Case study · Stack

How Resend built an email API on TypeScript and Supabase

Resend is an email API that lets developers send transactional and marketing email with a few lines of code. It grew out of the open-source React Email project and runs on TypeScript, Node.js and Go on AWS, with Postgres and auth from Supabase.
Copy this stackresend.com Email API for developers · United States · founded 2023

Language

  • TypeScriptresend.com

    Main language across the product, SDKs and React Email.

UI library

  • Reactbuiltin.com

    Builds the interface and the email components.

Full-stack framework

Hosting

  • AWSresend.com

    Main cloud, with serverless and container-based services.

  • Terraformbuiltin.com

    Infrastructure as code, together with AWS CDK.

Database

  • PostgreSQLsupabase.com

    Main database, hosted on Supabase.

    Why: Supabase gave them Postgres and auth in one place so the team could move fast.

  • ClickHousebuiltin.com

    Analytical database next to Postgres.

Login

  • Supabase Authsupabase.com

    Signs in Resend's users, more than 300,000 of them by 2025.

    Why: Bundled with the database, so they didn't need a separate auth tool.

Email

  • React Emailgithub.com

    Their own open-source library for writing emails as React components.

    Why: They felt email development was stuck in 2010 and should work like modern web apps.

Build and runtime

  • Turborepogithub.com

    Runs builds and tests in the React Email monorepo, with pnpm.

Backend framework

  • Node.jsresend.com

    Runs the back-end services.

  • Goresend.com

    Used in the back end, including the MTA and sending systems.

  • Honobuiltin.com

    Web framework for APIs, alongside Express.

Code quality

  • Biomegithub.com

    Linting and formatting in the React Email repo.

Error monitoring

  • Datadogresend.com

    Monitoring and observability for production.

How they built it

Starting from React Email

Before Resend, the founders built React Email, a set of unstyled components for writing emails with React and TypeScript. Their argument: email development was stuck in 2010 and needed to work like modern web apps.

React Email is still open source and maintained by Resend, and it remains a core part of the developer tools team's work, alongside the SDKs, CLI and MCP server.

Sources:github.com resend.com

Supabase to move fast early on

Resend came out of Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch and picked Supabase for its database and auth. The reasoning: startups need to move fast, and Supabase gave them Postgres and authentication together, simple enough for two front-end engineers to handle.

It also had room to grow, with partitioning, read replicas and backups, and the YC credits meant they didn't worry about backend costs while looking for product-market fit. By 2025, more than 300,000 users signed in through Supabase Auth.

Sources:supabase.com ycombinator.com

TypeScript and Go on AWS

Resend's current job posts describe a stack of TypeScript, Node.js, Go and Postgres running primarily on AWS, with infrastructure as code in Terraform or AWS CDK and monitoring in Datadog.

Earlier posts also listed Next.js, Express and Hono on the application side and ClickHouse next to Postgres for data.

Sources:resend.com resend.com builtin.com

Building its own sending layer

Resend now has a team dedicated to MTA systems: SMTP delivery, routing, retries, backoff and IP pools. Engineers there work in TypeScript and Go.

Sources:resend.com

Also detected on their website

Found on the homepage with the open Wappalyzer rules (HTML, scripts and headers). It shows what runs in the browser, not the whole backend.

  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon Web Services
  • HSTS
  • Vercel
  • Webpack
  • hCaptcha