Resend vs SES for a startup

For most startups, the choice is basically:

• Resend if you want the fastest path to good-looking product emails
• SES if you want lowest cost and maximum control
• Use both if you want simple developer experience now and a cheaper fallback later

Quick recommendation

Pick Resend if:

• You’re a small team and want to move fast
• You send mostly transactional emails: signups, password resets, receipts, alerts
• You care about a clean developer experience
• You want nice tooling for templates, previews, logs, and API ergonomics
• You don’t want to spend time on AWS setup, IAM, DNS complexity, or deliverability plumbing

Pick SES if:

• Email volume is high and cost matters a lot
• You already use AWS heavily
• You have someone comfortable with AWS, IAM, SES config, and DNS
• You want to optimize for scale + pricing
• You’re okay building more of the email experience yourself

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The real tradeoff

Resend

Pros

• Very easy to integrate
• Better UX for developers
• Great for product emails and modern apps
• Less operational overhead
• Easier templates, logs, and testing flow
• Good choice when email is not your core competency

Cons

• Typically more expensive than SES
• Less “infrastructure-level” control than AWS
• If you scale a lot, cost can become meaningful

SES

Pros

• Extremely cheap
• Mature, reliable, and scalable
• Good for high-volume sending
• Strong fit if you already live in AWS

Cons

• Setup can be annoying
• Deliverability and domain configuration are more manual
• Developer experience is more barebones
• Templates/logging/preview tooling are not as pleasant out of the box

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Startup decision framework

If you are pre-seed / seed

Go with Resend unless:

• you’re sending very high volume, or
• your team already knows AWS well

At this stage, engineering time is usually more expensive than email provider cost.

If you’re sending millions of emails/month

Consider SES or a hybrid approach:

• Resend for critical product emails
• SES for bulk/low-priority sends

If email is mission-critical

Choose the provider that lets you monitor:

• bounce rate
• complaint rate
• delivery logs
• suppression lists
• domain reputation

Both can do this, but SES gives more raw control; Resend gives a nicer experience.

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My practical take

For a startup building a SaaS app, I’d usually recommend:

Start with Resend. Switch or augment with SES later if cost becomes a problem.

Why?

• Faster launch
• Less setup friction
• Better dev experience
• Email usually isn’t the thing that should slow your product down

The exception is if you already know you’ll send huge volumes from day one. Then SES may be the smarter economic choice.

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Rule of thumb

• < 100k emails/month: Resend is often worth it for simplicity
• 100k–1M+ emails/month: SES becomes increasingly attractive on cost
• Complex AWS stack already in place: SES
• Small team, need to ship now: Resend

If you want, I can also give you a side-by-side comparison table or a decision based on your expected monthly volume and use case.