Get started

New tenant — first 30 minutes

Go from I just created an account to my user-signup email landed in a real Gmail inbox. This page is the only one you need to read on day 1.

1. Add your sending domain (5 min)
2. Publish DNS records (5 min in your DNS console + ~5 min propagation)
3. Set sender identity (1 min)
4. Mint a server-side API key (1 min)
5. Send your first verification email (5 min)
6. Verify it landed (1 min)

1 · Add your sending domain

Open /dashboard/domains → click Add domain. Enter the apex (e.g. acme.com, not mail.acme.com). SendBolt auto-generates a 2048-bit DKIM keypair scoped to that tenant + domain and stores the private half encrypted at rest.

2 · Publish DNS records

The domain detail page shows 4 records you must add to your DNS provider (Cloudflare, Route53, Namecheap, etc.). Each row has a one-click copy button.

Click Verify after you save them. Propagation usually takes 2-5 minutes; the page polls every 30 seconds and turns green when all four records resolve.

Why all four? SPF authorizes the sending IP, DKIM cryptographically signs the message, DMARC tells receivers what to do on misalignment, and MX makes your domain look legitimate to Outlook (which otherwise drops your mail). Skip any of them and Gmail/Outlook will hurt you — see troubleshooting.

3 · Set sender identity

Open /dashboard/settings → Sender identity. Set:

• From email — typically no-reply@yourdomain.com
• From name — your brand
• Reply-to — a real mailbox that reaches your support team (e.g. support@yourdomain.com)

Every send-test and transactional send from now on uses these as defaults; you can still override per-message.

4 · Mint a server-side API key

Open /dashboard/settings/api-keys → Create key. Scopes for a typical app:

• transactional:send — required
• templates:read + templates:write — if you store templates server-side
• suppressions:write— if your code needs to manually add to the suppression list (most apps don't)
• events:read — if you want to poll for opens / clicks

Copy the key (it's shown once) and stash it in your app's secret store. Conventional env var:

SENDBOLT_API_URL=https://api.sendbolt.io
SENDBOLT_API_KEY=sb_live_a1b2c3d4e5...

5 · Send your first verification email

Hit the transactional endpoint. The example below sends a 6-digit OTP + click-to-confirm link to a brand-new signup:

curl -X POST "$SENDBOLT_API_URL/api/v1/transactional/send" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SENDBOLT_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "alice@example.com",
    "subject": "Confirm your Acme signup",
    "body_text": "Hi Alice, confirm your email: https://acme.com/verify?t=abc123 — or use code 482910",
    "body_html": "<p>Hi Alice,</p><p><a href=\"https://acme.com/verify?t=abc123\">Confirm your email</a></p><p>Or use code <strong>482910</strong></p>",
    "bounce_risk_check_enabled": true
  }'

Response shapes

6 · Verify it landed

Three places to confirm:

1. The recipient's inbox (the obvious one)
2. Your dashboard's message log — search by recipient email or message-id
3. The events stream — every sent event is in the dashboard activity feed

If you don't see it in the recipient's inbox within 60 seconds, check:

• Spam folder — common on the very first send to a brand new domain (no reputation yet)
• Gmail Promotions tab — see troubleshooting
• The message log for an explicit error — bounce, suppression, or DSN code

You're done

Next steps:

• Add a welcome email that fires after the verify-link clicks
• Add a password reset flow
• Configure inbound mail webhook so replies hit your helpdesk
• Read the warm-up guide before you launch a campaign > 200 recipients