Workspaces
Set up Live, child, and Sandbox workspaces; understand shared billing, roles, testing, and day-to-day workspace management.
What is a workspace?
Use workspaces to separate environments, teams, brands, customers, or applications. Switching workspace changes the data and credentials you work with. It does not automatically grant access to another workspace, even when both workspaces share billing.
When you create a Simply Send account, you start with one personal Live workspace. Use it for production setup, or create additional Live children and Sandbox workspaces as your needs grow.
Live workspace
A production workspace. It sends real email after normal domain verification and uses its own credentials, resources, team, and email balance.
Sandbox workspace
A test-only child workspace. It simulates sending to Simply Send test addresses and never delivers externally. See Sandbox Testing for the complete test guide.
Create a workspace
- Open Account, then open the Workspaces section.
- Select New Workspace.
- Choose Live for production use or Sandbox for safe simulation.
- For a child workspace, select an eligible parent. Leave the parent empty only when creating a top-level Live workspace.
- Enter a workspace name and workspace contact email, then create the workspace. The contact email can be the same as the user creating the workspace. The creator becomes the child workspace Owner.
The create control is shown to users with team:write rights. The service rechecks permissions and quota when the workspace is created, so a stale screen cannot bypass the rules.
Parent and child workspaces
A parent is a top-level Live workspace that owns the billing relationship. A child is a separate workspace linked to that parent. Children share the parent's subscription and plan limits, but keep separate resources, credentials, membership, analytics, and email balances.
To add a child: the chosen parent must be a top-level billing-owner Live workspace, the user must have team:write there, and the parent must have available child-workspace capacity.
For a Sandbox child: the parent must also have an active paid subscription. Sandboxes cannot be top-level workspaces and cannot be parents themselves.
One level only: a child cannot create another child.
Manage a workspace
Open Account → Workspaces, then choose the workspace you want to manage. The available tabs depend on your role and permissions.
Members
Open Members and click Add Member. Enter the person's email, choose a role, and send the invite. You can also review, resend, cancel, or remove invitations and members here.
Roles
Open Roles and click Create Role. Give the role a name, choose at least one permission, and save it. Use custom roles when the built-in roles give too much or too little access.
Branding
Open Branding to change the workspace name or its contact email. The contact email belongs to the workspace and can be the same as the person who created it.
Test Data Allowlist
This Live-workspace tab protects real email-event data. Add a test recipient email or a verified sender domain. Team members who can view Email Events can then investigate matching test events without broad recipient, subject, or PII access. All other event data stays protected.
Subscription, limits, and credits
Subscription: children inherit the parent's billing subscription. A Sandbox requires an active paid parent; it does not have a separate subscription fee.
Workspace capacity: plans set the number of top-level and child workspaces that can be created. The parent's child-workspace limit is checked whenever a child is created.
Credits: each workspace maintains its own email balance. Sending from a child, including a Sandbox, consumes that child's balance by recipient at the applicable Transactional or Marketing rate. A billing owner with billing:manage can transfer available credits to a child in the same billing account.
Cost of simulated sends: sandbox sending is not an external delivery charge, but it is not free traffic. It consumes the sandbox workspace's email credits at the rate for the send type. Check your plan and credit balance for current pricing and availability.
Roles and permissions
Roles are assigned per workspace. A role on a parent does not automatically apply to a child. Owners can assign built-in roles and suitable custom roles; non-owners can assign only permissions they already hold.
| Role | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Owner | Full workspace access, including billing, deletion, and assigning the Owner role. |
| Admin | Manages members, roles, settings, domains, credentials, and workspace resources. Admin includes team:write. |
| Editor | Drafts templates, campaigns, workflows, and compliance-template changes. |
| Marketer | Manages audiences and executes approved marketing campaigns and workflows. |
| Content Approver | Reviews and approves campaigns, templates, and workflows. |
| Developer | Views technical setup, credentials, integrations, analytics, and delivery diagnostics. |
| Analytics Viewer | Views aggregate analytics only. |
| QA Event Viewer | Views redacted email-event data for testing and quality assurance. |
| Deliverability Manager | Investigates delivery data and manages suppressions. |
team:write, so an Admin can create an eligible child from a parent. Only an Owner can manage billing, delete a workspace, or assign the Owner role.Virtual Inbox
Virtual Inbox is the read-only inbox for simulated messages. In a Sandbox workspace, open Virtual Inbox from the left navigation. Select Transactional or Marketing, choose a test mailbox, then select a message to review its rendered content, lifecycle events, and message source.
It is not an externally reachable mailbox and it cannot receive replies. It exists so you can inspect what Simply Send accepted and the exact event sequence it simulated. Message source is retained with the email so you can inspect headers and MIME content during the five-day retention window.
Workspace FAQ
Is a legacy workspace live or sandbox?
Legacy workspaces without a type are treated as Live workspaces.
Can a child have another child?
No. Simply Send supports one parent-child level. A child workspace cannot be used as a parent.
Does being an Admin on a parent make me an Admin on every child?
No. Memberships and roles are workspace-specific. The person who creates a child starts as its Owner; other users must be added to that child separately.
Can an Admin create a child workspace?
Yes, when they have team:write on an eligible parent workspace and that parent has remaining child-workspace capacity.
Can I create a sandbox under a sandbox?
No. A sandbox must be a direct child of a paid Live workspace.
Do sandbox sends reach real recipients?
No. Every To, Cc, and Bcc address must be on the fixed sandbox test-data allow list. Any other address is rejected.
Does a sandbox affect sender reputation or production suppression lists?
No. Sandbox sends are simulated and do not call an external email provider or change production sender reputation.
How long are sandbox emails and events available?
Sandbox content, records, analytics, and events are retained for five days. Cleanup is asynchronous, so removal is not guaranteed at an exact time.
Can I use a sandbox domain in a Live workspace?
No. Mock verification is sandbox-only. A Live workspace must complete normal domain verification before sending.
Why does a sandbox send say there are insufficient credits?
Sandbox sends use the sandbox workspace’s own email balance. Transfer credits from the billing-owner parent workspace, then retry.