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An API credential is used to authenticate with the Helo API. Each credential is made up of an API key (passed as a Bearer token in the Authorization header), a set of permissions (what the key is able to do), and an optional Channel scope (which Channel the key is limited to, if any).

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Create new API credentials

You can create, edit, and delete your API credentials in the API credentials section in your Helo account. There’s no limit to how many credentials you can create. We recommend creating multiple credentials with granular permissions. In general, it’s a good idea to at least separate sending from other activities (e.g., a sending API credential and a domain management credential).
Tip: Create dedicated credentials for your testing environment. If you’re using a Sandbox Channel to test your email integration, set up dedicated API credentials to work with that Channel only. That way, you can neatly separate testing credentials from any production credentials.

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Permissions

When you create a new API credential, here is the full list of permissions you can assign to it. A credential can hold any combination of these.

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Scoping to a Channel

By default, credentials are valid for all Channels, but you can also choose to scope your credentials to a specific Channel. Channel-scoped credentials can only make API calls that impact the specific channel that’s been chosen.
If your credential is scoped to work with all your Channels, you’ll need to pass the X-Helo-Channel-Id header in your API request to tell Helo which Channel to send through. If your credential is valid for a single Channel only, you can omit the X-Helo-Channel-Id header.

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Good to know

  • For security, Helo only shows the API key once, at creation time. If you lose it, you’ll need to create a new credential.
  • You can delete a credential at any time from the API credentials section — this immediately revokes it, and any requests made with it will begin failing after a short time.