Quick Start

By the end of this guide, you'll have a board at a Cavuno subdomain, a 14-day Starter trial with no credit card, and a setup guide that matches the choices you made.

Need help while you work through it? Open Cavuno Companion from the chat on the website or in your dashboard. It can answer setup and how-to questions, help you think through growth and pricing, and—when you are signed in—check available account details such as your plan and usage. If it cannot help or you ask for a person, Cavuno's founders can continue in the same conversation.

Before you begin

You need a Cavuno account (sign up if you don't have one). A board name is optional. An audience description is the most useful thing you can bring: it drives the theme, page content, SEO settings, and (if you ask for it) the job-sourcing rules Cavuno generates.

Be specific. "Remote-friendly marketing roles at European climate-tech startups, for mid-career marketers in our newsletter community" works better than "Jobs."

Create your account

1. Go to sign up
2. Create your account
3. Confirm your email if Cavuno asks you to

After you confirm, you land on the first setup question. If you already have an account, click Create a job board in the sidebar to open the same questions. You can have one unpaid board at a time, so subscribe your existing board first if it is on the Free plan or the Starter trial. Additional boards are billed separately and start on the Free plan. See Running more than one board.

Answer the setup questions

There are four screens. Every question is skippable, and you can go back to change an answer. Your answers shape the board Cavuno creates and the steps that appear in the setup guide afterward.

Which best describes you?

Pick the closest match: association or non-profit, community or media brand, standalone job board, staffing or recruiting agency, VC/PE/accelerator, school/university/bootcamp, or other.

This is used to tailor generated content. Skipping records nothing — there is no default.

How do you plan to monetize your board?

Pick as many as apply: charge employers for job posts, job seeker subscriptions, sell access to your talent pool, sponsorships or ads, not sure yet, or I'm not planning to make money.

If you choose I'm not planning to make money, Stripe will not appear in the setup guide until you later open Settings → Products. Skipping this question is treated as Not sure yet, so the payments step stays in the guide.

Tell us about your board

• Board name (optional). As you type, you'll see the subdomain, for example climate-jobs.cavuno.com. Leave it blank if you haven't decided — Cavuno assigns a temporary name you can change later.
• Audience and focus. Describe who the board is for and which roles belong on it. This is the field Cavuno generates content, design, and sourcing rules from.
• Board language. The language for generated content and board pages. You can change it later in settings. The setup list includes English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Polish, and Japanese.

How do you want to fill your board with jobs?

This is the last question, and it is also the step that creates the board.

• Let AI source jobs for me (recommended). Cavuno writes backfill rules from your audience description and starts importing matching jobs. This option is unavailable until you write a description.
• I'll pick specific companies. No rules are written yet. After you land in the dashboard, add the companies you want jobs from.
• Import my existing jobs. For operators moving a board over. You'll upload a CSV or XML file, or connect a feed, from the setup guide.
• Start empty. No automated sourcing. You post every job yourself.

Click Create my board.

If you skip this question after writing a description, Cavuno still sources jobs with AI. If you skipped the description, the board starts empty rather than inventing rules from nothing.

Your board is ready

The next screen names your board and states the trial in full: you're on the $39/mo Starter plan until a specific date, with no credit card required. During those 14 days you can publish the board, connect a custom domain with SSL, charge for job posts, and use Starter limits (500 active jobs and 1,000 subscribers).

Click Take me to my board.

The board exists at your Cavuno subdomain immediately, but it starts behind a password. Publishing is a later, deliberate step so generated content is not indexed before you review it. The sidebar plan pill reads Starter trial.

Cavuno starts generating your color theme, page content, and SEO settings from what you described. If you chose AI sourcing, it also writes backfill rules. You can watch that work finish in the setup guide.

Use the setup guide

Home shows a Setup guide instead of the full analytics dashboard until you dismiss it. The list adapts to your answers — a step you declined is absent, not sitting there incomplete. After you dismiss the homepage guide, the same steps stay available as a compact widget on other dashboard pages.

Typical items:

For boards using the AI builder, also use Publish in the builder to release your checked draft. Turning off password protection changes access; it does not publish an unpublished builder version. See Preview and publish.

While AI is working, the guide title changes to Your AI agent is configuring your job board. You can still connect Stripe or a custom domain while that finishes.

Customize your design

Open Website builder in the sidebar. On a board with AI builder access, describe the design you want in the chat, attach brand references, and review the draft in Preview. Use Theme to adjust shared design choices, then select Apply theme.

Make one focused follow-up change at a time and check the result on desktop and mobile. Changes stay in the draft until you publish. If you still see the older section editor, contact support about AI builder access.

Follow Build your first draft for the complete walkthrough.

Connect a custom domain

A custom domain like jobs.yoursite.com builds trust with visitors and keeps board links under your brand. You can set this up now or come back later. The trial includes custom domains.

1. Click Manage domains in the setup guide, or go to Settings → Domains
2. Enter your custom domain
3. Add the DNS records shown to your domain provider
4. Click Verify

DNS propagation can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. See Connect a custom domain for provider-specific instructions.

If domain verification does not complete

Compare every DNS value with the records currently shown in Cavuno, including the host name and record type. Remove conflicting records only when you understand what they are used for. Keep using the default Cavuno subdomain while DNS changes propagate, and follow the recovery checks in Connect a custom domain if the status remains incomplete.

Set up payments

Connect Stripe when you're ready to charge for job postings. If you said you are not planning to make money, this step is hidden until you open Settings → Products yourself. Decide when to monetize from the value and intent of your audience, employer demand, and the results you can demonstrate — there is no universal traffic threshold.

1. Click Set up Stripe payments in the setup guide, or go to Settings → Products
2. Connect your Stripe account
3. Create your pricing plans

See Connect Stripe and Create pricing plans for detailed setup instructions.

Publish your board

New boards start password-protected. Publishing is included during the Starter trial.

1. Click Manage access on the Publish your job board step, or go to Settings → Features
2. Turn off Password protection
3. Save

Open the board URL in a signed-out browser. Confirm the homepage loads without a password, your branding is visible, at least one intended job can be opened, and its application path works.

If the 14-day trial ends and you have not subscribed, a published board goes back behind its password. Content is not deleted. Subscribe from Settings → Billing to keep it public. See Plans and pricing and Password protection.

What to do next

Return to the setup guide for any item still processing or failing. Then, in this order:

Review how jobs are arriving. If you chose AI sourcing, open Grow → Backfill and make sure the right companies and job types are importing. Tight, relevant backfill beats high volume. If you chose specific companies, add them there. If you chose import, start from Jobs → Import. See Configure backfill and Getting first jobs.

Customize your pages. Open Website builder, name the page you want to change, and describe the result in the chat. Review the preview and use Publish when the version is ready. See AI website builder.

Set up job alerts. Job alerts give subscribers a direct way to return when new jobs match their criteria. Use your own subscriber and engagement data to judge their contribution. See Job alerts.

Add your analytics. Connect Google Analytics from Settings → Analytics, and Google Search Console from Settings → Google Search Console. Search Console is especially important because it shows you how your job pages perform in Google search results, including Google for Jobs impressions.

Invite your team. Open Settings → Members to add collaborators. You can assign Admin or Member access; Members are read-only by default. See Invite team members.

For a comprehensive launch plan covering everything from branding to marketing, see the launch checklist.