Comparison

The best SendLayer alternatives

SendLayer's Starter plan is $5/mo, which is the cheapest paid transactional plan in this whole comparison. People leave over the 1,000-email allowance and three days of logs that come with it.

Twenty alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and its gaps are listed like everyone else's.

20 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links

The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Best logs for the moneySMTP2GO

30 days on a $10 plan, against SendLayer's 3 days at $5.

Most volume for the moneyElastic Email

$19/mo for 50,000 emails, with the shared-reputation caveat.

Best free tierMaileroo

3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound free, with a dedicated IP.

Best developer experienceResend

Thirteen SDKs and a modern dashboard.

Best when you also send campaignsEmail Bump

Marketing and transactional on one contact-priced plan. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with SendLayer

SendLayer's price is its whole proposition, and the limits attached to that price are the reason people move on.

Starter keeps 3 days of logs. Three days. A customer who emails on Monday about something sent the previous Wednesday cannot be answered. Thirty days of retention needs Growth at $25/mo — five times the entry price.

1,000 emails a month on Starter. That's small. Business at $15/mo gets 5,000 and Growth at $25/mo gets 10,000 — where MailerSend gives 5,000 for $5.60 and Elastic Email gives 50,000 for $19.

Headline prices are annual. $5, $15 and $25 are the billed-annually rates. Monthly billing costs more, which matters when comparing against providers quoting monthly figures.

No marketing side at all. No contacts, segments, campaigns or unsubscribe handling. It relays transactional mail, which is exactly what it says it does — and means a second platform when the newsletter arrives.

The baseline

What SendLayer costs, from their own pricing page

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

Billed annually

The plans

$5/mo

1,000 emails a monthStarter — 3 days of log retention

$15/mo

5,000 emails a monthBusiness — 15 days of log retention

$25/mo

10,000 emails a monthGrowth — 30 days of log retention

Custom

20,000+ emails a monthScale — 30 days of logs, VIP support

Worth knowing

The fine print

$5/mo is the cheapest paid transactional plan in this comparison.
Log retention climbs 3 / 15 / 30 days with the tier.
A 200-email free trial, plus a 14-day money-back guarantee.
API and SMTP relay, suppression, bounce and blocklist management on every plan.
Headline prices are billed annually; monthly costs more.

Side by side

All 20, on the things that decide it

Provider	Starts at	Free tier	Marketing email	Licence	Data region
Email BumpHosted	$19/mo at 10,000 contacts	5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month	Included — campaigns, flows, segments and the API share one bill	Proprietary	United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
SMTP2GOHosted	Starter $10/mo for 10,000 emails ($100/year)	1,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day and 25 an hour until your domain is verified	None — it's a relay	Proprietary	Servers worldwide, with location-specific options
MailerSendHosted	$5.60/mo for 5,000 emails (Hobby)	500 emails a month, 1 domain, 1 template	Templates and basic automation; MailerLite is the sibling product for campaigns	Proprietary	United States and European Union
MailerooHosted	Paid plans start above the free 3,000 emails a month	3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound a month, 2 domains, free dedicated IP	A separate campaign product; the API plans are transactional	Proprietary	Multiple
Elastic EmailHosted	Starter $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails	1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month	An email designer and contact management; not a full automation platform	Proprietary	United States and European Union
MailjetHosted	Starter $9/mo for 8,000 emails	6,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day, 1,000 contacts	Campaigns and an editor; automation and landing pages arrive on Premium	Proprietary	European Union (France)
ResendHosted	$20/mo for 50,000 emails (Pro); marketing contacts are a second plan from $40/mo	3,000 emails a month capped at 100 a day, 1 domain — plus a separate 1,000-contact marketing free plan	Broadcasts, on a separate contact-priced plan. No journey builder.	Proprietary	United States
PostmarkHosted	$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)	100 emails a month	Broadcast streams only — 15 on Basic, 30 on Pro, unlimited on Platform. No visual automation builder.	Proprietary	United States
Amazon SESHosted	$0.16 per 1,000 emails (Essentials, first 10M/mo)	Up to $200 in AWS free-tier credits for new accounts, over the first 6 months	None. SES is a sending pipe.	Proprietary	Your choice of AWS region, including several in the EU
MailgunHosted	$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)	100 emails a day, with 1-day log retention	Sold separately as Mailgun Optimize / Mailjet rather than bundled	Proprietary	United States or European Union, per account
SendGridHosted	Essentials from $19.95/mo	None any more — a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day	Marketing Campaigns is a separate product with its own contact-based pricing	Proprietary	United States, with EU options on enterprise agreements
MailtrapHosted	$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)	4,000 emails a month, capped at 150 a day, 3 days of logs	Bulk stream on Business and above; no journey builder	Proprietary	United States, with EU sending available
Zoho ZeptoMailHosted	Credits, where 1 credit = 10,000 emails, valid 6 months	First credit free — 10,000 emails, valid for one month	None. ZeptoMail is transactional-only by policy; Zoho Campaigns is the other product.	Proprietary	Multiple, including EU data centres
AhaSendHosted	Paid tiers start at 25,000 emails/mo (Pro); the rate isn't published as a flat figure	1,000 emails a month, unlimited domains, no card required	Transactional focus; no campaign builder	Proprietary	European Union, multi-region
Scaleway TEMHosted	€0.25 per 1,000 emails after the first 300 a month (Essential)	300 emails a month, every month	Prohibited by policy — TEM is transactional only	Proprietary	European Union (multi-region, France-headquartered)
MailPaceHosted	Priced on monthly volume via a slider, in your choice of currency	A 100-emails-a-month plan, available on request	None — transactional only	Proprietary	European Union
LettermintHosted	Starter from €10/mo for 10,000 emails	300 emails a month, 1 sending domain, 1 project	Broadcast emails on paid tiers, alongside transactional	Proprietary	European Union
SweegoHosted	Individual €10/mo for 20,000–50,000 emails (€8 billed annually)	100 emails a day, unlimited domains, 7 days of logs	Transactional and inbound routing; SMS via credits	Proprietary	European Union (France)
LoopsHosted	Paid plans are priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table	1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email	Included — that's the core of the product	Proprietary	United States
useSend (formerly Unsend)Self-hostable	Free to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sending	Self-hosted — the software is free	Included: contacts, campaigns and transactional in one app	AGPL-3.0	Wherever you deploy it

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams paying twice — once for the transactional API, again for the newsletter

Marketing and transactional email in one product, billed on contacts rather than sends. The transactional API takes the same field names most developer email APIs use, so the migration is a base URL and a key. Also the only one on this list with a first-class CLI and MCP server, so an agent can run the whole account without a browser.

Starts at: $19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier: 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing: Included — campaigns, flows, segments and the API share one bill
Data region: United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)

What it does well

One price covers campaigns, automated flows, segments and the transactional API.
Sending is uncapped on paid plans under fair use — a viral week doesn't produce an overage bill.
Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop counting, so the bill tracks your real audience.
Unlimited team seats and unlimited sending domains on every plan, including free.
CLI, MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
Inbound email, SMTP on the same key, and webhooks are part of the plan, not upsells.

What to watch for

Sending is US-only today — there is no EU data region.
Not open source, and there's no self-hosted build.
The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers. Transactional sends never carry it.
Younger than Postmark or SendGrid, without their decade-plus of public deliverability history.

02Hosted service

SMTP2GO

Best for: Reliable SMTP relay with 30 days of logs on every paid plan

Deliberately unglamorous relay infrastructure. Nothing here is fashionable and the thing people actually praise is that the logs go back thirty days on the $10 plan, which several better-known providers don't manage at ten times the price.

Starts at: Starter $10/mo for 10,000 emails ($100/year)
Free tier: 1,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day and 25 an hour until your domain is verified
Marketing: None — it's a relay
Data region: Servers worldwide, with location-specific options

What it does well

30 days of log retention on every paid plan, including the $10 one.
$1 per extra 1,000 on Starter, dropping to $0.85 on Professional.
Professional at $75/mo includes a dedicated IP and email testing tools.
Straightforward SMTP relay that works with anything.

What to watch for

The free plan's hourly cap of 25 emails makes testing awkward until you verify a domain.
Free keeps only 5 days of logs and limits you to 2 team members.
No marketing side at all.
Phone and live chat support on free lasts 14 days.

03Hosted service

MailerSend

Best for: Small teams who want the cheapest paid tier with a template builder

From the MailerLite family. Drag-and-drop templates non-engineers can edit, an inexpensive entry plan, and SMS bolted on for the same money.

Starts at: $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails (Hobby)
Free tier: 500 emails a month, 1 domain, 1 template
Marketing: Templates and basic automation; MailerLite is the sibling product for campaigns
Data region: United States and European Union

What it does well

$5.60/mo for 5,000 emails is the cheapest real paid plan here.
Non-developers can edit templates without a pull request.
100 SMS a month included on every plan.

What to watch for

Free plan is 500 emails/month — a sixth of Resend's free tier.
Hobby caps you at 1 domain, 3 templates and 1,000 API requests a day.
API log retention is 7 days even on Professional.

04Hosted service

Maileroo

Best for: The most generous free transactional tier, dedicated IP included

3,000 free emails a month plus 1,000 inbound, with a free dedicated IP and automatic warm-up — an unusually complete free plan for a transactional provider.

Starts at: Paid plans start above the free 3,000 emails a month
Free tier: 3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound a month, 2 domains, free dedicated IP
Marketing: A separate campaign product; the API plans are transactional
Data region: Multiple

What it does well

A free dedicated IP with automatic warm-up on the free plan, which nobody else does.
1,000 inbound emails a month included free.
Email verification API, sandbox domain and a WordPress plugin included.
SMTP relay and REST API with webhooks and full authentication support.

What to watch for

Small and young — fewer public deliverability references than the incumbents.
The free plan allows 2 domains.
Marketing lives in a separate product rather than the same plan.
Paid tiers aren't laid out as a simple published table.

05Hosted service

Elastic Email

Best for: High volume at a low flat rate, if you can live with the reputation risk

One of the cheapest ways to send a lot of email through a hosted product. $19/mo for 50,000 emails is roughly half what most of this list charges, and the trade is a shared sending reputation across a very price-sensitive customer base.

Starts at: Starter $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails
Free tier: 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month
Marketing: An email designer and contact management; not a full automation platform
Data region: United States and European Union

What it does well

$19/mo for 50,000 emails undercuts almost every hosted competitor.
Pro at $49/mo adds inbound email processing, webhooks, sub-accounts and custom rDNS.
Reseller features and sub-accounts make it popular with agencies.
Private IPs from $40/mo, cheaper than most.

What to watch for

Low prices attract senders whose reputation you share; warm up carefully and watch your own numbers.
The free plan is 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails.
Starter and Pro both cap at 50,000 emails — the difference is features, not volume.
Support is a paid add-on for prioritised assistance.

06Hosted service

Mailjet

Best for: Small teams who want unlimited contacts alongside a send allowance

Sinch's other email product, sitting between a transactional API and a light marketing tool. Metered on emails, and unlimited contacts from the Essential plan — an unusual combination in this category.

Starts at: Starter $9/mo for 8,000 emails
Free tier: 6,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day, 1,000 contacts
Marketing: Campaigns and an editor; automation and landing pages arrive on Premium
Data region: European Union (France)

What it does well

Unlimited contacts from Essential at $17/mo — you're billed on sends, not list size.
A 6,000-a-month free tier with the API, SMTP relay and webhooks included.
$9/mo for 8,000 emails is among the cheapest entry plans anywhere here.
French company, so EU data handling comes as standard.

What to watch for

The free plan's 200-a-day cap bites long before the monthly one.
Automation, landing pages and team management only arrive on Premium at $27/mo.
Essential and Premium both include 15,000 emails — you pay for features, not volume, between them.
Deliverability reports are mixed, as with most generous free tiers.

07Hosted service

Resend

Best for: Developer experience, and an official SDK in whatever you write in

The current default recommendation for developer email. Thirteen official SDKs, a CLI, a clean dashboard, and react-email — the open-source library that made writing email in React tolerable. Transactional volume and marketing contacts are billed as two separate plans.

Starts at: $20/mo for 50,000 emails (Pro); marketing contacts are a second plan from $40/mo
Free tier: 3,000 emails a month capped at 100 a day, 1 domain — plus a separate 1,000-contact marketing free plan
Marketing: Broadcasts, on a separate contact-priced plan. No journey builder.
Data region: United States

What it does well

Official SDKs for 13 languages plus a CLI — the widest first-party coverage here.
react-email is open source, genuinely good, and portable to any provider.
Inbound receiving, SMTP and webhooks are all first-class.
$0.90 per extra 1,000 emails is half Postmark's Basic overage rate.

What to watch for

Transactional volume and marketing contacts are billed as two separate subscriptions.
30-day data retention on every plan, including Scale.
Overage is charged automatically per extra 1,000 emails against the card on file.
No EU region, and sending domains are capped by plan: 1 on Free, 10 on Pro.

08Hosted service

Postmark

Best for: Transactional mail where a receipt arriving late is a support ticket

The long-standing deliverability specialist. Separate message streams keep transactional and broadcast reputation apart, retention goes to a year, and support answers with an engineer rather than a bot.

Starts at: $15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier: 100 emails a month
Marketing: Broadcast streams only — 15 on Basic, 30 on Pro, unlimited on Platform. No visual automation builder.
Data region: United States

What it does well

Deliverability track record is the longest of anything on this list.
Retention is customisable up to 365 days on Pro and Platform, against Resend's flat 30 days.
Inbound email processing on Pro and above.
Support is a genuine differentiator, not a plan checkbox.

What to watch for

Overage is $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic — twice Resend's $0.90 — so bursts get expensive.
Broadcasts are a stream, not a marketing tool: no segments, no journeys.
Dedicated IPs start at $50/mo per IP.

09Hosted service

Amazon SES

Best for: High volume where you already have engineers to own the plumbing

The wholesale layer most of this list resells. Nothing is cheaper per email, and nothing asks more of you: no dashboard worth the name, no templates, no contact model, no suppression UI beyond the basics.

Starts at: $0.16 per 1,000 emails (Essentials, first 10M/mo)
Free tier: Up to $200 in AWS free-tier credits for new accounts, over the first 6 months
Marketing: None. SES is a sending pipe.
Data region: Your choice of AWS region, including several in the EU

What it does well

$0.16 per 1,000 is roughly a fortieth of Resend's Pro rate at the same volume.
Regions everywhere, so data residency is a config value.
Scales past anything a SaaS plan will sell you.

What to watch for

You build the dashboard, the templates, the retries, the suppression list and the reporting.
New accounts start in a sandbox; production access and quota increases are reviewed.
Attachments are billed separately at $0.12/GB, and deliverability tooling costs extra.

10Hosted service

Mailgun

Best for: Teams that need an EU sending region from a large, established vendor

A veteran developer email API, now part of Sinch. US or EU sending from one account, plus validation and deliverability services sold alongside.

Starts at: $15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier: 100 emails a day, with 1-day log retention
Marketing: Sold separately as Mailgun Optimize / Mailjet rather than bundled
Data region: United States or European Union, per account

What it does well

EU region on an established platform with real support contracts.
Scale at $90/mo for 100,000 emails includes a dedicated IP.
Email validation and deliverability tooling available as add-ons.

What to watch for

Log retention is 1 day on Free and Basic, 5 days on Foundation — painful when debugging.
$1.80 per 1,000 overage on Basic.
Extra dedicated IPs are $59 each per month.

11Hosted service

SendGrid

Best for: Enterprise volume, and procurement teams who want Twilio on the contract

The incumbent. Owned by Twilio, sold alongside their messaging products, and built for scale most senders never reach. The free plan is gone — what's left is a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day.

Starts at: Essentials from $19.95/mo
Free tier: None any more — a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day
Marketing: Marketing Campaigns is a separate product with its own contact-based pricing
Data region: United States, with EU options on enterprise agreements

What it does well

Scale and reliability at volumes most of this list never sees.
Part of Twilio, so SMS and voice sit on the same contract.
Extensive SDK coverage and a very large body of existing integrations.
Enterprise procurement, SLAs and compliance paperwork are all in place.

What to watch for

The permanent free tier was replaced by a 60-day trial — a real change if you last looked a while ago.
Marketing Campaigns is priced separately from the Email API, so a product with a newsletter pays twice.
Higher-tier prices aren't published as a static table.
Support quality is the most consistent complaint in this category.

12Hosted service

Mailtrap

Best for: Teams who want the test sandbox and production sending from one vendor

Best known for its email-testing sandbox, which catches staging mail before it reaches a real inbox. The sending product grew out of that and keeps the same debugging bias.

Starts at: $15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier: 4,000 emails a month, capped at 150 a day, 3 days of logs
Marketing: Bulk stream on Business and above; no journey builder
Data region: United States, with EU sending available

What it does well

The staging sandbox has no real equivalent at Resend.
Free tier is 4,000 emails/month against Resend's 3,000.
Bounce categorisation and per-domain debugging are unusually good.

What to watch for

Log retention is short on cheaper plans: 3 days free, 5 days on Basic.
Dedicated IP and bulk stream only arrive on Business, which starts at $85/mo.
Two products in one console takes a minute to get used to.

13Hosted service

Zoho ZeptoMail

Best for: Low, spiky transactional volume you'd rather not subscribe for

Pay-as-you-go credits instead of a monthly plan. One credit is 10,000 emails and lasts six months, which suits products that send in bursts.

Starts at: Credits, where 1 credit = 10,000 emails, valid 6 months
Free tier: First credit free — 10,000 emails, valid for one month
Marketing: None. ZeptoMail is transactional-only by policy; Zoho Campaigns is the other product.
Data region: Multiple, including EU data centres

What it does well

No subscription: buy credits, use them within six months.
10,000 free emails to evaluate with is the largest trial on this list.
Backed by Zoho, with EU data-centre options.

What to watch for

Strictly transactional — marketing sending will get the account closed.
Being inside the Zoho console is a taste thing.
Credits expire; unused volume is money gone.

14Hosted service

AhaSend

Best for: EU teams who want a modern developer API with the data kept in Europe

The closest thing to a European developer email API: the same shape of REST endpoint and SMTP relay you already use, multi-region EU infrastructure, and a free tier you can actually ship on.

Starts at: Paid tiers start at 25,000 emails/mo (Pro); the rate isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier: 1,000 emails a month, unlimited domains, no card required
Marketing: Transactional focus; no campaign builder
Data region: European Union, multi-region

What it does well

Data stays in Europe, not just the sending — the usual gap in 'EU-friendly' claims.
Unlimited sending domains even on the free plan.
USD and EUR billing, OIDC SSO on the top tier.

What to watch for

Smaller company; fewer public deliverability case studies.
No marketing or automation side at all.
Retention is 14 days on Pro, 30 on Max.

15Hosted service

Scaleway TEM

Best for: French and EU public-sector-adjacent teams who need sovereignty on paper

European cloud infrastructure rather than a developer-experience product. Cheap per email, GDPR-clean by construction, and deliberately narrow.

Starts at: €0.25 per 1,000 emails after the first 300 a month (Essential)
Free tier: 300 emails a month, every month
Marketing: Prohibited by policy — TEM is transactional only
Data region: European Union (multi-region, France-headquartered)

What it does well

€0.25 per 1,000 undercuts every hosted SaaS here except SES.
European sovereignty story is the strongest on this list.
Scale plan at €80/mo includes 100,000 emails, a managed dedicated IP and a 99.9% SLA.

What to watch for

Marketing email is against the acceptable-use policy — this is not a newsletter tool.
No inbound email support.
Billing counts recipients, so one message with three CCs is four emails.

16Hosted service

MailPace

Best for: EU-hosted transactional email where every plan has every feature

Made in the UK, hosted in the European Union, and structured so there's nothing to unlock — unlimited domains, unlimited team members, inbound email and 30-day retention on every plan, with only volume changing.

Starts at: Priced on monthly volume via a slider, in your choice of currency
Free tier: A 100-emails-a-month plan, available on request
Marketing: None — transactional only
Data region: European Union

What it does well

Every feature is on every plan: unlimited domains, team members and webhooks.
30-day email retention regardless of what you pay.
Inbound email, bounce management and anti-spam included.
Billing in USD, GBP, EUR and several other currencies.

What to watch for

The free plan isn't advertised — you have to ask for it.
No marketing side at all.
A small team, so no enterprise procurement story.
Pricing is a slider rather than a published table.

17Hosted service

Lettermint

Best for: European teams who want a modern transactional API priced in euros

EU infrastructure, GDPR-native, and priced so you can dial the included volume to match what you actually send rather than jumping between fixed tiers.

Starts at: Starter from €10/mo for 10,000 emails
Free tier: 300 emails a month, 1 sending domain, 1 project
Marketing: Broadcast emails on paid tiers, alongside transactional
Data region: European Union

What it does well

EU-based infrastructure with GDPR compliance as the default, not an add-on.
Volume is adjustable within a plan, so you're not paying for a tier you half-use.
Broadcasts and inbound email on paid tiers, not just transactional.
Priced in euros, which removes a currency conversion from procurement.

What to watch for

The free plan is 300 emails a month with one domain.
A young company with a short public track record.
Inbound email needs a paid tier.
No campaign builder, segments or automation.

18Hosted service

Sweego

Best for: French and EU teams who want email and SMS on European infrastructure

A European multichannel provider with a free tier, retention that climbs from 7 to 90 days with the plan, and SMS bought as credits rather than a second subscription.

Starts at: Individual €10/mo for 20,000–50,000 emails (€8 billed annually)
Free tier: 100 emails a day, unlimited domains, 7 days of logs
Marketing: Transactional and inbound routing; SMS via credits
Data region: European Union (France)

What it does well

€10/mo for 20,000–50,000 emails is excellent value at that volume.
Unlimited sending domains even on the free plan.
Log retention of 30 days on Individual, 60 on Startup and 90 on Scaleup.
SMS bought as credits valid for 12 months, with no setup fees.

What to watch for

The free plan's 100-a-day cap is a daily ceiling, not a monthly allowance.
7 days of log retention on free.
A dedicated IP needs Startup at €79/mo or above.
Small and French-market-focused; documentation is thinner in English.

19Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced like Email Bump, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Opinionated and pleasant; less of an infrastructure product than Postmark or SES.

Starts at: Paid plans are priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier: 1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing: Included — that's the core of the product
Data region: United States

What it does well

Transactional sending is included rather than billed as a second subscription.
Free plan is generous enough to run a small product on.
Genuinely quick to set up.

What to watch for

The free plan puts Loops branding in your footer and caps you at 10 emails/second.
Paid pricing lives behind a slider, which makes budgeting a guess until you sign up.
Thinner on raw email infrastructure — inbound, SMTP nuance, deep log retention.

20AGPL-3.0

useSend (formerly Unsend)

Best for: Self-hosters who want a modern dashboard on top of their own SES account

The best-known open-source answer to this search. It wraps Amazon SES with a dashboard, contacts, campaigns and webhooks, so you pay AWS rates and keep the UI.

Starts at: Free to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sending
Free tier: Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing: Included: contacts, campaigns and transactional in one app
Data region: Wherever you deploy it

What it does well

SES pricing with a real interface on top.
Transactional and marketing, REST API and SMTP, webhooks and inbound.
Docker images and a one-click Railway deploy.

What to watch for

Still described as beta by its own maintainers.
Bring your own AWS account, DNS, Postgres and Redis — and your own on-call.
AGPL-3.0 has real obligations if you build a product on top of it.

FAQ

SendLayer alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best SendLayer alternative?

For longer logs at a similar price, SMTP2GO — 30 days on its $10 plan against SendLayer's 3 days at $5. For more volume, MailerSend at $5.60 for 5,000 or Elastic Email at $19 for 50,000. For a free tier, Maileroo.

If the reason you're looking is that you now need campaigns too, that's a different category — us, Loops or Brevo.

Is SendLayer the cheapest?

At the entry point, yes — $5/mo billed annually is the lowest paid plan here. Per email it isn't: 1,000 emails for $5 is $5 per 1,000, against Amazon SES at $0.16 and Elastic Email at about $0.38.

Cheap entry price and cheap per email are different things, and SendLayer is the first rather than the second.

Is three days of logs a problem?

It is the moment a customer asks about an email from last week. Debugging and support both depend on being able to look up what happened, and three days is the shortest retention in this comparison after Mailgun's one day.

Growth at $25/mo gets you to 30 days, which is where SMTP2GO starts at $10.

Try the one we make

Logs that aren't a plan feature

Retention isn't tiered here — the free plan sees the same history as the top one — and campaigns share the same bill as the API. 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free.

Start free Read the API docs

The best SendLayer alternatives

Pick by the reason you're leaving

What actually goes wrong with SendLayer

What SendLayer costs, from their own pricing page

The plans

The fine print

All 20, on the things that decide it

Every option, and what it's bad at

SendLayer alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best SendLayer alternative?

Is SendLayer the cheapest?

Is three days of logs a problem?

Logs that aren't a plan feature

Keep reading