Setup

The setup process for Broadcast is straightforward and involves a few simple steps.

Step 1: Create your admin account

When you first access your Broadcast installation, you’ll be greeted with a split-screen onboarding page. Fill in your name, email address, and password to create the admin account.

Step 1: Create your admin account with name, email, and password fields

Note: Future versions of Broadcast will support multiple administrative users. For the time being, only one user is supported.

Step 2: Create your first channel

Channels are like mailing lists: they help you organize subscribers and send targeted campaigns. Give your first channel a descriptive name like “Newsletter” or “Product Updates”.

Step 2: Create your first channel with a name field

Step 3: Confirm your domain

Broadcast will auto-detect your server’s IP address and domain. Confirm that the domain shown matches the URL where you installed Broadcast.

Step 3: Confirm your installation domain

Step 4: Configure sender details

After completing the onboarding wizard, you’ll land on the dashboard. A card in the bottom-right corner tells you how many setup steps are still missing before you can send emails.

The card starts collapsed so it never covers the page. Click it to expand the checklist: it remembers that choice, and interacting with the page again closes it. Once every step is done, the card stops appearing.

Dashboard showing the setup checklist with remaining tasks

Navigate to Settings → Sender Details to configure:

  • Sender name: The display name recipients see (e.g., “John from Acme”)
  • Sender email: The “From” email address (e.g., john@acme.com)
  • Physical address: Recommended for CAN-SPAM and GDPR compliance
  • Email footer: Added to every broadcast and sequence email (includes an unsubscribe link by default)

Sender details form with name, email, address, and footer configured

Step 5: Add an email server

Navigate to Settings → Email Servers and click Add email server. You’ll see three options:

Add Email Server dialog showing Guided Setup, Manual Setup, and Test Server options

The easiest option. Select your email provider (Postmark, AWS SES, SendGrid, or Mailgun), paste your API key, and Broadcast will automatically configure domains, senders, and webhooks.

Provider picker showing Postmark, AWS SES, SendGrid, and Mailgun

Manual Setup

For advanced users or providers not supported by Guided Setup (Resend, SMTP.com, Inboxroad, or custom SMTP). You’ll configure SMTP or API settings manually.

Test Server

Requires a license key. Lets you try sending without emailing real people.

The test server captures every email in your private test inbox and never delivers it, so a message it accepts will not arrive in anyone’s mailbox, even your own. Broadcast marks it delivered because the test server accepted it.

To read what you sent, open the email server in Settings > Email Servers and click View Test Inbox. Captured mail is kept for 7 days.

When you are ready to send to real people, set up a real email server. As soon as a real server is active in a channel, Broadcast switches that channel’s test server off, so no real subscriber’s email ends up in the test inbox. You can turn it back on in Settings > Email Servers if you want to test again; while a real server is active, sends set to use any email server still skip it, and it is only used by broadcasts that select it by name.

The test server stays on in two cases. One is when an unsent broadcast, a sequence or a pending transactional email is set to use it specifically (selected by name, not “use any email server”). The other is when it is the only server in the channel for broadcasts, sequences or transactional emails, for example because your real server isn’t enabled for transactional emails. Once nothing needs it, switch it off yourself in Settings > Email Servers.

Email Server Delivery Methods

Broadcast supports two delivery methods:

SMTP Delivery

Traditional SMTP delivery works with all email service providers. You’ll need:

  • SMTP server address and port
  • SMTP username and password
  • Authentication type (Plain, Login, or CRAM-MD5)

API Delivery

For improved performance and better error handling. Supported for:

  • AWS SES: Uses AWS SDK for direct API sending
  • Postmark: Uses Postmark’s REST API with message stream support
  • SendGrid: Uses SendGrid’s v3 API with domain authentication
  • Mailgun: Uses Mailgun’s API with per-domain webhook tracking

API delivery provides faster sending, better error messages, and reduced infrastructure requirements (no SMTP ports needed).

Next Steps

Once your channel is configured with sender details and at least one email server, you’re ready to:

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