Real emails collected from the wild, not templates or mockups.
VerifiedBy George Hartley, Co-founder·Updated September 3, 2026
What onboarding emails are
An onboarding email is the first communication a user receives after signing up for a service or product. Its purpose is to guide new users through initial setup, introduce key features, and help them achieve their first success with the product. These emails are critical for reducing churn and improving user retention.
This page is one slice of the Nitrosend email library. It holds 656 real emails from 508 brands, all of them collected out of two ordinary inboxes. Nothing here is a mockup.
2median CTAs
37%exactly one CTA
49%use first name
Onboarding emails you can look at
Filter by industry, design style, layout or length. Open any one to read the subject line, what it is doing, and the prompt that rebuilds it.
What 656 of them actually do
Most brands keep calls to action minimal. We collected 656 onboarding emails, and 37% of them contained just one clear call to action. Visual elements are also sparse, with only 11% including a hero image. This suggests a focus on direct instruction over heavy promotion.
Many onboarding emails prioritise a warm, instructional tone. 45% of the emails we collected used a warm tone, with another 35% opting for an instructional approach. These emails often address the recipient by first name, with 49% doing so. I personally experienced confusion during onboarding with an AI tool (Claude) and realised Nitrosend users might face similar issues, prompting a focus on improving first-time user hand-holding.
Clarity and function often outweigh elaborate design. Plain text (28%) and minimal (27%) designs dominate the emails we collected. Single column layouts are also preferred, making up 61% of the examples. Kam, who built our deliverability layer, notes it is important to assess if the model understands the onboarding state and directs users properly for the next high-value action.
The majority of these emails are short and to the point. 37% of onboarding emails are classified as 'short' and 23% as 'micro', meaning they deliver information quickly. This makes sense when the goal is to get users started without overwhelming them. Asking a new user to add 5 DNS records during onboarding is a non-starter; I’d abort.
Welcome emails are the most common type within the onboarding stage. 70% of the emails collected were welcome messages, followed by email verification at 17%. This indicates that the initial 'hello' and setup confirmation are the primary uses for email during this critical phase.
None of this helps if the send never lands, which is a transactional email problem rather than a design one.
What to take from these
Keep calls to action focused; 37% of brands use only one.Prioritise a warm or instructional tone; 80% of emails collected use one of these.Address recipients by first name, as 49% of brands do.Opt for a plain text or minimal design style to maintain clarity.Use a single column layout for your onboarding emails, like 61% of the corpus.Aim for short or micro lengths to get users started quickly, as 60% of emails collected are.
Plain text is the most common design style, accounting for 28% of onboarding emails collected. Minimal designs follow closely at 27%, suggesting a strong preference for simple, clear layouts over complex graphics.
Our data shows that 37% of onboarding emails contain exactly one call to action. The median number of calls to action per email is two, indicating that most brands keep their instructions focused and direct.
Every plan includes full stack emailing: Flows, Newsletter Campaigns and Transactional Email, plus our NitroWheel LLM and all agent integrations (Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor and others). Pay for what you send, not who you store.
