Bring your own lead list and mailboxes

AY Inbox works from the lead list you built and the mailboxes you already own. You import your list, connect your Google, Microsoft or any IMAP/SMTP mailboxes, and AY Inbox sends from them, syncs replies back, and checks the list before a campaign starts. Buying leads or mailboxes through AY Inbox is never required.

"Bring your own" means two things here. Your lead list is the set of people you want to email, with whatever fields you collected about them. Your mailboxes are the sender accounts mail goes out from: every warmup message and campaign email is sent through a mailbox you connected, under your own domain.

Importing a list

Start from Contacts and import a file:

1. Upload a CSV, TSV or XLSX file of up to 50 MB and 50,000 rows. A CSV may use commas or semicolons. Nothing is written yet.
2. Map columns. One column must map to Email. Map the rest to name, company, phone, Subscribed, Labels, or any custom field. A file with the same headers as one you imported before maps itself the way you confirmed last time.
3. Review the counts: new contacts, ones you already have, merged repeats and rows that cannot be imported. Choose Leave as is or Update details for existing contacts, and add everyone to segments, labels or a campaign.
4. Import. It runs on the server in chunks, so you can close the window.

A few things make re-importing safe. One address is one contact, matched on the lowercased email. A blank cell never erases a value you already hold. Failed rows come back as a file with the reason in the last column, ready to fix and import again.

Custom fields carry your research. Map any column to an existing custom field or create one, and it is usable in copy straight away: a column mapped to industry becomes {{.industry}} in an email. See personalization.

Consent travels too. If you write to countries on the workspace's prior consent list, map a column to Consent given. A date records when consent was given, yes records it as of the import, and no or withdrawn clears it.

The import wizard, Google Sheets sync sources and every mapping option are in contacts and CRM.

Keep the verification you paid for

If your list already went through a verification service, keep its verdicts. During mapping, a column whose header or values look like a verification service's results is recognised and offered as Verification status. Those verdicts are stored as imported, and the background check leaves those contacts alone.

Contacts without a verdict are checked in the background within about a minute of being added. Campaigns never send to an address marked invalid, and send to risky only when the campaign allows risky addresses. See address verification.

The launch check

Importing does not judge the quality of your list. The list is judged when you launch a campaign with it, which is where a bad list would cost you:

The projection counts only addresses verification actually rejected, among leads that would really be sent to (suppressed and unsubscribed leads are skipped). Lists under 50 leads are never refused. A refused launch offers Launch anyway for a list you verified with another service. See the launch check on your list.

Connecting mailboxes

Open Accounts and choose Add account:

For many mailboxes at once, Import mailboxes takes up to 5,000 from a CSV, TSV or XLSX file or a pasted address:password list. Only an address and a password are required: servers, ports and encryption are worked out for you. Failed rows are grouped by cause and can be fixed and retried for 7 days. If you bought mailboxes from an inbox vendor, Inbox vendor reads them straight from the vendor with an API key. See import mailboxes.

On a self-hosted instance the whole-domain grants stay switched off until the operator sets them up; see whole-domain mailbox connects. The full provider table, scopes and reconnection steps are in mailboxes.

Mailboxes you already warmed

Keep warmup running on mailboxes that also run campaigns; it is designed to continue alongside cold sending, at a reduced volume while a campaign is live.

A mailbox that warmed with AY Inbox does not jump straight to its full cold cap. It starts cold sending at 5 a day and rises by at most 5 per clean day, and only as fast as confirmed human replies from real recipients allow. A mailbox that never used warmup is not held to that ceiling. The campaign's Today's sending plan shows when this is what limits a mailbox. See easing out of warmup.

Finding more leads when you need them

Lead sourcing is optional, and each source adds contacts the same way an import does:

• Looot lead jobs take company domains and job titles, find people there, verify each address and add only the deliverable ones, inside a budget you set. The operator has to turn them on.
• Apollo imports saved lists with your own Apollo API key and keeps them in sync.
• Clay sends enriched rows into your contacts.

Doing it by API or CLI

Everything above is reachable without the dashboard:

• POST /contacts takes a JSON array of contacts, including a verification_status you already hold and the verification_provider it came from.
• POST /contacts/import/preview returns the detected columns and a sample, and POST /contacts/import/commit imports the file with your mapping.
• For large files, POST /contacts/imports uploads the file as a draft, POST /contacts/imports/:id/start queues it, and GET /contacts/imports/:id reports its progress.

The CLI wraps the same calls: ayinbox contact import-preview, ayinbox contact import, ayinbox contact imports, ayinbox contact import-start and ayinbox contact import-status. Mailbox imports carry passwords, so they currently take a signed-in session, not an API key.

Field-level detail is in the contacts API reference.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use my own lead list with AY Inbox?

Yes. Import a CSV, TSV or XLSX file of up to 50 MB and 50,000 rows, or send contacts as JSON through the API. Any column can be mapped into a custom field for personalization.

Will AY Inbox re-verify a list I already verified with another service?

No. Map the other service's result column to Verification status and those verdicts are kept as imported. The background check skips contacts that already have one.

Can I keep using mailboxes I already warmed elsewhere?

Yes. Connect them like any other mailbox. A mailbox that never used AY Inbox warmup is not held to the ramp that eases a mailbox out of warmup, though its daily campaign limit still applies, and warmup here stays optional.

Does AY Inbox stop a campaign with a bad lead list?

On lists of 50 or more deliverable leads, launch is refused above a 4% projected bounce rate and warns between 2% and 4%, counting only addresses verification rejected. Launch anyway overrides it for a list you verified elsewhere.

Do I need to buy leads to use AY Inbox?

No. Lead sourcing is optional. If you want more leads, a Looot lead job (when the operator turns it on), Apollo with your own API key, or a Clay table can add them to your contacts.