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Amazon SES vs Resend

Two sides of the transactional email decision: raw infrastructure and transactional API. When each fits, what it costs, who moves from one to the other, and what makers who chose it say.

Amazon SESRaw infrastructure
ResendTransactional APIllms.txtIn Bolt, Lovable, Replit
Ask your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗

Which fits you

Choose Amazon SES if
  • You send at high volume and cost per email matters most

Use it whenYou already run on AWS, or your email volume makes per-message price the main cost.

Trade-offBare-bones; you build templates, bounce handling and tooling yourself.

Choose Resend if
  • You write React or TypeScript and want email templates as components in the same codebase

Use it whenYou're setting up sign-up and reset emails in a TypeScript app and want templates to live next to your UI code.

Trade-offA younger service than Postmark or SES, and costlier than SES at very high volume.

At a glance

Amazon SESResend
Used by4 makers' products · 32 open-source projects942 makers' products · 54 open-source projects
Cost at default usageemails 50k emails$5.00/mo À la carte$20/mo Pro 50k
Moved to it on GitHubpull requests since Oct 202415 from Resend16 from Amazon SES
Downloads3.6M/wk−15% vs npm9.4M/wk4.1× vs npm
PricingPay per message; the cheapest option at high volume. · paid from $0.10 per 1k emailsFree tier for small volume; paid plans by monthly emails. · paid from $20/mo
Free tierNoYes
Open sourceNoNo

Cost as you grow

At 1k emails Resend costs less ($0 vs $0.10); from about 5k emails Amazon SES does ($0.50 vs $20). They're different kinds of tool — raw infrastructure and transactional API — so the prices don't buy the same thing.

$0$50$200$500$1,000$2,0001k5k10k25k50k100k250k500k1M5M
ResendAmazon SESx: emails per month (email) · cheapest usable plan at each point, list prices · try your own numbers
The numbers, plan by plan
Emails per monthAmazon SESResend
1,000$0.10 À la carte$0 Free
5,000$0.50 À la carte$20 Pro 50k
10,000$1.00 À la carte$20 Pro 50k
25,000$2.50 À la carte$20 Pro 50k
50,000$5.00 À la carte$20 Pro 50k
100,000$10 À la carte$35 Pro 100k
250,000$25 À la carte$170 Pro 100k
500,000$50 À la carte$350 Scale 500k
1,000,000$100 À la carte$650 Scale 1M
5,000,000$500 À la carte$2,300 Scale 2.5M

From each vendor's pricing page: Amazon SES, Resend.

Who moves from one to the other

Public pull requests on GitHub since Oct 2024 whose title says "Amazon SES to Resend" or the reverse — real code changes, by developers in general rather than makers only.

Resend → Amazon SES15 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗
Amazon SES → Resend16 PRs
All matching pull requests on GitHub ↗

What makers say

Makers on using it for transactional email, from Product Hunt and Starter Story interviews, each linked to the source. Products with a page of their own and fuller notes first.

On Amazon SES

No maker quote about Amazon SES for transactional email yet.

On Resend
SendGrid and Mailgun still work but feel like 2015. Resend has the cleanest API and React-based email templates, so all my transactional mail took an afternoon instead of a sprint.
VC Boom, the makerSep 2026 ↗
Resend handles all of MusicLib's transactional emails — verification, password resets, reservation confirmations. Clean API, great deliverability, took about 15 minutes to integrate.
MusicLib, the makerMar 2026 ↗
Here’s what we use for marketing and operations: Stripe (payments) ConvertKit & Resend (email marketing) Plausible Analytics & Mixpanel (web and product analytics) Senja (testi…
FounderPal, the makerMar 2024 ↗
123 more on the Resend page →

Loved and watch-outs

Themes that recur in makers' words and Hacker News comments, each linked to what it summarises.

Amazon SES
Most loved
  • Sending costs pennies per thousand emails, with a free monthly allowance through the API. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • Relaying outgoing mail through it fixes deliverability for self-hosted mail servers. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • It enforces anti-spam discipline, warning senders early when complaint rates spike. HNHN 2
Watch-outs
  • Getting out of the sandbox is hard, and requests can be rejected with no clear reason. HNHN 2
  • Shared IP reputation is outside your control, and a dedicated IP costs extra without guaranteeing delivery. HNHN 2HN 3HN 4
  • The console is clunky, and domain and DNS setup often needs hand-holding. HNHN 2
Resend
Most loved
  • The API is clean and TypeScript-first, simple enough to call with a plain fetch and no SDK. PHPH 2
  • Transactional email goes live within a day, with DNS setup and deliverability basics handled. PHPH 2
  • The free tier is generous enough to build and test before paying. PHPH 2HNHN 2
Watch-outs
  • It runs on AWS SES, so an AWS us-east-1 outage stopped both its dashboard and email sending. HNPH
  • API gaps remain, such as the broadcast API not returning email content and no stored copy of sent threads. HNHN 2
On Product Hunt: 4.9★, 252 reviews · mentioned most: easy setup, developer-friendly API, reliable delivery · complaints: slow performance

Who uses each

Amazon SES4 makers' products
BetterPicChat DataScrapingdogUptimeRobot
Resend942 makers' products
Actx0AgentcardAirbook AIAnythingApexappdesignsAppReplyAritectArkivAtomic BotBackdropBasedash+930 more
Used by both — often one replacing the other, or each for a different part of the product
BetterPic

What makers pair each with

With Amazon SES
Database
Frontend Framework
File Storage
Backend Framework
With Resend
Frontend Framework
Database
Hosting
Payments

Neither quite right?

See the whole transactional email decision →
PostmarkTransactional APIDeliverability when the mail has to arrive within seconds.vs Amazon SES →vs Resend →
MailgunTransactional APIHigh volume and inbound email parsing and routing.vs Amazon SES →vs Resend →
SendGridTransactional + marketingOne vendor for both jobs at large scale.vs Amazon SES →vs Resend →