Your first send

This guide takes a new Wakio account to its first delivered email. Your dashboard keeps the same steps as a checklist on Overview, and ticks each one off as you finish it. The API key is only for sending from your own app, so a newsletter can skip it.

1. Verify a sending domain so mail can go out under your name.
2. Choose a plan to switch sending on.
3. Send your first message and watch it arrive.
4. Issue an API key, only if your app sends email through Wakio.
5. Add your postal address for the foot of your campaigns and flows.

What you'll end up with

A verified domain, a plan and one delivered email. Most of the time goes to waiting for your DNS changes to show up.

You need two things before you start:

• Access to your domain's DNS settings, wherever you bought or host the domain. DNS is the public directory that tells the internet where your domain's mail and website live.
• If you want your app to send email, such as receipts or password resets, a developer to make that request. Campaigns and flows need no developer.

Create your account

Create your account, then open the confirmation email Wakio sends you and confirm your address. You can sign in once it is confirmed, and as the person who signed up, you are the account's owner.

Verify your sending domain

Your sending domain is the part after the @ in the address you send from. Wakio sends from it only once you prove it is yours.

Under Sending domains, choose to add one and type the domain.

1. Type the domain you want to send from, such as mail.yourcompany.com.

What you should see: the domain's own page, listing the DNS records to publish.

1. Proves you own the domain.
2. Signs your mail so inboxes can tell it really came from you.
3. Tells inboxes what to do with mail that fails those checks.
4. Copies all three at once, for DNS providers that can import a batch.

Add each record at your DNS provider, copying its name and value exactly. If your domain already has a DMARC record, keep it and skip the third one, as explained below. What you should see: the records saved in your DNS provider's settings, matching the names and values Wakio shows.

At the top of the domain's page, the status reads Waiting on DNS until Wakio confirms the records.

1. Your domain's status. It changes to Ready to send once Wakio finds your records.

What you should see: once your records are live, the status changes to Ready to send. Wakio checks for them on its own, and an owner or admin can choose Check now on the domain's page to check right away.

If something's off

• The records are not showing up yet. DNS changes can take a while to reach everyone, sometimes hours. Wakio keeps checking, so the status changes once they arrive; Check now just asks sooner.
• A record's name ends in your main domain twice. A record's name is the address the record lives at, such as wakio._domainkey.mail.yourcompany.com. Many DNS providers add your main domain (yourcompany.com) to the end of every name. If yours does, leave that part off when you paste, or you end up with a name like wakio._domainkey.mail.yourcompany.com.yourcompany.com, which Wakio never finds.
• Your DNS provider will not save the signing record. Its value, the one whose name starts with wakio._domainkey, is more than 255 characters long, and some providers' forms refuse a value that long in one piece. Look for an option to split it, or paste it as two quoted parts one after the other, such as "first part" "second part". Inboxes join the parts back together.
• Your domain already has a DMARC record. That is a TXT record whose name starts with _dmarc. Keep yours and skip the one Wakio shows: a domain with two DMARC records gets neither applied, and Wakio does not need its own to mark the domain ready.

Choose a plan

Nothing sends until your account has a plan: not the email your app sends, and not your campaigns. Your plan switches sending on and sets your monthly allowance. Only the account's owner can see Billing and choose a plan there.

If Wakio manages your allowance directly, the checklist says so and there is nothing to choose. Team, API keys and billing explains what the allowance covers.

Send your first email

Either of these finishes setup.

• From a campaign. Under Campaigns, write one and send yourself a test. The test is a real email, and once Wakio has accepted it, Overview switches from the checklist to your numbers.
• From your app. When your domain is ready and you have an API key, Deliveries shows the exact request that sends your first email, already filled in with your domain.

Hand that request to your developer, along with your key and the first email walkthrough.

What you should see: the email listed under Deliveries, with its status. That list is where every email you send shows up, along with what happened to it.

Issue an API key

Only if your app sends email through Wakio. An API key is the password your app uses to send email, and your developer needs one to make that request. Campaigns and flows do not use one.

Under API keys, an owner or admin issues a key and gives it a name. Wakio shows the key once, so copy it right away and hand it to your developer somewhere safe. The API overview explains how your developer uses it.

Add your postal address

Under Settings, an owner adds the business's postal address. Wakio puts it at the foot of every campaign and flow email, which US law expects of marketing email. The checklist marks this step optional because email your app sends does not need it.

Next

Read Sending domains to learn what each status means and how your account's campaigns warm up.