Sendrealm Free Plan: What Is Included and How to Start

The Sendrealm free plan is enough to configure a real sending domain, integrate a small application, and test an initial broadcast without entering payment details. It currently includes 500 transactional emails and 250 broadcast emails per month, one sending domain, and one team member.

Plan allowances can change, so use the live Sendrealm pricing calculator as the source of truth before planning production volume.

What the monthly email allowances mean

Sendrealm separates two types of email usage:

• Transactional email is triggered for a particular user or application event, such as a password reset, receipt, sign-in link, or account alert.
• Broadcast email is a campaign sent to an audience, such as a product announcement or newsletter.

The free allowances are measured separately. Sending fewer transactional messages does not increase the broadcast allowance, and unused monthly volume should not be treated as permanent capacity.

Contacts do not add a storage charge, but list size and send volume are different things. A large audience can exceed the monthly broadcast allowance even when storing the contacts is free.

What you can validate on the free plan

A small, deliberate pilot can prove most of the operational workflow:

• add and verify one sending domain;

• create a project-scoped API key;

• send through the API or SMTP;

• create static and dynamic audiences;

• import a consented contact sample

  ;

• build and test an email campaign;

• inspect delivery, bounce, open, and click events;

• review recipient-level troubleshooting information.

Do not spend the first month sending arbitrary test messages. Define a pilot that resembles the production path you actually intend to run.

A practical setup sequence

1. Create the team and project

Use a project boundary that will still make sense after the pilot—for example, a production application rather than a single template experiment. The free plan includes one member, so decide which operator will own domains, keys, and billing during evaluation.

2. Verify the sending domain

Add the exact DNS records shown in the Sendrealm dashboard. Use a dedicated subdomain such as notify.example.com if separating transactional traffic from corporate or marketing mail makes operations clearer.

Wait for DNS propagation and confirm verification before judging delivery. Domain authentication is a prerequisite, not a guarantee that every message will reach the inbox.

3. Create a narrowly scoped key

Create a project key with sending permissions for the application. Store it in a secret manager or environment configuration on a trusted backend. Never embed an API key in browser or mobile code.

If you use SMTP, the host is smtp.sendrealm.com, the username is smtp, and the API key is the password. Use port 587 with STARTTLS or port 465 with implicit TLS.

4. Send to a controlled test group

Start with addresses your team owns across a few relevant providers. Test a representative password reset, receipt, or notification—not only “Hello world.” Confirm merge values, links, reply handling, and recipient events.

For a broadcast test, create a small static seed audience. Check the audience preview, unsubscribe experience, and tracking choices before sending.

5. Define the production threshold

Estimate monthly transactional and broadcast volume separately:

transactional volume = product events that trigger email × expected users
broadcast volume = recipients per campaign × campaigns per month

Include retries, seasonal peaks, growth, and internal test sends. Upgrade before a critical workflow depends on capacity beyond the free allowance.

What the free plan is best for

The plan fits:

• a developer evaluating the API or SMTP integration;
• an early product with low email volume;
• a proof of concept for domain setup and event visibility;
• a small campaign pilot to a consented seed audience.

It is not a substitute for load testing or a production capacity plan. A product may have only a few hundred users yet generate several transactional messages per user each month.

When to upgrade

Upgrade when you need more than one member or domain, or when expected sending volume approaches either free allowance. Do not wait until password resets or customer receipts begin failing because the project has outgrown its operating envelope.

Use the email pricing calculator to model transactional and broadcast volume. Revisit the estimate after launches, seasonal peaks, or changes to lifecycle messaging.

Free-plan launch checklist

• one project has a clear owner;
• the sending domain is verified;
• credentials are scoped and stored server-side;
• real message templates are tested across relevant inboxes;
• recipient events and failure handling are understood;
• campaign consent and unsubscribe behavior are verified;
• monthly transactional and broadcast volume are estimated separately;
• the team has an upgrade threshold before production depends on it.

The free plan is most valuable as a disciplined production rehearsal. Use it to prove the complete path—from authentication and credentials to delivery evidence and consent—then make the paid-plan decision using observed volume rather than guesswork.