# Create your account Sign up, understand what each field does, and know when your free trial actually begins. Signing up takes about two minutes and no credit card. It creates your account and, at the same time, creates your boat, ready for a device to link to it. Two fields deserve attention before signup: the e-mail address becomes your username, and a referral code normally has to be entered before you submit the form. ## Before you fill in the form Have these to hand: - **The e-mail address you intend to keep.** It becomes your username and cannot be changed later without asking support. - **A referral or promo code, if someone gave you one.** Enter it during signup so both accounts receive the advertised credit. You do not need your boat, your device, or anything from the boat's network yet. None of that is asked for at signup, and you can sign up at home in the winter with the boat ashore. ## Sign up 1. Go to [saillogger.com/accounts/create/](https://saillogger.com/accounts/create/). 2. Enter your **Email address**. This becomes your username, so use an address you will keep. 3. Enter a **Password**. It must be at least 8 characters. 4. Enter your **First name** and **Last name**. Each must be at least 3 characters. 5. If you were given a code, click **Have a promo or referral code?** and type it into the field marked **Promo or referral code (optional)** before submitting. 6. Tick **I agree to Terms of Service**. 7. Click **Submit**. There is an invisible reCAPTCHA on **Submit**, so nothing extra is normally asked of you. If the page does not move on after a few seconds, reload it, check the fields and try once more. Contact us if the form still does not complete. After you submit, you land on the Getting Started page, which is where you choose how to connect your boat. That is the next page of this guide. > [!TIP] > If a browser password manager offers to save the password, let it. The e-mail address you signed up with is the username it should store. ## Your e-mail address is your username The address you sign up with is your login. It cannot be changed later from anywhere in the Saillogger interface. If you need to change it, for example because you have left an old provider behind, write to info@saillogger.com from the address currently on the account and ask for it to be changed. Everything else about you (your name, your boat's details, your preferences) you can change yourself at any time in **Settings**. ## Promo and referral codes A referral code has to go in at signup. If a friend gave you one, click **Have a promo or referral code?** before you submit the form and enter it. If the signup form itself failed while you were entering the code, write to info@saillogger.com and we will look at it. What a referral code does: - You get 25% off your first paid month. - The boater who referred you earns one free month, once you make your first payment. If your friend sends you a share link rather than a bare code, it looks like this: ``` https://saillogger.com/accounts/create/?referral=CODE ``` Opening that link takes you to the same signup form with the code already filled in, which is the least error-prone way to use one. > [!IMPORTANT] > Enter a referral code while you are creating the account. There is no way to add one afterwards, and both your discount and your friend's free month depend on it. ## One account, one boat Signing up creates one boat for you automatically. You do not create it yourself, and you do not name it here: for most setups the boat's name comes from your Signal K server, which is covered in [Connect your boat](https://saillogger.com/docs/connect-your-boat.md). One account holds one boat. Boaters who own more than one boat, or who keep an old boat's logs while running a new one, use a separate account for each. Saillogger staff can link those accounts together so that a **switch boat** entry appears in the menu and you can move between them without signing out. Ask for it at info@saillogger.com or on the [community forum](https://community.saillogger.com), naming the accounts you want linked. > [!TIP] > The iOS and Android apps show the same signup form as the web site, so it does not matter which you use. The account is the same account either way. ## After you sign up Until your boat sends its first data, signing in takes you to Getting Started instead of the usual home screen. That page keeps the connection choices close at hand until the first data arrives. Getting Started offers three ways to connect a boat, and you pick one. The next page walks through all three, so you can leave that screen for now. Once data arrives, the redirect stops and you get your normal home screen. ## When your free trial starts Your 45 free days start when your boat first sends data, not when you sign up. Signing up in the winter and connecting your device at launch in the spring costs you nothing in trial days. Until the first data arrives, **Settings** > **Subscription** shows: > Your trial period hasn't started yet. > > It will start automatically when your monitoring device is linked. When that message is gone and the tab shows your plan and its dates instead, your trial has begun, which also tells you data has arrived. Full details of what happens at the end of the 45 days, and how to pause over the winter, are in [Subscription and seasonal pause](https://saillogger.com/docs/subscription-and-seasonal-pause.md). ## If you never link a boat An account that never links a boat is closed after 60 days. You get a warning e-mail 7 days before that happens, at the address you signed up with. No action is required while the account is within those 60 days. If you need more time, or if the account has already been closed, write to info@saillogger.com from the registered address. Contacting us before creating another account helps keep your boat and history together. ## Passwords **If you cannot sign in**, use **Forgot your password?** on the sign-in form, or go straight to [saillogger.com/accounts/password_reset/](https://saillogger.com/accounts/password_reset/). You get an e-mail with a reset link. **If it does not work:** - Check the address you typed is the one you signed up with. The reset only goes to a known address. - Look in your spam folder for the message. - If your account was cancelled or closed, the reset can fail without telling you why. Write to info@saillogger.com from the registered address and ask for the account to be re-enabled. **To change a password you already know**, sign in and open **Settings** > **General**, find the **Password** row and click **Change Password**. ## Before you connect your boat - An account you can sign in to. - A boat that exists but has never sent data, so your trial has not started. - Getting Started waiting for you every time you sign in. The next page turns that into a boat that is actually logging. > [!NEXT] > Go to [Connect your boat](https://saillogger.com/docs/connect-your-boat.md) and pick one of the three ways to send data.