SendKernel vs Resend
Resend is an excellent transactional email API with the best developer experience in the category. It bills sending and marketing as two products. We do the same — you can buy either one — at about 10% under their list prices, with an assistant that operates the account and compliance that cannot be skipped.
Competitor pricing verified September 2, 2026 from public pages. Check before switching — everyone's pricing moves.
Choose Resend if
- You want the most polished React email tooling available — React Email is theirs and it is genuinely good.
- You want a large company with a long track record and a big support team behind your API.
- You need SDKs in a language we do not publish yet.
Choose SendKernel if
- You want the same sending/marketing split as Resend, about 10% cheaper.
- You want an assistant that operates the account rather than a dashboard you have to learn.
- You want compliance enforced by the product — one-click unsubscribe, injected postal address, mandatory DMARC — instead of documented and left to you.
- You want to spend $18 for 50k transactional emails, or $54 for that plus 5,000 contacts, rather than Resend's $20 / $60.
Side by side
| Resend | SendKernel | |
|---|---|---|
| Sending only (50k emails) | $20/mo | $18/mo |
| Marketing only (5k contacts) | $40/mo | $36/mo |
| Both (50k emails + 5k contacts) | $60/mo (two products) | $54/mo |
| Both (100k emails + 25k contacts) | $215/mo (two products) | $195/mo |
| Free tier | 3,000 emails/mo | 2,000 emails + 500 contacts |
| Transactional API | Yes | Yes |
| Broadcast to audiences | Yes, billed separately | Yes, marketing product |
| Assistant that runs the account | No | Yes |
| RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe | Yes | Yes |
| DMARC required before sending | No | Yes |
| React Email templates | First-class | Plain HTML |
| SDK breadth | Many languages | REST + fetch |
Questions people actually ask
- Is this a Resend clone?
- No. The overlap is that both send email over Amazon SES with a modern interface. The product decisions diverge immediately after that: Resend optimizes for developers integrating an API, this optimizes for a small team running both transactional and marketing mail through one assistant-driven interface.
- How can you be cheaper?
- About 10% on each product, on purpose. Amazon SES costs $0.10 per thousand emails. Resend Pro is $20 for 50,000 transactional emails; we charge $18. Resend Marketing is $40 for 5,000 contacts; we charge $36. Buy one or both. We also do not run a sales team.
- Can I migrate from Resend?
- Export your audiences as CSV and import them here, then re-verify your sending domain with the DNS records we give you. Your existing DKIM records for Resend can stay while you test — a domain can carry multiple DKIM selectors at once.
Try it before you migrate anything
The free plan does not expire. Verify a domain, import a small segment, and send one campaign before you move your list.
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