Quickstart: send your first message

This guide sends your first message in about five minutes.

1. Get your API key

Sign in to the dashboard, open Settings → API keys, and create a key. It authenticates every request you send and should never be exposed in a browser or mobile app — call it from your own backend.

Confirm your email address before your first send. Click the link in the welcome email WeZend sent when you signed up. Until someone on the account has confirmed, every send is rejected: the message is created with status suppressed and a reason, and it is not queued — confirming afterwards does not deliver it, you send again. One confirmed user covers the whole account, transactional: true does not bypass it, and accounts created before 15 August 2026 are unaffected. Lost the email? Resend it from Settings → Security, or call POST /v1/auth/send-verify-email with { "email": "you@example.com" }; the link is valid for 24 hours.

2. Send a message

curl https://api.wezend.com/v1/messages/send \
  -H "X-API-Key: $WEZEND_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+4512345678",
    "channel": "sms",
    "message": "Hello from WeZend"
  }'

The example deliberately sends without a sender field, so the message uses your account's default sender — which works on a fresh account as soon as your email address is confirmed. A custom sender (your brand name) must be approved under Settings → Sender IDs first; an unapproved value is rejected with 403.

A successful call returns 201 with the message record:

{
  "message_id": "3fa1e2c0-...",
  "status": "queued",
  "channel": "sms",
  "to": "+4512345678",
  "cost": 0.045,
  "currency": "EUR",
  "created_at": "2026-07-08T10:00:00.000Z"
}

3. Check delivery

Poll GET /v1/messages/:message_id, or — better at any real volume — pass a webhook_url in the send request and receive delivery updates as they happen. See Webhooks.

Before your first real email: verify your domain

The send above goes out under WeZend's shared default sender. To send as your own domain — and to stay out of spam — add it under Settings → Domains first (GET /v1/account/email-domains). WeZend generates the exact records for your account: an SPF include:, a DKIM CNAME under WeZend's own selector, and a recommended DMARC starting at p=none.

Publish the DKIM record under the selector WeZend gives you — not one your mailbox host already uses for its own mail. They are different keys, and only WeZend's selector matches the signature we apply. Then call POST /v1/account/email-domains/:id/verify; the checks object says per record what passed and, if not, why. Keep DMARC at p=none until DKIM verifies, then tighten it. Full walkthrough: Email: domains, DNS & sending.

What needs enabling

Not everything is self-serve, and it's better to know now than to debug it later.

Next steps

• Authentication — API keys vs. dashboard sessions
• Sending messages — every field /v1/messages/send accepts, and channel fallback
• Rate limits — the real, current limits per endpoint