A Resend alternative that doesn't tax you for growing

Side by side

Both services are transactional email APIs. Both — and this is verifiable from the DNS records each asks you to publish — send through AWS SES. The differences are price, packaging, and focus.

Resend figures are as published on their pricing page (resend.com) at the time of writing. Pricing changes — verify current pricing on resend.com before deciding.

Why the price gap exists

There's no trick here. AWS SES is one of the cheapest ways to send email that exists, and both products sit on top of it. Resend spends its margin on a broader product: template tooling, broadcasts, a large team. MailFleet keeps the layer above SES deliberately thin — one send endpoint, domains, keys, webhooks, logs — and passes the difference to you. At 50,000 emails a month you keep $10 of the difference every month; the gap widens as your volume grows. If you outgrow the Starter plan, 200,000 emails are $29/mo and a million are $99/mo, SSO included.

When Resend is the better choice

• You build emails with React Email. Resend created and maintains the React Email ecosystem, and the integration between the two is first-class. If your templates live in React components, that workflow is hard to beat.
• You also want marketing email.Resend has broadcasts, audiences and contact management. MailFleet deliberately doesn't — we're transactional-only (see our Acceptable Use Policy), so one-tool teams may prefer Resend.
• You want the bigger team and longer track record. Resend is a well-funded company with a large community. If vendor maturity is a top criterion, that matters, and we won't pretend otherwise.

When MailFleet is the better choice

• Price per email. 50,000 emails cost $10/mo here versus $20/mo on Resend Pro. At 200,000 emails, our Pro plan is $29/mo. Same underlying SES infrastructure, half the bill or better.
• Enterprise features at a flat price. SAML/SSO, audit logs and a 99.9% SLA are line items on our $99/mo Business plan. On Resend they sit on the Enterprise tier behind a sales conversation and custom pricing. When your first big customer demands SSO, you check a box instead of booking a call.
• Tenant isolation by default.Every MailFleet customer sends from an isolated SES tenant, so another customer's bad list can't drag your deliverability down with it.

Migrating is a five-minute diff

The payload shape is nearly identical — from, to, subject, html. Swap the URL and the API key, re-verify your domain with 3 DKIM CNAME records, and you're sending. Delivery webhooks and an SMTP relay are there too if you use them. Since both services send through SES, your recipients see mail signed by your domain either way — deliverability doesn't reset when you switch. Full details in the API docs.

curl https://api.resend.com/emails \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer re_xxxxxxxx" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "from": "Acme <hello@acme.com>",
    "to": "customer@example.com",
    "subject": "Your receipt",
    "html": "<p>Thanks for your order!</p>"
  }'

curl https://mailfleet.dev/api/v1/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer mf_live_xxxxxxxx" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "from": "Acme <hello@acme.com>",
    "to": "customer@example.com",
    "subject": "Your receipt",
    "html": "<p>Thanks for your order!</p>"
  }'