EmailOctopus vs Resend
Pricing
EmailOctopus: Free up to 2,500 subs, from $9/mo
Resend: Free up to 3,000 emails/mo, then from $20/mo
Description
EmailOctopus: Simple, affordable email marketing
Resend: Modern email API that developers actually enjoy using
Pros
- 1/3 the price of Mailchimp for comparable features
- Free tier covers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month
- Simple interface that does not try to be a CRM
- 3,000 free emails/month, enough for most early-stage products
- Clean, simple API that takes minutes to integrate, not hours
- Built by the creator of React Email: the DX is noticeably better than SendGrid or SES
Cons
- Automation is basic: no complex branching or conditional workflows
- Email template library is small compared to Mailchimp or MailerLite
- Free tier holds fewer subscribers than Kit (formerly ConvertKit), which allows 10,000
- Younger service: smaller ecosystem and fewer battle-tested edge cases
- No visual email template builder: you design emails in code (React Email)
- Deliverability is good but has not been tested at the same scale as Postmark or SendGrid
Details
EmailOctopus offers email marketing at roughly a third of Mailchimp’s price. Built on Amazon SES for reliable delivery at low cost.
Bootstrapped to $3M ARR by Jonathan Bull and Tom Evans. Remote team of 9, serving 92,000+ organizations across 119 countries.
Resend is what happens when someone who hated the existing email APIs built a new one. Created by Zeno Rocha (who also built React Email), it focuses on developer experience above everything else. The API is clean, the docs are clear, and you can have transactional emails working in your app in about 15 minutes.
The free tier of 3,000 emails per month covers most solo founders for months. When you outgrow it, $20/month gets you 50,000 emails. If you value developer experience and clean code over the battle-tested reliability of Postmark or the scale of SendGrid, Resend is the pick.
Verified
