TouchBasePro

TouchBasePro is a customer engagement platform built in Johannesburg that sends transactional and marketing email alongside six other channels: SMS, voice, WhatsApp, USSD, push notifications and forms. It calls itself "Africa's customer-engagement platform", and the footer line "Built in Johannesburg. Sent across the continent." sums up its focus. The company, TouchBasePro (Pty) Ltd, gives its establishment date as 28 February 2005, and a comparison post on its blog describes it as one of the two largest email service providers in South Africa. What separates it from a pure software vendor is the service layer: a business can use the platform itself, bring in an agency team on retainer to run its campaigns, or have TouchBasePro manage email on another provider it already uses.

Email and deliverability

Email is the first of the seven products, described as "Beautiful, deliverable, measurable." The platform handles both transactional mail, the receipts and notifications an application sends, and marketing email to your own lists, and the homepage promises mail "that lands in the inbox. Yes, even the South African ones."

Deliverability is the part the company talks about most. Under the heading "Deliverability you can prove" it says inbox placement is "a first-class metric, not a hopeful guess," with every send observable, every bounce explained and every domain tuned. The technical basis it gives is local: direct carrier integrations, local points of presence, and routing "that knows the difference between Vodacom and MTN." For senders whose recipients sit on African networks, that local routing is the main argument for the platform.

Testicly, one of the company's sub-brands, adds pre-send checks: rendering, link, spam-score and deliverability testing before a campaign goes out, pitched with the line "Find the typo before the CEO does."

The other six channels

The same account covers six more channels, under what the homepage calls "One billing relationship, one support team, one set of dashboards."

SMS offers one-to-one and bulk messaging "over premium African routes," with direct routes on every network. Voice is programmable, with local numbers and quality routing, and covers IVR menus, voice OTP, outbound calling and AI agents. WhatsApp runs on the WhatsApp Business API, described as Meta-verified, with message templates, sessions and rich media. USSD delivers interactive menus across all major African carriers and needs no mobile data, so it reaches every phone rather than only smartphones with a data plan; the site calls it "The unglamorous channel that quietly converts." Push notifications go to iOS and Android apps with segmentation and personalization. Forms capture, qualify and route leads, and the homepage says these branded forms "feed your CRM in real time."

For a business whose customers use very different devices and networks, this range is the point. One customer can be reached by email, another by SMS or WhatsApp, and a third who has only a basic phone by USSD, with one support team and one set of dashboards behind all of them.

Software plus services

The blog post sets out the service model. Businesses "can bring on a full-service agency team on retainer to handle strategy, design, campaign execution, automation builds, and reporting," so the platform can be run in-house, by TouchBasePro's team, or by a mix of both. Inboxd.agency, another sub-brand, packages the same idea as done-for-you direct marketing from strategy to execution: you bring the brand, and the team brings the calendar, the copy and the inbox placement.

The company also works on other email platforms. The blog says TouchBasePro can manage campaigns in Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and SendGrid, so a business does not have to switch providers to use its team, and that as one of SendGrid's South African partners it provides onboarding, local support and managed services for SendGrid clients.

The post, which describes the company as headquartered in South Africa, claims TouchBasePro is "the only provider in South Africa that offers both the platform and the people to run it." The customer quotes on the homepage speak to that agency side as much as to the software. C2 Group says "the creative is sharp, and the impact on our business is genuinely measurable," Wits Plus says the team nurtures its audiences with care and that retention and engagement have never been stronger, and Humanz credits the team with getting results "despite our lack of experience," which makes the managed option relevant for a company without an in-house email specialist.

Sub-brands

Beyond Testicly and Inboxd.agency, the homepage lists three more focused tools that it groups as "Same family, same standards." SigDaddy deploys on-brand email signatures across a whole team. NewslettersSuck is "A fresh take on newsletters, built by people who got tired of writing boring ones." SurveySally builds one-question-at-a-time surveys with AI brand detection and real-time analytics.

Pricing, support and legal

The site publishes no prices; the homepage steers visitors to book a demo or talk to the team, with a sign-up link alongside. The demo is a 30-minute walkthrough with no slides: the team opens the platform and runs your actual job to show the seven channels working as one.

Support is local. The homepage promises "Real engineers, in your timezone, ready to help you when it matters. A real and local support team." Customer quotes on the same page back that up. A marketing manager at Wits Plus writes "Four years in and the results keep compounding," a financial accountant at C2 Group, which runs Carfind.co.za, says the company has been a partner since 2021 and adds "We don’t have to chase," and the CMO of Humanz says his team "came to TouchBasePro for the tool and stayed for the people," describing onboarding as hands-on. The site says it is trusted by some of South Africa's most discerning brands and has customers from Cape Town to Cairo.

The footer links to privacy and terms pages, a security page, and separate POPIA and GDPR pages, and a status page reports whether all systems are operational.

Who it suits

TouchBasePro fits businesses whose customers are in South Africa or elsewhere on the continent, where local carrier routes, USSD and a support team in the same time zone matter. It suits a company that wants email, SMS and WhatsApp under one bill and one set of dashboards, and one that would rather hand campaign work to an agency team than hire for it. Businesses already on Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor or SendGrid can use the team without moving platforms. A solo newsletter writer who wants to compare plans online and sign up in minutes is less well served, since pricing goes through a demo or a conversation with the team.