HomeSetup guide

Setup guide

From nothing to your
first campaign.

9 steps, about half an hour of real work. They are in the order we would do them in, which is not quite the order you would guess — the sending rules come before the contacts, and the first send goes to you.

  1. Create your workspace

    2 minutes

    Your name, an email address, a password and the business name. The business name becomes the workspace and the default sender name, and both can be changed later.

    • One account can hold several workspaces and switch between them
    • Whoever signs up owns the workspace — ownership is the one role that cannot be granted away from the team screen
  2. Connect your number

    1 minute

    On the Numbers screen, add the number and scan the pairing code with the WhatsApp app on the phone that holds it. There is no business verification to apply for and nothing to wait on.

    • Use the number your customers already have saved — that is the whole point of it
    • The connection is held by our WhatsApp service, not by your browser, so you can close the tab
    • A number that drops off says so on the Numbers screen, and campaigns using it stop rather than fail quietly
  3. Set your sending rules — before anything else

    3 minutes

    Workspace settings holds the frame everything else inherits: the hours messages may leave in, the daily ceiling, the pace, and whether consent is required before anybody can be messaged. Doing this first is the difference between a careful first campaign and an apology.

    Sending hours are currently judged in UTC, because a workspace has no timezone of its own yet. If you want 09:00–20:00 in Istanbul, enter 06:00–17:00.

    • Pace: cautious, balanced or brisk — six, twelve or twenty messages a minute
    • Turn on “require opt-in” and Birsend refuses anybody without consent on file, everywhere: campaigns, the inbox, and the API
    • A campaign or a number can tighten these hours further, never widen them
  4. Bring your contacts

    5 minutes

    Import a CSV or a plain text file, or add people by hand. The import shows you what it parsed before anything is written, and reports every row it could not read rather than refusing the file.

    • CSV and TXT. Export from a spreadsheet as CSV first — the importer does not read .xlsx
    • Numbers can be a single international column; nothing has to be split into a dial code
    • Mark the list as opted in only if it truly is. That flag is what a send checks
    • Tag as you import — tags are how you build an audience later
  5. Write the message

    5 minutes

    Save it as a template so it is not retyped, and set it to active — the campaign builder only offers active templates, so a half-written draft cannot be one click from going out.

    • The composer shows WhatsApp formatting as your customer will see it
    • A campaign body is sent exactly as written. Placeholders like {first_name} fill on automatic replies, not on campaigns
    • Attach one picture or document from the file library if the message needs one
  6. Build the campaign

    3 minutes

    Choose the number to send from, the audience, and the hour. Save it as a draft while you are still deciding; scheduling it is a separate, deliberate act.

    • The audience is resolved when the send starts, not when you save — somebody added in between is included
    • The hour has to be in the future. A time already past is refused
    • A campaign can hold its own tighter window, daily cap and pace
  7. Send to a few people first

    10 minutes, mostly waiting

    Make a second campaign aimed at a handful of numbers you own, and let it go. Read what arrives on an actual phone: the sender name, the formatting, the link, the attachment.

    • There is no rehearsal mode you can switch on from the panel — the safe first send is a small real one
    • Check the campaign page afterwards: sent, delivered, and the reason beside anybody who was skipped
    • Then pause it and resume it once, so you have seen those buttons work before you need them
  8. Send it, then watch it land

    ongoing

    Schedule the real one. The sender checks every minute, so the hour you picked is the hour it goes. Replies arrive in the shared inbox against the same contact, in the same thread.

    • Queued, sent, delivered, read and failed move as the campaign works through the audience
    • Pause stops it within a minute and remembers exactly who it had reached
    • A campaign left far past its hour is cancelled automatically rather than delivered late
  9. Add your team

    2 minutes each

    Create an account for each colleague and hand them the password. There is no invitation email — the account exists the moment you save it, so nobody waits on a link.

    • Three roles ship configured: Admin, Agent, Analyst. Add your own if none of them fit
    • Sixteen areas, each with “see it” and “change it”. Reports and Logs are separate, because either one shows the shape of the whole business
    • Removing somebody revokes every session and key they held, and keeps their name on everything they wrote

What people get wrong

Six things worth reading before the first send rather than after it. Every one of these has a real cause in how the product works today.

Sending hours set in local time

The window is compared against UTC. A 09:00–20:00 window entered by somebody in Istanbul means 12:00–23:00 to them. Enter it in UTC until a workspace timezone exists.

Expecting {first_name} to fill in a campaign

It does not. A campaign body is sent exactly as written; the placeholders fill on automatic replies only. Check the preview before you schedule.

Uploading a spreadsheet

The importer reads CSV and TXT. Save as CSV from Excel or Sheets first — an .xlsx will not parse.

Marking a cold list as opted in

The flag is what a send checks, so ticking it on a list that never agreed is how a number gets reported. If consent is unclear, leave it off and require opt-in.

Deleting a campaign that is part way through

It is refused while sending or paused, because the messages already delivered need a record to belong to. Let it finish, then delete it.

Assuming a paused campaign will start itself

It will not. A pause holds until somebody resumes it, and the people it had not reached stay waiting however long that takes.

Once that has landed

None of this belongs in a first afternoon. Come back to it when the first campaign has been out and you know what you actually need.

Answer the obvious questions automatically

A rule can reply to a keyword, to somebody’s first ever message, or to everything that arrives — from a template, and it can tag the contact while it is at it. An “outside sending hours” condition turns any rule into an out-of-office reply.

Measure what people click

Links in a campaign are shortened and counted, with country and device, so a broadcast turns into a list of people who were actually interested.

Connect your own systems

A REST API for software you wrote, and an MCP server so an AI agent can work the inbox. Both under the same sending rules, with keys that can never exceed the person who made them.

Decide what may never leave

The safety screen holds your own blocked word list and an allow list for words a filter would over-catch, plus a log of every message it stopped and why.

Half an hour, and it is running.

Fourteen days free, no credit card. If you get stuck on any of these steps, write to us and say which number the step was.

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