How to Verify Emails in Instantly
Instantly runs cold campaigns across many rotating inboxes, and a dirty lead list spreads bounces across every one of them. Because each hard bounce chips away at the sending reputation Instantly works hard to build, verifying leads before they enter a campaign is essential. This guide walks through exporting leads to CSV, cleaning them with VeriMails, and re-importing only deliverable contacts.
TLDR
- Export leads from the campaign Leads tab for quick campaign cleanup, or use CRM views when you need custom-field filtering.
- Keep Email, name, company, owner, campaign, status, and custom variables in the CSV so cleaned leads can be mapped back cleanly.
- Verify the CSV in VeriMails before upload, then import only valid leads into the campaign.
- During Instantly CSV import, map the Email column, keep useful custom variables, and use duplicate checks before upload.
Campaign Gate Checklist
Use this as the operating gate before an Instantly list goes live. The goal is to catch list issues while the campaign is still paused, not after the first sequence step has already sent.
| Gate | Exact check | Launch decision |
|---|---|---|
| Export location | Campaign > Leads for simple status filters; CRM > All Leads, Lists, or Campaigns for custom-field filtering. | Use the CRM path when the campaign view cannot express the segment you need. |
| Required import field | Instantly requires an Email column during CSV upload. | Do not upload a cleaned file until the email column is mapped correctly. |
| CSV hygiene | Keep column headers in the first row, avoid duplicate column names, and keep files in UTF-8 CSV format. | Fix formatting before verification so the same file can be imported after cleaning. |
| Duplicate handling | Use Instantly's duplicate check across campaigns and lists during upload. | Prevents a verified lead from being re-added to another active send accidentally. |
| Verification setting | If you already cleaned the file with VeriMails, import the valid rows intentionally and review any optional in-app verification setting before spending platform credits. | Keep one clean source of truth for why a lead was allowed into the campaign. |
Why Verify Your Instantly Contacts
Instantly is a cold email platform built around inbox rotation and warm-up. Its model depends on every sending inbox keeping a clean reputation. The fastest way to undo that work is to upload a lead list full of addresses that do not exist. The campaign sends, the addresses bounce, and the bounces land against your own inboxes.
Bounces spread across every rotating inbox in the campaign
Instantly distributes a campaign across multiple connected mailboxes to keep volume per inbox low. When a lead list is unverified, the invalid addresses get dealt out across all of those inboxes, so a single dirty list damages the reputation of every mailbox at once rather than just one. Verifying the list before upload keeps the bad addresses out entirely.
Cold lead lists carry the highest error rates of any source
The leads going into Instantly campaigns usually come from scraping tools, list providers, or older prospecting exports. These sources have meaningfully higher error rates than a CRM you have maintained over time. Verifying before the campaign launch is what turns a raw outbound list into a list that is safe to send.
Instantly itself pauses or throttles campaigns when bounces climb
Cold email platforms watch bounce behavior closely because mailbox providers do. Repeated hard bounces tell Gmail, Microsoft, and other mailbox providers that a sender is working from an unmaintained list. Verification keeps the most obvious bad addresses out before Instantly starts rotating mailboxes through the sequence.
Catch-all and disposable addresses distort campaign metrics
A large share of B2B domains are catch-all, accepting every address whether or not a real mailbox exists. Instantly cannot tell a catch-all from a confirmed inbox. Scraped lists also pick up disposable addresses that should never enter a campaign. Verification flags both, so your open and reply rates reflect real recipients rather than phantom ones.
Instantly Screens to Check Before You Send
Use these points in the workflow to confirm the list is clean before campaign volume starts. For the broader product tradeoff, see the VeriMails vs Instantly comparison.
What VeriMails Checks
VeriMails runs every lead from your Instantly export through bulk verification, with a layered set of checks that catches a different category of bad email and returns a clear status for each lead rather than a fuzzy score.
It starts with syntax validation to catch malformed addresses, which are common in scraped data. MX and DNS checks then confirm the domain exists and is configured to receive mail. A live SMTP handshake opens a real connection with the receiving mail server and confirms the specific mailbox will accept a message, without ever sending one, so your leads see nothing.
VeriMails also runs catch-all detection to identify domains that accept all addresses, disposable detection to flag throwaway inboxes that scraped lists often contain, and role-based detection to surface generic addresses like info@ or contact@. Catch-all status is reported as a clear detection result, never a vague rating. Across all of these checks VeriMails returns clear verification results that work well in live workflows.
Pricing for Instantly Users
Verification is priced to fit the way cold email teams launch campaigns. VeriMails credits start at $0.0019 per email, so a 10,000-lead list costs about $19 on the entry pack. Credit packs scale up to 5 million verifications for $1,499, and credits never expire, so a balance you buy now carries forward to your next campaign.
If you launch campaigns on a steady schedule, monthly subscriptions are available from $15 per month up to $299 per month. Every new VeriMails account includes 100 free credits with no credit card required, enough to verify a small lead list and see the result before committing. The best habit is to verify every lead list immediately before you upload it into an Instantly campaign.
Step-by-Step
Open the campaign Leads tab and filter
In Instantly, open the campaign and go to the Leads tab to see every lead in it. Filter by status if you only want a subset, for example Contacted or Replied. If you need to filter by a custom variable, use the CRM view instead, since the campaign view does not filter on custom columns.
Select leads and download the CSV
Select all leads or just the filtered subset using the checkbox, then click Download to export a CSV. From the CRM view, the equivalent action is Row actions followed by Download selected. Name the file with the campaign and date so it is easy to identify later.
Upload the lead CSV to VeriMails for bulk verification
Sign in to VeriMails, open bulk verification, and upload the Instantly CSV. VeriMails automatically detects the email column, so there is no manual mapping. The job runs as a queued bulk verification while the syntax, MX, DNS, SMTP, catch-all, disposable, and role-based checks run.
Review the valid, invalid, catch-all, and risky results
VeriMails sorts every address by status. Valid addresses are safe to send to. Invalid addresses would hard bounce and should be removed before the campaign starts. Catch-all results are flagged so you can decide whether to include them. Disposable and role-based addresses appear separately. Download the filtered valid results.
Re-import the cleaned list into Instantly
Open your Instantly campaign and use Upload leads via CSV to bring the verified file in. Instantly maps the CSV columns during upload. With only verified leads in the campaign, the bounce rate stays low, which protects every rotating sending inbox and your domain reputation.
What to Do With Each Result
Do not upload every VeriMails row back into the same Instantly campaign. Split the file first so each status has a clear campaign decision.
- Valid Upload to the campaign and keep the mapped variables needed for personalization.
- Invalid Remove from the campaign import entirely so the first step cannot hard bounce.
- Catch-all Keep in a separate low-volume segment or exclude unless the account is high value.
- Disposable Exclude from outbound campaigns because the inbox is temporary and low quality.
- Role-based Review manually before enrollment; generic addresses usually need different copy and lower volume.
Frequently Asked Questions
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