Resend vs Amazon SES for Solo Developers

Amazon SES is the cheapest email sending service on the planet. Resend is one of the most pleasant to use. For solo developers, the question is whether saving a few dollars a month is worth the extra configuration and AWS complexity. This comparison breaks down exactly what you get with each.

Resend Overview

Resend is a developer-focused email API built for modern web applications. It provides a clean REST API, native React Email support for building templates with JSX, and SDKs for every major language. The focus is on making email sending as straightforward as possible.

Setup takes minutes. Verify your domain, grab your API key, and send your first email with a single API call. The dashboard shows delivery status, opens, and clicks without any additional configuration. Everything just works.

The free tier includes 3,000 emails per month with 100 per day. Paid plans start at $20/month for 50,000 emails. Pricing is predictable and easy to understand.

Amazon SES Overview

Amazon Simple Email Service is AWS's email sending platform. It is designed for high-volume transactional and marketing email at rock-bottom prices. SES handles sending, receiving, and managing email at any scale, from a few hundred to millions of emails per day.

The pricing is what draws most people in: $0.10 per 1,000 emails. If you are running on EC2, the first 62,000 emails per month are free. At scale, nothing else comes close on cost.

The tradeoff is the AWS experience. Setting up SES involves navigating the AWS console, requesting production access (you start in a sandbox that can only send to verified addresses), configuring IAM policies, setting up DKIM and SPF records, and potentially dealing with sending quotas. The initial setup can take hours if you are not already familiar with AWS.

SES also provides fewer guardrails. You are responsible for managing your sending reputation, handling bounces and complaints, and monitoring deliverability. AWS gives you the raw infrastructure but not the hand-holding.

Comparison Table

When to Pick Resend

Resend is the better choice when developer experience and speed matter more than per-email cost:

• You want to be sending production emails in under 15 minutes.
• Clean API design and modern SDKs are important to your workflow.
• React Email templates appeal to you for building maintainable email designs.
• You do not want to deal with AWS IAM policies, sandbox restrictions, or CloudWatch for monitoring.
• Your email volume is moderate (under 50,000/month) and the pricing difference is negligible.
• You are not already invested in the AWS ecosystem.

For most solo developers sending a few thousand emails a month, the price difference between Resend and SES is less than $10. The hours saved on setup and maintenance are worth far more.

When to Pick Amazon SES

Amazon SES makes sense when cost is the primary concern or you are already deep in the AWS ecosystem:

• You are sending high volumes (100K+ emails/month) and the cost savings are meaningful.
• You are already running on AWS and comfortable with IAM, SNS, and the AWS console.
• You need inbound email processing (SES can receive emails and trigger Lambda functions).
• You want maximum control over your email infrastructure and sending reputation.
• Dedicated IPs for sender reputation isolation are important to your use case.

SES is also the right choice if your project might scale to millions of emails. At that volume, the cost difference is substantial, and SES handles it without breaking a sweat.

Verdict

Resend wins for solo developers who value their time. The setup is faster, the API is cleaner, the dashboard is friendlier, and the developer experience is leagues ahead of SES. For typical solo developer volumes (hundreds to low thousands of emails per month), the cost difference is trivial.

Amazon SES wins on raw economics at scale. If you are sending 100,000+ emails monthly and you are already comfortable with AWS, SES saves real money. But if you are a solo developer starting a new project and debating between the two, ask yourself honestly: is saving $15/month worth spending an afternoon fighting AWS IAM policies and sandbox restrictions? For most of us, the answer is no. Ship with Resend, and revisit the decision if your email volume ever makes SES pricing genuinely attractive.