Getting Started with StretchMail

What is StretchMail?

StretchMail is StretchSuite's email platform. It combines two jobs most teams juggle in separate tools:

• Marketing email — build audience lists, compose campaigns, and track opens and clicks (the StretchSuite answer to Mailchimp).
• A shared team inbox — receive, read, triage, and reply to inbound mail tied to your own mailboxes, domains, and aliases.

Everything you see is scoped to your organization. You only ever work with your own domains, mailboxes, lists, contacts, campaigns, and messages — never another workspace's data.

Key concepts

The StretchMail workspace

Open the app from the workspace sidebar under Comms & Legal → StretchMail. The top of the screen shows live counters — Domains, Mailboxes, Aliases, Contacts, Campaigns, and Queued — and an Engine card that shows whether outbound sending and inbound routing are ready.

Below the counters is a row of tabs:

• Dashboard — the at-a-glance overview you land on.
• Domains — add and verify your sending domains.
• Mailboxes — create and manage send/receive addresses.
• Aliases — extra and forwarding addresses.
• Inbox — your shared team inbox for inbound mail.
• Audience — lists, contacts, and segments.
• Campaigns — compose, schedule, and send.
• Reports — opens, clicks, and rates.

You'll also find a Setup view (a guided readiness checklist) and Drafts and Queued views for work in flight.

Your first five steps

1. Open the Dashboard. It shows counts for your domains, mailboxes, contacts, and campaigns. On day one most of these read 0 — that's expected. The counters fill in as you complete setup.
2. Verify a sending domain. Open Domains, click Add domain, enter your domain (e.g. yourcompany.com), and add the DNS records StretchMail generates. Then click Verify. See Verifying your sending domain for the full walkthrough. A verified domain is what keeps your mail out of spam.
3. Create a mailbox. On the verified domain, open Mailboxes, click New mailbox, and create an address like hello@yourcompany.com. This is what sends and receives.
4. Build an audience list. Go to Audience → New list, name it (for example Newsletter subscribers), then add contacts by hand or Import a CSV with email,name columns.
5. Create and test a campaign. Open Campaigns, pick your list, write a Subject and Preview text, compose the body, then send a test to yourself before you queue the real send.

Tip: Always send a test to your own inbox first. The test uses the exact content your subscribers will receive, so it's the fastest way to catch a broken link, a typo, or a missing image before it goes out.

A realistic example

Beau runs Payne Coaching Co. He opens StretchMail with 0 domains and 47 contacts already imported. His first hour looks like this:

1. He adds paynecoaching.com under Domains and pastes the verification, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records into his DNS host. Twenty minutes later he clicks Verify and the domain flips to active.
2. He creates the mailbox beau@paynecoaching.com.
3. He confirms his 47 contacts sit on a New clients list under Audience.
4. He drafts a welcome campaign, sends a test to himself, fixes one link, then schedules it for 9:00 AM.

Tips

• Verify your domain before anything else. Mailboxes, aliases, and campaigns all depend on it.
• The Dashboard counters are your health check. If Queued keeps climbing but nothing sends, check that your sending engine is active (see the Engine card).
• Use the Setup view. It bundles domain verification, inbound routing, SMTP sending, mailboxes, and aliases into one checklist so you know exactly what's left.
• Keep contact statuses clean. Only subscribed contacts receive campaigns.

Where to go next

• The StretchMail production setup checklist — get fully ready to send and receive.
• Building audience lists and importing contacts — get your subscribers in.
• Composing and sending a campaign — the composer, preview, test, schedule, and send.
• Using the shared team inbox — the receiving side.
• Measuring performance with Reports — opens, clicks, and rates.