If your campaign isn't sending emails as expected, start by clicking the Diagnose button in your campaign's Analytics section for automatic diagnostics.
Before diving into detailed troubleshooting, check your campaign status:
Draft: You need to launch the campaign for emails to start sending. Once launched, it can take 10–15 minutes before sending begins if it's within the sending schedule.
Paused: Resume the campaign for sending to continue. After pausing, resuming, or updating a campaign, there's typically a 10–15 minute delay before sending resumes (as long as it's within your sending schedule).
This guide covers the most common reasons campaigns don't send and how to fix them.
Issue 1: Not Within the Sending Schedule
Your campaign is configured to send emails only during specific hours or days, and it's currently outside that window. The campaign will automatically start sending once it's within your scheduled window.
To start sending immediately:
Go to your campaign's Schedule tab
Adjust the schedule to include the current time
Verify the end date hasn't been reached
Confirm you've selected the correct timezone and days.
Ensure your schedule is long enough to accommodate the expected sending volume based on your number of accounts, time gap settings, and sending behavior preferences. Example:
Default time gap: Minimum 9 minutes between emails, plus a random additional 5 minutes (for a total of 9-14 minutes). If you have 5 sending accounts in the campaign, the campaign uses all 5 accounts to send 5 emails (one from each account) every 9-14 minutes
Maximum volume in 2 hours: Approximately 40-65 emails (depending on the randomized time gap)
Calculation: (120 minutes ÷ 9-14 minutes per batch) × 5 accounts ≈ 42-65 emails
Issue 2: Campaign Daily Limit Reached
The campaign has reached its daily sending limit - the maximum number of emails that can be sent per day from all sending accounts within this specific campaign.
To check your campaign limit:
Open your campaign and go to the Options section
Scroll down to find the "Daily limit" setting
Calculate your maximum limit: Number of sending accounts × 30
Example: If you have 2 sending accounts in the campaign, the daily limit can be set to 60 (each account sends 30 emails per day).
Solutions:
Wait until the next day
Or increase your campaign's daily limit if you have capacity
Or add more sending accounts to the campaign
Issue 3: Account Daily Limits Reached
All sending accounts have reached their individual daily limits or slow ramp limits. Each email account has its own daily limit for the total number of campaign emails it can send across all campaigns per day.
How to check your account limits
Go to the Email Accounts dashboard
Check the "Emails Sent" column to see each account's current usage(Campaign emails sent today / Daily campaign limit)
Check if "Campaign slow ramp" is enabled
When enabled, the account starts at 2 campaign emails and increases by 2 per day until reaching your daily limit.
This improves deliverability for new accounts but may cause the campaign to stop sending once the slow ramp limit is reached.
How to update account limits
Navigate to the Settings section in the pop-up window
Scroll down to find "Daily Campaign limit" (Recommended: 30 campaign emails per account per day)
You can disable Campaign Slow Ramp to reach the full limit immediately, though keeping it enabled is recommended for gradual volume increases.
Understanding Account Limits Across Campaigns
One sending account assigned to a single campaign
The campaign uses that account until it reaches its daily limit, then no more emails are sent from that account for the day.
One account assigned to multiple campaigns
The daily limit is shared across all campaigns using that account.
If campaigns run simultaneously, the system distributes available sends between them.
If campaigns have different schedules, the earliest scheduled campaign is prioritized, and later campaigns may not send if the account has already hit its limit.
Best Practice: Use separate sending accounts for each campaign to avoid sending interruptions.
Issue 4: Waiting for a Lead to Process
The system is waiting for available leads to process. The campaign will automatically resume sending when leads become available based on your campaign settings and sequence wait times.
Common Reasons No Leads Are Available
1. No New Leads: Ensure you have enough leads with a "Not yet contacted" status.
If all leads have already been contacted or skipped, no new sends will go out.
If "Max New Leads" is set to a negative value (e.g., -1), the campaign will only send follow-ups and will not contact new leads.
All leads have been contacted
All leads have been contacted
If all your leads have received the first step, they're now waiting for follow-up steps based on the "Send next message in X days" gap you set between sequence steps
Skipped leads
Skipped leads
Limit Emails Per Company: This setting controls how many people from the same company domain you can email per day. If enabled, leads from the same company domain may be skipped to stay within the limit. You can adjust or disable this setting in Advanced Deliverability settings or the Campaign's Options section.
Risky or Invalid Leads: For leads verified by Instantly, risky or invalid leads will be skipped automatically to protect your sender reputation.
If leads are still in the verification queue, the campaign will wait for the verification process to complete.
Leads with the "Instantly credits low" status will not be contacted until you add more credits
Blocklists/BounceShield: Leads will be skipped if they are
In your custom blocklists
Detected by the BounceShield feature (protects against known bounces)
AI Lead Filtering: Our AI identifies and skips leads that are:
Less likely to respond to your campaigns
More likely to engage negatively (e.g., reporting emails as spam)
Review and adjust AI filtering settings in Advanced Deliverability settings.
Global Lead Status Sync
By default, the same lead across multiple campaigns will share the same status. This means when a lead is marked as "Interested" or other statuses in one campaign, that same lead in other campaigns will automatically be updated to the "Interested" status as well, which may result in leads not being contacted in those campaigns.
This helps maintain consistent lead data across your workspace and prevents you from continuing to contact leads who have already responded positively.
If you want leads to have independent statuses in different campaigns, you can disable this feature:
Go to Preference settings
Enable "Disable global lead status synchronization"
Leads will now maintain separate statuses in each campaign
2. Waiting for Step Delay: Your campaign may be waiting for the "Send next message in X days/hours/minutes" gap you set between sequence steps. This is normal behavior. The campaign will automatically send follow-ups when the delay period ends.
3. Lead Prioritization Settings
Follow-ups are prioritized over new leads by default. The system sends all scheduled follow-ups first before contacting new leads.
To prioritize Step 1 (Hyper Growth plan or above):
Enable "Prioritize new leads" to prioritize Step 1 for new leads
Set "Max new leads" to specify how many new leads the campaign contacts per day
If "Max New Leads" exceeds the campaign's daily limit, only Step 1 will send (no follow-ups)
If 'Max New Leads' is set to a negative value (e.g., -1), the campaign will only send follow-ups and will not contact new leads
4. Time Gap Between Emails: Your campaign may be waiting for the "Time gap between steps" setting before sending the next email.
Default time gap: Minimum 9 minutes between emails, plus a random additional 5 minutes (for a total of 9-14 minutes).
It’s not recommended to reduce the time gap below 5 minutes.
Understanding Simultaneous Sending: When you have multiple sending accounts in a campaign, Instantly sends emails from all accounts simultaneously by default. For example:
You have 5 sending accounts in the campaign
The campaign uses all 5 accounts to send 5 emails (one from each account) every 9-14 minutes
Maximum volume in 2 hours: Approximately 40-65 emails (depending on the randomized time gap)
Calculation: (120 minutes ÷ 9-14 minutes per batch) × 5 accounts ≈ 42-65 emails
Customizing Sending Behavior: If you want to space out sending so emails don't go out simultaneously, you can adjust the sending behavior in the Preferences page.
"Send Emails One at a Time"
Sends emails from each account sequentially, not all at once
Each account waits for the time gap before the next account sends
Example: With 5 accounts and a 14-minute gap, emails are sent every 14 minutes from one account at a time
"Use a Single Sending Account per Time Gap"
Sends one email per time gap, then switches to the next account
Rotates through accounts in sequence
Example: With 5 accounts and a 14-minute gap, Account 1 sends, waits 14 minutes, then Account 2 sends, and so on
Best practice: Ensure your campaign schedule is long enough to accommodate the expected sending volume based on your number of accounts, time gap settings, and sending behavior preferences.
5. Provider Matching/ESP routing: Provider Matching ensures emails are sent from accounts that match the recipient's email provider (Outlook-to-Outlook or Gmail-to-Gmail). This can slow sending, as the campaign waits for a matched account or lead.
Matching provider available: If a lead uses Outlook and you have an Outlook sending account, the system waits to match them.
No matching provider: If a lead uses Outlook but you only have Gmail accounts, the system proceeds with Gmail after detecting no match.
To use Provider Matching effectively: Have at least one sending account that matches each lead's provider. If you set a "Do Not Send" ESP routing rule, ensure you have at least one "Send" rule configured.
Global Advanced Deliverability Setting: If provider matching isn't enabled at the campaign level, check the global setting under Advanced Deliverability Settings to see if "Enable ESP Matching" is enabled for all campaigns in the workspace.
Check if "Enable ESP Matching" is enabled globally
This enables ESP matching for all campaigns within the workspace
Issue 5: Sending Accounts in Error or Paused
No active sending accounts are available for the campaign.
1. Verify accounts are assigned to the campaign
Ensure you have selected at least one sending account in the campaign.
If using tags: Verify that sending accounts are associated with the tag you've assigned to the campaign.
After making changes, save and resume the campaign. It may take 10–15 minutes for updates to take effect.
2. Check account status
Go to the Email Accounts dashboard and filter by "Has Errors" or "Paused" status.
For DFY or pre-warmed accounts from Instantly: Contact support for assistance.
For accounts from other providers: Follow the troubleshooting steps here.
For accounts paused due to plan expiration: Accounts are automatically paused after the 14-day free trial or when your Email Outreach plan expires. To unpause accounts:
Select the paused accounts (tick the checkbox next to each account)
Click the three dots (...) in the top right corner
Select "Unpause selected accounts"
Resume your campaign
Checking Campaign Activity
If you've made recent changes to the campaign, wait 15 minutes and then check the activity log to verify sending has started:
Open the target campaign
Go to the Analytics section of the campaign
Scroll down the page and select the 'Activity' section
Apply the 'Email sent' filter to see the most recent sending activities.
