Brevo
Transactional email — password resets, magic links, receipts, and notifications sent from your app.
Why we need this
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the service that sends the transactional email your app relies on: account verification, password resets, magic links, receipts, and other notifications. Calda connects to it two ways — over the SMTP relay and through the Brevo API — so the app can send mail reliably from your own domain.
Like all other accounts, this one should be owned by you. Your sending domain reputation and email history are tied to the account, so keeping it under your company means that history and reputation belong to you, not us.
Do I need a credit card?
Brevo's free plan itself requires no credit card and covers early development:
- 300 emails per day
- Unlimited contacts
- Shared sending IP
However, we need to be invited as a user on your account so we can access the dashboard — view sending logs, monitor deliverability, and manage your senders, domains, and keys. On Brevo, adding users requires a paid plan, so you'll need to be on a paid plan (and add a card) for us to get that access.
A paid plan will be needed
Two things require a paid plan on Brevo: adding us as a user (so we can manage sending and view logs), and the higher sending volume your production app will need once it grows past the free plan's 300 emails/day limit. Plan to upgrade when you set this up so we're not blocked from helping.
Step-by-step setup
Create the Brevo account
Sign up at brevo.com using your company email. Brevo keeps everything — senders, domains, API keys, and billing — under your account, reachable from the account dropdown in the top-right corner.
Add and authenticate your sending domain
You'll need access to your domain's DNS settings for this step.
Open the account dropdown → Senders, Domains & Dedicated IPs → Domains, then
click Add a domain. We recommend using a subdomain like
send.yourcompany.com or updates.yourcompany.com rather than your root domain
— this keeps your main domain's reputation protected.
Brevo will show a Brevo code, a DKIM record, and a DMARC record (and
an SPF entry — include:spf.brevo.com). Add them at your DNS provider, then
click Authenticate. Many providers also support one-click automatic
authentication. Once the records propagate, the domain shows as
Authenticated.
Where to find your DNS records
If you're not sure where your DNS is managed, it should be in the same place as your email or domain hosting provider.
Decide on a from / sender address
Pick the address email should come from on your verified domain — something
like no-reply@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com. You can add it under
Senders, Domains & Dedicated IPs → Senders.
Invite Calda
Open the account dropdown → Settings → Users, click Add users, enter the Calda email we share with you, and grant All access. We need this so we can manage your domains, senders, and keys, and keep an eye on sending logs and deliverability.
What we'll do once we're in
After you've added us, we'll generate the SMTP key and API key ourselves (under Settings → SMTP & API) and wire up the app's sending — you don't need to create or share any keys.
Confirm in Slack
Don't forget to notify us in Slack so we can accept the invitation and confirm that we can sign in.
Conclusion
That is it — with this configuration we can start sending email from your domain. Once you've added us as a user and confirmed in Slack, we'll handle the rest of the integration on our side.
How is this guide?