Getting started as a business

This is the walkthrough for the person setting up SingleSign Business for their company. By the end, your company has an organization with its own free address — acme.singlesign.com — you have a company mailbox such as you@acme.singlesign.com, and everyone you invite can be given one too — each with the Screener, each beside the personal @singlesign.com mailbox that stays theirs. Mail, Chat, Calendar, Docs and Meetings work from the moment the organization exists.

You don't need a domain of your own to start. If you want addresses like you@acme.com, you can add your domain during setup or any time afterwards — see step 3.

If you were invited by someone else, you want Joining an organization instead.

What you need

A SingleSign account for you. It's free, and each colleague creates their own as part of accepting the invite — there are no passwords to hand out.
A few minutes of your own time.
A list of who you'll invite, with their email addresses. Any address works; they sign in with SingleSign afterwards.
Your own domain — only if you want one. To use a domain you already own, you'll need access to where its DNS records are managed — usually your registrar (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Route 53, Squarespace and the like). You'll add one record to prove ownership and four more to route mail. There is no limit on the number of domains an organization can add; each one goes through the same steps.

1. Create your SingleSign account

Sign up free at singlesign.com — see Creating an Account. If you already have one, you're done with this step. Later, your company address becomes one more way to sign in to it.

2. Start an organization

Any of these gets you to the same place:

On email.singlesign.com, choose "Get started" — or "Start your organization" on the SingleSign Business page.
On singlesign.com, open Account → Organizations and click "Start an organization". You stay signed in on the way over.
Already in SingleSign Mail? Click your avatar (top right) and choose "Start an organization" — it's also in Mail settings.

(One note on the address bar: it reads email.singlesign.com/workspace/new. That URL segment is the only place the old word survives — it means organization.)

The page is titled "Set up your organization", with a five-step rail: Company → Domain → Your address → Invite → Done. You can leave at any point — "Do this later" or "Leave setup for now" — and pick it up again: your inbox sidebar shows a "Finish setting up Acme Inc." card with "Continue setup", and coming back to the wizard asks "Pick up where you left off?" with "Continue setting up Acme Inc." or "Start another organization".

Company

Enter your company's name under "Company or organization name" (for example "Acme Inc."). The name is shown to colleagues on their invites and in the account menu beside their company address. You can rename it later from the organization console.

Below it, "Your free address" is your organization's free SingleSign subdomain: the name you choose, followed by .singlesign.com. It's filled in from the company name as you type, and you can change it. A live check under the field tells you whether the name is free — "acme.singlesign.com is free and yours." — and when a name is taken it says so and suggests one that's free (such as acme-2). The rules for the name:

3 to 40 characters: the letters a–z, the digits 0–9 and hyphens.
No hyphen at the start or the end.
Some names are reserved and can't be used; the check tells you when you've picked one.

Click "Create organization". The organization and its free subdomain are created together, and there's nothing to verify and no DNS record to add for the subdomain — SingleSign runs it. Everyone you give an address to gets a real mailbox on it, such as joe@acme.singlesign.com.

Domain

This step — "Your own domain (optional)" — is where you can bring a domain you already own. Your free address is ready by now ("acme.singlesign.com is ready — your organization can use it right away."), so you can click "Continue" and carry on. You can add your own domain any time later in Admin → Domains; until then, everyone gets an address on your free SingleSign subdomain.

To add it now, enter "Your company domain" — just the domain, no www, no @ (for example acme.com) — and click "Add domain". You then see the "Verify ownership" panel with one TXT record, each part with a copy button:

Type	Host	Value
`TXT`	`@`	`singlesign-site-verification=…` (your own token)

Add it where you manage the domain's DNS, then do nothing. "We keep checking on our own: this step moves on by itself the moment the record is found, and you can close this page — we email you when it's verified." "Verify" just checks right now. You don't have to wait here either: the button to move on is always there, and verification carries on without you. Most DNS providers publish within minutes; changes can take up to 72 hours to spread, and after three days we keep checking hourly — we never give up on a domain. Registrar-by-registrar instructions are in Domains and DNS records.

Your address

"Your address at Acme Inc." — pick the part before the @ (letters, numbers, dots, hyphens or underscores) and click "Create my mailbox". The address goes on your free subdomain — you@acme.singlesign.com — unless you've already verified your own domain, which is then offered first; with more than one to choose from, pick the domain from the list. The line under the field shows the result: "Mail will arrive as you@acme.singlesign.com".

This creates your own company mailbox: its own inbox, storage and calendar, separate from any personal mail. It opens right there and sits beside your personal mailbox in the account menu.

Invite

Type or paste "Email addresses" (up to 20 per send), choose "Invite as" — Member is the default — and click "Send invites". Or "Skip for now"; you can invite people anytime from the organization console. The details are in Members and invites.

Done

"Acme Inc. is ready" — click "Open your inbox" to land in your new company mailbox.

3. Add your own domain (optional, any time)

Your organization works fully on its free subdomain, so this step is entirely up to you. When you want addresses on a domain you own, open the organization console and go to Domains → "Add domain" (or use the wizard's Domain step). Adding a domain changes nobody's address.

Prove you own it. One TXT record, exactly as in the wizard above. We check on our own and email you the moment it's verified.

Turn on mail for it. Verifying the domain proved you own it. Four more DNS records make mail flow through it. Find your domain under Domains and follow "Set up mail": the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC rows, each with the exact value and a copy button.

Record	Host	Value
MX	`@`	`10 email.singlesign.com.`
SPF (TXT)	`@`	`v=spf1 include:_spf.singlesign.com ~all`
DKIM (TXT)	`ss1._domainkey`	`v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=…` — your domain's own key, shown in the console
DMARC (TXT)	`_dmarc`	`v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourdomain`

Each row reads Found, Missing or Mismatch (with what we found instead), and the checks explain the usual slips — a record published at your DNS host that the internet can't see yet, an old MX still pointing at another provider, two SPF records instead of one. "We check on our own every few minutes — you can close this page." Your existing mail keeps working until the MX record changes.

The first time all four are found we send a signed test message from postmaster@acme.com to your inbox — subject "Your domain acme.com is ready" — which proves the whole path works. The card then reads "Mail is live for acme.com" and the admins get an email. Every record, every finding and every registrar is covered in Domains and DNS records.

Give people addresses on it. Once the domain is verified, an admin can give someone who already has joe@acme.singlesign.com the extra address joe@acme.com: open them from Members, and under Addresses choose "Add an alias". "Make default" on the new address makes it the one their mail goes out from. Both addresses land in the same mailbox. Someone who doesn't have a company mailbox yet can be given one directly on your domain.

What happens to the free subdomain. It stays. In Domains it's listed as "Included" — a "SingleSign subdomain" — and it can't be removed while any address still uses it. More in Domains and DNS records.

4. Your company address, if you skipped it

Left the wizard before the address step? Come back to it from the "Finish setting up Acme Inc." card in your inbox sidebar. Once your own domain's mail is live, its card in Domains also offers "Give yourself you@acme.com" in one click.

5. Invite people and give them company addresses

Once someone accepts their invite ("Accept invite" on the join page), they're a member — colleagues already find them in people search. Then an admin gives them their address: open the member from Members, and under Addresses choose "Give them a company address" — name, and the domain: your free subdomain or any domain you've verified — then "Create mailbox". That creates their company mailbox; they get a notification under the bell and an email — "You've been given name@acme.singlesign.com at Acme Inc." — and the mailbox appears in their account menu right away. "Add an alias" on the same screen adds further addresses to that mailbox. See Company mailboxes.

6. Phones

Each mailbox goes on a phone separately: in that mailbox, open Settings → Phone & apps, create an app password (iPhone gets a one-tap profile), and add the account — the username is the company address itself. The steps are in SingleSign Mail on Your Phone; how several mailboxes sit side by side on one phone is in Your Accounts & Organizations.

Organizations started before free addresses

An organization created before free addresses existed, and without a verified domain of its own, is still marked "setting up": its console shows "Finish setting up this organization", and nobody can be given a company mailbox there yet — members can still be invited. One click sorts it out: "Get a free acme.singlesign.com address", on that banner, in the wizard's Domain and Your address steps, and on the empty Domains card. The name comes from the organization's name; if it's already taken, a free variant such as acme-2 is used, and the confirmation tells you which address you got. Or choose "Connect domain" and verify your own domain instead.

What happens by itself afterwards

Your free subdomain needs no upkeep. SingleSign publishes and maintains its DNS records.
Your own domains are checked on a schedule. A new domain's ownership record is checked every few minutes for three days, then hourly, indefinitely. A verified domain's records are checked every hour (ownership and MX) and in full once a day. "Check again" runs one now, and the Domains page refreshes on its own while a domain is on its way.
The test message goes out automatically the first time all four mail records of your own domain are found.
You get an email at each milestone — domain verified, mail live — and later if a record goes missing or changes: one notice per record per day. We warn; we never switch your mail off for you.
The setup card — "Acme Inc. setup" at the bottom of your inbox sidebar — tracks how many colleagues have joined, how many have a company mailbox, and where your addresses stand ("acme.singlesign.com — your free address is live ✓", or for your own domain "acme.com — 2 of 4 mail records set up"). "Manage organization" jumps to the console. The card goes away once everything's in place, or dismiss it with the ×.

The organization console

Everything above is run from the organization console:

From your company mailbox: Mail settings → "Organization" ("Members, mailboxes and domains for Acme Inc.").
From your personal mailbox: Mail settings → "Your organizations", then "Manage".
From singlesign.com: Account → Organizations → "Manage".

The header shows your plan ("Free · up to 25 members") and your standing ("Owner · Super admin"), with tiles for members, admins, domains and pending invites; if you run several organizations, a "Switch organization" picker sits under the name. Below it: Members, Pending invites, Invite teammates, Mailboxes, Admin roles, Domains, Mail settings, the Audit log and — for the owner — the Danger zone.