Today, we are going to talk about an open-source alternative for email-sending services that can literally save you from a big monthly bill.
We all know sending emails directly with SES can be a headache. There should be a simpler alternative for that. However, subscribing to a SaaS model, especially when you have a large audience, can become quite expensive. That’s why having a self-hostable option for these services is crucial.
That’s where service like Unsend comes in. Why Unsend? It’s fairly easy to self-host and uses SES on the backend, which is likely the most affordable option available right now.
It also offers a great UI, unlike many other open-source alternatives that often compromise on user experience to cut costs.
By the way, this is not sponsored—it’s something I have used and contributed to multiple times.
Unsend also offers a custom SMTP platform that can be integrated with providers like Supabase, NextAuth, and others.
Kind of like this:
const transporter = nodemailer.createTransport({
host: "smtp.unsend.dev",
port: 465,
secure: false,
auth: {
user: "unsend",
pass: "us_123",
},
tls: {
rejectUnauthorized: false,
},
});If you want to self-host this solution, you can read more about it here