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Getting Started

Getting Started with Plunk

If you're new to Plunk, this is the place to start. We'll walk you through the basics of Plunk and how to get started.

The before with other tools

If you ever tried to integrate emailing into your app, you know how much work it is and the technical debt it creates. One platform is usually manageable but once you have to start keeping a transactional email provider, a marketing email provider, and a newsletter provider in sync, it gets messy.

An illustration showing the problems one encounters when trying to keep multiple email providers in sync

The after with Plunk

Plunk brings together all these services into one single, shared space. Allowing you to set up transactional emails, marketing emails, and newsletters in one place on top of a shared contact. What this means is that one contact in Plunk provides an overview across all your email types.

An illustration showing Plunk's three services surrounding the contact

Automations

Automations are the core of Plunk. They allow you to create repeatable, delayable, and conditional flows that can be triggered by events that are sent into Plunk through the API. Plunk bundles these events meaning that you can create flows that require events from different sources such as webapps, mobile apps or other services.

An image showing an example flow of a Plunk automation

Setting up your first automation is easy and all steps can be found in the Creating your first automation guide. This guide goes over the entire process from sending an event through the API, creating a template and setting up the automation.

Transactional

Transactional emails are most likely the emails you are already sending. They do not require the same setup as automations and are sent directly through the API. You can find more information on how to send transactional emails in the API documentation.

Campaigns

Campaigns are broadcasts to a list of contacts. They are written, managed and sent entirely on the dashboard. You automatically have access to your list of contacts and the events they have triggered to segment them.