turboSMTP

What turboSMTP is

turboSMTP is an SMTP relay and email API for sending transactional email and newsletters. The home page describes a professional SMTP service whose outgoing mail server provides secure SMTP relays and is "ideal to send transactional emails", alongside an API for developers of cloud applications and a free SMTP service. The About page says turboSMTP was "Founded in 2009" and is "an independent SMTP provider serving over 100,000 clients on six continents", and the company it names is Edisplay srl, with addresses in Milano and in Fonni (NU). The home page repeats the customer figure as "Trusted by 100,000 happy customers".

The service is aimed at a wide range of senders. The About page says it can meet the needs of "any business, ranging from home and small businesses to large email providers", and the site sorts its users into four groups: mobile, PDA and iPhone users, home and small business, mailing list distributors, and mail server administrators. Much of the site is about replacing an internet provider's outgoing mail server with one that stays off blacklists, and the features marked new on the features page add webhooks, validation, reports and a campaign tool on top of that relay.

The SMTP relay

The relay is the core of the service. The Why turboSMTP page explains the case for it: mail servers run by ordinary internet providers use random IP addresses, some of which end up blacklisted, and a sender never learns that the messages did not arrive. turboSMTP's answer, in its own words: "We constantly monitor blacklists and focus on maintaining relationships with major email providers to keep our servers whitelisted." The same page says the company strictly follows email senders' best practices and guidelines, names Hotmail, Gmail and Comcast as mail servers with strict rules, and promises that a customer sets the SMTP settings once in an email client or mailing program and never changes them again, from a laptop, an iPhone or a PC, whatever the connection or location. It also presents the relay as a way around the usage limits internet providers put on their own outgoing mail.

The relay works with ordinary desktop software as well as applications. The features page says it is compatible with free and professional mail tools and names Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Mail, SendBlaster and GroupMail, and step-by-step video tutorials show how to configure a mail client. For websites, the developer section links a free WordPress SMTP plugin and a turboSMTP email validator for WordPress. The features page also says there are no bandwidth caps on data transfer.

The email API

For developers there is a REST API. The API page shows a POST request to api.turbo-smtp.com/api/v2/mail/send, authenticated with a consumer key and a consumer secret in the request headers, with a JSON body holding the sender, one or more recipients separated by commas, a subject, cc and bcc addresses, and plain-text and HTML content. Ready-made examples cover cURL (for CMD, Bash and PowerShell), C# on .Net 6.0, Go, NodeJS, Python, Ruby, PHP and Java, and the footer links an API reference, a webhooks reference and a page of email SDKs. The page says the API can handle a dispatch "whether it's to send 2 emails or 2 million" and that the infrastructure scales "from a handful to several million emails", with both SMTP and RESTful API integration. Getting started takes three steps: sign up for a free account, take the API key from the dashboard, and follow the API documentation.

Tracking, validation and deliverability tools

Much of the features page is about knowing what happened to each message. Real-time click and open tracking shows "if and when the recipients have opened your emails or clicked on your links." Event notification webhooks tell the customer's server in real time about events on sent emails. Regular activity reports arrive by email on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and the account area has real-time charts and delivery statistics that show which messages were delivered and why a message did not reach its destination. The API page describes an analytics dashboard with real-time metrics on deliverability, opens, clicks and bounces.

On the list side, the email validation tool screens a contact database before a campaign goes out and reports how many contacts are valid and how many are potentially dangerous or non-existent. Bounce, spam and unsubscribe management covers soft and hard bounces, spam complaints and the removal of unsubscribed addresses. Smart routing uses adaptive routing to lift deliverability and inbox placement, and a custom tracking domain can be set up, which the features page says has a positive impact on delivery rates. A separate domain check tells a sender whether a domain is validated under the new Gmail and Yahoo rules the site dates to 2024. A chart on the home page puts turboSMTP at 99%, against 82% for "other SMTP" and 70% for "free SMTP".

Campaigns and sub-accounts

turboSMTP also sends marketing email from its own dashboard. The email marketing tool, marked new on the features page, lets a customer "Design, send, and track professional email campaigns directly from your turboSMTP dashboard", and the page calls it "A fully integrated marketing tool powered by turboSMTP's own delivery infrastructure." The home page opens with sending newsletter campaigns straight to users' inboxes, and the company's page on cheap SMTP services lists among turboSMTP's advantages a drag and drop editor for templates for both transactional and commercial emails, real-time statistics, and dedicated support for deliverability issues and marketing plans. The site footer suggests MailStyler for HTML email building.

The sub-account and white label system is aimed at teams and resellers: sub-accounts let a customer split relays among coworkers or resell them to their own customers.

Plans, free account and refunds

The free account is a standing plan rather than a trial. The site offers up to 6,000 emails a month with no credit card required, and the API page says a free account gets "6,000 free emails per month". Paid service comes as monthly plans or as packages: the home page says customers "Choose among a wide range of monthly and pay-as-you-go plans based on the number of sent emails", and the features page asks whether a buyer needs "a single package" or prefers "a monthly plan". The product pages quote no plan prices beyond the free allowance.

A money-back guarantee comes with two limits. The features page says a customer can get a full refund "Within 15 days or until you have sent 100 messages (whichever is sooner)".

Data location, GDPR and support

The home page says turboSMTP has "servers and IP addresses in Europe, USA, Middle East and Asia to be fully compliant with different European (GDPR) and non-European regulations." It describes the service as "100% GDPR compliant", saying that protecting user data is a top priority, and the API page says the service integrates "superior encryption protocols to secure your data" and strictly adheres to privacy laws. An anti-spam policy applies: turboSMTP says it is an outgoing mail service meant for legitimate senders, and accounts that violate the policy are suspended or terminated.

Support is round the clock and staffed by people. The home page promises "real people supporting you 24/7 via ticket, AI free chat and phone", and the features page describes 24/7 multi-language support by phone, chat and email, "24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year." The footer lists a knowledge base, an FAQ, a pre-sales contact and a US and Canada sales contact, and the site itself is available in English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Russian, Swedish and Turkish.

Who it suits

turboSMTP suits small businesses, mailing list senders and mail server administrators who want a relay that stays whitelisted and a person to talk to when something breaks. The free account of 6,000 emails a month covers a small website or a first test, the WordPress plugin and the code examples cover websites and applications, and sub-accounts with white labeling make it usable for an agency or host reselling relays to clients. Senders who also want to run newsletters get a campaign tool in the same dashboard instead of a second platform. Servers and IP addresses in Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Asia give it a footprint well beyond its Italian base, which matters to senders who deal with regulations in more than one region.