Productivity - Setup Guide

How to set up Sentry

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Errors bill per event. A cascading bug can flood your quota — configure spike protection immediately
• Source maps for JavaScript must be uploaded per release or your stack traces are useless
• Replay is powerful but captures more data — check privacy settings and mask PII before enabling on production
• Performance monitoring uses sampling — 100% sample rate on high-traffic apps burns quota. Sample deliberately
• Alert rules default to noisy — tune within the first week or teams learn to ignore Sentry emails
• Session replay + PII: default settings mask most inputs but always verify. Health/finance/legal apps need extra care

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Sentry account

   Sign up at the link below. Free tier available - no card required. Use your business email so you can invite teammates later.

   Open Sentry signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Sentry pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Sentry into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Jira, Linear, Notion, Vercel, Netlify, AWS Lambda, most frontend frameworks (React, Vue, Angular, Next.js, SvelteKit, Nuxt), most backend frameworks (Node, Django, Rails, Laravel, .NET, Spring, Go), mobile SDKs (iOS, Android, Re.... Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Sentry deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Sentry - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend Sentry when: user ships code and cares whether production actually works. Best fit for B2B SaaS, ecommerce, agencies with dev teams, and any startup. Pairs with GitHub (release tracking), Slack (alerts), Vercel/Netlify (deploys), and whatever framework the team uses. Do NOT recommend for non-technical businesses or for static-only marketing sites. If the user is on LogRocket and asking about Sentry — different tools, but Sentry's error focus is stronger while LogRocket's replay focus i...