Almost every transactional email provider on the market handles this — it's the baseline use case they're all built for. Password resets and onboarding emails are one-to-one, triggered-by-a-user-action sends, and that's exactly what Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Resend, Brevo, Mailjet, SparkPost (now Bird Email), and lightweight options like Notify are all designed to handle via API. The differences that actually matter for this use case aren't "does it support this" — almost all of them do — but price at your volume, how much extra platform you have to navigate to get there, and whether you want templating built in or you're bringing your own HTML.
Two Broad Categories
Full-featured platforms — SendGrid, Brevo, Mailjet — bundle transactional sending with marketing campaigns, contact/audience management, and in some cases SMS or CRM tools. These make sense if you'll eventually send marketing email from the same account, alongside your password resets and onboarding flow.
Transactional-focused APIs — Postmark, Resend, Mailgun, SparkPost/Bird Email, Amazon SES, and Notify — are built around sending one email at a time in response to a backend event, which is the more natural fit for password resets and onboarding specifically, since you're never sending to a list. Within this group there's a further split worth knowing:
- Feature-forward: Postmark (deliverability reputation), Resend (React Email and broader developer tooling)
- Cloud-native, assemble-it-yourself: Amazon SES — cheapest per email, but logs and webhooks aren't built into a dashboard; you wire them up via SNS and CloudWatch
- Minimal by design: Notify — one send endpoint, domain verification, logs, and webhooks, and nothing else
What Actually Matters for Password Resets and Onboarding
These emails share a specific shape, regardless of which provider sends them:
- Single recipient, triggered by your backend — not a list, not a campaign
- HTML you already control — a welcome email or reset link rarely changes once it's written
- Domain verification (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) so the email lands in the inbox instead of spam, and doesn't come from a shared domain
- Logs you can actually check when a user says "I never got the email"
- Webhooks so you find out about a bounce or failed delivery without the user having to tell you
Comparing the Options
Current pricing, checked directly against each provider's own pricing page:
| Provider | Free tier | Cheapest paid plan | Best known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notify | 1,000 emails/mo, 1 domain | $10/mo — 10,000 emails, 3 domains, webhooks | Minimum infrastructure — domains, logs, webhooks, one endpoint |
| Resend | 3,000 emails/mo (100/day cap) | $20/mo — 50,000 emails | React Email, developer experience |
| Postmark | 100 emails/mo | $15/mo — 10,000 emails | Deliverability reputation for pure transactional |
| Mailgun | 100 emails/day | $15/mo — 10,000 emails, no daily cap | API flexibility, EU/US region options |
| SendGrid | Limited; check current terms | ~$20/mo | Breadth — transactional plus marketing, large ecosystem |
| AWS SES | None — pay per email from the start | ~$0.10 per 1,000 emails | Cheapest raw sending; logs/webhooks require SNS + CloudWatch |
Brevo, Mailjet, SparkPost/Bird Email, Elastic Email, and SMTP2GO are also real options in this space — each supports the same core transactional-via-API pattern — but they lean more toward combined transactional-plus-marketing use cases than the narrow "just password resets and onboarding" need this comparison is built around.
Sending Onboarding and Password Reset Emails with Notify
A welcome email, sent right after signup:
curl -X POST https://notify.cx/api/email/send \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "x-api-key: $NOTIFY_API_KEY" \
-d '{
"to": "user@example.com",
"from": "welcome@your-verified-domain.com",
"subject": "Welcome to the app",
"message": "<p>Thanks for signing up. Here'"'"'s how to get started...</p>"
}'
A password reset email, using the same endpoint:
curl -X POST https://notify.cx/api/email/send \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "x-api-key: $NOTIFY_API_KEY" \
-d '{
"to": "user@example.com",
"from": "noreply@your-verified-domain.com",
"subject": "Reset your password",
"message": "<p>Click below to reset your password. This link expires in 1 hour.</p><p><a href=\"https://yourapp.com/reset?token=abc123\">Reset password</a></p>"
}'
Both go through the exact same one endpoint, authenticated the same way — no separate onboarding-email vs. transactional-email distinction to configure. Add a webhook subscribed to Bounce and Delivery events on your domain and you'll know within seconds if either one didn't land, instead of waiting for a support ticket.
Where Notify Fits In This List
If your API needs are specifically password resets and onboarding — not marketing campaigns, not a list of contacts, not a visual template you're editing regularly — Notify is built around exactly that scope, and it's priced accordingly: $10/month for 10,000 emails, against $15/month at Postmark or Mailgun and roughly $20/month at Resend or SendGrid for a comparable tier. What you don't get is a templating layer — Notify is bring-your-own-HTML — which for a welcome email or reset link you rarely touch after writing it usually isn't a real limitation. If you know you'll want React Email—style templating, or you'll eventually send marketing email from the same platform, that points toward Resend or SendGrid instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Notify?
Notify is a lightweight transactional email API for developers — one endpoint to send, plus domain verification, delivery logs, and webhooks. No template builder, no marketing tools, no bulk sending.
Can I send onboarding emails through Notify's API?
Yes. Onboarding emails — welcome messages, verification links, "getting started" sends — are single-recipient, backend-triggered emails, the same category as password resets, and go through the same send endpoint.
Does Notify support password reset emails specifically?
Yes — password resets are one of the most common uses of Notify's API. You send the HTML (including your reset link) in the request body; there's no separate "password reset" email type to configure.
How does Notify's pricing compare to Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, and Resend for this use case?
At the volume most onboarding/password-reset workloads run at, Notify's Pro plan is $10/month for 10,000 emails — lower than Postmark or Mailgun (~$15/month) and Resend or SendGrid (~$20/month) at a comparable tier.
Do I need a template system for password resets and onboarding emails?
Not necessarily. These emails are usually static HTML that changes rarely, which is why a bring-your-own-HTML API like Notify works well for them — you're not paying for or maintaining a visual template builder you'd use once and forget.
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