Arara

Arara Message (アララ メッセージ) is an email delivery service from Arara Inc. (アララ株式会社), a company with its office in Minami-Aoyama, Minato ward, Tokyo. It covers two jobs: bulk and marketing email sent from a web dashboard, and email sent automatically from a company's own systems through an API, from newsletters to transactional notices. The home page frames the product as the fix for email that does not arrive, arrives late or costs too much ("届かない・遅い・高い"), and promises high speed, a high delivery rate and every feature included as standard.

The company says it has developed and maintained the service in Japan for more than 15 years, calling it a purely Japanese-made email service with domestic development and in-house support ("国内開発・自社サポート"). The FAQ is clear about who can sign up: it is a service for companies incorporated in Japan (国内法人様向け), not for individuals. Customers, according to the API page, range from large companies to small and mid-sized businesses in services, information and communications, finance, and government and local authorities. The service won the DX Contribution Award in the support ASP/SaaS category of the ASPIC Cloud Award 2024, backed by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Campaign email from the dashboard

For marketers, the dashboard is designed to be simple. You pick from more than 150 templates to build an HTML email, which the site says even first-time users can manage, and the blog adds that no prior knowledge is needed to operate the interface. The standard plan includes email creation with an HTML editor, step emails that send automatically on a schedule, flexible segment extraction and targeted sends, and list management with automatic removal of error addresses and automatic CSV upload.

An AI feature helps with subject lines: based on the body of the email, the AI suggests 5 subject line options, which the company presents as a way to save time when writing a newsletter and to lift open rates. Measurement is built in: with a simple setting when you create an email, you get the number of clicks on each URL in the body and the number of HTML opens, and results are shown as graphs.

Customer stories show the range. Asoview says that HTML production had been its main problem with newsletters, that building HTML became easy after switching, and that purchases via its newsletter reached 1000% of the previous year. Hot Staff uses SMS, LINE and Arara Message side by side, choosing by audience and content, and sends a newsletter through Arara once a week.

The email API

The API side lets a company connect its core systems and send both bulk mail and transactional mail. The API page lists the functions:

• Sending: scheduled delivery, merge fields such as the recipient's name, Cc and Bcc, and attachments of up to 2MB per email in a bulk send.
• Tracking: URL click counts and HTML open counts.
• Security: issuing and retrieving DKIM keys through the API, S/MIME signing, and sending over STARTTLS.
• Results: delivery results per address, a list of addresses that failed, and updating error counts for addresses on the error filter.

The company notes that some functions depend on which API you use and points to its manuals, and full API documentation is published online for engineers. Use cases on the page include trade confirmation emails for a securities company, ticket purchase and boarding time emails for an airline, disaster alerts with evacuation information sent by a local government, and powering the email function of marketing tools and customer management systems, including a different sender for each client.

Delivery

Delivery is the core of the pitch. The API page claims an average delivery rate of 99%, and the home page says the system automatically applies optimal tuning for each destination domain. Arara states a processing speed of 1 million emails per hour, marked as a best-effort figure, and says the service handles the delivery logic of Japanese mobile carriers and ISPs, making it a product specialized in the Japanese email environment. Infonia, which runs the points site GetMoney!, says its error count halved and its delivery rate rose. For larger needs, the company offers to design the environment around your requirements, such as adding capacity as volume grows, a redundant configuration for availability, faster sending, or a dedicated environment for one company.

On authentication, the site explains that SPF and DKIM protect against spoofing and that STARTTLS encrypts the content between servers. An optional setup support service helps customers configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

Plans and pricing

Pricing is monthly, by the number of emails sent, and contracts can start from one month. The API page prints the full table, with a per-email rate when you exceed your plan:

• 50,000 emails a month: 9,980 yen, then 0.22 yen per email over the limit
• 100,000: 18,000 yen, then 0.15 yen
• 300,000: 26,000 yen, then 0.10 yen
• 500,000: 38,000 yen, then 0.10 yen
• 700,000: 52,000 yen, then 0.10 yen
• 1,000,000: 68,000 yen, then 0.10 yen
• 1,500,000: 92,000 yen, then 0.07 yen
• 2,000,000: 108,000 yen, then 0.07 yen
• 2,500,000: 120,000 yen, then 0.07 yen

Higher plans are available on request. The home page lists what the monthly fee includes: sending functions, list management, measurement, the email API and anti-spam measures.

To try it first, the API page offers a 30-day free trial, and the trial details are issued within 3 minutes of the form request; a trial environment carries over to production. After ordering, the home page says it takes about 4 business days before you can start, the API page says the account is issued within 4 business days, and the FAQ says about 5 business days.

Support

Support comes from the company's own team. Inquiries go by email to a dedicated customer support desk, phone inquiries are taken on weekdays from 10:00 to 18:00 Japan time, and the system is monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Arara also runs a support site, publishes regular version updates, and offers a separate email delegation service and a mail relay product called Bare Mail.

Who it suits

Arara Message fits Japanese companies that send large volumes and care most about mail reaching phones and inboxes quickly: retailers and services sending newsletters, and developers wiring order, booking, trading or alert emails into their systems. The published price table with overage rates makes budgeting straightforward, and month-to-month contracts keep the commitment low.

The limits are set by the company itself: the service is for companies incorporated in Japan, and the product pages are written in Japanese.