Getting Started

Onboarding

After you create your account and sign in for the first time, a short onboarding wizard sets up your workspace. Routebase uses deferred onboarding: nothing is provisioned until you complete the final step, so you can safely close the tab or step back at any point. Your selections are kept for the duration of the browser session.

Onboarding requires a signed-in user. If you already belong to an organization and revisit an onboarding page — via a bookmark or the Back button — Routebase redirects you straight to the dashboard instead of letting you run the wizard twice.

Step 1 — Choose your account type

The wizard opens with "How will you use Routebase?" and two options:

Option Described as Trial
Personal Side projects, learning, and personal APIs Start with a 14-day Pro trial, then Free forever
Business Team collab, professional API management Start with a 14-day Pro trial

No credit card is required for either option, and you can always change this later. Both paths auto-start a 14-day Pro trial when you finish the wizard, so you can explore every feature before deciding on a plan.

The trial is granted once per person, not once per workspace. Sign up again with the same address — or create a second workspace after leaving the first — and it starts on Free; the app says so plainly ("The 14-day Pro trial is granted once per person"). Addresses from disposable email providers get no trial.

Choosing between a personal and a business workspace during onboarding

Step 2 — Create your workspace

Business: Create Organization

Choosing Business leads to the Create Organization form ("Set up your team workspace to collaborate with others"):

Field Details
Organization Name (required) Your company or team name, e.g. "Acme Corp".
Description (optional) A brief description of your organization.
Hosting Region (required) European Union (EU data residency · GDPR-compliant) or United States (lower latency for North America). "Your data is stored in this region. This cannot be changed later." See Region Selection.

There is no workspace address to pick. Routebase derives an identifier from the organization name when it provisions the workspace, adding a suffix if that one is already taken. You never choose or type it; the only place it surfaces is the SCIM base URL for Enterprise directory sync.

Click Continue to finish. A Back button returns to the account-type step.

The Create Organization form with name, description and hosting region

Personal: Name your workspace

Choosing Personal leads to "Name your workspace" ("Give your personal workspace a name. You can change it later."). The same fields appear — Workspace Name, optional Description, and Hosting Region — and the name field suggests one derived from your account (for example, "Jane's Workspace") as its placeholder. Click Create workspace to finish. Below the card: "Free forever. No credit card required."

What happens when you finish

Completing the wizard provisions everything in one step, in the region you picked:

  1. Your user account and organization (or personal workspace) are created.
  2. Your 14-day Pro trial starts automatically.
  3. You land on the Dashboard, where an empty-state screen offers Create Project and Import OpenAPI as your first actions — see Getting Started for that walkthrough. Environments (Development, Staging, Production, and more) are configured per project when you create one.

If something is already taken

  • "Account already exists" — an account with your email address already exists under a different sign-in method (for example, you originally signed up with a social login and are now signing in with email and password). Routebase does not merge accounts by email automatically; click Sign in instead and use your original sign-in method.
  • "You already belong to an organization." — each user account belongs to one organization. Leave your current organization first if you want to create a new one.
  • "This domain belongs to an organization" — someone has verified your email domain for their organization, so an address on it cannot found a separate workspace. The page names the organization and tells you the way in: "Ask an administrator of that organization to invite you. Once the invitation arrives by email, you can join with this account." Nobody is added automatically — verifying a domain blocks shadow workspaces, it does not pull people in.

Invitations take precedence

If you were invited before you signed up, you never see this wizard. Routebase notices the open invitation — from the link you clicked, or by looking it up against your address if you open the mail on another device or days later — and takes you to the invitation instead.

Nothing is accepted on your behalf; the page asks. If you decline, you continue into the wizard and create your own workspace as described above.