React Email vs Resend: Understanding the Modern Email Stack

What Each Tool Does

React Email: Template Building

React Email is an open-source library for building email templates using React components. It provides a component library, development server with hot reload, and tools to render React components to email-compatible HTML.

Key capabilities:

• Write emails as React components with JSX
• TypeScript support for type safety
• Preview emails during development
• Render to HTML for any sending provider
• Component library with common email elements

Resend: Email Delivery

Resend is an email API service for sending transactional and marketing emails. It handles delivery, including authentication, deliverability optimization, and analytics.

Key capabilities:

• RESTful API for sending emails
• SDKs for multiple languages
• Domain verification and authentication
• Delivery analytics and webhooks
• Native React Email integration

How They Work Together

The intended workflow combines both tools: use React Email to build your templates, then use Resend to send them. This creates a seamless developer experience where you write templates in React and send them through a modern API.

// Build template with React Email
import WelcomeEmail from './emails/welcome';

// Send with Resend
import { Resend } from 'resend';
const resend = new Resend('re_123456789');

await resend.emails.send({
  from: 'hello@example.com',
  to: 'user@example.com',
  subject: 'Welcome!',
  react: WelcomeEmail({ name: 'John' })
});

Using Them Independently

React Email Without Resend

You can use React Email to build templates and send them through any email provider. Render your React components to HTML, then send via SendGrid, Mailgun, AWS SES, or any other service.

import { render } from '@react-email/render';
import WelcomeEmail from './emails/welcome';

// Render to HTML
const html = await render(WelcomeEmail({ name: 'John' }));

// Send via any provider
await sendgrid.send({
  to: 'user@example.com',
  html: html
});

Resend Without React Email

Resend accepts HTML strings, so you can use it with templates built any way: MJML, handlebars, plain HTML, or any other method.

await resend.emails.send({
  from: 'hello@example.com',
  to: 'user@example.com',
  subject: 'Welcome!',
  html: '<h1>Welcome, John!</h1>'
});

Resend Pricing

Resend offers a generous free tier and competitive pricing:

• Free: 3,000 emails/month, 100/day limit
• Pro: From $20/month for 50,000 emails
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for high volume

When to Consider Alternatives

The React Email and Resend combination works well for developer-heavy teams comfortable with code-based workflows. However, it requires technical skills and time investment to build templates.

For teams that need professional templates quickly without coding, Sequenzy offers AI-powered template generation. Describe what you need, and Sequenzy creates brand-matched templates automatically, including the automation to send them.

Sequenzy serves teams who want professional results without dedicating engineering time to email template development. It is a different approach than code-first tools, prioritizing speed and accessibility over technical control.

Recommendation

For development teams already working in React who want code-level control over templates, React Email with Resend provides a modern, developer-friendly stack. The tools work well together and represent the current state of the art for code-based email.

For everyone else, consider whether the development investment is worthwhile. Sequenzy produces professional templates faster, without requiring React knowledge or ongoing code maintenance.