Dashboard guide

Overview

How the dashboard is organized, how teams work and what your plan unlocks.

What it's for

The dashboard brings together everything the API does, in screens: send and track emails, look after your audience and broadcasts, set up domains and keys, and check limits and billing. This page shows how the dashboard is organized, how teams work and what your plan unlocks. The other pages of the guide explain each screen in detail.

When to use: On your first visit, or whenever you are not sure which menu a screen is in.

#Navigation

The top bar appears on every screen. From left to right: the logo (it takes you to Emails), the menu sections and, on the right, your team menu. On a computer, hovering over a section with a small arrow opens the list of its screens; clicking it or pressing the down arrow key also opens it. On narrow windows and on phones, the Open menu button (three lines) shows the same menu full screen, and becomes Close menu while it is open.

Menu section	What it holds
E-mails	Three screens: Emails (sent through the API and SMTP), Templates (reusable emails with variables) and Inboxes (incoming email).
Marketing	Seven screens: Audience (contacts, segments, tags and topics), Broadcasts, Automations, Forms, Scheduled (everything set for a time), Events (sent by your app) and Email validation.
Metrics	Direct shortcut to Metrics: sends, deliveries, bounces, complaints, opens and clicks.
Developers	Six screens: Domains (DNS, DKIM and tracking), API keys, Webhooks, Logs (incoming requests), Suppressions (blocked addresses) and Integrations (ready-made code for your stack).
Settings	Direct shortcut to Settings: usage, billing, team, SMTP, AI connections, exports, documents and Labs.

How lists work

Screens shown as lists (Emails, Logs, Contacts, Broadcasts and others) follow the same layout:

A toolbar at the top with the search, the Period selector (on lists that have one), the Filters button and, on the right, the total and the Export button. The search waits until you stop typing before looking. The Filters button is explained in Audience › Filters.
The pagination at the bottom of the list: Previous, Page N and Next. Filters and search are kept in the page address, so you can copy the link to a list that is already filtered.
The row menu (three dots) with the item's actions: open, duplicate, delete and so on.
The View code button (the </> symbol) on several screens shows the same action as an API request, in cURL, Node.js, PHP and Python, ready to copy.
The empty state: a list with no items explains what the screen is for and offers the button to create the first one. With filters applied, the message changes to No ... found.

Notices, tasks and help links

Confirm your email: while the account email has not been confirmed, a banner at the top asks you to open the link we sent (Resend link sends another). Until you confirm, you cannot add domains or create API keys.
Sending paused: a red banner shown when Postal paused the team's sending because of a high rate of bounces or complaints. It shows the reason, the View the bounced emails shortcut and, for owners and admins, the Request review button. The reply arrives by email within 1 business day. See Limits to understand the levels.
Background tasks: exports, contact imports and list verifications appear in a card in the corner of the screen, with their progress. You can keep using the dashboard or leave the page; the finished file stays in that card and in Settings › Exports.
Learn more: the discreet link at the top of each screen opens the section of this guide that explains that screen, in another tab.

See also: Getting started with the API · Authentication.

#Teams

Everything in the dashboard belongs to a team: the members, domains, API keys, emails, audience, broadcasts and plan. A team is your company or a project; one person can belong to several, each with completely separate data.

The team button is in the right corner of the top bar (avatar, team name and plan). When you open it:

Item	What it does
Team card	Team name, plan and your role. It takes you to Settings › Team.
Switch team	The arrows button next to the name opens the list of your teams (the check mark shows the current one). Choosing another one switches teams and takes you back to Emails. At the end of the list, Create team opens the form for a new team (Team name); whoever creates it is the owner, and the team starts with its own members, domains, keys and plan.
Sent today / Sends this month	Bars showing how much the team has already sent against the plan limit. They turn yellow from 70% and red from 90%. They only appear for the limits the plan has.
Settings, Billing, Invite member	Shortcuts to usage and limits, billing and inviting new people to the team.
My account, Security, Help, Sign out	The bottom part of the menu is about you, not the team: your profile, security, Help (support) and Sign out.

Roles

Role	What they can do
Owner	Everything an admin does, plus deleting the team and transferring ownership. A team always has one owner.
Admin	Uses the dashboard and the API and also manages members, invitations, plan and billing, and can turn on features in testing (Labs) and request a review of paused sending.
Member	Uses the dashboard and the API: sends emails, looks after the audience, creates broadcasts, templates and the rest. Cannot see billing or manage people.

Invitations are sent by email and are valid for 7 days. The recipient can accept in Profile › Teams or through the link in the email. If you switch teams in another browser tab, the dashboard tells you that the team changed.

Tip

To keep environments apart (for example, production and testing), create different teams: each one has its own API keys, domains and limits.

See also: Settings › Team · Profile › Teams.

#Plans and limits

The team's plan defines how much it can send and which features are available. The plans are Free, Starter, Pro, Scale and Enterprise, and transactional sending and marketing are subscribed to separately in Settings › Billing. Up-to-date prices and limits are on Pricing and Limits.

What the plan controls	How it appears in the dashboard
Sending quotas	Emails per day and per month. The per-day limit is the lower of the plan's and the account reputation ceiling, which starts at 500 for new accounts and grows with the sending history. The day resets at 00:00 UTC and the month on the 1st. When the quota is reached, sends are refused; a broadcast pauses and resumes by itself when the quota renews. On plans that allow it, Keep sending above the monthly limit (in Billing) keeps sends going and charges the extra emails per thousand. When the plan offers the Sends add-on, the owner or an admin can also buy a reserve of sends, with a one-time payment, that is only used once the monthly quota runs out.
Requests per second	The API limit per team, adding up all keys.
Plan items	Number of domains, inboxes, team members, contacts, segments, broadcasts per month, automation runs per month, AI and email validation credits (the Validation add-on adds credits to the plan's), CRM connections and app integrations. When the marketing plan offers it, the Contacts add-on raises the contact limit without changing plans.
Plan features	Some things only exist on paid plans, such as inboxes on your own domain and A/B tests in automations. The screen shows the locked feature with Not in your plan, Upgrade or See plans.
Account reputation	Regardless of the plan, each team has a score from 0 to 100 that sets its level, the daily sending ceiling and the bounce limit. Postal pauses a team's sending when permanent bounces, complaints or rejected content go above the limits, to protect delivery for everyone; before that, owners and admins get an email warning. See Account reputation.

Where to see what you have already used

The Sent today and Sends this month bars in the team menu.
Settings › Usage: all the team's limits, with how much was used and when they renew.
The Paused features notice in Billing, when the current plan does not include something the team was using (for example, after downgrading).
In the APIs, GET /usage returns the same numbers.

Warning

Going over a quantity limit (for example, the number of domains) does not delete anything that already exists: it only stops you from creating one more. To free it up, upgrade or remove an item. In the API, this case responds with 403 plan_limit_reached.

See also: Limits · Plans (API) · Pricing.