Look for an email service for your product and you'll find a long list of names. They can all send your mail. The differences are in pricing model, setup effort, and what kind of team each one suits.
Prices and policies change quickly. The information below comes from public material as of November 2026 and is only meant to compare approaches. Check each provider's website for current details.
The overview in one table
| Service | Highlights | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon SES | Pay as you go at a very low unit price (about $0.10 per thousand). You must request to leave the sandbox, and the console is low-level | Teams that know AWS, send at high volume, and are happy to build the extras themselves |
| SendGrid | Long-established and full-featured, handles both marketing and transactional mail | Companies that need marketing tools and transactional email together |
| Mailgun | Developer-focused, with strong logs and routing | Inbound mail, parsing and complex routing |
| Resend | Clean API, works well with React Email | English-speaking teams on a frontend stack |
| BulkMail | Chinese and English docs, pay with USDT, Alipay or WeChat Pay, separate IPs for free and paid users | Teams without an international credit card, mainly sending transactional email |
Pricing models
There are two common models: pay as you go (SES) and monthly plans (most of the others). At low volume, a plan's free tier is usually enough. At very high volume, with ops capacity in house, pay as you go is cheaper. In between, it comes down to whether you'd rather save money or save effort.
Does deliverability differ much?
The differences between reputable providers are far smaller than the differences your own setup makes. Whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC are right, whether your list is clean, and whether you mix marketing mail with verification codes matter much more. See fixing spam-folder problems.
One question is worth asking any provider: who else is on the shared IPs? If free and paid users share the same IPs, other people's sending quality affects you.
Payment options
Most international services only accept international credit cards, and many teams and solo developers get stuck right there. BulkMail accepts USDT (activated automatically once the transfer confirms), Alipay, WeChat Pay and bank transfer.
How to choose
- Millions of emails a month and a team that knows AWS: Amazon SES.
- Need both marketing and transactional, with budget to spare: SendGrid.
- Need inbound mail and complex routing: Mailgun.
- English-speaking team on a React stack: Resend.
- Mainly sending verification codes and notifications, and want to pay with USDT or Alipay: give BulkMail a try.
