Getting started

Sign in

Sign in with your email address: MailCheap emails you a code to type in. Each code works once, for 5 minutes, so there's no password to remember. On this server, only the addresses its admin allowed can sign in.

Set up your newsletter

The first time you sign in, MailCheap asks four things:

• Your newsletter's name.
• What it's about, in one line, under its name on your signup form and website. You can skip it.
• Who it's from: the name your readers see in their inbox.
• Whether you have subscribers already, and where they are now.

You can change all of it later in the newsletter's settings.

Send your first issue

Until they're done, a list of these steps sits at the bottom right of the dashboard, for the newsletter that's open: its design, issues and subscribers count for it alone, while your domain and AI agent count for all your newsletters. The step to do next is open, and a click on any other shows what it takes, one step at a time. Close the list and it stays closed for that newsletter, on every device. Your other newsletters, and the ones you add later, keep theirs.

1. Choose your design. Click one of the themes in the list, and your website and emails take its colors and fonts: Customize, in the message that follows, changes them. Preview all themes opens the Design page, which shows each one on your website and in an email. Design and themes
2. Add your subscribers. On the Contacts page, import a CSV file from the platform you're leaving, take signups with a form on your site, or add people with the API or by hand. Adding contacts
3. Write your first issue. Start a draft from the Campaigns page. It saves as you type. Writing an issue
4. Send from your domain. Add its DNS records on the Domains page, then send from an address at it. Sender addresses and domains
5. Send your first issue. Open your draft, send yourself a test, then send it now or schedule it. Sending and scheduling
6. Connect your AI agent, if you use one. ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Codex or Grok Bot can write, test and schedule issues for you. API and AI assistants

The overview

The overview shows how the newsletter that's open is doing over a period, the last 30 days at first: the emails it sent, the share delivered, opened and clicked, bounces and spam complaints, each next to the period before, and its subscribers day by day, or hour by hour over 2 days or less, with the period before as a dashed line. Opened from the sidebar, the overview starts on the last 30 days.

To see another period, click Last 30 days, the button at the top right, and pick the last 24 hours, 7 days, 90 days or 12 months. Under Custom range, pick the first and last day of any period up to 12 months long, like a launch week, then Apply: the numbers cover those days, today at the latest, next to as many days before them.

Below, a chart shows the issues and welcome emails sent over the same period, in front of the period before's, in your timezone: a bar for each hour over 2 days or less, each day up to 31 days, each week up to 180 days, and each month over longer periods. Over the last 24 hours, Now marks the hour you're in. Then come your latest campaigns. The API and AI assistants get the same numbers, for any of these periods.

The sidebar

The sidebar lists your newsletter's pages, then your account's, like the Domains page. The button next to MailCheap at its top folds it down to its icons, for more room on the page. Folded, it opens over the page while your mouse is on it and folds back when you move away. To keep it open, click that button again, or the MailCheap logo on a touch screen. Your browser remembers your choice.

While you edit a campaign, the sidebar also folds down on its own to leave the issue more room. The next page shows it open again, unless you folded it yourself.