Is Resend Down? How to Tell and What to Do

Is Resend Down? How to Tell and What to Do

Resend is a developer-first email API used to send transactional emails — password resets, magic links, welcome emails, notifications, and receipts. When it goes down, these emails stop delivering silently. Users try to log in, never receive the password reset, and assume your product is broken.

The fastest way to know: Statusfield monitors Resend continuously and alerts you within minutes. Without monitoring, you find out about a Resend outage when support tickets pile up about missing emails.

Common Signs of a Resend Outage

How to Confirm It's Resend, Not Your Code

1. Make a direct API call

Call the Resend API directly with a minimal test payload:

curl -X POST https://api.resend.com/emails \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"from":"test@yourdomain.com","to":"your@email.com","subject":"Test","text":"Test"}'

If the API returns a 5xx error, the issue is on Resend's side. If it returns 200 with an email ID, the API is up — the problem may be in email delivery downstream.

2. Check the email ID status

If the API returns an email ID but the email never arrives, query the email status:

curl https://api.resend.com/emails/{email_id} \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

If the status is stuck in sending for more than a few minutes, Resend's delivery pipeline is backed up.

3. Send a test to multiple providers

Test delivery to Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud Mail separately. Delivery failures to all providers at once point to Resend's infrastructure, not spam filtering by a specific mailbox provider.

4. Check your domain's SPF/DKIM separately

Resend-specific outages don't affect your domain's DNS records. If a test email delivered through another provider works fine, it's not a DNS/authentication issue.

The Problem With Missing Email Alerts

Resend outages are uniquely painful because the impact is delayed and silent. Users don't get an error message — they just never receive an email. By the time you notice, thousands of password reset attempts may have failed across your user base.

Resend's own status page may lag minutes behind actual degradations, especially for delivery issues that don't immediately surface as API errors.

Statusfield detects Resend degradations the moment they start — before the support tickets arrive.

What to Do During a Resend Outage

Immediate (first 5 minutes)

1. Confirm via direct API call — don't trust your application logs alone. Make a raw API call to verify whether the issue is in your code or Resend's infrastructure.
2. Check the email queue depth — if emails are queued in your app and Resend is returning 200s but not delivering, enable logging on the email ID status endpoint to catch silent delivery failures.
3. Decide on fallback strategy — can you switch to a backup sending provider (SendGrid, Postmark, AWS SES)? If yes, activate it for critical emails only (password resets, 2FA codes).
4. Do not retry-bomb the API — if Resend is already degraded, sending thousands of retries will worsen queue backup once the service recovers.

Communication (first 15 minutes)

• If your application has authentication flows that depend on email (magic links, OTPs), consider displaying a user-facing notice: "Email delivery is currently delayed — please try again in a few minutes."
• Alert your on-call engineer or customer success team so they're ready for a support ticket spike.
• If you have enterprise customers who rely on email notifications, proactively message them.

Recovery

• After Resend recovers, don't retry all queued emails at once — stagger them to avoid a spike that overwhelms recipient inboxes or triggers spam filters.
• Check for emails that Resend attempted to deliver during the outage window — some may have been delivered, some may need a resend.
• Update your user-facing status page to reflect that the issue is resolved.

Resend Components and What Each Outage Looks Like

API failures are highest-severity — no emails can be submitted at all. Delivery failures are high-severity but harder to detect because the API still returns 200.

Monitor Resend Before Your Next Password Reset Fails

Statusfield monitors Resend and 1,800+ other services continuously. When something degrades, you get alerted — not after your users file support tickets about missing emails.

3 monitors, 10 alerts/month, no credit card required.

FAQ

Is Resend down right now?

Statusfield monitors Resend continuously and will tell you before users start complaining about missing emails. If the API is returning 5xx errors or emails are stuck in delivery, check Statusfield for real-time status.

Why aren't my Resend emails delivering?

If the API returns 200 but no emails arrive, Resend's delivery pipeline is backed up — not the API layer. Check the email status endpoint and monitor Statusfield for recovery. Activate a fallback provider for critical sends (password resets, 2FA) during the outage window.

How do I get alerted when Resend goes down?

Statusfield monitors Resend continuously and fires alerts the moment it detects a degradation. Every plan starts with a free trial — no credit card required.