Quickstart
Getting from a new workspace to a delivered email is four steps. The dashboard tracks them for you on Get started, which knows how far along you are and stops guessing once your first message lands.
Pick the track that matches you at the top of that screen. I'm integrating assumes you are wiring the API or pointing an existing mailer at us; I'm sending campaigns assumes you are here to send to an audience. It changes the wording and the credential advice, not the steps.
1. Connect your domain
You cannot send until a domain is verified, so nothing else can start here.
Add the domain, publish the records it generates, and let the automatic check run. Two records decide verification: SPF and DKIM. Three more improve delivery and reporting.
Use a subdomain like mail.norn.so rather than your root domain, so that campaign
reputation stays separate from the address your staff send from.
→ Verify a sending domain walks through it, and DNS records explained covers what each record is for.
This is the step that takes real time. DNS propagation is usually minutes, but it can take up to 48 hours. The other three take about four minutes in total.
2. Create a credential
Sending needs either an API key or an SMTP user. Both are created under API Keys & SMTP, and both are per workspace.
Choose SMTP if you already have something that sends mail (an application framework, a CRM, a script) and you want to repoint it. Choose an API key if you are writing the integration yourself.
Campaigns use the same credentials as product email. There is no separate marketing credential to create.
3. Send your first email
Send to yourself, from an address at the domain you just verified.
If you are integrating, Get started shows a ready-to-run request in cURL, Node, Python and Go, pre-filled with your verified domain and your own address so the only thing you supply is the key.
Send from an address at your verified domain. A from address on a domain that is not
verified is rejected before it reaches a recipient, and that is the most common reason a
first send fails.
4. Watch it arrive
Open Activity and find the message. It should move from Accepted to Delivered within seconds.
Open it to see the timeline: accepted, connected, delivered, with the offsets between each. That timeline is the thing to reach for whenever a later send does not behave, so it is worth looking at once while everything is working.
Once a message has been delivered, the setup guide steps out of the sidebar on its own. It stays reachable from the Docs panel.
If a step stalls
| Symptom | Where to look |
|---|---|
| The domain will not verify | The panel names the likely cause under each record. See verification |
| The send is rejected immediately | Check the from address is at a verified domain, and that the key belongs to this workspace |
| The message shows Failed | Open it. The plain-language reason and the receiving server's verbatim response are both on the message |
| It was delivered but never arrived | Check spam, then confirm the recipient address. A delivered message was accepted by the receiving server; what it does afterwards is its own policy |
After the first send
Nothing below is required to send, and all of it is easier to reason about once mail is flowing.
- Open and click tracking. Off by default, set per stream.
- Bounce rate and suppression. What the platform does about bad addresses on your behalf.
- Reading the Overview. The four measures and what they count.