Get started
Introduction
MailAfrica is a developer-first email infrastructure platform for Africa. Create sender IDs, receive inbound email via webhooks, send transactional email, and manage wallet balance and top-ups with a single API.
Everything you need to integrate MailAfrica programmatically — no dashboard clicks required once you have an API key.
What MailAfrica gives you
- Sender IDs — create discrete inbound addresses (
hello@mailafrica.online) programmatically, up to 100 per account. - Inbox webhooks — get pushed
inbound.message_receivedevents the instant mail lands, HMAC-signed so you can verify them. - Outbound email — send transactional email from the platform or your own verified sending domain.
- TZS native — all pricing in Tanzanian Shillings, debited from a single wallet balance.
- Balance & top-up — read your balance and start a mobile-money or card top-up over the API.
- Sandbox — test the whole flow with disposable SMTP credentials, no real mail.
Base URLs
| Environment | Base URL |
|---|---|
| Production API | https://api.mailafrica.online |
| Dashboard | https://app.mailafrica.online |
| Documentation | https://docs.mailafrica.online |
There is one production base URL. Every request is scoped to your account by your API key — you can only ever read or write your own data, never the platform's internal data or another user's data.
How the API stays secure
MailAfrica is designed so that programmatic integrations only ever see their own resources:
- API keys are account-scoped — a key issued to your account can only access your sender IDs, addresses, messages, webhooks, domains, and balance.
- No internal endpoints — operator/admin surfaces are not part of the public API and are never reachable with a developer key.
- Secrets are single-show — plaintext API keys, webhook secrets, SMS keys, and sandbox passwords are returned exactly once; store them safely.
- Webhooks are verifiable — every delivery carries an HMAC-SHA256 signature you can check before trusting the payload.
- Wallet-gated — each message debits your balance, so spend is bounded by what you top up.
Pricing at a glance
| Message | Price |
|---|---|
Inbound on the platform domain (mailafrica.online) | 5 TZS per message |
| Inbound on your own verified receiving domain | 10 TZS per message |
| Outbound from the platform sender | 5 TZS per recipient |
| Outbound from your own verified sending domain | 10 TZS per recipient |
Next steps
- Register an account and verify your email or phone.
- Create an API key for your integration.
- Create your first sender ID and receive mail.
- Wire up an inbox webhook to react in real time.
- Check your balance and top up — billing is per message from your wallet.