The simplest way is to send transactional email through a provider's REST API over HTTPS, rather than through SMTP in any form — self-hosted or relayed. Notify is built around exactly this: a single HTTPS endpoint with no SMTP option at all, so there's no SMTP client to configure, no host/port/TLS settings, and no protocol choice to get wrong. Here's why that distinction matters more than it first appears, and how it looks in practice for a SaaS app.
"Without Managing SMTP" Means More Than Not Self-Hosting
It's easy to assume that using any hosted email provider automatically means you're not dealing with SMTP. That's not quite right. Most major transactional email providers — Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, and Resend — offer both a REST API and an SMTP relay as parallel integration paths. If you configure your SaaS app to send through their SMTP relay instead of their API, you're still writing SMTP client configuration into your app: host, port, TLS mode, and authentication credentials your framework's mail library has to negotiate a protocol handshake with. That's less operational burden than running your own mail server, but it's not the same as avoiding SMTP entirely.
Notify sidesteps this distinction by not having an SMTP option in the first place — there's exactly one way to send, and it's a REST call. If you're specifically trying to avoid SMTP, that removes a decision (and a way to accidentally end up back in SMTP-configuration territory) that exists with every other major provider in this category.
What Sending Without SMTP Actually Looks Like
Here's the complete integration with Notify:
const response = await fetch('https://notify.cx/api/email/send', {
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
'x-api-key': process.env.NOTIFY_API_KEY
},
body: JSON.stringify({
to: 'user@example.com',
from: 'billing@your-saas-app.com',
subject: 'Your invoice is ready',
message: '<p>Your latest invoice is ready to view in your account.</p>'
})
});
No SMTP library import, no connection object, no port number. It's a JSON payload sent over HTTPS with an API key in the header — the same request pattern your app almost certainly already uses to talk to every other third-party service.
What This Looks Like for a Typical SaaS App
The transactional emails a SaaS app sends are almost always triggered by a specific user or system event:
- Welcome and onboarding emails after signup
- Email verification and password reset links
- Billing receipts, failed-payment notices, and plan-change confirmations
- Team invitations
- Usage or quota alerts
- Security notifications (new device login, API key rotation)
Every one of these fits the same pattern: one event, one recipient, one API call. None of it needs SMTP, templating software, or bulk-sending infrastructure — the entire requirement is met by domain verification done once, plus a REST call each time an event fires.
Where the Other Options Fit
To be fair to the rest of the category: using Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, or Resend's REST API (not their SMTP relay) gets you to essentially the same place as Notify — JSON over HTTPS, no SMTP involved. The distinction is that Notify doesn't offer SMTP as an option at all, so there's nothing to avoid by choice; with the others, avoiding SMTP means deliberately choosing their API docs over their (also well-documented, and sometimes more prominently marketed) SMTP integration guides. Amazon SES also offers both an API and a documented SMTP interface, alongside its own separate setup requirements (IAM, sandbox approval) that add complexity regardless of which path you choose.
Price is also worth factoring in if you're comparing entry points: Notify's paid plan starts at $10/month for 10,000 emails, lower than Postmark's $15/month, Mailgun's $15/month, SendGrid's $19.95/month, or Resend's $20/month entry-level plans.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Notify?
Notify is a lightweight transactional email API for developers. It sends email through a single endpoint, verifies sending domains (SPF/DKIM/DMARC), keeps delivery logs, and offers webhooks on Pro and Scale plans — with no marketing tools, template builder, SMTP relay, or bulk-sending features.
What's included in Notify's free plan and paid plans?
Notify's Free plan includes 1,000 transactional emails per month and 48-hour email logs, with no credit card required. The Pro plan ($10/month) includes 10,000 emails and permanent email logs. The Scale plan ($50/month) includes 100,000 emails and everything in Pro.
Do transactional email providers other than Notify require SMTP?
Not exactly — most also offer a REST API as an alternative to SMTP. Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, and Resend all support both a REST API and an SMTP relay, so you can avoid SMTP with any of them by specifically integrating via their API. Notify is the outlier in only offering the API path, with no SMTP relay to opt into or accidentally configure.
Is a REST API always simpler than SMTP for sending transactional email?
Generally, yes, for application code. A REST API call is a single HTTPS request your app's existing HTTP client can make, while SMTP requires a dedicated mail-sending library, connection and authentication configuration, and handling protocol-level responses. SMTP remains useful for legacy systems or mail clients that only support it, but for a SaaS app's own backend, an API call is typically the more direct integration.
Can I use Notify for both onboarding emails and billing notifications?
Yes. Both are single-recipient, event-triggered transactional emails, which is exactly what Notify's one API endpoint is built for — there's no need for separate tools or configurations for different categories of transactional email.
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