Comparison

PayloadCMS email adapters differ less in how they integrate with Payload and more in who owns the delivery infrastructure and where responsibility sits.

All options plug into email in buildConfig and preserve payload.sendEmail(). The distinction is the delivery model.

useSend

PayloadCMS useSend Email Adapter integrates useSend using a REST-based API.

The defining characteristics of useSend are that it is open source and self-hostable. This allows teams to operate their own email delivery platform while retaining a Resend-like developer experience.

The adapter exposes useSend-native features such as templates, variables, and scheduled delivery directly at the adapter level, without introducing SMTP configuration or provider-specific transport logic.

This makes it suitable for privacy-sensitive, compliance-driven, or EU-hosted projects where SaaS-only email providers are not acceptable.

Resend

The official Payload adapter integrates Resend, a proprietary, managed email API.

Resend offers a similar REST-based developer experience and is well suited to serverless environments. Infrastructure, pricing, and data handling are fully managed by Resend, with no self-hosting option.

Feature availability and behaviour are constrained by Resend’s API surface and service model.

Nodemailer

Nodemailer is a transport library rather than an email platform. Payload’s Nodemailer adapter connects applications to SMTP or service-based transports.

This approach provides maximum flexibility and broad provider support, but shifts responsibility for deliverability, scheduling, templates, analytics, and connection management to the application or chosen provider.

Nodemailer is best suited to legacy systems, bespoke SMTP requirements, or environments where full transport control is required.

Integration

• PayloadCMS useSend Email Adapter: REST integration with useSend, including template and scheduling support at adapter level
• Resend adapter: REST integration with Resend, following Resend’s API semantics
• Nodemailer: SMTP or service transport abstraction, provider-dependent

All approaches integrate with PayloadCMS through the same payload.sendEmail() API.

Deployment

• useSend: cloud or self-hosted
• Resend: managed SaaS only
• Nodemailer: depends on SMTP provider or infrastructure

Self-hosting capability is a primary differentiator for useSend-based integrations.

Runtime

REST-based adapters are well suited to serverless and short-lived runtimes due to stateless HTTP requests. SMTP-based approaches can operate in these environments but require additional configuration to manage connection lifecycle and verification overhead.

PayloadCMS useSend Email Adapter occupies a middle ground between hosted-only APIs and low-level SMTP tooling. It provides REST-based delivery, provider-native features, and self-hosting capability without changing Payload’s email API.