd like to have some easy way for it to let me know if something went wrong.

I would prefer not to have to modify the original image, which is a recent version of Ubuntu, so ideally I'd like to do all setup in the script I pass to the Ubuntu instance through the ec2-run-instances command.

I've considered creating a gmail account for it, and letting it send email through that - but the setup was rather involved, with certificates and such things.

I've looked at using the gist API, but anything uploaded through it is public.

The Google command line tool also appears quite complicated to set up.

Is there some easier way to do this?