Quickstart: send your first notification

In this guide you send a message, read the response and check whether it was delivered. The examples use email, but the request is the same for SMS and WhatsApp — only channel changes.

Before you start

You'll need:

A Notify API key, stored in the NOTIFY_API_KEY environment variable.
A template in your account. The examples use one called order_confirmation that expects the name and order_id variables.

Authentication

Every request carries your API key in the Authorization header as a Bearer token. The key identifies your account, so never send a customer ID in the body.

Keep the key out of browsers and mobile apps: call Notify from your backend.

Authorization: Bearer $NOTIFY_API_KEY

Send a message

Make a POST /v1/messages request with the channel, the recipient and the template key. If you pass a locale, Notify picks the template version in that language.

cURL

curl https://api.notify.com.mx/v1/messages \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NOTIFY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: order-1042-confirmation" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "channel": "email",
    "recipient": { "address": "ana@example.com", "locale": "es" },
    "template_key": "order_confirmation",
    "variables": { "name": "Ana", "order_id": "1042" }
  }'

Python

import os
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.notify.com.mx/v1/messages",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['NOTIFY_API_KEY']}",
        "Idempotency-Key": "order-1042-confirmation",
    },
    json={
        "channel": "email",
        "recipient": {"address": "ana@example.com", "locale": "es"},
        "template_key": "order_confirmation",
        "variables": {"name": "Ana", "order_id": "1042"},
    },
    timeout=10,
)
response.raise_for_status()  # 202 Accepted
message = response.json()
print(message["id"], message["status"])

PHP

<?php
$ch = curl_init('https://api.notify.com.mx/v1/messages');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST => true,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
        'Authorization: Bearer ' . getenv('NOTIFY_API_KEY'),
        'Idempotency-Key: order-1042-confirmation',
        'Content-Type: application/json',
    ],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode([
        'channel' => 'email',
        'recipient' => ['address' => 'ana@example.com', 'locale' => 'es'],
        'template_key' => 'order_confirmation',
        'variables' => ['name' => 'Ana', 'order_id' => '1042'],
    ]),
]);
$body = curl_exec($ch);
$status = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); // 202
$message = json_decode($body, true);
echo $message['id'] . ' ' . $message['status'];

JavaScript (Node.js)

const response = await fetch('https://api.notify.com.mx/v1/messages', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.NOTIFY_API_KEY}`,
    'Idempotency-Key': 'order-1042-confirmation',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    channel: 'email',
    recipient: { address: 'ana@example.com', locale: 'es' },
    template_key: 'order_confirmation',
    variables: { name: 'Ana', order_id: '1042' },
  }),
});

if (response.status !== 202) throw new Error(await response.text());
const message = await response.json();
console.log(message.id, message.status);

Reading the response: 202, not 200

Notify returns 202 Accepted as soon as the request is validated and queued. That means the message was accepted — not that it was delivered. Delivery happens in the background, with retries if a provider fails.

Keep the id from the response: you'll use it to check the real status.

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted

{
  "id": "6f1c2a4e-9b7d-4c1e-8a35-2d0f5b9e7c11",
  "status": "accepted",
  "channel": "email",
  "template_key": "order_confirmation",
  "resolved_locale": "es",
  "created_at": "2026-10-05T17:42:08Z"
}

Check whether it arrived

GET /v1/messages/{id} returns the current status plus the history of attempts per provider.

cURL

curl https://api.notify.com.mx/v1/messages/6f1c2a4e-9b7d-4c1e-8a35-2d0f5b9e7c11 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NOTIFY_API_KEY"

{
  "id": "6f1c2a4e-9b7d-4c1e-8a35-2d0f5b9e7c11",
  "status": "delivered",
  "channel": "email",
  "template_key": "order_confirmation",
  "resolved_locale": "es",
  "created_at": "2026-10-05T17:42:08Z",
  "delivered_at": "2026-10-05T17:42:11Z",
  "attempts": [
    {
      "attempt_number": 1,
      "provider": "ses",
      "status": "sent",
      "attempted_at": "2026-10-05T17:42:09Z"
    }
  ]
}

Message statuses

Status	What it means
`accepted`	Accepted and queued; not sent yet.
`processing`	A worker is handing it to the provider.
`sent`	The provider accepted it. Delivery isn't confirmed yet.
`delivered`	The provider confirmed delivery to the recipient.
`failed`	All retries were exhausted. Check `attempts` for the reason.
`blocked`	Not sent because the recipient opted out of that channel.

Retry without duplicates

Networks fail. If you don't get a response, retry with the same Idempotency-Key header: Notify returns the original message and never sends twice.

Use a key that identifies the business event — e.g. order-1042-confirmation — not a random value per attempt.

Errors

Errors always include a stable code for your code to branch on and a readable message for your logs. A 422 means the request is well-formed but can't be processed — for example, a template variable is missing. On a 429, wait the number of seconds in the Retry-After header.

HTTP/1.1 422 Unprocessable Entity

{
  "code": "missing_required_variable",
  "message": "Template order_confirmation requires the order_id variable.",
  "details": { "variable": "order_id" }
}

Next steps

Head to the full reference to create multilingual templates, list messages and see every field in the API.

Go to the API reference