Why Resend Left Amazon SES for Bare Metal
Zeno Rocha explains the hidden architectural overhead of Amazon SES and why Resend moved its email pipeline from JavaScript to Go.
Designing for Agents — Zeno Rocha, Resend
With swyx, Zeno Rocha · Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Zeno Rocha, co-founder and CEO of Resend, discusses building modern email infrastructure designed for both human developers and autonomous AI agents. He details Resend's growth, deliverability mechanisms, and strategies for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), alongside the technical challenges of maintaining open-source tools like React Email and scaling an infrastructure business while balancing family life.
Key takeaways
- Amazon SES looks cheap at a base price like $5,000, but handling production email requires adding Amazon SNS, SQS, and CloudWatch just to track events. Read more →
- Resend captures over 60 percent of email infrastructure recommendations inside Claude Code by engineering specifically for autonomous agent scrapers. Read more →
- Deliverability cannot be solved with more servers or faster compute; mailbox providers throttle traffic based on recipient engagement rather than outbound sending bandwidth. Read more →
- Resend created an official suite of over 80 named Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools after an early prototype built by Yoko Li from Andreessen Horowitz proved the concept. Read more →
- Zeno Rocha modeled Resend's growth on Vercel's relationship with Next.js, building React Email as an open-source top-of-funnel acquisition channel. Read more →
- Resend scaled past four million users while managing technical email deliverability hurdles like DKIM, SPF, and CNAME record setup. Read more →
6 articles from this episode
How Resend Won 60 Percent of Claude Code Recommendations
Zeno Rocha explains how Resend replaced JavaScript widgets with raw text and Markdown to win recommendations inside Claude Code.
Zeno Rocha on How to Scale Email Without Landing in Spam
Zeno Rocha explains why high-volume email deliverability fails with brute force, and how queue front-loading and domain separation beat spam filters.
Why Resend Built 80 MCP Tools for AI Agents
Zeno Rocha explains why Resend built over 80 Model Context Protocol tools and why modern apps need 100 percent API and dashboard parity.
React Email Is Resend's Next.js
Zeno Rocha built React Email as an open-source wedge for Resend, writing docs for competitors before pitching his own email pipeline.
Zeno Rocha Banned Manual Support Replies to Scale Resend
Zeno Rocha scaled Resend to four million users by forcing support staff to write public docs instead of typing ad-hoc answers into tickets.
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