How to Use Resend: Free Email Limits, Paid Plans and Managed Hosting

What Resend does

Resend is a transactional email platform. A website uses it to send messages triggered by a visitor action: a contact-form notification to the business, a booking confirmation to the visitor, a password-reset message or a status update. It is not the same as a marketing-newsletter platform.

For a normal contact form, the flow is simple: the visitor submits the form, the website validates it, Resend sends an internal notification, and the visitor receives a short confirmation. The two emails have different jobs. The internal message contains the enquiry and follow-up details; the visitor message confirms that their request arrived and explains what happens next.

How to set it up

1. Create a Resend account in an account the client can access.
2. Add and verify the sending domain, such as hello@yourdomain.com.
3. Add the DNS records Resend provides. They prove that Resend may send on behalf of that domain and improve delivery trust.
4. Store the Resend API key only in server-side environment variables.
5. Send a test enquiry using real email addresses. Check the visitor confirmation, the internal notification, the spam folder and the delivery log.
6. Add form validation and spam protection before the form is public.

Resend Free: the $0 plan

Resend Free currently includes 3,000 transactional emails per month, with a daily limit of 100 emails in each UTC calendar day. Both sent and received emails count toward this quota. If one message has several To, CC or BCC recipients, each recipient counts separately.

The Free plan supports three verified domains and retains email data and delivery events for 30 days. It is often enough for a low-volume enquiry form, trial booking confirmation or small appointment flow. It is not unlimited: paid overage is available only on paid subscriptions, so a Free account that reaches its quota must wait for the relevant quota to reset or upgrade before sending continues.

Resend Pro: the paid plan

Resend Pro is Resend’s own paid plan. It currently costs $20/month and includes 50,000 emails per month, 10 verified domains and no daily email limit. Additional email volume is listed at $0.90 per 1,000 emails.

Paid plans can use pay-as-you-go overage after the included monthly quota, but Resend applies a hard limit of five times the monthly quota to prevent extreme bills. If a project consistently exceeds the included amount, moving to a higher tier is usually more predictable than relying on overage.

Choosing the right route

Use Free for a low-volume transactional workflow that stays comfortably below 100 messages a day and 3,000 messages a month. Use Pro when the volume is higher, the daily cap is a risk, more domains are needed or the site needs a paid overage path. Check the current Resend pricing page and quota documentation before choosing.

Prefer us to manage it?

ServicePeak managed hosting is a separate service; it is not a Resend plan. It starts at $19/month per website. If the agreed scope needs paid platform accounts, we pay those account fees as part of the ServicePeak hosting service. If usage becomes high or the site adds new paid services, we explain the change and obtain approval before any cost changes.