How to Use Instantly: A Step-by-Step Guide for Your First Campaign

To use Instantly, you connect your sending inboxes, turn on warmup and let it run for at least two weeks, then create a campaign, upload leads, write a short sequence, set a schedule and launch. Replies land in the Unibox, and results show in each campaign's Analytics tab. This guide walks through every step in the order Instantly's own help center lays out, as of October 2026.

Some tool links here are affiliate links (disclosure). Nerdy Joe is not an Instantly partner; we only use an affiliate link. Every step below is checked against Instantly's help center, which we cite in each section and in the sources list at the end.

If you are still deciding whether Instantly is the right tool, read our Instantly review first. If you already have an account, open Instantly in another tab and follow along.

What you need before you start

Instantly sends the emails, but it does not fix weak setup. Have these ready before you sign up:

• Separate sending domains. Most cold emailers send from lookalike domains, not their main website domain, so a bad week does not hurt company email.
• Inboxes on those domains with SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up. Our guide to cold email infrastructure covers how many domains and inboxes to plan for.
• A lead list with at least an email column and, ideally, first name, company and one detail you can personalize on.
• A short sequence draft: one opening email and two or three follow-ups.

You can also buy domains and inboxes inside Instantly (done-for-you Google accounts, pre-warmed accounts or its own AirMail inboxes). That is faster, but read the lock-in note in the pricing section below first.

Instantly pricing at a glance (as of October 2026)

Instantly sells sending (Outreach), lead data (Credits), CRM and placement testing as separate subscriptions. These are the Outreach plans from the official pricing page and help center.

Two plan details matter for this guide. Replying from the Unibox, team invites, extra workspaces and subsequences all require Hypergrowth or higher, according to Instantly's plan comparison. The uploaded contacts limit is a running total, not a monthly allowance, and it does not reset.

Done-for-you inboxes need an active Outreach plan after the trial. If the plan lapses, those inbox subscriptions pause, which is worth knowing before you build everything inside one vendor.

Step 1: Create your account and start the trial

Go to Instantly and sign up. The 14-day trial needs no credit card and includes 1,000 emails, 250 uploaded contacts and 100 credits, per Instantly's plans overview.

During the trial you can connect and warm up 2 accounts for free. That is enough to learn the app, but not enough to run a real campaign, because those inboxes need two weeks of warmup before they send.

Tip: start the trial on the day you connect inboxes, not the day you plan to launch. Warmup takes most of the trial window.

Step 2: Connect your email accounts

Instantly's help center describes the same path for every provider:

1. Click Email Accounts in the left sidebar.
2. Click Add or Buy Accounts.
3. Click Connect Existing, then choose your provider.

What happens next depends on the provider.

Google Workspace

Choose Google, then Option 1: oAuth method. Instantly says you first need to allow Instantly in your Google Workspace Admin console. OAuth does not connect every account in your workspace at once, so you connect each inbox individually.

Personal Gmail

Choose Google, then Option 2: App password method. Instantly's quick start guide warns that Google restricts free Gmail heavily and recommends Workspace or Microsoft accounts instead.

Microsoft 365 and Outlook

Enable SMTP access in your Microsoft account settings first. Then choose Microsoft and follow the prompts. Outlook accounts connect one at a time; bulk connection is not available for them.

Any other provider (IMAP and SMTP)

Choose IMAP/SMTP, then Single account or Bulk Import from CSV. Both IMAP and SMTP must be set up. Instantly does not accept SMTP-only accounts, because it needs IMAP to detect replies and run warmup.

Step 3: Set up a custom tracking domain

If you plan to track opens or clicks, set up a custom tracking domain so your links do not share a generic tracking address with every other sender. Instantly's quick start guide gives these steps:

1. In your DNS provider, add a CNAME record with host inst and value prox.itrackly.com.
2. Wait for it to propagate. Instantly says this can take 24 to 72 hours.
3. In Instantly, open the account from Email Accounts, go to Settings, check Custom tracking domain and enter inst.yourdomain.com.
4. Click Check Status until it shows CNAME Verified.

Done-for-you and pre-warmed accounts bought from Instantly come with this set up already.

Step 4: Turn on warmup and wait

Warmup sends and receives a small number of emails between real inboxes so mailbox providers see normal activity before you start cold sending.

To turn it on for one account, go to the Email Accounts page and click the flame icon next to the account. To do several at once, tick their checkboxes, click the three dots in the top right and choose Bulk enable warmup. Warmup starts at the next 12:00 AM UTC, so do not expect activity right away.

Instantly pre-fills warmup settings with its recommended values. For new accounts, its warmup settings article suggests:

Advanced options include Weekdays only mode and Read Emulation. You can filter accounts by warmup state with the Status filter on the dashboard: a green flame means active, grey means paused.

How long to wait: Instantly's help center says an account is ready for campaigns after at least 2 weeks of warmup (3 weeks for AirMail accounts) and a warmup health score above 90%. Keep warmup running after you launch, too.

Step 5: Create a campaign

1. Open Engage and click + Create New in the top right.
2. Choose the cold outreach campaign option (the help center labels it "Cold Outreach Campaign" in one article and "Cold Email Outreach Campaign" in another).
3. Name it with the audience: title, niche and region, for example "Ops Directors, 3PL, US". Clear names save time once you have twenty campaigns.

Step 6: Import your leads

Open the campaign's Leads section. You can search Instantly's own database with Find leads (this uses separately billed credits) or bring your own list by CSV, Google Sheets, manual entry, HubSpot or Pipedrive.

For a CSV, Instantly's import article gives these steps:

1. Check that your workspace has enough room under its uploaded contacts limit.
2. Select Upload CSV.
3. Map each column with the Select Type dropdown. Email is required. Map the rest to a built-in variable, a custom variable or Do Not Import.
4. Review the two settings. Check for Duplicates Across All Campaigns/Lists is on by default and skips leads already in another campaign or list. Verify Leads checks each address and costs 0.25 credits per lead.
5. Click Upload all.

Instantly then reports how many emails were missing or invalid and how many already existed. The lead count can take up to 5 minutes to update.

Where to get the list: if you build lists in Apollo, the export steps are the same ones we cover in our Apollo to Smartlead workflow; the CSV imports into Instantly the same way. Exporting only verified emails from Apollo keeps bounces down.

Step 7: Write your sequence steps

The sequence editor is where you write the emails. Per Instantly's campaign setup guide:

• Enter a subject line and body for step 1.
• Use + Add variant to create A/Z test versions of a step. Instantly allows up to 26 variants per step.
• Set the gap before each follow-up with Wait X days/hours/minutes.
• Click the + button at the bottom to add follow-ups. Instantly's quick start guide suggests no more than 3 to 4 steps for most cold campaigns.
• Leave a follow-up's subject line blank to send it in the same thread as the previous email.

To personalize, insert variables from the variable option in the bottom toolbar, or use the bolt icon to add one to the subject line. The editor also supports placeholder values for missing data, Spintax and Liquid syntax. Add an opt-out line with Insert Unsubscribe Link.

Before you move on, click Preview to load a real lead and check that every variable fills in. Send a test email to yourself from the same panel.

If you want a second check on wording, run your copy through our spam word checker. For structure ideas, see our guide to cold email sequences.

Step 8: Pick sending accounts and set the schedule

Open the campaign's Settings tab.

Accounts. Choose the inboxes that will send. Instantly rotates sending across them automatically, and there is no limit on how many you add. If you select by tag, make sure the accounts actually carry that tag.

Schedule. Choose During office hours, At custom times or On any day, any time, set the timezone, a start date and an optional stop date.

Daily limit. This is the total for the whole campaign across all inboxes. Instantly's campaign settings article recommends 30 emails per sending account (20 for AirMail). So ten warmed inboxes support about 300 emails a day.

Settings worth checking before launch:

Instantly also suggests leaving "Stop Sending Emails on Auto-reply" off so its AI Smart Pause can handle out-of-office replies instead.

Step 9: Launch

Instantly's quick start guide ends with a short checklist: leads imported with variables mapped, sequence saved, variables tested in Preview, test emails received, accounts assigned, schedule and daily limit set. When all of that is true, click Launch.

Start smaller than you think. Sending the first week at a modest daily limit tells you whether bounces and replies look normal before you scale.

Step 10: Handle replies in the Unibox

The Unibox collects replies from every connected inbox in one place. Per Instantly's Unibox guide, the left sidebar filters by Lead status, All Campaigns, AI Sales Agents and All Inboxes, and the More menu holds Unread only, Reminders, Scheduled, Sent and Others.

To reply, open the email, click Reply (or use the arrow for Reply All), write and click Send. Change a lead's status from the top right of the conversation so your reporting stays accurate.

Remember the plan limit: replying from the Unibox needs Hypergrowth or Light Speed. On Growth you can read replies there but must answer from Gmail or Outlook.

A few habits from Instantly's own best-practice notes:

• Reply fast and aim to get a call booked within 24 to 48 hours.
• Answer every question the prospect asked, briefly.
• Mark uninterested leads as Not Interested so they drop out of your follow-up view.
• Use Attach Lead when someone replies from a different address, so the thread links to the right lead.

Instantly also offers an AI Reply Agent that drafts or sends replies. It costs credits (5 per reply, per the pricing page), so test it on a small campaign first.

Step 11: Read your analytics

There are two places to look, per Instantly's analytics article:

• Inside each campaign, the Analytics tab: key metrics, step-by-step results (scroll down) and sending activity you can filter and download.
• The Reports tab: account-wide outreach numbers, plus per-account results showing contacted, opened, replied and a combined score.

The core outreach metrics are total sent, sequence started, reply rate, open rate, click rate, positive reply rate, opportunities and conversions. Note three quirks Instantly documents:

• Reports use UTC.
• The Progress figure only rises when a lead finishes the whole sequence.
• Open and click rates need open and link tracking turned on, and they miss text-only clients.

In practice, reply rate and positive reply rate tell you more than opens. If replies are low, check list quality and the first email before blaming the tool.

Common setup mistakes

• Launching before warmup finishes. Two weeks minimum, per Instantly.
• Uploading unverified lists. Bounces hurt every inbox in the campaign. Verify on export or turn on Verify Leads at import.
• Forgetting the contacts cap. Deleting leads from Lists does not free space; deleting them from campaigns does, per Instantly's contacts limit article.
• Assuming Growth includes everything. Unibox replies, subsequences and team invites start at Hypergrowth.
• Too many follow-ups. Three or four steps is Instantly's own suggestion.

Instantly vs Smartlead for this workflow

The setup arc is almost identical in Smartlead: connect mailboxes, warm up, import, sequence, schedule, master inbox. Reviewers often describe Instantly as the easier app to learn. Smartlead tends to suit agencies that want client workspaces inside one account.

We compare them in detail in Smartlead vs Instantly, and the Smartlead version of this guide is how to use Smartlead.

Rather not run it yourself?

Setting up domains, warming inboxes and writing sequences takes weeks before the first reply. If you would rather hand that off, book a 30-minute call with David at Koldify, the done-for-you cold email agency where David Tile is a partner.

Sources

• Instantly pricing: https://instantly.ai/pricing
• Instantly plans overview: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/10273259-instantly-plans-overview
• Email outreach plans comparison: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/7920548-email-outreach-plans-comparison
• Uploaded contacts limits: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/7918680-uploaded-contacts-limits
• Quick Start Guide (All-in-One): https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6451970-quick-start-guide-all-in-one
• How to Connect Your Email Accounts to Instantly: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6222224-how-to-connect-your-email-accounts-to-instantly
• How to Enable Warmup: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/5975330-how-to-enable-warmup
• Warmup Settings: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/7988514-warmup-settings
• When Your Email Account Is Ready for Campaigns: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/13938078-when-your-email-account-is-ready-for-campaigns
• How to Create a Campaign: Complete Setup Guide: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6386134-how-to-create-a-campaign-complete-setup-guide
• How to Import Leads via CSV: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6254215-how-to-import-leads-via-csv
• A/Z Testing: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6661549-a-z-testing
• Campaign Settings: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6222396-campaign-settings
• How to Manage Unibox: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6576561-how-to-manage-unibox-best-practices-for-replying-to-leads
• Analytics: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/6602310-analytics
• DFY email accounts: https://help.instantly.ai/en/articles/9361043-dfy-done-for-you-service-from-instantly-automated-email-setup
• Instantly pricing.md (credit costs): https://instantly.ai/pricing.md