I'm building a pet project for a local community, and I need to send emails - potentially thousands of them. The project won't be commercial, so I'd like to spend as little money as possible. I'd also like to avoid hosting a custom SMTP server or dealing with all the setup.

It seems like there are quite a few email providers on the market, but I'm not sure whether my project would meet their requirements.

What would you recommend as a cheap and reliable(good deliverability) provider for transactional emails? What email providers do you use for pet projects?