How to Set Up Resend, Step by Step (Non-Developers)

Claude Code has suggested Resend for your project’s emails, and you’re partway through setup. This guide shows how to set up Resend from start to finish, in the order the steps actually need to happen.

It’s written for people who build with Claude Code but don’t write code. Every step happens on a website, in your domain settings or in a plain-English message to Claude Code. Resend is a transactional email service: it sends the automatic, one-to-one emails your project needs, like welcome emails, password resets and receipts.

How to set up Resend: what you need first

You need three things before you start: a domain you own, a project in Claude Code, and about 30 minutes plus some waiting time while your domain settings update.

Resend’s free plan covers 3,000 emails a month, with a cap of 100 a day and up to 3 domains. The Pro plan is $20 a month for 50,000 emails with no daily cap (prices checked October 2026).

Step 1: Create a Resend account

Go to resend.com/signup and create an account. You can sign up with an email address or a social login. No payment details are needed for the free plan.

Once you’re in, you’ll land on Resend’s dashboard. The two pages you need are Domains and API keys, both in the left-hand menu.

Step 2: Verify your domain in Resend

Domain verification proves to inboxes that you own the domain your emails come from. You add your domain in Resend, copy a few records into your DNS settings, and Resend checks they’re there.

1. In Resend, open the Domains page and click Add Domain.
2. Enter a subdomain, such as mail.yourcompany.com, rather than yourcompany.com itself. Resend strongly recommends this, because it keeps your email’s reputation separate from your main domain. Our guide to choosing your sending domain and from address explains the options.
3. Choose a region close to most of the people you’ll email.
4. Open the domain’s Records tab. It lists the records to add.
5. In a new tab, log in where your domain’s DNS is managed (usually your registrar or hosting company) and add each record exactly as Resend shows it.
6. Back in Resend, click Verify DNS Records.

The records usually look like this:

A few things trip people up:

• Leave your domain off the name. Most DNS settings add it for you. Type send, not send.mail.yourcompany.com. With a subdomain like mail.yourcompany.com, the name becomes send.mail.
• Copy values exactly. One missing character stops verification.
• On Cloudflare, use "DNS only". Proxying a record blocks verification. Resend also offers a Sign in to Cloudflare button that adds the records for you if your domain is on Cloudflare.

Verification often finishes within 15 minutes, but DNS changes can take up to 72 hours. Once it’s verified, Resend suggests adding a DMARC record too, an extra rule that helps stop others pretending to be you. For a fuller walkthrough, see how to verify a domain for sending email.

Step 3: Create a Resend API key

An API key is a long secret code your project uses to prove it’s allowed to send email through your Resend account. Treat it like a password.

1. In Resend, open the API keys page and click Create API Key.
2. Give it a name you’ll recognize, such as "yourcompany website".
3. Choose Sending access. Resend recommends this unless the key needs to manage your whole account. Full access can create and delete things across your account, which your project doesn’t need.
4. Optionally, limit the key to your verified domain.
5. Copy the key straight away. Resend shows it only once.

If you lose it, create a new key and delete the old one.

Step 4: Add the key to your project with Claude Code

Your project needs the key stored somewhere safe, plus a small piece of sending code. Claude Code writes the code; your job is to give it the key in a safe way.

The safe place is an environment variable: a setting your project reads when it runs, kept outside your code. On your computer that’s usually a .env file. On your hosting platform it’s a settings page. Our guide on where to put API keys explains both.

I’ve set up Resend for this project’s emails and created a Sending access API key. Please set up a .env file for the key, make sure it never gets committed with my code, and tell me exactly where to paste it. Then add what the project needs to send email through Resend from hello@mail.yourcompany.com.

Claude Code will create the file, tell you where to paste the key, and add the sending code. When you publish your project, add the same key to your hosting platform’s environment variable settings too. Ask Claude Code which name to use.

You can also connect Resend to Claude through its connector. A connector, built on MCP, lets Claude Code work with a service directly while you build. In Claude Code, open Customize, then Connectors, find Resend in the directory, and sign in to Resend when asked. Resend’s docs say its connector can manage domains and API keys as well as send emails.

Step 5: Send a test email

A test confirms that the domain, key and code all work together.

Please send a test email through Resend to my own address, from hello@mail.yourcompany.com, with the subject "Resend test". Then tell me whether Resend accepted it.

Within a minute or two, the email should land in your inbox. If you’d rather not use a real inbox, Resend provides delivered@resend.dev, which always accepts the email. Don’t use made-up addresses at placeholder domains: Resend blocks them, because they bounce.

If nothing arrives, check the Emails page in Resend’s dashboard to see whether it was sent, then share any error with Claude Code. Our guides to testing emails before users see them and checking whether an email actually sent cover more.

What is working with Resend like day to day?

Once it’s set up, Resend sends every email your live project triggers. Claude Code isn’t involved at that point; your project talks to Resend directly.

Resend is built for developers, and it shows in a good way: its docs are thorough and its tools are well made. Day to day, though, much of the work lives in its dashboard. You check the Emails page when a user says a message never arrived, manage keys on the API keys page, and update domains and settings there. With the connector, Claude Code can take on more of this, but the docs and support are written for people who code.

That suits people who write code or want to edit code themselves. For a deeper look at Resend’s Claude Code tools, see setting up Resend in Claude Code.

How is SimpleSends different for people who don’t code?

SimpleSends is a transactional email service built for people who build with Claude Code but aren’t developers. Setup covers the same ground: an account, a verified domain, a key and sending code. The difference is who it’s built for and what working with it feels like afterwards.

• Plain English throughout. Sign-up, connecting and help are written without developer jargon.
• Day-to-day work happens in the chat. After sign-up, you don’t need a dashboard. You brief Claude Code the way you’d brief a person.
• Claude Code does the email work. It designs, writes, builds and changes your welcome, password reset and receipt emails. "Set up all my transactional emails" is a fair brief.
• Problems get sorted in plain English. Claude Code reads your send logs through SimpleSends, so "a user says they never got their reset email" is a question you ask in the chat.

Connecting takes four steps:

1. Sign up on the SimpleSends website and follow the steps there to set up the email address you’ll send from. To send from your own domain, this includes adding a few DNS records where your domain is registered.
2. In Claude Code, open Customize, then Connectors, choose Add, then Add custom connector. Use the name SimpleSends and the MCP server URL https://mcp.simplesends.com/mcp.
3. When Claude prompts you to connect, log in to SimpleSends.
4. Back in the chat, tell Claude Code what you’ve done.

I’ve connected SimpleSends for all transactional email.

Claude Code takes it from there, including adding what your project needs to send email. For more on how this works, see transactional email for non-developers.