Getting Started

This guide takes you from nothing to a working Backbuild workspace: a verified account, your first project, and a team if you want one. By the end you will understand every step of signup, including the one step that surprises most people, the vault master password, and you will know exactly what to do in your first fifteen minutes.

Before You Begin

You need one thing: an email address you can read. That is the entire prerequisite list.

  • No credit card is required. Signup never asks for payment details. Every new account starts on the Free plan, which is a complete workspace, not a trial.
  • No plan selection. You are not asked to choose a tier during signup. You can upgrade later, in-app, whenever you are ready. See pricing for what each plan adds.
  • No organization setup. Backbuild creates a personal organization for you automatically. You do not fill out company details or make structural decisions before you have even seen the product.

If you were invited to Backbuild by a teammate, your path is shorter: skip ahead to Joining from an invitation.

1. Create Your Account

Go to app.backbuild.ai/auth/sign-up. Signup is a short sequence of four screens, in this order:

Diagram of the four signup steps: enter your email address, enter the 6-digit code from your inbox, set your account password, create your vault master password, then arrive at your dashboard. The vault master password step is marked as separate from your account password.
The whole signup flow. Step 4 creates a second password that only you know.
  1. Enter your email address. Backbuild sends a 6-digit verification code to it.
  2. Enter the verification code. Check your inbox, type the code, and your address is verified. You verify your email before you ever set a password, so there is no half-registered state to come back and clean up.
  3. Set your account password. This is the password you sign in with.
  4. Create your vault master password. This is a second, different password that protects your Secrets vault. It matters enough to get its own section below.

That is the whole flow. When the last step completes you land directly in your dashboard, signed in, with a workspace already provisioned.

The Create Account screen with the email field highlighted as step 1 and the Continue button highlighted as step 2. A progress indicator across the top shows the four stages: Email, Verify, Password, Vault.
Signup starts with just your email address. The progress bar shows all four stages up front.
The Verify Your Email screen with the six single-digit code boxes circled. Below the boxes are a Verify button, a Resend code link, and a Change email address option.
Type the 6-digit code from your inbox into the circled boxes, or open the verification link from the email.

Account password requirements

Your account password must be at least 13 characters (up to 128) and include an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a digit, and a symbol. A strength meter guides you as you type. Backbuild also rejects passwords that are common or that appear in known data breaches, and tells you which of those checks failed so you can fix it. A passphrase of several words with a digit and a symbol clears all of these checks easily and is easier to remember than a shorter scramble.

Prefer Google sign-in?

You can sign up with your Google account instead. Choose the Google button on the signup screen and approve the request. Both paths are secure: Google sign-in means one less password to manage and inherits your Google account's protections, while an email-and-password account gets the breached-password screening described above. Either kind of account can add multi-factor authentication and passkeys later. See Signing In and Account Security for the full picture.

If the verification code does not arrive

Codes normally arrive within a minute or two. If yours has not:

  • Check your spam or quarantine folder. Corporate mail filters are the most common culprit.
  • Request a new code from the signup screen. Only the newest code is valid.
  • Codes expire after a short time, and entering the wrong code too many times invalidates the attempt. In both cases the fix is the same: request a fresh code and enter it promptly.
  • If a strict corporate filter keeps eating the email, sign up with a different address or reach us through the contact page.

The signup screen shows the same "check your email" message whether or not an address already has an account. This is deliberate: it prevents anyone from using the signup form to discover which email addresses are registered. If you already have an account, the email you receive will route you the right way.

2. The Vault Master Password, Explained

After reading this section you will know what the vault master password is, why it is separate from your account password, and what to do about remembering it.

Backbuild includes Secrets, a zero-knowledge vault for passwords, API keys, and other credentials. Zero-knowledge means your vault contents are encrypted on your device before they ever reach Backbuild. The vault master password is the key to that encryption. Backbuild never receives it, never stores it, and therefore can never read your vault.

  • It is not your account password. Your account password signs you in. Your master password unlocks your vault. Resetting one does not touch the other.
  • Support cannot recover it. This is the price of a vault the platform itself cannot read, and it is a feature. Choose something memorable, or record it in a safe place such as another password manager or a physical note in a secure location.
  • Forgetting it does not lock you out of Backbuild. Your account, projects, docs, mail, and everything else keep working. Only the encrypted vault contents are unreadable without it.

If you close the signup flow before completing this step, your account still works. Backbuild simply asks you to create the master password the first time you open Secrets.

3. Your Workspace Is Ready

The moment signup completes, Backbuild has already created a personal organization for you on the Free plan, with you as its owner. An organization is the container that holds your projects, documents, and (later) your teammates. You did not have to configure any of this, and there is nothing you need to change about it to start working.

On first arrival you land in Ask AI, the workspace home. The sidebar on the left lists every app in your workspace, and the project panel at the top of the sidebar prompts you to create your first project. There is nothing you must configure before you start working.

The workspace immediately after signup. The sidebar lists Ask AI, Email, Calendar, Meetings, Contacts, Files, Prove, Projects, Marketplace, Training, Finances, and more. The project panel at the top of the sidebar is highlighted with the prompt to create your first project.
Your workspace on first arrival. The highlighted panel is the fastest path to your first project.

4. Your First Fifteen Minutes

The fastest way to make Backbuild yours is to do one real piece of work in it. Here is a first-success checklist:

  1. Create a project. From the dashboard, create your first project. Projects organize documents, entities, tasks, and AI interactions around one effort.
  2. Create a document inside it. Open the project and start a doc. Write anything: meeting notes, a plan, a draft.
  3. Open the other apps in the sidebar. Mail, calendar, files, sheets, and Secrets are all part of the same workspace. Knowing where they live now saves hunting later.
  4. Store one credential in Secrets. Unlock the vault with your master password and save one login you use often. This is the moment the vault master password from signup pays off.
The Create Project screen with the Project Name field highlighted and filled in with an example name. An optional Description field sits below it, with Cancel and Create Project actions at the bottom.
Creating a project takes one required field: the name. Everything else is optional.

That is a complete loop: an organization, a project, real content, and a protected credential, all inside the free plan, all in one sitting.

5. Invite Your Team

This section teaches you how invitations behave so you can send them confidently and answer your team's questions before they ask.

Invite teammates from the Identity & Access Management screen in your organization's settings. Each invitee receives an email with a personal invitation link. What happens next is designed to be self-service, so nobody comes back to you for setup help:

  • The invitee sets everything up on one page: their login password and their own vault master password. When they finish, they are in your organization and working.
  • Invitations expire 24 hours after they are created. If a link expires unused, send a new one.
  • The link locks to the first browser that opens it. This protects the invitation if it is forwarded or intercepted. If someone opens it on the wrong device, send a fresh invitation and have them open it where they intend to finish.
  • An invite to an address that already has a Backbuild account never creates a duplicate. That person is routed to sign in and joins your organization with their existing account, skipping any setup steps they have already done.
The Invite Member dialog on the Identity and Access Management screen. The personal email address field is highlighted and filled with an example address. Below it are role choices for Admin, Member, and Viewer, and a Create Invitation button.
Invite a teammate by email and pick their role. The invitation link is personal and expires in 24 hours.

Joining from an Invitation

If you are the one who was invited: open the link from the invitation email in the browser you actually want to use, because the link binds to the first browser that opens it. Set your login password and your vault master password on the setup page (read the master password section above before you pick one), and you land in your team's organization ready to work. If you already have a Backbuild account under that email address, you will be sent to the normal sign-in page instead, and joining takes seconds. If your link has expired, ask the person who invited you to send another; they expire 24 hours after creation.

Upgrading, Downgrading, and Your Data

Plans are managed in-app after signup. When you outgrow the free allowances, upgrade from the Personal Organizations panel in your settings; the change is self-serve and takes effect immediately. Current plans, allowances, and prices live on the pricing page, which is always the authoritative source for numbers.

Two guarantees worth knowing before you invest real work:

  • Hitting a free-plan boundary never charges you. Usage simply pauses at the free allowance until you upgrade or add credits. There is no surprise invoice.
  • Downgrading never deletes your work. If a plan lapses, the organization returns to the Free tier and your data stays put. The only removal policy on the platform is for abandoned accounts: a Free account with no activity for six months receives a deactivation notice first and is removed only if it stays untouched for another 30 days, as described on the pricing page.

You are also not locked in. Your content remains accessible through the apps and through the REST API, and the research editors support standard export formats (see Research Editors & Export).

For Developers

Everything you just did in the UI is available programmatically. Mint an API key in the app, then drive the platform from scripts: 

# Create a project via the API
# The project is created in the organization tied to your key
curl -X POST https://api.backbuild.ai/v1/projects \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "My First Project", "description": "Created from the command line"}'

See the API Reference for the endpoints; keys are minted and revoked from your API keys settings in the app. If you live in a terminal, the CLI Reference and the Secrets CLI guide are your next stops. The CLI is entirely optional: nothing in this guide required it, and non-developers never need it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a credit card to sign up?
No. Signup never asks for payment details, and the Free plan is not a time-limited trial. You add payment information only if and when you upgrade.

Should I sign up with Google or with email and password?
Either is a good choice, and both are protected. Google sign-in means one less password; a password account is screened against breached and common passwords. You can add stronger factors (passkeys, authenticator apps) to either. Use whichever fits how you already work.

What happens if I forget my vault master password?
Your account keeps working normally; only the vault contents are affected. Because the vault is zero-knowledge, nobody at Backbuild can read or recover what is inside it without your master password. Store it somewhere safe when you create it.

I never received my verification code.
Check spam, then request a new code; only the newest one is valid. If a corporate filter is blocking the mail, use another address or contact us via the contact page.

What happens when I hit a free-plan limit?
Usage pauses at the allowance. Nothing is charged and nothing is deleted. Upgrade or add credits in-app to continue; details are on the pricing page.

Can I get my data out?
Yes. Your content is accessible through the apps and the REST API, and the research editors export to standard formats. Leaving is possible, which is exactly why staying is a choice.

Do I need to install anything?
No. Backbuild runs in your browser. A desktop app is available for Windows and macOS if you prefer one, and developers can use the optional CLI.

Next Steps

Create Your Account