Getting set up

The seven steps

Setup is seven steps. You reach them from Overview: the setup card there has a "Continue setup" button. Setup is an Admin job — a Support member does not see that card, and cannot open provider credentials at all.

A list down the side shows all seven, and a counter above the step you are on reads "Step 3 of 7". Every step in that list is a link, so you can open any of them at any time, including ones you have not reached yet. Nothing is locked.

"Continue" does not move you one step along. It jumps to the first later step that is not already done. If you come back to change something and press Continue, you can be carried straight past a step you meant to revisit — use the list at the side to open a step deliberately.

Nothing is stored as done

The panel says it plainly under the step list: nothing here is stored as "done". Each step reflects your live account, so it updates itself when something changes.

Every time you open the flow, the panel looks at what actually exists right now — whether a subscription is live, your connections, how many packages you have imported, whether the seven legal answers are filled in, and whether the store is published — and works the ticks out from that.

This runs backwards as well as forwards. Disconnect your payment account and your setup is genuinely incomplete again: the step loses its tick and the card returns to Overview. No step remembers having been finished once.

Step 1 — Account

There is nothing to do here. The step is headed "Your account is ready" and shows the email you are signed in as, and your plan. One button: "Continue".

It is worth reading the line above those facts, because it is the shape of everything that follows: signup created your organisation and this login, and every step after it connects your own provider and payment accounts. Esimbit orchestrates; you own the keys and the money.

Step 2 — Subscription

Signup opens your account before the payment page is finished with. If you closed Stripe Checkout, or never got through it, you still have everything you have seen so far: a login that works, an owner, a store, and a customer record at Stripe. The account even reads as "trialing". What you do not have is a plan.

That matters more than it sounds, because there is no free tier — every entitlement you have comes from a paid subscription. With none, your plan allows zero eSIM provider connections, zero payment accounts and one seat, which the owner is already sitting in. Each of the steps below would refuse you, and none of them would say why. That is what this step is for, and why it comes second.

It shows one of three things, depending on what your account already has.

The missing picker in the middle case is deliberate. Choosing a plan again would start a second subscription alongside the one you are already behind on, and you would be paying twice for one account. Update the card in the billing portal instead — the panel says as much: you do not need to choose a plan again.

Only the account owner can start a subscription. An Admin can open this step and read it, but where the picker or the portal button would be there is one line instead: "This account has no subscription yet. Only the account owner can start one." If setup is stuck here, it stays stuck until the owner acts — no amount of Admin access moves it.

The trial is 14 days and is offered once per account. Subscribe, cancel, and come back later and there is no second trial: the free-days badge is simply not on the plans any more, and checkout starts billing you straight away.

Step 3 — eSIM provider

You paste the API credentials from your own provider account. The form asks for a Provider, a Label of your choosing, an Environment, and then one masked field for each credential that provider needs, each labelled with the credential's own name.

Your provider issues these in their partner dashboard — with Airalo, under Partner API; with Maya, under API Keys in the Connect+ dashboard. Use sandbox keys while you are testing and live keys when you are ready to sell; Environment is where you say which you have pasted.

There is one button, "Connect and verify", and it does both things in one press: it stores the credentials and asks the provider to accept them there and then. Keys are stored encrypted and never shown again — afterwards the panel shows only the last four characters.

Verification is not a formality. If the provider rejects the credentials you will see "The provider rejected those credentials", and the connection is kept but marked invalid — no orders will be routed through it until it verifies. The step also keeps you where you are: it only moves you on when the provider actually accepted the keys.

Once a provider is connected, the step shows it instead of the form — label, environment, the last four characters of the key and a status badge — with "Continue" and "Use different keys" beneath it.

Step 4 — Import your catalog

Without a verified eSIM provider this step refuses to start, with "Connect a provider first" and a button back to step 3. There is nothing to import until a provider is connected and verified.

Importing reads every package your provider offers you, with the cost you pay. That cost is what your selling price is built on, and it is the reason the import comes before the markup. The button reads "Import catalog" the first time and "Import again" once you have packages.

While it runs you get a progress bar, the words "Importing packages…", and a package count that climbs as they arrive.

The import is a background job, not something the page is doing. After 90 seconds of no answer the panel stops waiting and tells you so: the import has not reported back yet, check Connections in a minute, or import again. That is not a failure — your packages may well appear a moment later.

Step 4 — Set your markup

Your markup is one percentage on top of what the package costs you. The field stays dimmed and disabled until at least one package exists, and reads "An example appears once your catalog is imported."

Once it has your catalog, the example underneath is built from a real cost out of your own packages and recalculates as you type: "A 4.50 cost becomes 6.30." It is one rule for every package — you can override single packages later on Catalog & pricing.

You cannot price below the provider cost. Esimbit refuses it, because every such order would lose you money.

"Save and continue" is not a gentle default. It is the same bulk operation as "Apply to all" on Catalog & pricing: it clears the margin overrides across your whole store and puts every package back on this one rule. Fixed prices and hidden packages are kept. If you come back to this step months later to nudge the percentage, that is what you are doing — set the number on Catalog & pricing instead.

Step 5 — Payment account

Customers pay into your own gateway account. Esimbit never holds the money; it needs the keys only to create the checkout and to verify that a payment really happened.

The form is the one from step 3. You need two things from your gateway dashboard: its secret API key, and the signing secret of a webhook. Press "Connect and verify" with the API key, and the step will then show you the exact Webhook URL to register, with a "Copy" button beside it.

Create a webhook in your gateway pointing at that URL, then paste its signing secret into the credential the panel names, webhook_secret — on the form it is a masked field labelled "webhook secret". Every notification is signature-checked before an eSIM is delivered.

The signing secret is what tells Esimbit that a customer paid. Without it the step turns amber — "Payments will not complete yet", with a "webhook missing" badge — but "Continue" still works, and the step counts as done with a warning. You can publish and sell in that state: checkout works, the money lands in your gateway, and no eSIM is ever delivered. Do not sell until the badge is gone and the step reads "Ready to take payments".

Adding the secret afterwards changes your webhook URL. "Add webhook secret" opens the same form as "Replace keys": it removes the connection and creates a new one, and the URL you were shown identifies the old one. So after you store the secret, come back to this step, copy the URL again and correct it in your gateway. The form also comes back blank, so you have to re-enter the gateway API key alongside the secret, not just the secret.

Step 6 — Legal details

Your store sells to consumers, and its terms of sale, privacy notice and refunds page carry your name — not Esimbit's. Those pages cannot go live naming nobody, so the store stays in draft until this is filled in.

Setup asks only the seven answers that block publishing, in two groups. The rest of the fields sharpen the same pages and can wait; they live on Legal details in the panel sidebar, which this step links to.

While anything is blank, a line at the top counts what is left — "3 still needed before the store can be published" — each of the seven carries a "Required" badge, and the single "Continue" button stays disabled with the hint "Fill these in to continue."

There is no separate Save on this step. The one button saves and moves you on together, and it saves the answers as a set. A field you leave blank is recorded as unanswered rather than as an empty clause, so your public page shows an honest gap instead of a sentence that says nothing.

Step 7 — Publish

The last step opens with a setup summary: the other six steps, each with a tick or a dash, and the word "needs attention" against any that is done but warning. Then one button, "Publish".

Publishing refuses while anything essential is missing, and it names what. Four things have to be true: a verified eSIM provider, an imported catalog, an active payment account, and complete legal details including your support email. If any is missing you get a list headed "Before this store can sell:" — read it, fix those, and press Publish again.

A payment account with no webhook signing secret still counts as active, so it does not block publishing. Publishing successfully is not proof that you can deliver an order.

When it succeeds the step changes to "Your store is live" and a band appears and stays: "Store published", your live store address, a "Copy link" button and an "Open store" button that opens the store in a new tab. That address is what you give customers.

Before your first sale

Once you are published the step lists three jobs, each linking to the screen that does it.

• Check your prices, on Catalog & pricing — confirm the markup gives you the margin you want, and hide anything you would rather not sell.
• Set your brand, on Storefront — your store name and support email are what customers see.
• Place a test order, watched from Orders — buy one package yourself with your gateway in test mode and watch it arrive, delivered.

Do the test order. It is the only check that covers the whole chain at once — your provider keys, your prices, your gateway and your webhook. If the money arrives and the eSIM does not, the webhook is the first place to look: either the signing secret is not stored, or your gateway is pointing at an old URL.

If you leave setup half-done

Nothing is quietly dropped. The publish step tells you how many steps are unfinished and that they stay on your dashboard until they are done.

That is the card on Overview. It lists every step that is not done or is carrying a warning, with the same one-line reason as the step list, and its heading tells you which kind of trouble you are in: "Finish setting up before you can sell" when something is unfinished, "Your setup needs attention" when everything is done but something warns — in practice, the missing webhook signing secret.

The card has no dismiss. It disappears only when your setup genuinely completes, and because progress is recomputed rather than stored, it can come back later — a disconnected payment account or a deleted provider will bring it straight back.

Its "Continue setup" button opens the first step that is not done, which is not necessarily where you stopped.

An account with no subscription gets a second thing on Overview, beneath the card: an alert reading "This account has no subscription, so nothing is unlocked yet — every limit reads as reached until you pick a plan", with a "Choose a plan" link that opens the Subscription screen. It is the one alert with somewhere to go, because it is the one that is a single decision away from being fixed.