How it all fits together
The contacts → segments → campaigns flow and the rules that keep it safe.
Unitpost has two ways to send: the API (transactional mail — receipts, password resets, one-to-one messages triggered by your app) and Campaigns (one-to-many marketing sends to an audience). Most of the dashboard exists to make the campaign path safe and repeatable, and to give you visibility into both.
The core flow
Three resources form a pipeline, each building on the one before it: Contacts → Segments → Campaigns.
- Contacts are the people you can email — an address plus optional name and custom fields. They carry a marketing subscription state; an unsubscribed or suppressed contact is never mailed.
- Segments are named groups of contacts. A campaign sends to exactly one segment, so a segment is the unit of "who receives this send." Only subscribed members are mailable.
- Campaigns combine a template (the content, authored on the Templates page) with a segment (the audience) and a verified from-domain, then send now or on a schedule.
Read the chain bottom-up when something won't send
A campaign can only send if its template is publishable, its segment has subscribed members, and its from-domain is verified. When a send is blocked, walk back down the chain — domain → segment members → template — and the offending link is almost always one of those three.
Supporting pieces
- Domains establish sending identity (DKIM/SPF/DMARC). Nothing sends from an address on an unverified domain.
- Templates hold reusable content; the Library stores the images and assets templates reference.
- Emails and Activity are the read side — every individual message and every account event, for debugging and auditing.
- API Keys and Webhooks are the developer surface: keys authenticate the API, webhooks push event notifications back to you.
Archive, don't delete
Deleting a segment or campaign archives it rather than removing it immediately. Archiving keeps history intact (a sent campaign still shows what it sent to) and avoids orphaning references. Archived items are hidden from pickers and lists by default, can be restored with one click, and are permanently swept ~30 days later once nothing active references them.
Active references block destructive actions
You can't archive a segment that a non-terminal campaign (draft, scheduled, or sending) still needs — cancel or finish that campaign first. This is the rule that used to be a confusing 500 error; now it's a clean, explained stop in both the UI and the API.
Each page has its own guide below. New to the product? Follow the sidebar order: verify a Domain, build a Template, add Contacts, group them into a Segment, then create a Campaign.