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Getting started

This walkthrough takes you from nothing to your first round of pairings. Fifteen minutes, most of it waiting for colleagues to click "yes".

1. Create an account

Go to app.pouroversocial.com and choose Create an account. You'll need:

  • Email — this becomes your login, and the Reply-To address on every pairing email you send.
  • Your name (optional) — shown to participants in invitations ("Jordan would like to include you in coffee pairings").
  • Password — at least 8 characters, entered twice.

Press Create account. Nothing is created until you confirm the address: Pourover emails you an activation link, and the account can't log in — and can't send anything to anyone — until you've clicked it.

No activation email?

Check spam first. If you try to log in before activating, Pourover re-sends the activation link automatically. If the address already had an account, you'll get a "You already have a Pourover account" email instead — just log in.

2. Activate and log in

Open the email titled "Activate your Pourover account", follow the link, and press Activate my account. Then log in with your email and password.

You land on Home — a dashboard that will soon summarize your next cycle, waiting requests, and roster at a glance. Right now every card says the same thing: there's nobody to pair yet.

3. Build your roster

Head to Roster in the sidebar. You have two ways in:

  • Add one person — the form sits on the right of the roster page: type a name (email and team optional), press Add. You land on their new page, ready to set a pause or a personal pace if you need one.
  • Add people in bulk — paste a whole list at once. It accepts what Outlook and Excel give you when you copy, shows a preview of exactly what will happen, and writes nothing until you confirm. This is the fast path — see Adding people in bulk.

Everyone you add with an email address immediately gets one invitation email and shows up as Invited on the roster. They join the pairings only once they accept, at which point they turn Active. People without an email stay visible on the roster but are never paired — there's no way to send them their match.

You don't have to wait for everyone

Pairings only ever include people who have accepted. Generate your first week as soon as two people are active; late acceptances simply join the next round.

4. Check your rhythm

The default cadence is every week. If your group would rather meet every other week or every four weeks, set that now in Settings — the invitation email tells people how often they'll be paired, so it's worth getting right before the bulk of invitations go out.

While you're there, check the workspace timezone: it drives the times shown in the app and, if you later turn on automatic sending, the moment your pairings go out.

5. Run your first week

Open Next cycle and press Generate pairings in the Build panel on the right. Pourover builds groups of two (plus one trio if the count is odd), avoiding anyone who met recently — which for a first week means a clean random matching. (If your server has AI pairing configured, a separate Generate with AI button asks Claude for the arrangement instead; the plain Generate button is always the standard matcher.)

Look the board over. If you want a different arrangement, Reshuffle. If you want to hand-tune it, click any person to pick them up, then click another person to swap them — see The week board.

When it looks right, press Finalize and send in the Commit panel. (Want different wording first? Scroll to The email below the board, adjust, and Save wording before finalizing.) Every placed participant gets one individually addressed email naming their group, with a personal unsubscribe link in the footer. The week locks and becomes history.

That's the whole ritual. Next week, do it again — or turn on automatic sending and don't.

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