Quick Start Guide

How to Get Help 

One of the best things about SocketLabs is our team of email experts. Our team is available from 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM ET (USA) Monday-Friday, excluding holidays and other business closings.

Depending on your account's service level, you can contact our team via chat, email, or by phone. To submit a ticket, you can click "Contact Us" in any page on our help center.

Important Requirements

We take email security seriously. You must send your emails from a domain that is registered to you, is under your control, or that you have permission to use. You may only send to recipients that have given their permission to receive emails from you. There are other requirements that are fully explained in our Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service.

Commercial email messages must provide recipients with a working unsubscribe method and must include the physical address of the sender.

Email sent through SocketLabs must conform to all applicable laws and regulations, including but not limited to, the CAN-SPAM act. If you are unfamiliar with the specifics of the CAN-SPAM act, you can read about it here.

If we find that your email is not in compliance with all of the above regulations, your service may be suspended or terminated.

Logging Into the Control Panel

To log into the Control Panel, go to http://cp.socketlabs.com. The Control Panel allows you to configure your service, access reports and analytics, compose email messages, and more.

One Service, Many Uses

SocketLabs provides a wide range of email services included within your account. We've included some helpful links below to get you started, depending on how you'd like to use our infrastructure.

Email Marketing Tools

Getting Started with the Email Marketing Tools

 Sending with SMTP

Getting Started with SMTP

 Sending with HTTP

HTTP Injection API

 Processing Inbound Email

Inbound API

Ramping up your Service

Part of getting your email into the inbox requires us to establish a good reputation for you with mailbox providers. To do this, we will initially throttle the rate at which we deliver your email. This is an automatic "warm-up" process that gets the mailbox providers (Gmail, Microsoft, etc...) familiar with your email. You will notice your messages being delivered increasingly faster and faster over the first few weeks of your service as the warm-up period progresses. We discuss the warm-up process more in depth here. 

Usage Notifications, Overages, and Suspensions

If you exceed your monthly allowances, you will receive an email notification every day detailing your current usage and overage. By default, servers that exceed their allowances by more than double will be temporarily suspended. This  is intended for your protection in case accidental overages occur but it can be adjusted to accommodate expected or temporary overages. These options can be managed in the Control Panel under your server's Configuration settings.

Integrate with our APIs

Integrating with our APIs enables your applications to get the most out of your SocketLabs Service. 

Notification API

The Notification API provides you with the ability to receive email status notifications directly to your application through HTTP POST events. The Notification API can send HTTP POST events such as sent messages, failed messages, complaints, opens, clicks, etc.
Click here for a complete guide on the Notification API

Injection API

The Injection API provides you with the ability to send messages through HTTP POST requests as opposed to standard SMTP message injection which is also supported by SocketLabs. The Injection API provides you with both the ability to do inline mail merges in a single HTTP POST request and the choice of JSON or XML based on your application and business needs.
Click here for a complete guide on the Injection API.

Reporting API

The Reporting API is a REST API that uses standard HTTP over SSL to query for tracking information associated with email sent through SocketLabs. With the Reporting API, you can programmatically query for all sent, failed/bounced, complaints, open and click events.
Click here for a complete guide on the Reporting API.

Marketing API

The Marketing API exposes RESTful HTTP methods to access and manipulate aspects of marketing features such as list management.
Click here for a complete guide on the Marketing API.

Manage Your Account Like a Pro

One Account, Many Servers

When you sign up for service, your account is provisioned with one server. It is possible to create multiple servers within your account, each on its own messaging plan. This can be very useful if you need to segregate your outbound email for different customers or departments or to segregate outbound email between test and production environments. When you log into the Control Panel, you can create new servers or select existing servers to manage.

 Reports & Analytics

We provide server/domain level reporting and analytics on such things as Delivered Messages, Failed Messages, Open & Click Activity, and Complaints. These reports can be filtered in a number of different ways. If a CSV file of reporting data is needed, there is a download button in the upper right hand corner of these reports. 

Suppression List

To ensure that you maintain an excellent reputation with mailbox providers, we automatically suppress email messages on your behalf for any known invalid email address or email to an address from which you received a complaint. This Suppression List is per-server and can be managed or searched in the Control Panel.

Account & Server Settings

There are many settings at both the Account and Server level. We suggest that you browse through the Control Panel, explore these settings, and customize them to your needs. Account level settings are for billing and notifications, while Server level settings pertain to each server on your account. Server level settings expose such things as your SMTP Credentials, overage and notification settings, authentication settings and open and click tracking settings.