Resend vs MailerSend
React Email-first sending versus a modern API with visual template tooling.
What matters for early-stage startups
At an early stage the deciding factors are what the free tier actually covers, what the first paid invoice looks like, and how much of a founding engineer's week the setup costs. Feature depth that only matters at a million sends a month is noise until it is not.
| Priority | Resend | MailerSend |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 3,000/mo permanent, capped at 100/day, one domain | 500/mo permanent |
| Best published rate per 1,000 | $0.35 | Tiers not published in comparable form |
| Starts at | $20/mo for 50,000 emails | $7/mo for 5,000 emails |
| DX score | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Deliverability | Acceptable, but the deliverability track record is shorter than Postmark or SendGrid. Independent inbox-placement studies vary. Dedicated IPs are available on higher tiers. | Good and steadily improving; reputation managed via dedicated IP options on paid plans. |
| Operating since | 2023 | 2020 |
| Scheduling | Yes | Yes |
| SDKs | node, python, go, ruby, php, rust, java, elixir, cli | node, python, go, ruby, php |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes |
For a pre-revenue or early-revenue team running a waitlist, a launch announcement, onboarding email, and the first transactional sends, the split is even: Resend takes SDK breadth, MailerSend takes operating track record. Neither pulls ahead on this audience's priorities. On free tier, Resend offers 3,000/mo permanent, capped at 100/day, one domain against 500/mo permanent from MailerSend. That ordering reflects this audience. Weigh the same table differently and the answer changes.
Side by side
| Feature | Resend | MailerSend |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 3,000/mo permanent, capped at 100/day, one domain | 500/mo permanent |
| Starts at | $20/mo for 50,000 emails | $7/mo for 5,000 emails |
| DX score | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Deliverability | Acceptable, but the deliverability track record is shorter than Postmark or SendGrid. Independent inbox-placement studies vary. Dedicated IPs are available on higher tiers. | Good and steadily improving; reputation managed via dedicated IP options on paid plans. |
| SDKs | node, python, go, ruby, php, rust, java, elixir, cli | node, python, go, ruby, php |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes |
| Tagline | Email API tightly coupled to React Email. | Modern transactional API with a clean UI. |
| Pricing model | tiered | tiered |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| SMTP | Yes | Yes |
| Templates | react-email | rich |
| React Email | Yes | No |
| Inbound | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-tenant | No | Yes |
| Idempotency | Yes | No |
| Dedicated IP | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | Early-stage React or Next.js product teams sending under 50k/mo. | Teams that want both API and visual template editing. |
Resend
- ›Idiomatic SDKs across major languages
- ›React Email integration is the smoothest of any provider
- ›Idempotency keys supported
- ›Clean dashboard and event log
- ›Volume pricing is significantly higher than AWS SES at large volumes
- ›Founded 2023, so deliverability track record and incident history are still building
- ›No drag-and-drop template editor; non-React stacks get a thinner experience
- ›Free tier is capped at 100 sends a day, so a 3,000/mo allowance cannot absorb a launch spike
- ›January 2024 breach exposed email metadata, contacts, and encrypted API tokens for all users; message bodies were not reached
- ›Status page logged roughly ten incidents in the three weeks to 2026-08-01, mostly outside the sending path: dashboard, webhooks, domain verification, and automations
- ›Single-region historically; multi-region setup is newer
- ›Smaller support footprint than Twilio SendGrid or Sinch Mailgun
MailerSend
- ›Drag-and-drop templates plus API
- ›Inbound routing supported
- ›Sub-accounts for agencies
- ›Smaller SDK footprint than SendGrid
- ›Brand and ecosystem less recognized than older providers