A resend operation of application-level messages by communicating control messages over a publish/subscribe channel. A sending module sends application-level original messages to recipients, and stores a copy of the original message in a store. A resend determination module determines, in the event of insufficient acknowledgement of the original message, whether the original message should be resent. If the original message should be resent, the resend determination module also publishes a control message that correlates to the original message. A resend module subscribes in a manner that results in the resend module receiving the control message, and uses the control message to determine that the corresponding original message should be resent, whereupon the original message may be resent using the copy of the original message in the store.