diff --git a/.changeset/early-mugs-divide.md b/.changeset/early-mugs-divide.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..f028c89229
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/early-mugs-divide.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+"react-email": patch
+---
+
+Respect user's NODE_ENV when previewing templates
diff --git a/packages/react-email/src/cli/utils/preview/start-dev-server.ts b/packages/react-email/src/cli/utils/preview/start-dev-server.ts
index b695d82e37..9ae28b1125 100644
--- a/packages/react-email/src/cli/utils/preview/start-dev-server.ts
+++ b/packages/react-email/src/cli/utils/preview/start-dev-server.ts
@@ -119,8 +119,10 @@ export const startDevServer = async (
   // these environment variables are used on the next app
   // this is the most reliable way of communicating these paths through
   process.env = {
-    ...process.env,
     NODE_ENV: 'development',
+    ...(process.env as Omit<NodeJS.ProcessEnv, 'NODE_ENV'> & {
+      NODE_ENV?: NodeJS.ProcessEnv['NODE_ENV'];
+    }),
     ...getEnvVariablesForPreviewApp(
       // If we don't do normalization here, stuff like https://github.com/resend/react-email/issues/1354 happens.
       path.normalize(emailsDirRelativePath),