This guide covers the most common reasons regular campaigns don't send and how to fix them. Note that this guide does not apply to AI sales agent campaigns.
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).
You can use Instantly AI to investigate why the campaign is not sending.
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 Settings tab
Check your schedule and timezone. If the current time falls outside your configured sending hours, adjust them accordingly
Verify your "Starting Sending" and "Stop Sending" fields to ensure the current time falls within your active sending window
Ensure your sending schedule is long enough to support your expected volume given the 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 with 5 sending accounts (depending on the randomized time gap)
Calculation: (120 minutes ÷ 9-14 minutes per batch) × 5 accounts ≈ 42-65 emails
Campaign Daily Limit Reached
The campaign may have 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 Settings section
Scroll down to find the "Schedule & Limits -> Daily limit" setting
Calculate your maximum limit:
Number of sending accounts × 30
Number of Airmail accounts × 20
Solutions:
Wait until the next day
Increase your campaign's daily limit, provided you have sufficient capacity
Add more sending accounts to the campaign
Account Daily Limits Reached
Sending accounts may have reached their individual daily limits or slow ramp limits. Each email account has its own daily limit on the total number of campaign emails it can send across all campaigns.
To check your account limits:
Go to the Email Accounts dashboard
Check the "Daily 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.
This can cause campaigns to show no available accounts even when accounts are assigned to them.
To update account limits:
Click the email account
Navigate to the Settings section in the pop-up window
Scroll down to find "Daily Campaign limit"
Instantly AirMail mailboxes: AirMail mailboxes are capped at 20 campaign emails per account per day.
Other mailboxes: We recommend 30 campaign emails per account per day
If Campaign Slow Ramp is enabled, you can disable it 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.
No Leads Are Available(Most Common Reason)
1. No New Leads: If all leads have already been contacted or skipped, no new sends will go out.
All leads have been contacted
All leads have been contacted
Filter leads with "Not yet contacted" status
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.
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 Gap: Leads may be waiting for the "Send next message in X days/hours/minutes" gap you set between sequence steps. Follow-up emails will be sent automatically once the specified delay has elapsed.
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)
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.
Leads that use the provider specified in the "Do Not Send" rule will not be contacted.
Global ESP Matching Setting: If provider matching isn't enabled at the campaign level, check the global setting under Advanced Deliverability to see if "Enable ESP Matching" is enabled:
Go to Advanced Deliverability settings
Check if "Enable ESP Matching" is enabled globally
This enables ESP matching for all campaigns within the workspace
Sending Accounts Not Available for Sending
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, 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 "Sending error/Has errors" or "Paused" status.
For DFY/Airmail/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 Outbound 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.
