Sending from the shared domain
Every new Bird workspace can send email immediately from Bird's shared onboarding domain — messages from onboarding@messagebird.dev. There's nothing to configure: no DNS records, no domain verification, no waiting. It exists so you can prove the pipes work in your first five minutes, before you've set up anything of your own.
Because the domain is shared by everyone, it comes with deliberate guardrails. This page explains what they are and why they're there.
What it's for
The shared domain is a test and first-send capability:
- Confirming your account and workspace can send, right after signup.
- Letting a developer verify an integration end to end before your own domain is verified.
- Running deterministic delivery tests against the mail sandbox.
It is not meant for production sending — not because of an arbitrary rule, but because the guardrails below make it unsuitable for real traffic by design.
The guardrails
Recipients must be verified members of your workspace. The shared domain only delivers to people who have a verified Bird account with access to your workspace — in practice, you and your teammates. Sending to any other address is rejected with a clear error explaining why. This protects the shared domain's reputation for everyone using it: nobody can use it to email strangers.
There's a daily recipient cap. Sends are capped per organization per day — by default 50 recipients across your whole organization. Once you hit the cap, further sends are rejected with a clear error, and the allowance resets the next day. Fifty is plenty for testing; it's intentionally far too small for production.
One exception: sandbox addresses. The mail sandbox addresses — delivered@, bounce@, and the other magic addresses at messagebird.dev — are exempt from the members-only restriction, so you can simulate deliveries, bounces, and complaints without inviting anyone. They do still count toward the daily cap.
Moving to production: verify your own domain
When you're ready to send real email to real recipients, set up your own sending domain. That removes the recipient restriction and the daily cap, puts your own name in the From address, and builds sending reputation that belongs to you. The Sending domains guide walks through registering a domain, publishing its DNS records, and the verification lifecycle — most domains verify within minutes of DNS propagation.
The shared domain doesn't go away when you verify your own — it stays available for testing whenever you need a known-good sender.
Related pages
- Send your first email — the developer quickstart that uses the shared domain
- Email sending FAQ — common questions about sending, including the shared domain
- Test email delivery (mail sandbox) — deterministic bounces, complaints, and deliveries with no real inbox
- Sending domains — set up your own domain for production sending