The Resend Alternative That Stays Cheap at Scale
Resend got the developer experience right, and plenty of teams are happy there. The bill is what changes their mind: a flat $0.40 per thousand here against $0.90 at Resend, and $149 a month where Resend charges $350 for the same half-million emails.
5,000 emails a month free, then plans from $19/mo with a flat $0.40 per 1,000 emails.
Why Teams Look for an Alternative
Resend is a good product with a clean API and a strong React Email story, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. What we hear from teams arriving here is narrower. The free tier runs out sooner than they expected. The per-thousand rate above the allowance is more than double ours. The features they want next sit on a plan that costs several times what they pay today.
The free plan stops at 100 a day
Resend's free tier is 3,000 emails a month and no more than 100 in a day. A launch day, a password-reset storm, or one backfill job hits that ceiling well before the monthly number matters. Mailfully's free tier is 5,000 a month with a 200-a-day cap, so the same launch fits without a card.
Overage costs more than double
Past the allowance Resend charges $0.90 per 1,000 emails, dropping below that only on Scale plans priced in the hundreds. Mailfully charges a flat $0.40 per 1,000 on every paid plan, at every volume. There is no rate that improves as you spend more, because it starts where Resend's ends up.
A dedicated IP means moving to Scale
Resend puts dedicated IPs on Scale only, at $30 a month, and then requires at least 3,000 sends a day before you qualify. At Mailfully a dedicated IP is a $29 add-on on any paid plan with no volume floor, and it is included outright on Scale.
Marketing email is a second subscription
Resend prices marketing separately, by stored contacts, starting around $40 a month on top of the transactional plan. Mailfully bills marketing and transactional from one allowance on one plan, and the only marketing-specific rule is that a marketing send takes one recipient, so one-click unsubscribe means something.
Mailfully Compared With Resend
| Mailfully | Resend | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 5,000 emails a month, 200 a day | 3,000 emails a month, 100 a day |
| Cheapest paid plan | $19 a month for 50,000 | $20 a month for 50,000 |
| Overage rate | $0.40 per 1,000, flat at every volume | $0.90 per 1,000, improving only on Scale plans |
| 500,000 emails a month | $149 | $350 |
| Dedicated IP | $29 add-on on any paid plan, included on Scale | $30 a month, Scale plans only, needs 3,000+ sends a day |
| Marketing email | Same plan, same allowance | Separate subscription priced by stored contacts |
| Log retention | 30 days, 60 on Growth, 90 on Scale | 30 days on the free plan; paid tiers not published |
| Sending domains | 3 free, 10 on Starter, 25 on Growth, unlimited on Scale | 3 free, 10 on Pro, 1,000 on Scale |
| Single sign-on | Not offered today | $150 a month add-on on Scale, included on Enterprise |
| React Email | Send the rendered HTML from any framework | First-party React Email, built by the same team |
Resend figures checked in September 2026 from its own published pricing and documentation. Published prices change; check both before you commit.
What the Same Volume Costs
| Emails a month | Mailfully | Resend |
|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | $0 | $0 |
| 50,000 | $19 | $20 |
| 100,000 | $39 | $35 |
| 500,000 | $149 | $350 |
| 1,000,000 | $349 | $650 |
Each column takes the cheapest route that vendor offers at that volume, base plan plus overage where that beats the next plan up. Mailfully at 100,000 is Starter plus 50,000 of overage, which Resend's $35 Pro plan beats; we would rather you see the one row we lose than find it yourself after switching. At 1,000,000 Mailfully is Scale plus 500,000 of overage. Resend figures from its published pricing page, checked September 2026.
What Mailfully Does Better
- Best in Class Pricing
- Straightforward plans, published in full. Overage is a flat $0.40 per 1,000 emails at any volume. Marketing email is included in the same allowance.
- Get Real Human Support
- Every paid plan includes support from a real person. When an email goes missing, our team pulls up the message, reads the log, and tells you what happened. Resend reserves its Slack channel and urgent response for Scale and Enterprise customers.
- Extremely Fast Email Delivery
- Your API call returns instantly and the email goes out right behind it. Our servers run in the same AWS region as Amazon SES, so there is no queue to wait in.
- Detailed Logging and History
- Every email keeps a complete history, down to the exact reply from the receiving mail server. When a customer says a receipt never arrived, you see what Gmail said about it. Logs are kept for 30 days on Starter, 60 on Growth, and 90 on Scale, available from the API and the dashboard.
Moving Over
Both APIs take one POST with from, to, subject, and html, so in most codebases the change is the client import, the environment variable, and nothing else. Field names line up. Mailfully returns 202 with an id where Resend returns 200. The SDK hands back a data-or-error result instead of throwing, so a failed send stops being an exception your job runner has to catch.
// Before
// import { Resend } from "resend";
// const resend = new Resend(process.env.RESEND_API_KEY);
// await resend.emails.send({ from, to, subject, html });
import { Mailfully } from "@mailfully/node";
const mailfully = new Mailfully({
apiKey: process.env.MAILFULLY_API_KEY,
});
const { data, error } = await mailfully.emails.send({
from: "you@yourdomain.com",
to: "customer@example.com",
subject: "Welcome aboard",
html: "<p>Thanks for signing up!</p>",
});
// No throw. Handle it as a value.
if (error) return retryLater(error);Questions
- Do I have to move my domain over in one go?
- No. A domain can be verified on both services at once, because DKIM uses separate selectors and both sets of records can live in DNS together. Most teams verify here, move one low-stakes email, watch the logs for a day, then shift the rest at their own pace.
- Is Mailfully built on Amazon SES?
- Yes, and so is Resend. The sending infrastructure underneath is mature and trusted, and neither of us is doing anything novel there. What differs is the layer above it: the exactly-once claim, the per-message logs, the suppression and abuse handling, and the pricing.
- What happens if I go over my plan?
- You keep sending and pay $0.40 per 1,000 extra emails, and the dashboard warns you as you approach the allowance.
- Can I keep using React Email?
- Yes. React Email renders to HTML, and Mailfully takes HTML. Render the component and pass the result as the html field. You lose the first-party integration, not the library.
Send the First One Free
5,000 emails a month on the free tier, no card. Paid plans start at $19/mo with a flat $0.40 per 1,000 emails beyond the allowance.
Start free