Quick start guide: Create your organization and first project

Welcome to Amplitude! This Quick Start Guide is intended to help you set up Amplitude in the quickest and most optimal manner. In it, we'll discuss the data structure and what data you should send to Amplitude:

0. Introduction & getting started (this article)
1. Instrumentation pre-work: Things to consider before deciding what data to send
2. Identifying your users: Requirements for properly tracking your product's unique users
3. Event data: How to identify the events or user actions you should track
4. User properties and event properties: The attributes you should send to upscale your analytics
5. Cross-platform instrumentation vs. separate platform instrumentation: The differences between them, and when you should choose one over the other
6. Dive into Amplitude and Snowflake, and explore powerful resources: Use Snowflake with Amplitude to answer key questions via SQL

As you prepare to implement Amplitude, it's important to assign a project lead, a data governor, and an instrumentation lead to your implementation team. If you are a manager who will be responsible for instrumenting Amplitude, then you should also read our Getting Started Guide for Developers as well.

Create your organization and first project

Before we can dive in and immerse ourselves in all things Amplitude, you'll need to create an organization. This is the basis for all Amplitude analyses; without an organization, you can't do much of anything else.

Just follow these steps to get started.

1. Create an Amplitude Account. If you haven't already, just click here to sign up for an Amplitude account. You will be directed to explore the demo environment, where we've set up dashboards and charts that allow you to see some of what Amplitude can do for you. 
2. Verify your email. You will receive an email from Amplitude, asking you to verify your email address. Click the link it contains to set a password and finish creating your account. Once completed, you will be redirected back to the demo environment, where you can click Set up on the Free Plan at the top of the page to set up your own Amplitude implementation.
   
   If you have not received a verification email, click Set up on the Free Plan at the top of the demo environment to resend the email.
3. Create an organization. Read this Help Center article on how to create a new organization in Amplitude. Within each organization, you will be able to create multiple projects. Your company should have only one organization in Amplitude, but you can have multiple projects within that organization. Most Amplitude customers use the name of their company as the name of your organization. 

4. Create a project. Once you have created an organization, just answer a few questions and you will be redirected to your organization's general settings. Here, you can see your organization's name, org ID, org URL, plan type, and other account details.
   
   From here, click the settings icon () and select Projects in the left nav to create your first project. Each project in Amplitude has its own separate API key you'll use to send data. For example, if you have one iOS project and one Android project within your organization, you'll have your iOS app and your Android app send data to their respective API keys.

5. Send data to your project. Now you're ready to begin sending data to Amplitude. Data can be sent to Amplitude in different ways: SDKs, HTTP API v2, Batch API, Amplitude's integration with Segment, or Amplitude's integration with mParticle. Below are some resources to help you understand your options:

• • • Getting Started for developers: This article is meant to complement the Quick Start Guide and is specifically meant for developers who will be instrumenting Amplitude. It outlines technical best practices on how to get up and running with Amplitude.
    • Amplitude SDKs: Find Amplitude's list of SDKs here. 
    • Amplitude HTTP API v2: Use Amplitude's HTTP API v2 to send server-side event data; limit is 10 events per device/user per second.
    • Batch API: Batch API can also be used to send server-side data; limit is 1000 events per device/user per second.
    • Segment.io: See our article on integrating Segment with Amplitude for more information.
    • mParticle: See our article on integrating mParticle with Amplitude for more information. 

After instrumenting Amplitude successfully, your data will be visible just as soon as your product begins sending events. (You'll have to instrument and log events before this can happen.) Check out our data taxonomy playbook for detailed documentation on how to approach your event taxonomy.

6. Create more projects, not organizations. Creating a new project and sending data to a new API key does not require creating a new organization. For example, if you wanted to instrument your Android app in Amplitude after instrumenting your iOS app, you should go to the Settings page and create a new project there. Do not create an entirely separate organization for your Android app.
7. Continue learning. Now you are ready to get started. For documentation on all of our features, check out our Help Center. 

Next, we'll cover what to do prior to instrumenting Amplitude.