FAQ (Mailrelay Frequently Asked Questions)

INDEX

• FAQ (Mailrelay Frequently Asked Questions)
  • What is Mailrelay?
  • Why do I need Mailrelay?
  • Can I use my Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! address as sender?
  • What is the difference between monthly plans and prepaid plans?
  • What are the differences between the standard version and the enterprise version?
  • What limitations does the free plan have?
  • Can I send emails of any size?
  • What happens if I use up all my monthly sending volume and I need to send more emails?
  • Does Mailrelay detect failed and bounced emails?
  • Does Mailrelay offer databases?
  • Can I use different senders?
  • Why can't I send mass mailings using my own internet connection?
  • Will I use my internet connection to send mailings with Mailrelay?
  • Do I need the authorization of my subscribers?
  • Can you guarantee that my mailings will not be blocked in hotmail, yahoo!, Gmail, etc?
  • Why not send my mailings from a dedicated server?
  • Can I use Mailrelay via SMTP?
  • How do I include unsubscribe links in the newsletters?
  • How does the subscriber limit work?
  • How can I log in to my account from the Mailrelay website?
  • Can I use email addresses with accents, ñ or ç?
  • How to define a custom domain and rename the tracking links?
  • Can I buy the contact list from Mailrelay?
  • What is the maximum size of the newsletters?
  • Can I use autoresponders in the free account?
  • Can I create mailings from an RSS feed?
  • Can I import my own contact list?
  • What are asynchronous bounces?
  • What are the technical specifications of a Mailrelay account?

Here you can find answers to the most frequently asked questions about Mailrelay

What is Mailrelay?

Mailrelay is the #1 email marketing software that stands out for its features, cost and ease of use. It is an advanced online platform that, thanks to its power and ease of use, adapts to the needs of any user. From small clients who run small campaigns to large companies with millions of monthly sends. Mailrelay achieves the best results with the most profitable marketing technique, email marketing.

Why do I need Mailrelay?

Most companies do not have the necessary resources or the money to maintain their own high-performance newsletter sending system. We offer exactly that at a very low cost, with no need for implementation. You only need to create an account on our platform.

Can I use my Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! address as sender?

It is not possible to do that. You need to have access to configure the DNS records of your domain in order to configure the SPF, DKIM and dMarc record so that your emails are not marked as spam.

What is the difference between monthly plans and prepaid plans?

Monthly plans have a limitation on the number of emails you can send each month and on the number of contacts you can send to. The limits and the payment are monthly. By default the monthly plan has a 12-month commitment. It can also be contracted without commitment, with a 15% surcharge.

Prepaid plans are a bit more expensive but they are useful if you do not have a monthly sending schedule. You buy a package of sends that you can use during 12 months without a restriction on sending to subscribers.

What are the differences between the standard version and the enterprise version?

Free Enterprise plan

80,000 free sends to 20,000 subscribers per month

Standard sending queue

Includes open (view) and click tracking statistics.

Transactional emails via SMTP and API: 30-day trial, then + €14.95/month

WhatsApp messaging: 10-day trial, then + €9.95/month

Remove the Mailrelay logo from emails: add-on + €4.95/month

Ticket support: Monday to Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (Spain time)

Standard Version: Does not include tracking statistics for opens (views) and clicks.

In all other respects, it is identical to the Enterprise version.

Ticket and chat support: Monday to Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (Spain time)

Paid Enterprise version: Includes all standard features, as well as tracking for views and clicks.

• Priority sending queue
• Priority support via chat, ticket, and phone
• Transactional emails via SMTP and API included
• WhatsApp messaging included (Meta charges a separate fee for each delivered template message, based on the template category and the recipient's country)
• No Mailrelay logo in emails
• Ticket, chat and phone support: Monday to Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (Spain time)

Can I switch from a Standard Monthly plan to an Enterprise plan if the year has already begun?

Yes, you can switch an invoice will be generated for the price difference, and you would not have to pay for a full year upfront.

What limitations does the free plan have?

The free version has a sending limit of 80,000 emails to up to 20,000 contacts.

The free account can add the SMTP + API add-ons (30-day trial, then €14.95/month) and WhatsApp (10-day trial, then €9.95/month, plus Meta’s per-conversation fee), and emails sent via SMTP or API count toward those 80,000 free sends.

Can I send emails of any size?

You can do it, but consider that if your email takes up more than 100kB the system will count one email for every additional 100 kB.

If for example your email takes up 250 Kb it will be counted as 3 sends for billing purposes. Keep in mind that this considers the total size of the email, including headers, text, subject and attachments.

In addition, when attachments are sent they must be converted to base64 format, so they will take up 30% more (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_file).

What happens if I use up all my monthly sending volume and I need to send more emails?

In that case you can buy a new prepaid package.

Does Mailrelay detect failed and bounced emails?

Yes. Mailrelay automatically detects bounces and marks them as bounced, so that the system does not send to those addresses in the future. Keep in mind, though, that in order to detect bounces it is necessary to carry out a previous send.

The first time you send to a contact Mailrelay will detect if the send fails and will mark it as bounced in that case. In future sends the system will only send to the addresses that are still valid.

Does Mailrelay offer databases?

No, Mailrelay is only a sending tool. We do not offer databases or lists of any kind.

Can I use different senders?

You can use any sender domain that you own and to whose DNS records you have access.

Why can't I send mass mailings using my own internet connection?

Normal email providers limit the volume of emails you can send daily. So sending using your internet connection would take hours, even days.

Will I use my internet connection to send mailings with Mailrelay?

If you send the newsletters from our application all emails are sent from our servers. If you connect to our server using SMTP, in that case you will use your internet connection.

Do I need the authorization of my subscribers?

Spanish legislation defines spam as unsolicited emails, so you need the permission of all your subscribers to send them emails. In other countries, however, the legislation may be different.

Can you guarantee that my mailings will not be blocked in hotmail, yahoo!, Gmail, etc?

No. Neither we nor any other company can guarantee you 100% deliverability with a given provider, since it is something that depends only on them. The rules that filter emails as spam are specific to each provider and are not usually made public.

However, our platform is prepared to meet the providers' requirements in matters such as speed, IP management and other factors that determine the deliverability of email campaigns. The most important thing in that case to maintain high deliverability is to keep the contact list clean and made up of contacts who have requested to receive the emails.

Why not send my mailings from a dedicated server?

Being able to send a large volume of emails in a short time and not having deliverability problems is something that does not depend only on the power of the server. It also requires powerful software that offers the necessary tools to analyze the responses of the destination servers, as well as detailed statistics so that you can know if the mailing had any impact. That is exactly what Mailrelay offers.

To get your emails to reach the inbox in Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! etc. It is sometimes necessary to sign agreements with those providers, in addition to complying with their policies. It is also necessary to have enough IP ranges that can be balanced in real time. 

These requirements can hardly be met with a dedicated server. If you hire a dedicated server it is very possible that your IP will be blocked and you will be left with a server from which you cannot send emails. In short, thanks to Mailrelay you have a much better chance of your emails reaching the inbox.

Can I use Mailrelay via SMTP?

Yes you can, the sending speed will be limited by the speed of your internet connection. You can subscribe to the SMTP + API add-on (30-day trial, then €14.95/month). Check out this article, which explains how to set up SMTP in Mailrelay by starting the free trial.

How do I include unsubscribe links in the newsletters?

To add the unsubscribe link you can follow these steps: https://help.mailrelay.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000092562-adding-the-unsubscribe-link

How does the subscriber limit work?

This is a very frequent question, we explain it to you in detail here: The subscriber limit represents a global limit, not associated with a specific send but with the limit you have contracted. It does not matter if you make smaller groups or delete the contacts after having sent to them. All the different recipients count, also those of the emails you send via SMTP.

Let's see an example, if your account has a limit of 5 subscribers, and you send a newsletter to the following subscribers:

– subscriber1@demo.net

– subscriber2@demo.net

– subscriber3@demo.net

At this moment you have used 3 out of a total of 5 subscribers. Let's now see another newsletter send:

– subscriber1@demo.net

– subscriber2@demo.net

– subscriber3@demo.net

– subscriber4@demo.net

– subscriber5@demo.net

The first three contacts have been used in previous sends. These will not subtract any more from your contact limit (they do subtract from the sending limit), but since there are two new email accounts subscriber4@demo.net and subscriber5@demo.net then two more subscribers are consumed from the contact limit. So now we can send emails without problems to those accounts, such as for example:

– subscriber3@demo.net

– subscriber4@demo.net

– subscriber5@demo.net

That will work, because we will still be within the limit of our contact usage. But a send to these emails:

– subscriber3@demo.net

– subscriber4@demo.net

– subscriber6@demo.net

– subscriber7@demo.net

Since there are new addresses and our limit is already at 0, that would block the sending limit of sending emails.

IMPORTANT: Deleting contacts once you have already sent to them does not reduce the consumption already used.

IMPORTANT: every month the limit is set to 0 so that you can keep sending.

IMPORTANT. Always check your current consumption in the package statistics of your account.

How can I log in to my account from the Mailrelay website?

You just have to click on the top login button, that will take you to a form. And in that form you must enter your login details.

https://mailrelay.com/en/login/

(You should have received your login details in an email when you registered)

Can I use email addresses with accents, ñ or ç?

Whether you want to use a sender that includes these characters or there are emails in your contact list that have them, you must consider:

All emails must be made up of two parts separated by @:

local-part@domain-name

The domain name must correspond to an existing domain and must comply with the rules for domain names

Include letters, numbers, hyphens and dots (many can even contain ñ) You can find more information at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname

The local part can include any of these characters:

• Uppercase and lowercase characters of the English alphabet
• Numbers from 0 to 9
• The following characters !#$%&’*+-/=?^_`{|}~
• The dot character “.” (but not at the beginning or the end of the local part or repeated twice in a row)
• Some special characters “(),:;<>@[] with some restrictions

It must also comply with the following:

• Latin alphabet (with diacritical accents): Pelé@example.com
• Greek alphabet
• Japanese characters
• Cyrillic characters

It may not work on all mail servers and email clients.

For more information you can visit the following article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address

How to define a custom domain and rename the tracking links?

Normally you access your Mailrelay account with a link similar to this one:

yourdomain.ipzmarketing.com

Where you must replace «yourdomain» with the name of your domain. This way, the ending «.ipzmarketing.com» is always added to your domain name. But it is possible to make some configurations to access directly using:

newsletters.yourdomain.com

Or whatever you want to put instead of “newsletters”. If you want to make this change you will have to create a CNAME record in the DNS for the subdomain you want. You have to create this in the hosting panel of your domain and it must point to: yourdomain.ipzmarketing.com

Keep in mind that if you point a subdomain directly to your main domain, your website might not work. Ask us any questions. For example, the following would not be correct:

yourdomain.com CNAME yourdomain.ipzmarketing.com

Whereas the following would be:

newsletters.yourdomain.com CNAME yourdomain.ipzmarketing.com

Once you have made these configurations you can go to the Settings Menu – Custom domains

NOTE: before creating the subdomain make sure that it does not already exist

That is, when you create a CNAME record, for example newsletters.yourdomain.com, if it already exists, you should choose another one.

Can I buy the contact list from Mailrelay?

No, Mailrelay does not offer or sell contact lists The client is responsible for their contact list.

What is the maximum size of the newsletters?

The maximum allowed size is 2 MB. If you need more it is possible that the images are not correctly optimized.

If that is not the case please contact support.

Can I use autoresponders in the free account?

All Mailrelay accounts have the possibility of creating autoresponders.

You can see more information about autoresponders here: https://help.mailrelay.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000393273-automations

Can I create mailings from an RSS feed?

Yes, all Mailrelay accounts include the possibility of making mailings from an RSS feed So all Mailrelay users can automate this task

You can see more information here: https://help.mailrelay.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000136652-how-to-create-an-rss-campaign

Can I import my own contact list?

Yes, of course. You can do it in multiple ways: https://help.mailrelay.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000156748-imports

What are asynchronous bounces?

A synchronous bounce occurs when the recipient's server rejects the email during the actual delivery process. An asynchronous bounce occurs when that server accepts the email but later sends a delivery error notification to the message's bounce address (the Return-Path).

Other messages, such as auto-replies, also arrive at that address. Mailrelay discards them and processes only the delivery error notifications.

Please note:

• Requirement: Asynchronous bounces are processed only for accounts with a custom domain where the asynchronous bounce option is enabled for that domain. You can check this under "Settings" → "Custom domain."
• Activation: Whenever you add a custom domain, the option is enabled automatically. You can subsequently disable or re-enable it, and—if you have multiple custom domains—choose which ones have the feature enabled.
• Permanent and temporary bounces: Both types are processed. If the error is permanent ("hard bounce"), the subscriber's status changes to "Bounced." If it is temporary ("soft bounce"), a single instance does not change their status; however, if it recurs across multiple consecutive campaigns, the subscriber's status changes to "Bounced."
• Forwarded emails: If the recipient forwards or redirects the email to another address and the notification arrives from that other address, it cannot be associated with the subscriber and is not processed.
• Out-of-office replies: Automated responses, such as vacation auto-replies, are ignored and never count as bounces.

What are the technical specifications of a Mailrelay account?

These are the limits for each account, grouped by category:

Sending

• Sending speed: variable. It depends on several factors, including the time of day, and can reach peaks of 300,000 emails per hour.
• For free accounts, during the initial review period (approximately 5 days), there is a limit of 500 sends per day for the entire account. During this time, the system monitors the account's activity, campaigns, and database to ensure that no spam is being sent. If the account fails this review—for instance, due to a high bounce rate—the limit will remain in place even after the 5-day period has passed. In such a case, please clean your mailing list and contact our support team so that we can re-evaluate your account.
• Test emails: up to 20 recipients per day.

Senders and domains

• Senders: 100
• Custom domains: 10, with only one active at a time.

Subscribers and lists

• Subscriber import limit:
  • Free plan and monthly plans: double the plan's subscriber limit. For example, the free plan allows sending to 20,000 subscribers and importing up to 40,000.
  • Prepaid plans: twice the amount purchased. For example, with a 100,000-email credit pack you can import up to 200,000 subscribers.
• Groups: 500
• Segments: 500
• Custom fields: 30
• Signup forms: 50
• Blacklist import: CSV or TXT file up to 150 MB. 

Newsletters and automations

• Newsletters: 10,000
• Newsletter folders: 100
• RSS newsletters: 100
• Blocks per automation: 150

Media file manager

• Maximum image size: 3 MB
• Total image storage: 5 GB
• Folders: 100

API

• API keys: 30
• Requests: 250 every 5 minutes, per API key. If this limit is exceeded, the API returns a 429 error until the next 5-minute period begins.

Users

• Users: 75
• User profiles: 25

SMTP

• Rate: There is no limit on messages per minute or per hour. The limit is set by the plan you've purchased.
• Simultaneous connections: 15 per IP.

SMS

• Sending by pasting a list of numbers (copy and paste): up to 50,000 recipients.