Email hosting / emails your app sends

The free tier is the bait. Price your app’s email.

Sign-in links, password resets, receipts: every app sends email from its own domain. Pick how many a month and see what each service costs over two years, including where free tiers stop.

Emails your app sends a month

Cheapest for 10,000 emails a month: Amazon SES À la carte, $24.00 over 2 years ($1.00/mo).

  1. Amazon SES À la carteCheapest
    Pay per email: $0.10 per 1,000

    Cheapest per email, but not the default: new SES accounts start on the Essentials plan ($0.16 per 1,000) and must switch. No free email quota; attachments cost $0.12 per GB.

    $24.002 yrs · $1.00/moSet up DNSPricingSign up →
  2. MailerSend Hobby 5k
    5,000 emails/mo included$1.50 per 1,000 extra

    Yearly billing is 10% cheaper.

    $348.002 yrs · $14.50/moSet up DNSPricingSign up →
  3. Mailgun Basic 10k
    10,000 emails/mo included$1.80 per 1,000 extra

    1 domain.

    $360.002 yrs · $15.00/moSet up DNSPricingSign up →
  4. Postmark Basic 10k
    10,000 emails/mo included$1.80 per 1,000 extra

    Known for fast delivery of transactional mail; Pro and Platform plans add features for more.

    $360.002 yrs · $15.00/moSet up DNSPricingSign up →
  5. SMTP2GO Starter 10k
    10,000 emails/mo included$1.20 per 1,000 extra

    Yearly billing: two months free.

    $360.002 yrs · $15.00/moPricing
  6. Brevo Starter 10k
    10,000 emails/mo includedNo overage: move up a plan

    Starter covers marketing and transactional email. Prices can vary by region; yearly billing saves 10%.

    $408.002 yrs · $17.00/moPricing
  7. SendGrid Essentials 50k
    50,000 emails/mo included$1.30 per 1,000 extra

    The free option is a 60-day trial (100 a day), not a lasting plan.

    $478.802 yrs · $19.95/moSet up DNSPricingSign up →
  8. Resend Pro 50k
    50,000 emails/mo included$0.90 per 1,000 extra

    No daily limit, 10 domains.

    $480.002 yrs · $20.00/moSet up DNSPricingSign up →

Published USD prices, billed monthly, checked on the date shown on each source. Taxes, dedicated IPs and add-ons are extra. Ranked by the cost of sending this many emails for two years; some sign-up links are affiliate links and never change the order.

How to read this

  • Transactional email is mail your app sends to one person because they did something: signed in, reset a password, bought something. It needs a sending service; your inbox provider isn’t built for it.
  • Free tiers often cap the day as well as the month. A launch day can hit the daily cap long before the monthly one.
  • Send from a subdomain such as send.yourdomain.com when you can. A spam problem there doesn’t hurt the mail people send from your main address.
  • Picked one? The launch kit gives you its DNS records (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) and checks them live, alongside your website and inbox.