Quick starts

Your first hour with SenderSignal

Four short guides, in the order that makes sense. Add a monitor first, because everything else assumes an asset is being watched. Each one is a few minutes.

Add a blacklist monitor

About 2 minutesStart here. Everything else builds on having an asset under watch.

  1. Add the assetIn the dashboard choose Add asset and enter a domain, a subdomain or a sending IP. Add the exact hostname your mail leaves from, for example mail.yourdomain.com, not just the root domain, because that is what receivers look up.
  2. The first scan runs immediatelyYou do not need to trigger it. All 45+ blacklist and reputation sources are queried straight away and you get a 0 to 100 reputation score within seconds.
  3. Confirm the recheck cadenceScheduled rechecks then run on your plan's cadence: 30 minutes on Free, 60 on Starter, 15 on Professional, and as fast as 1 minute on Business and Enterprise.
  4. Read a listing honestlyResults come back as clean, listed or no answer. A source that did not respond is reported as no answer rather than counted as clean, so a partial result never reads as a pass.

Next. If something is listed, open the delisting guide on the incident. It has the per-source removal steps and rechecks afterwards to confirm the removal took effect. See Blacklist monitoring.

Start Inbox Boost

About 5 minutes to set up, 28 days to runDo this if the domain is new, or if mail has never reliably landed.

  1. Add the sending domain. That is your part.Choose Inbox Boost and enter the domain you want to warm. You do not need an SMTP host, a port, credentials, or a connected ESP. SenderSignal registers the domain on its own sending infrastructure and provisions a dedicated sending server for it.
  2. Let it publish your DNS, or copy the recordsSPF, DKIM and return-path are generated for you. Connect Cloudflare, Name.com, GoDaddy or Dynadot and SenderSignal writes them into your zone itself, merging into any SPF record you already have instead of replacing it. On any other registrar, the guided setup gives you the exact records to paste. DMARC stays a separate step because it needs a policy you choose.
  3. Set the target volumeEnter the daily volume you eventually want to send. The 28-day ramp is derived from it: small steady sends at first, increasing only when the previous days held up.
  4. Leave bounce guard onBounce guard measures your bounce rate against a 2% threshold and pauses the ramp on its own if it is crossed. This is the setting that makes an unattended ramp safe. Do not switch it off.
  5. Then leave it aloneThere is no daily checklist. Volume steps up on schedule, engagement accumulates as opens and clicks, and the reputation score moves. Check in weekly, not hourly.

Next. Around day 14 run a placement test to confirm the trust you are building is showing up as inbox placement. See how Inbox Boost works.

Run a placement test

About 3 minutes, plus delivery timeDo this when you need to know where mail lands, not just that it was accepted.

  1. Create the testChoose Inbox placement then New test. You get a seed list covering Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Yahoo, Zoho and AOL. Each test costs one credit from your monthly allowance.
  2. Send to the seeds the way you really sendSend the campaign or template you actually care about, through the path you actually use for it. A placement test only tells you something if it tests the real thing.
  3. Read the folder, per providerResults report the real folder: Inbox, Promotions, Updates, Social, Spam or Missing. Missing means it never arrived at that seed, which is more urgent than Promotions because it points at a block upstream of foldering.
  4. Then read the content analysisOnce a seed receives the message, content analysis runs automatically on the delivered copy and scores it out of 100 with the specific lines working against you. No extra step.

Next. If placement is poor but content scores well, the problem is reputation, so look at Inbox Boost and your blacklist status. See Inbox intelligence.

Configure alerts

About 3 minutesDo this before you need it. An alert configured after an incident is worth nothing.

  1. Pick the events, not all of themThere are 60 distinct event types and you subscribe individually. Start with listings, delistings and score drops. Subscribing to everything trains you to ignore the channel.
  2. Add a channelThree are live: email on every plan, and Slack plus signed webhooks on Professional and above. Email needs no setup; Slack is an OAuth connect; a webhook needs a URL that accepts POST.
  3. Verify webhook signaturesEvery webhook carries X-SenderSignal-Signature, an HMAC-SHA256 of the raw request body. Verify it against your signing secret before trusting the payload, and compare using a constant-time function.
  4. Send a test and check the logFire a test event, then open the delivery log. Every attempt is recorded with its response code, and failures are retried with backoff, so a webhook your side dropped is visible rather than silently lost.

Next. Route to where your team already works. An alert in a channel nobody watches is the same as no alert. See Alert channels.

If you only do one thing

Add a monitor and configure an email alert. That is five minutes, it is free, and it turns the most common failure, finding out about a listing from a customer, into something you hear about in minutes.