Resend vs Userlist
Pricing
Resend: Free up to 3,000 emails/mo, then from $20/mo
Userlist: From $99/mo
Description
Resend: Modern email API that developers actually enjoy using
Userlist: Email automation built specifically for SaaS
Pros
- 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
- SaaS-focused (not generic marketing)
- Behavior-based campaigns
- Company-level tracking
Cons
- 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
- Pricier than generic tools
- Smaller ecosystem
Details
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.
Userlist is email automation that actually understands SaaS. Track users AND companies, trigger emails based on product usage, run onboarding sequences that adapt to behavior. Built by Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke specifically because generic email tools don’t get SaaS.
Verified
