Trustaroo sending versus Zapier sending
General Settings asks one question that changes how your review requests reach people: does Trustaroo send them, or does Trustaroo hand them to Zapier so your own mail tool sends them? This page helps you choose, and explains what changes when you do.
This is part of Trustaroo Premium. Upgrade from Account and billing in the app to switch it on.
The two options
Under Email Provider you pick one of these.
Trustaroo - We send emails for you. Trustaroo delivers the email itself. There is nothing else to configure, and nothing else to keep working.
Zapier - Forward to Zapier to send via your preferred email service. When a step comes due, Trustaroo does not send anything. It posts the details of that email to the Zapier Outbound Webhook URL you provide, and your Zap sends the message with whatever tool you already use.
Which to choose
| You want | Choose |
|---|---|
| To be up and running today, with nothing to maintain | Trustaroo |
| Email that arrives from your own sending domain | Zapier |
| Your existing HTML template, logo and footer | Zapier |
| The request logged against the customer in your CRM | Zapier |
| Delivery, bounce and open reporting in your own mail tool | Zapier |
| One less external service to pay for and debug | Trustaroo |
Most businesses should start with Trustaroo sending. Move to Zapier when a concrete requirement forces it, not on principle: sending through Zapier means your Zap, your mail tool and your sending domain all have to keep working, and a broken Zap means silently unsent review requests.
How Trustaroo sending works
Trustaroo composes the email for the contact, replacing the template variables with that contact's details, and sends it. You see nothing in General Settings beyond the radio button, and the contact moves on to the next step in the Contacts Queue.
The trade-off is control. You cannot change the sending address, add an HTML design or route the message through your own provider.
How Zapier sending works
Trustaroo posts a small JSON payload to your Zap for each email that comes due. It contains the contact's email address and name, the subject and body from the step, the contact's review URL and the step number.
Your Zap then does the sending, using Gmail, Outlook, Mailchimp, Brevo, HubSpot, a transactional email tool or anything else Zapier connects to. The same Zap can log the request against the customer record at the same time.
Two things are yours to get right:
- The Zap has to be on. Trustaroo posts to the URL and expects a success response; if your Zap is off or erroring, that email does not go out.
- The body arrives as plain text with the variables already filled in. If you want HTML, your Zap has to wrap it.
The full field list and setup steps are in Connect Zapier to Trustaroo.
Sending is the outbound direction. Adding contacts is the inbound direction, and it is a separate URL that Trustaroo gives you. You can use Zapier for both, one, or neither, and mixing them up is the most common setup mistake. See the inbound webhook reference.
Switching later
You can change the provider at any time. Open General Settings, pick the other option, fill in or clear the Zapier Outbound Webhook URL, and select Save Settings.
The switch applies to every email sent from that moment on. Contacts already in the queue keep their position and their review URL, so a customer can get email 1 from Trustaroo and email 2 from your own mail tool.
If Zapier is selected and no outbound webhook URL is saved, there is nowhere for Trustaroo to hand the email to, so nothing reaches your customers. Either paste the URL or switch back to Trustaroo sending.
Check it after switching
Add yourself as a contact, set the first step to a delay of 0 days, and wait for the next processing run, which happens within about 15 minutes. If nothing arrives, work through Emails not arriving.