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For email sending APIs: from verified domain to paid plan, and which guides bring switchers.

An email sending API is adopted in steps: sign up, verify a domain, send test mail, go live, and pay when volume passes the free allowance. Tally counts those steps as goals and ties each plan and overage invoice to the visit behind it, including the migration guide a switcher arrived on.

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01How they sell

  • SubscriptionMonthly plans by emails sent, with tiers for dedicated IPs or longer log retention.
  • UsageOverage per thousand emails above the plan, billed with the next invoice.
  • FreemiumA free allowance per month or per day for testing and small apps.

02Payments it reads

  • StripeVolume plans and overage through Stripe; tier changes, renewals and refunds are read.
  • PolarDeveloper-first sending APIs bill through Polar; subscription cycles, metered usage and lost disputes are read.
  • PaddleSome sending APIs use Paddle to sell worldwide with tax handled; transactions and adjustments are read.

What Tally can't read

  • Emails sent through your API, with their deliveries, bounces and opens, aren't read.
  • Domain verification happens in your product and in DNS, outside Tally, unless you send it as a goal.
  • Plans billed through a cloud marketplace aren't read.

03Where buyers come from

  • Migration guidesDevelopers switching providers after deliverability trouble search for a migration guide and can move in an afternoon.
  • Framework guidesSearches for how to send email from Next.js, Rails or Laravel land on a guide with your SDK.
  • AI coding assistantsAssistants asked how to send email from an app suggest providers by name.
  • Developer communitiesThreads comparing deliverability send developers who read the docs closely.
  • Email template librariesOpen-source email template projects link to your API from their READMEs.

04What Tally answers

  1. Where do developers drop between sign-up, a verified domain and a paid plan?

    Send tally('domain_verified') and tally('first_send') from the dashboard and build a funnel from them; the goals view shows each step's completions and the revenue of those who finished.

    Goals and funnels

  2. Do switchers from another provider pay on their first visit?

    Path to purchase gives the share who buy on the first visit and the pages buyers saw, so a migration guide that turns visitors into same-day buyers stands out.

    Path to purchase

  3. Did the sale come from the guide, or from the assistant that pointed to it?

    The receipt shows the first visit and the credited one; a developer sent by an assistant to a guide shows the AI channel on the visit before paying, with the guide as its landing page.

    Receipts

  4. Can we get a Slack message when a team moves up a tier?

    Sale alerts post to Slack, Discord, Telegram, email or a webhook as payments arrive, each with its credited source, so a tier change lands in the channel when it's billed.

    Alerts and digests

  5. Do buyers read the deliverability docs?

    What they read sets buyers' engaged time and scroll depth against everyone else's for each page, so deliverability and DNS setup pages can be checked for whether paying developers study them.

    What they read

05Numbers worth watching

Goal conversion
The share of visitors who verify a domain, the step without which no email is sent and nothing is billed.
Renewals
Monthly renewals by first source, which carry tier changes as volume grows.
First-visit buyers
How many pay on their first visit, high among switchers with a migration already planned.
Refunds and chargebacks
Refunds and chargebacks by source, where abusive sign-ups leave their mark.

06An example

Example

Path to purchase

Last 30 days · 105 of 124 new sales, the ones linked to a visitor

Median time to buy

3days

from their first visit

Median visits

3visits

the one they paid in included

Bought on the first visit

12%

13 of 105

Pages before buying

11

median pages viewed

Where buyers came from, and who closed the sale

105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.

50% of new sales were credited to the source that first brought the buyer in. Hover or focus a flow for its numbers.

  1. Googlecredited toGoogle26
  2. x.comcredited tox.com10
  3. Other (3 sources)credited toOther (3 sources)10
  4. Directcredited toOther (3 sources)9
  5. ChatGPTcredited toChatGPT9
  6. Other (3 sources)credited toNewsletter9
  7. Redditcredited toReddit8
  8. Googlecredited toNewsletter6

6 smaller flows in the table below.

Show the flows as a table
105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.
Brought them inCredited with the saleNew salesShare
GoogleGoogle2625%
x.comx.com1010%
Other (3 sources)Other (3 sources)1010%
DirectOther (3 sources)99%
ChatGPTChatGPT99%
Other (3 sources)Newsletter99%
RedditReddit88%
GoogleNewsletter66%
DirectGoogle55%
x.comGoogle55%
RedditGoogle33%
DirectReddit22%
ChatGPTGoogle22%
Other (3 sources)ChatGPT1<1%

Time from first visit to purchase

  1. 13Same visit: 13 sales (12%), bought in their first visit
  2. 13Same day: 13 sales (12%), a later visit, under 24 hours after the first
  3. 301–3 days: 30 sales (29%), 1 to 3 days after the first visit
  4. 194–7 days: 19 sales (18%), 4 to 7 days after the first visit
  5. 151–2 weeks: 15 sales (14%), 8 to 14 days after the first visit
  6. 102–4 weeks: 10 sales (10%), 15 to 28 days after the first visit
  7. 51–3 months: 5 sales (5%), 29 to 90 days after the first visit
  8. 03+ months: 0 sales (0%), 91 days or more after the first visit

Pages buyers saw before paying

Share of the 105 buyers who viewed each page before paying

  1. /pricing96%, 101 of 105 buyers
  2. /71%, 75 of 105 buyers
  3. /signup63%, 67 of 105 buyers
  4. /docs38%, 40 of 105 buyers
  5. /blog/stripe-fees26%, 28 of 105 buyers
  6. /compare21%, 23 of 105 buyers
  7. /changelog8%, 9 of 105 buyers
  8. /blog/launch-week5%, 6 of 105 buyers

Only new sales count here. Renewals and upgrades belong to the visit that won the subscription, so counting them would count that journey again.

Fig. 1Path to purchase on the example site. For an email API, look at the pages buyers saw: framework and migration guides near the end of a path are the ones that got the integration done.

07Setting up

  1. Next.jsIn a Next.js docs site, add the tag to the root layout; framework guides then share visitors with the dashboard.
  2. PolarSet tally_visitor_id in the Polar checkout's metadata when a developer chooses a plan, so metered overage keeps the source.
  3. Send goals from the dashboard when a domain is verified and when the first email is sent.

08Questions

  • Are the emails our customers send counted anywhere?

    No. Sends, deliveries and bounces aren't read. Tally counts visits to your own pages and reads payments.

  • Does overage billing change a customer's source?

    No. Overage lands on the subscription's invoices, which take the first payment's link.

  • Abusive sign-ups end in refunds or chargebacks. Where does that show?

    In refunds and chargebacks, set against the source of each reversed sale, so a channel that attracts abuse carries it in its own figures.

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