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Zapier connects Notifuse to thousands of other applications without writing any code. Notifuse offers both halves of a Zap:
  • Triggers start a Zap the moment something happens in Notifuse — a contact is created or updated, someone subscribes to or unsubscribes from a list, a contact enters or leaves a segment. They are real-time, not polled: Notifuse pushes each event to Zapier as it happens.
  • Actions let another app write into Notifuse — create or update a contact, or subscribe a contact to a list.

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Before You Start

You need two things from Notifuse — an API key and your API URL — and Settings → Zapier hands you both on one screen. You also need HTTPS. Zapier only talks to endpoints served over HTTPS with a certificate issued by a public certificate authority, so a self-hosted instance has to be reachable from the public internet.

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Step 1 — Create the Key from Settings → Zapier

Open Settings → Zapier in the workspace you want Zapier to work in, and click Create a Zapier API key. Only the workspace owner can create an API key. The screen creates the key with exactly the permissions this integration needs and nothing else: Webhook Subscriptions, Contacts and Lists read and write, plus Segments read. There is nothing to tick — a key minted here cannot read your message history or send email, so a leaked token costs you this integration and no more. The token is displayed once, when the key is created. Copy it before you leave the screen — it cannot be retrieved afterwards. The same screen prints the API URL you will need in Step 2, with a copy button beside it. The screen also fills in a name for the key, something like zapier_1a2f. Names are unique across your whole Notifuse installation, not just this workspace, which is why the suggested one carries a suffix. If you change it to a name that is already taken, the screen says so — pick another.
Or create the key by hand. Settings → Team → Create API Key works too, and it is where you grant the permissions yourself — see the table below for what to tick. Team is also where you widen or narrow an existing key later, whichever screen created it: the change takes effect on the key’s next request and the token does not change, so there is nothing to re-enter in Zapier. Give Zapier its own key rather than reusing an existing one. See Admins & API Keys for the full permission reference.

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What the Key Can Do

This is a reference, not a checklist: Settings → Zapier grants all of it for you. Read it to know what the token in Zapier’s hands can reach — or to know what to tick if you are building the key by hand from Settings → Team, or narrowing one afterwards.
Read is what fills the dropdowns; write is what performs the step. Every picker in this integration reads the things you choose from, so an action that only writes still cannot be configured. A key with Lists write but not Lists read makes the Subscribe Contact to List step impossible to save: its list picker answers with a permission error, and the list is a required field.Contacts read is needed by every trigger too, not only the contact ones: the sample records Zapier shows while you build a Zap are read from your contacts whichever trigger you picked. A key without it fills its dropdowns but fails on Test trigger.
Webhook Subscriptions write and Lists write reach further than their names suggest. A trigger subscribes to events and has their payloads delivered to Zapier, and subscribing an address to a list creates or overwrites that contact’s record. Treat this key as you would treat read access to your contact database.

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Step 2 — Your API URL

Zapier’s connection form has an API URL field, and Settings → Zapier prints the value to put in it.
  • Notifuse Cloud: the field arrives pre-filled with the Cloud API, https://v3.notifuse.com. Leave it as it is.
  • Self-hosted: paste the address the Settings → Zapier screen prints — the same address you open the Notifuse console at, scheme and domain only, with nothing after the domain and no trailing slash. Do not clear the field: an empty API URL means Notifuse Cloud, not “this instance”.
Your instance must be reachable from the public internet, over HTTPS, with a certificate from a public certificate authority. Let’s Encrypt is fine.
Plain http://, self-signed certificates and internal certificate authorities are not supported, and neither is an instance reachable only from inside your network. Zapier requires HTTPS with a publicly trusted certificate. If your Notifuse instance sits behind a firewall, note that Zapier only publishes a fixed set of outbound IP addresses to allowlist on its paid plans.

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Step 3 — Connect Your Workspace

In Zapier, create a Zap, search for Notifuse, and choose a trigger or action. When Zapier asks you to connect an account, paste the API key and — if you self-host — your API URL. Every Notifuse trigger and action then asks which workspace to use, from a dropdown.
One connection per workspace. A Notifuse API key belongs to exactly one workspace, so the workspace dropdown will only ever offer that one and selects it for you. If you run several workspaces, open Settings → Zapier in each one, create a key there, and add a separate Zapier connection for each — Zapier labels connections with the workspace name and the host they live on, so they are easy to tell apart. Since key names are unique across the whole installation, no two of those keys can share a name — the suffix in the name each screen suggests is there to keep them apart.

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Triggers

List and segment triggers let you pick a specific list or segment. Do pick one: Notifuse then sends Zapier only the events for that list or segment instead of every list in the workspace, which keeps your Zap’s task usage down and your instance faster.

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New List Subscriber Covers Three Ways In

A contact can become an active subscriber of a list in more than one way, and only the first one is a plain new subscription:
  • They subscribe for the first time.
  • They confirm a double opt-in subscription that was waiting for confirmation.
  • They resubscribe after previously unsubscribing, bouncing or reporting spam.
New List Subscriber fires for all three, because a returning contact never produces a first-time subscription event, and a Zap that only watched for one would silently miss every returning subscriber. Each run carries the specific event so you can branch on it inside Zapier if you need to treat a first-time subscriber differently from a returning one.

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Updated Contact Ignores No-Op Saves

Updated Contact fires only when a contact’s details actually change. Saving a contact without changing anything, or a background job touching a record, produces no event. This is deliberate — otherwise routine internal updates would run your Zaps.

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Zapier Manages Its Own Webhook Subscriptions

Turning a Notifuse Zap on creates a subscription under Settings → Webhooks, marked as created by Zapier. Turning the Zap off removes it.
Do not delete a Zapier-created webhook subscription by hand. The Zap that owns it will stop receiving events, and it will not recreate the subscription on its own — you have to turn the Zap off and on again in Zapier, which works even though the subscription is already gone. Delete the Zap instead, and let it clean up after itself.
A delivery that fails is retried, so a Zap can occasionally run twice for the same event. If your Zap does something that must not happen twice — charging a card, sending a message — add a Zapier filter or a deduplication step.

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Actions

Both actions match on the email address, so re-running them with the same address updates the same contact rather than creating a duplicate. Notifuse’s custom contact fields appear in these actions under the labels you gave them. Name your custom fields in Settings → Custom Fields first — unlabelled slots are hidden, so a field you cannot find in Zapier is usually a field with no label yet.

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Subscription Status Is Not Always Active

This is the behaviour most likely to look like a bug when it is not. Subscribe Contact to List returns the resulting status for every list, and it is not always active:
  • A contact who previously unsubscribed comes back as pending, not active, and receives the list’s confirmation email. Notifuse forces double opt-in for anyone who has opted out before, whatever the list’s own settings say. This is a compliance rule and it cannot be switched off. The Zap did not fail — the contact simply has to confirm before they receive anything. Note that a list with no double opt-in template configured has no confirmation email to send, so those contacts stay pending indefinitely: set one up before pointing a re-engagement Zap at a list.
  • A brand-new contact lands active even on a double opt-in list, and receives no confirmation email, because the request came from an authenticated API key rather than from a public subscription form.
Read those two together before you point a lead-capture Zap at a double opt-in list: new addresses skip the confirmation step. Only add people to a list through Zapier when you have their consent, exactly as you would when importing a file.
Three more cases where the action reports success without adding a new subscriber. They do not all look the same in the output, which matters if you filter on the result:
  • An address that has bounced or reported spam is not resubscribed, deliberately — it comes back reported with its terminal status, bounced or complained. A Filter step keyed on Status sees it.
  • A contact already active on the list is left alone. Re-running the Zap changes nothing, and the membership comes back as active.
  • An address at a disposable email domain is dropped silently. This is the only case with nothing to report: the step succeeds with no memberships at all and a blank Status. Nothing was written — not the membership, and not the contact.
Filter on the status value, not on the status existing. Continue if Status exists passes a bounced address just as happily as an active one — both carry a status — and stops only the disposable-domain case. A filter that means “the contact is now subscribed” should check that Status is active, or that Memberships is not empty if you are subscribing to several lists at once.

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Troubleshooting

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The connection test fails

  • Check the API URL: it must start with https:// and contain no path after the domain. Settings → Zapier prints the exact value.
  • Open https://your-domain/api/workspaces.list in a browser. An authentication error is the expected answer and proves the address is reachable; a timeout, a connection error or a certificate warning means Zapier cannot reach it either.
  • Check the certificate is issued by a public certificate authority, not a self-signed or internal one.
  • If the key was deleted in Notifuse, the connection stops working immediately. Zapier reports it as an authentication failure and offers to reconnect the account: create a new key and paste it in.

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A step fails with a permission error

The message names the missing permission. Add it to the key from Settings → Team; the change takes effect on the next request and the token stays the same.

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A Zap stopped receiving events

Open Settings → Webhooks in Notifuse and look at the subscription for that Zap:
  • Switched off with a reason attached. Notifuse disables a subscription automatically after a long run of failed deliveries and records why. Turn it back on once the cause is resolved — or, easier, turn the Zap off and on again in Zapier to recreate it.
  • Missing entirely. Someone deleted it by hand, or the Zap was turned off. Turn the Zap off and on again.
The delivery log on each subscription shows every event sent, the response Zapier returned, and the payload — the fastest way to tell whether Notifuse sent an event at all.

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The trigger test finds no data

Zapier looks for recent matching activity to build its sample. If a list has had no subscribers recently, or a segment no new members, there is nothing to show. Create a test contact, subscribe it to the list, and re-run the test.

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Limitations

  • A connection covers one workspace. Several workspaces means several connections.
  • Contact deletions do not trigger a Zap, and neither do broadcast or automation events.
  • There is no search step yet — you cannot look a contact up mid-Zap without an action that writes.
  • Custom fields must be labelled to appear in an action.