Resend

Verdict: Worth your time

What it is: an email platform built for developers. Sending, mailing lists, and broadcasts through a clean API instead of a bloated marketing suite.

What we ran it on

This site's newsletter. The signup form on this site adds you to a Resend audience; our Dispatch issues are staged as Resend broadcasts; the sending domain was verified through their dashboard. End to end, the list infrastructure took an evening, including testing a real signup against the live API.

Do this

Verify your sending domain first (the SPF and DKIM records). Nothing trustworthy happens before that step, and Resend's instructions for it are clear.
Use audiences plus broadcasts if all you need is a list and a newsletter. That covers most small businesses completely.
Test the loop once with your own address: sign up, check the contact appears, send yourself the draft.

Skip that

Skip the heavyweight marketing platforms if a list and a monthly send is your actual need. You'd be paying for automation journeys you'll never build.
Skip buying email lists, on any platform. Build yours from people who asked.

Sharp edges

The dashboard is minimal by design, which is great until you want hand-holding. Deliverability still depends on your domain's reputation, not just the tool. And some API limits only surface when you hit them, so test with real calls before you depend on a workflow.

Disclosure: our own newsletter runs on it. We pay for it like anyone else.