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Which vendor is cheapest at 100,000 transactional emails a month?

Amazon SES on a la carte pricing at $10.00 a month: 100,000 divided by 1,000 times $0.10. Resend Pro with overage is $65.00 a month and Postmark Platform is $126.00 a month. SES is 6.5 times cheaper than Resend and 12.6 times cheaper than Postmark at that volume, before the engineering cost of running SES yourself.

At what volume does Postmark Pro become cheaper than Postmark Basic?

At 13,000 emails a month. Basic is $15.00 with $1.80 overage per 1,000 and Pro is $16.50 with $1.30 overage per 1,000, so the $1.50 base gap closes once 3,000 overage emails save $0.50 per 1,000. Platform beats Pro above 25,000 emails a month, where its $1.20 overage rate repays its $1.50 higher base.

Does Resend Scale ever beat Resend Pro on price?

No, not on price alone. Both plans charge the same $0.90 overage per 1,000 emails, so Pro with overage is $25.00 a month cheaper than Scale with overage at every volume above 100,000. Scale is bought for its features — 1,000 domains, Slack support and dedicated-IP eligibility — not for a lower bill.

What does a dedicated IP cost on each vendor?

Resend charges $30.00 a month on Scale only, for senders above 3,000 emails a day. Postmark charges from $50.00 a month per IP on Pro or higher, for senders of 300,000 or more emails a month. Amazon SES charges $24.95 a month per IP for a standard dedicated IP you warm yourself, or $15.00 a month plus $0.08 per 1,000 emails for a managed one.

Do any of the three vendors offer an annual discount?

No. Resend states in its pricing FAQ that it only provides monthly plans. Postmark states it does not offer annual plans right now. Amazon SES is pay-as-you-go with no annual billing option. Every annual total in this playbook is the monthly price times 12, with no discount applied.

Which vendor has the most generous free tier?

Resend, by a wide margin: 3,000 emails a month free, capped at 100 a day. Postmark gives 100 emails a month on its free developer plan with no overages allowed. Amazon SES lists no free email allowance on its current pricing page — new AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits instead.

Software Reviews • 12 min read

Resend vs Postmark vs Amazon SES: Transactional Email Pricing, Deliverability and the 10k/100k/1M Playbook

Resend sells flat tiers, Postmark sells a cheap base plus steep overage, and Amazon SES sells raw usage at $0.10 per 1,000 emails — and that one difference decides the bill more than any headline price. This playbook prices all three from their own pricing pages, works the 10k, 100k and 1M totals, and names the volume where each vendor stops being the cheap option.

By Enow A. Jovial • Published 2026-11-14

Resend, Postmark, and Amazon SES all deliver the same password reset — a triggered message that must arrive in seconds — but they do not sell it the same way. Resend sells flat monthly tiers with a hard included allowance. Postmark sells a cheap base with a steep per-thousand overage rate. Amazon SES sells raw usage at $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no monthly fee. That one difference decides the bill: at 10,000 emails a month the three cost $20.00, $15.00, and $1.00; at 1,000,000, $875.00, $1,206.00, and $100.00. Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 14 November 2026.

The cheapest workable monthly bill at 100,000 emails is $10.00 on Amazon SES a la carte, $65.00 on Resend Pro with overage, $126.00 on Postmark Platform. At 1,000,000 emails the bills are $100.00, $875.00, $1,206.00. SES is 8.75 times cheaper than Resend and 12.06 times cheaper than Postmark — and the gap is the product: SES sells raw sending; the other two sell the dashboard around it.

The billing model is the whole decision

Resend is a tier with a cliff: $20 a month for 50,000 emails, then $0.90 per 1,000 more — but only if pay-as-you-go is switched on. Postmark is a low base with expensive overage: every paid plan starts at the same 10,000 included emails, and the plan sets the overage rate. SES is a meter: $0.10 per 1,000 emails, no base, no cliff.

Resend: priced per tier, generous at the bottom

Free costs $0: 3,000 emails a month, capped at 100 a day, 3 domains, 30-day retention. Pro costs $20 a month: 50,000 emails, overage at $0.90 per 1,000, 10 domains, no daily limit. Scale costs $90 a month: 100,000 emails, the same $0.90 overage, 1,000 domains. Enterprise is a custom quote.

Labelled reproduction of the Resend pricing tiers

Resend's free tier is the most generous of the three — 3,000 emails a month against Postmark's 100 — but it ends hard at 100 emails a day, and there is no plan between Free and Pro: the jump from $0 to $20 happens at 3,001. A dedicated IP costs $30 a month on Scale only, for senders above 3,000 emails a day. There is no annual discount — monthly plans only.

Postmark: priced by overage, cheapest base, dearest extra thousand

The free developer plan costs $0: 100 emails a month, no overages allowed, and it does not expire. Basic costs $15 a month: 10,000 emails, overage at $1.80 per 1,000, 5 domains, 45-day retention. Pro costs $16.50 a month: the same 10,000 included emails, overage at $1.30 per 1,000, 10 domains, inbound processing. Platform costs $18 a month: the same 10,000 included emails, overage at $1.20 per 1,000, unlimited domains and users.

Labelled reproduction of the Postmark pricing tiers

All three paid plans include the same 10,000 emails, so the plan choice is really an overage-rate choice. Basic looks cheapest at $15, but its $1.80 overage rate is the highest, and it stops being cheapest at 13,000 a month. Platform beats Pro above 25,000 a month. Unused emails do not roll over, there are no annual plans, and Postmark accepts card payments only.

Amazon SES: priced by the meter, cheapest by far, barest by design

SES a la carte costs $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails, with no monthly fee and no minimum: attachments add $0.12 per gigabyte, inbound email costs $0.10 per 1,000. Since July 2026 AWS also sells three named plans. Essentials costs $0.16 per 1,000 with no monthly fee. Pro costs $0.22 per 1,000 plus $105 a month per account per region. Enterprise costs $0.23 per 1,000 plus $500 a month. New SES accounts default to Essentials from 21 July 2026; a switch to a la carte is possible at any time.

Labelled reproduction of the Amazon SES pricing plans

SES is raw sending infrastructure, not a finished product: no visual template editor, no campaign builder, no open-rate dashboard. The sender builds suppression handling, bounce processing, and templating in their own code. A standard dedicated IP costs $24.95 a month per IP and the sender warms it manually; a managed one costs $15 a month per account plus $0.08 per 1,000.

Two cautions. Postmark's page also carries a volume calculator, and secondary guides report it quotes lower volume-tiered base prices than the printed formula used here — $55 a month at 50,000 emails against $87.00 from the formula. A Resend Pro tier at $35 a month for 100,000 emails appears in secondary guides but not on the pricing page as read this cycle.

The decision table

Factor	Resend	Postmark	Amazon SES	Authority
Billing model	Flat monthly tier	Low base + overage	Pure usage meter	Vendor pricing pages
Free allowance	3,000/mo, 100/day	100/mo	$200 AWS credits, new customers	Vendor pricing pages
Entry paid price	Pro $20/mo, 50,000	Basic $15/mo, 10,000	$0.10/1,000	Vendor pricing pages
Overage per 1,000	$0.90	$1.80/$1.30/$1.20	None	Vendor pricing pages
Dedicated IP	$30/mo, Scale, 3,000+/day	From $50/mo, Pro+, 300,000+/mo	$24.95 standard; $15 + $0.08/1,000	Vendor pricing pages
DKIM/SPF/DMARC	Generated DKIM + SPF, DMARC by user	Listed; DMARC monitoring $14/mo	Easy DKIM, 2048-bit	Vendor docs

The reproducible math: 10k, 100k, and 1M emails

\text{Resend monthly} = \text{Base} + \frac{\max(0, V - \text{Included})}{1,000} \times \$0.90

\text{Postmark monthly} = \text{Base} + \frac{\max(0, V - 10,000)}{1,000} \times \text{Overage rate}

\text{SES monthly} = \frac{V}{1,000} \times \$0.10

\text{Effective cost per 1,000} = \frac{\text{Monthly bill}}{V / 1,000}

— A1, Resend at 10,000: Free caps at 3,000 a month and 100 a day, so Pro is required — $20.00 a month, $2.00 per 1,000.

— A1, Resend at 100,000: Pro with overage is $20.00 + (100,000 − 50,000) ÷ 1,000 × $0.90 = $65.00 a month. Scale flat is $90.00; $0.65 per 1,000.

— A1, Resend at 1,000,000: Pro with overage is $20.00 + 950 × $0.90 = $875.00 a month. Scale with overage is $90.00 + 900 × $0.90 = $900.00 a month.

— A2, Postmark at 10,000: Basic $15.00 a month; Pro $16.50; Platform $18.00; $1.50 per 1,000 on Basic.

— A2, Postmark at 100,000: Basic $15.00 + 90 × $1.80 = $177.00; Pro $16.50 + 90 × $1.30 = $133.50; Platform $18.00 + 90 × $1.20 = $126.00.

— A2, Postmark at 1,000,000: Basic $15.00 + 990 × $1.80 = $1,797.00; Pro $16.50 + 990 × $1.30 = $1,303.50; Platform $18.00 + 990 × $1.20 = $1,206.00.

— A3, SES a la carte at 10,000: 10 × $0.10 = $1.00 a month.

— A3, SES a la carte at 100,000: 100 × $0.10 = $10.00 a month. Essentials $16.00; Pro $127.00.

— A3, SES a la carte at 1,000,000: 1,000 × $0.10 = $100.00 a month, $1,200.00 a year. Essentials $160.00; Pro $325.00; Enterprise $730.00.

Labelled reproduction of the worked monthly totals at 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 emails

— A4, the SES multiple: at 1,000,000, $875.00 ÷ $100.00 is 8.75 times; $1,206.00 ÷ $100.00 is 12.06 times. At 100,000 the multiples are 6.5 and 12.6 times.

— A5, Postmark break-evens: Basic against Pro is $15.00 + 0.0018 × (V − 10,000) = $16.50 + 0.0013 × (V − 10,000), which solves to V = 13,000 a month; Pro against Platform, V = 25,000.

— A5, Resend Pro against Scale: both charge the same $0.90 overage, so Pro with overage minus Scale with overage is ($20.00 − $90.00) + 0.0009 × 50,000 = −$25.00 a month at every volume above 100,000. There is no price break-even.

— A6, annual totals: Resend Pro route at 1,000,000 is $10,500.00 a year; Postmark Platform is $14,472.00; SES a la carte is $1,200.00. Switching to SES a la carte saves $9,300.00 a year from Resend, $13,272.00 from Postmark Platform.

— A7, dedicated-IP amortisation: Resend's $30.00 IP on Scale at 100,000 adds $0.30 per 1,000, taking Scale plus IP to $120.00. Postmark's $50.00 IP at 1,000,000 adds $0.05 per 1,000, taking Platform plus IP to $1,256.00. SES standard IP at 1,000,000 takes a la carte from $100.00 to $124.95; managed IP costs $95.00 on top of sending, $195.00 total.

— A8, effective cost per 1,000: Resend is U-shaped — $2.00 at 10,000, $0.40 at 50,000, $0.65 at 100,000, $0.875 at 1,000,000. Postmark Platform falls from $1.80 at 10,000 to $1.206 at 1,000,000. SES a la carte is flat at $0.10.

— A9, SES attachment data: 100,000 emails at 32 KB each is 3.2 GB, and 3.2 × $0.12 = $0.38 a month against a $10.00 bill. At 1,000,000 emails the data charge is $3.84 a month. Resend and Postmark list no per-gigabyte attachment charge.

Deliverability and reputation: shared pools, dedicated IPs, and the warm-up bill

No vendor here publishes an inbox-placement percentage on its pricing page, so this playbook makes no such claim. On Resend's Free and Pro plans you send from a shared IP pool, and Resend states it maintains the shared IPs in good standing. A dedicated IP is available only on Scale, above 3,000 emails a day, warmed and monitored by Resend for $30 a month. On Postmark the shared pool is the default too; dedicated IPs start at $50 a month on Pro or higher, for senders of 300,000 or more a month. On SES the shared pool is the default; a standard dedicated IP costs $24.95 a month with manual warm-up.

The failure mode is buying the cheapest bill and discovering the reputation bill in the second month: a sender who moves 100,000 password resets a month onto SES a la carte for $10.00, then sends them from a cold dedicated IP with no warm-up plan, will watch resets land in spam. The reverse failure is worse: a sender who buys Postmark Platform for its reputation, then discovers its $1.20 overage rate turns a 1,000,000-email month into a $1,206.00 bill, has paid twelve times the SES sending cost for a gain no vendor quantifies.

Authentication is the same job on all three. Resend generates the DNS records for each domain — a DKIM TXT record at resend._domainkey, an SPF TXT and an MX record on a send subdomain — and the domain often verifies within 15 minutes, though DNS can take up to 72 hours. The DMARC record is the sender's job. Postmark lists DKIM, SPF, and DMARC authentication on its pricing page. SES Easy DKIM signs with a 2048-bit key by default and publishes three CNAME records. Suppression is where the vendors part company: Postmark manages it automatically, Resend surfaces bounces and complaints through signed webhooks the sender must consume, and SES leaves it to the sender's code unless the Virtual Deliverability Manager is bought at $0.07 per 1,000.

API and developer experience

Resend is built for a TypeScript and React stack: official SDKs from Node.js to Rust, templates as React components, a batch API that sends up to 100 emails in one request, and webhooks for delivery events. Its API rate limit is set per team and is the same on every plan. Postmark offers a REST API and SMTP, official SDKs, sandbox mode, and inbound email processing that turns an incoming message into a JSON object posted to a webhook — a Pro and Platform feature, not a Basic one. SES offers a REST API and SMTP through the AWS SDKs, with sending scoped per AWS region; templates, suppression lists, and dashboards are built by the sender. The difference is staffing: Resend and Postmark are products a single developer can run; SES needs an engineer who owns the pipeline.

The buying protocol

Measure thirty days of real volume first — transactional sends only.
Price your volume on all three with the formulas above, at your 10th and 90th percentile months.
Check the free-tier ceiling against your worst single day: Resend Free stops at 100 emails a day; Postmark Free stops at 100 a month.
Run the Postmark break-even check: below 13,000 emails a month Basic is cheapest; between 13,000 and 25,000 Pro is; above 25,000 Platform is.
Decide the IP question before the first send: below 300,000 emails a month, stay on the shared pool; above it, price the dedicated IP into the monthly total.
Verify the domain and read the headers before going live: add the DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records, send one real message to a Gmail account, and confirm all three pass.

Who should not buy which

A team sending under 3,000 emails a month with no engineer to spare should not buy SES — the $1.00 bill is real, but suppression handling is the sender's job. A team whose volume sits between 50,000 and 100,000 emails a month should not buy Resend Scale for price — Pro with overage is $25.00 a month cheaper. A team sending over 300,000 emails a month that needs a dedicated IP should not buy Postmark Basic — it needs Pro or higher. A team that needs inbound email processing should not buy Postmark Basic either. A team whose volume swings wildly month to month should not buy Postmark without running its calculator first.

Founder & CEO Insight — Enow A. Jovial

"The vendors want you to compare the monthly price. That is the wrong comparison. Compare the billing model first — flat tier, overage rate, or meter — because a team that sends 100,000 emails pays $10 on one vendor and $126 on another for the same password reset. I have watched teams buy the cheapest seat and pay the real price in the third month, when the overage invoice lands. Price your worst month, not your average one, and do not let a vendor hold your sender reputation without an exit plan."

— Enow A. Jovial, Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Execution checklist

[x] Measure thirty days of transactional volume.
[x] Price the 10th and 90th percentile months on all three vendors.
[x] Check the free-tier ceiling against the worst day.
[x] Run the Postmark break-even check: Basic below 13,000, Platform above 25,000.
[x] Decide the dedicated-IP question before the first send.
[x] Verify DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, then read one real message's headers.

Start on the vendor with the cheapest bill at your real volume, not the cheapest headline: at 10,000 emails a month that is SES a la carte at $1.00 if you have the engineer, Resend Pro at $20.00 if you do not.