# Resend

> My email service. Transactional and marketing on one platform, built for developers and agents.

- Verdict: My default
- Vendor: Resend
- Layer: [Email](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/email.md). Job: Transactional and marketing email
- Last reviewed: 18 October 2026, by Nicolas Dao (Cloudless Labs, Sydney)
- Web page: https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/resend/. The whole stack in one file: https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/brief.md

I picked Resend and I'm not switching. Idempotency keys, scheduled sending and signed webhooks out of the box, no sandbox to argue my way out of, about three times cheaper than Postmark in the middle range, and marketing email on the same platform. One vendor, one API, one bill.

## Use it when

- Any app that sends email: sign-up, receipts, alerts.
- Newsletters and product announcements to contact lists, from the same account.
- Agents that send or manage email: there's an official MCP server and CLI.

## Don't use it when

- Clients whose data must stay in Australia: Resend stores data in the US. Use SES in Sydney.

## Pricing

Transactional: $20 a month for 10k emails, $35 for 100k, $650 for 1M. Marketing: $40 a month for 5k contacts, $180 for 25k, $450 for 100k.

## Gotchas, with fixes

- **Gotcha:** Young company (founded 2023).
  **Fix:** Keep sending behind one small module of your own so a switch would be a day's work, not a rewrite.
- **Gotcha:** The Terraform provider is community-maintained.
  **Fix:** Pin its version and keep templates in code, not in IaC.

## Provisioning

Pulumi via a Terraform provider · Community Terraform provider

Community Terraform provider (jhoward321/resend) used from Pulumi via `pulumi package add terraform-provider`; manages domains, API keys, audiences, webhooks. Pin the version. Templates and contact lists aren't managed by IaC.

## Instead, consider

- [Amazon SES](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/aws-ses/index.md): Australian data residency, or the cheapest bulk volume.
- [Postmark](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/postmark/index.md): Not for me.

## Worked examples

- [Better Auth or Cognito?](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/guides/sign-in/index.md): Which sign-in should my app use, and what do I actually get for free?

## Where it fits

- [Sending email](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/use-cases/email.md): pick 1. Both, on one platform, with an MCP server for agents.
- [Sign-in and identity](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/use-cases/sign-in.md): pick 3. Sends Better Auth's reset, verification and magic-link emails.

## Sources

- [Resend pricing](https://resend.com/pricing)

## Related

- [Email](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/email.md): every tool in this layer, with its verdict
- [The whole stack in one file](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/brief.md): every use case and tool, for questions that span many
- [Map of every Markdown file on cloudlesslabs.com, with what each one answers](https://ask.cloudlesslabs.com)