What it is

useSend is open-source sending infrastructure, positioned directly as an alternative to Resend, Sendgrid and Postmark, and written in TypeScript under the AGPL-3.0 license. It lives in the email and communication ecosystem, filed under Productivity & Utilities / Email & Communication. Like most email products on the market, it uses Amazon SES under the hood to transmit messages, and it wraps that delivery layer in an open dashboard for sending reliably and cheaply. The project's stated premise is simple: pay per email sent, rather than paying for contact storage. The repository carries 4676 stars, 421 forks and 37 open issues, and the project describes itself as being in beta.

The concrete problem it addresses is the coupling between contact storage and billing in commercial email platforms. useSend lets an operator manage contacts and send bulk mail such as newsletters and product updates, and it handles subscriptions on the sender's behalf. It exposes transactional mail alongside marketing email, so one piece of infrastructure covers both flows. The project currently supports email only, with stated plans to expand to other sending protocols such as SMS, push notifications and WhatsApp.

Key capabilities

• Domain management, so senders can add their own sending domains.
• Transactional mail for application-driven messages.
• A REST API for programmatic sending.
• A dashboard reporting delivered, opened, clicked and bounced events.
• Marketing email for bulk sends such as newsletters and product updates.
• SMTP support for clients that send over that protocol.
• A Schedule API and webhook support for timed sends and event delivery.

Who uses it and how

• Application teams send transactional mail through the REST API or over SMTP.
• Marketing teams run bulk campaigns and newsletters while useSend manages subscriptions.
• Operators schedule sends through the Schedule API and consume results through webhooks.
• Self-hosters run useSend on their own infrastructure, with a documented path for local development.
• Teams wanting the fastest path deploy through Railway using the provided guide and deploy button.

Getting started

Local development follows the guide at docs.usesend.com/get-started/local. Docker images are published on DockerHub as usesend/usesend and on GitHub Container Registry as ghcr.io/usesend/usesend, and a self-hosting guide plus a Railway deployment option are documented.

When to use it — and when not

It suits teams replacing Resend, Sendgrid or Postmark with something self-hostable that bills per message rather than per stored contact. A self-hoster