# Receive your first message

> From account created to first email received, in four steps and without a card.
> https://facteur.eu/en/help/premiers-pas

Facteur gives you an email address that receives, and an API to read what lands in
it. There is nothing to install, and nothing to change in the application you are
testing: it will send an email to an address, exactly as it already does.

Allow a few minutes.

## 1. Create the account

Open the [sign-up page](/en/signup) and create your account. The free plan asks for no
card, and nobody here approves your registration.

## 2. Confirm your email address

We send a confirmation link as soon as you sign up. Open it: it is valid for
24 hours.

**This is the step that blocks people most often**, so it comes early here. Until that
link is opened you can [sign in](https://app.facteur.eu/login) and look around the
application, but you cannot create anything in it: no organization, no inbox, no
invitation. The API answers `403 EMAIL_NOT_VERIFIED`.

Without this step, anybody could open an inbox on your address and read the mail
that arrives in it.

**No message?** Check the address you entered. Open
[**Settings → Profile**](https://app.facteur.eu/settings/profile) to correct it, which
stays possible for as long as it is unconfirmed: a new link is sent right away.

## 3. Open an inbox

You land in your default workspace. Open
[**Inboxes → New inbox**](https://app.facteur.eu/inboxes) and enter a name, for example
"Sign-up tests". It is the only required field.

That name is a label: it helps you find the inbox in the list. It does not appear in
the receiving address, which we generate for you, and which never changes.

(Optional) Add a description if several inboxes are going to look alike. See
[Filters and tags](filtres-et-tags).

## 4. Send a message

Your inbox receives on **a whole domain**:

```
anything@<inbox-identifier>.inbox.facteur.eu
```

The full address is shown at the top of the inbox view, with a copy button. Send a
message there, from your application or from your mail client. It appears in the list
within a second or two.

Open it. You get the raw message, its text version, its HTML version, and what was
**extracted** from it: the one-time code, the links, the headers. That is the subject
of [Extraction](extraction).

## Next steps

- [**Create an API key and wire up your test suite**](cles-api)
- [**Read a message from a test suite**](lire-un-message), or go straight to
  [**a Playwright test**](tests-playwright) and
  [**a Cypress test**](tests-cypress)
- [**Know what your plan includes**](quotas-et-retention)
- [**Organise your inboxes once there are several**](espaces-de-travail)