Getting Started

Overview

unMTA provides email delivery infrastructure for your applications. You can send email using either SMTP or HTTP—choose whichever fits your application best.

This guide walks you through the initial setup: adding a domain, creating credentials, and sending your first message.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you'll need:

Access to the unMTA dashboard (from your onboarding)
A domain you control (for DNS configuration)
An application that needs to send email

1. Add Your Domain

Domains must be verified before you can send email through unMTA. Verification confirms you control the domain and enables DKIM signing for your messages.

Navigate to Domains in the sidebar
Click Add domain
Enter your domain name (e.g., example.com)
Click Save

The dashboard displays the DNS records you'll need to configure.

See Domains for complete details on domain verification and DNS configuration.

2. Configure DNS Records

Add these DNS records to your domain. The exact values are shown in the dashboard after adding your domain.

Record Type	Name	Purpose
TXT	`unmta._domainkey`	DKIM public key for signing
TXT	`_dmarc`	DMARC policy (recommended)

DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate, though most providers update within minutes. See Domains for provider-specific instructions.

3. Verify Your Domain

Once DNS records are in place:

Return to the Domains page
Click the menu on your domain row
Select Check DNS

If records are configured correctly, the domain status changes to Verified and you can start sending email.

4. Create Credentials

Credentials authenticate your application when sending email.

Navigate to Credentials in the sidebar
Click Add credentials
Enter a username for the credential
Select which domains this credential can send from
Click Save

Copy the password immediately—it's only shown once. If you lose it, you'll need to delete the credential and create a new one.

You can restrict credentials to specific domains and IP addresses. See Credentials for details.

5. Send Your First Email

With a verified domain and credentials, you're ready to send. Choose SMTP or HTTP based on your application.

To find your cluster's SMTP hostname and HTTP endpoint, see Clusters.

SMTP

Connect to your cluster's SMTP endpoint on port 587 with STARTTLS:

swaks --to recipient@example.com \
  --from sender@yourdomain.com \
  --server your-cluster.unmta.net:587 \
  --tls \
  --auth-user your-credential \
  --auth-password your-password \
  --header "Subject: Test Message" \
  --body "Hello from unMTA!"

HTTP

POST to the injection endpoint with HTTP Basic Auth:

curl -X POST https://your-cluster.unmta.net/api/inject/v1 \
  -u "username:password" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "envelope_sender": "bounces@yourdomain.com",
    "recipients": ["user@example.com"],
    "content": {
      "from": "sender@yourdomain.com",
      "subject": "Hello from unMTA",
      "text_body": "This is a test email."
    }
  }'

See Sending Messages for complete options including scheduling and campaign headers.

What's Next

Track delivery — Set up webhooks or log shipping to monitor email events
Manage queues — Use the Queues page to monitor and control delivery
Automate setup — Use the API to manage domains and credentials programmatically

Getting Started

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