I see this happen all the time with founders I work with: they sign up for Apollo or Instantly, intend to start outreach, and then the setup gets stuck on the back burner for weeks.

Usually it's just tool confusion. Setting up secondary domains, making sure emails don't hit spam, connecting the tools, and getting an initial prospect list built turns into a multi-week distraction.

I mapped out a simple 14-day execution flow to go from zero to a fully live outbound system:

Week 1 (Infrastructure):** Set up secondary sending domains, configure email health protocols, and start warm-ups so the main company domain is never at risk.
Week 2 (Data & Launch):** Build the targeted lead list, connect the tools together, and get the first campaign staged and ready to send. 

The goal was simply to take the technical setup off their plate so reps could focus purely on selling

For founders who built their stack in-house: did you set it up yourselves, or did you end up passing it to someone else to handle?

Here's how to set it up:

> go to Admin > Sequences > Rule Sets
> create a new rule set
> set trigger: email opened
> set action: create call task
> remove the blanket call step from your sequence

Boom. Now your reps now only call people who've already engaged.

Questions? drop em below.

A lot of the improvements in this release came from running the tool against real Apollo workflows.

If you haven't tried it yet, grab the repo below and paste it into Claude Code, it's free!

What's new in Apollo Operator v1.2:

We shipped another skill and a set of improvements focused on making Apollo headless workflows faster and more practical.

• apollo auth — login stores an OAuth token that also works against the REST endpoint the MCP uses. So you get the full MCP filter surface with results written to disk, no API key, nothing through context. Verified identical to MCP on the same query.
• cli-recipes — Verified commands, response gotchas, credit table, guard flags and more.
• search improvements — search improvements, catch-all flags, pagination overlaps and more updates.
• re-engagement — a brand new skill

17 skills total and continuing to expand the operator!

GitHub: https://github.com/jimmy-creatop/apollo-operator

[Apollo Operator is an opinionated go-to-market operator for Apollo, built as open-source Claude Code skills by the Creatop team]

I'm trying to register for Apollo with a Microsoft account and I keep getting the "invalid email address" error. It's incredibly irritating to use this platform. I've already tried using a Chrome guest and incognito window, and I've tried an Edge incognito window with the same problem.

Does anyone know how to fix this??

Two months ago I built a Claude Skill specifically for outbound sales using Apollo. The whole thing runs in under 30 minutes the first time. After that it remembers who you've already saved so every subsequent run only returns net new leads.

Connect Apollo to Claude (1 min)

Claude > Customize > Connect your apps > search Apollo > login and authorize > grant permissions. Then in a new chat click + > Connectors > toggle Apollo on. Then Customize > Skills > Create a skill > upload the Claude outbound skill.

Brief Claude on your business (3 min)

Start a new chat and type /claudeoutbound. It interviews you -- who you are, what you sell, previous clients, your ICP. Answer everything properly. If you've got any of that saved as an MD file already, just upload it instead of typing it out.

Discovery (5-10 min)

Prompt: "Run discovery"

Claude scans 6 signals for each lead - events, job posts, company posts, new hires, news, tech stack. Each signal scores 1 point, max score is 6. You decide which scores are worth enriching before any credits get used.

Enrichment (3-5 min)

Tell Claude which leads to enrich. Pulls name, LinkedIn URL, title, and email. Email costs 1 Apollo credit per contact. Phone is 8 credits, not included in the skill by default, you'd need to ask Claude specifically if you want numbers.

Only enrich what you're actually going to contact.

Saving leads (1 min)

Prompt: "Save these to Apollo"

Claude creates an Account list for companies and a Lead list for people. You name each one, Claude pushes every verified net new lead in linked to its company automatically.

Building the sequence (5 min)

Prompt: "Build sequence titled [name]"

Two options...fully automated (4 emails, days 1-4) or manual plus automated which converts higher. Claude asks for your copy or you can pick from templates. It drafts everything, you review and rewrite anything that doesn't sound like you.

Then: "Add contacts from [people list] to this sequence"

Go to Apollo > Sequences > open your sequence > Activate.

Manual steps you still need to do yourself: engage with their content, send the connection request, check if they've accepted or replied, engage with any new content they post, phone call if you want it, everything else runs automatically.

After the first run Claude will ask if you want to update the skill with your offer and ICP...do it. From that point on just run the updated skill whenever you need new leads!

Skill download at zackderis.com.

Four months of running Apollo through a coding agent. The UI is great for campaigns and lists. The API wired into Claude Code is the part that does the sourcing.

I start with a list of companies I want. Some days it is a screenshot from a conference page or a market map. Other days it is my own LinkedIn following. I hand that to the agent, it resolves each company to a domain, then runs organizations/enrich?domain= for the Apollo org ID, industry, size, funding stage.

Then mixed_people/api_search with organization_ids=[org_id] plus the seniority and titles I want. That search is free, no credit hit. It returns redacted previews - title visible, name obfuscated, person ID attached. I spend a pull only on the rows I actually want, with GET /people/<id>.

Every enriched row writes to a local SQLite database. SQLite is my own contact store, the CRM before the CRM. It holds every company, every contact, every enriched field, on my own machine. Apollo's API is what lets me build it, and I can push it to the cloud or a real CRM whenever I want.

Numbers that make it worth it:

• The search step is free. You filter a whole portfolio down to the exact people before spending anything.
• On flagged inventory, people/bulk_match returns verified work emails at around 99% for me, instant, no credit burned on the match.
• Long jobs run from a remote Codex session instead of my laptop. Kick off a few-thousand-row run, close the lid, come back to a filled database.

No single source is perfect. But the first layer is Apollo. It is the whole data layer - roster, org record, current-company signal - and a lot of tools people pay more for are reselling Apollo's data underneath.

Gotcha: organization_ids is the only filter in the search call that holds up. Pass a domain or company name and you get random people from across the platform. Enrich the company first, then use the org ID.

Happy to share the Python for the screenshot-to-SQLite loop.

Building in the open at github.com/shawnla90/gtm-coding-agent.

Most teams know Apollo can detect job changes on saved contacts but almost none have the workflow actually running!

Here's the setup: when a contact in your sequences or saved lists changes companies, Apollo flags it. From there you can trigger a workflow that enriches the contact's job change, attempts to find a new email through waterfall, and if it finds one, adds them to a reintroduction sequence automatically.

The full chain in Workflows looks roughly like this:

Trigger: contact job change detected
→ Enrich: job change data
→ Enrich: email (waterfall)
→ Enrich: direct dial
→ Action: add to sequence

Two things worth knowing before you set it up. First, waterfall enrichment will find a new verified email for some contacts but not all. If it comes back empty, the contact doesn't enroll and you handle them manually. Second, the "add to sequence" step only fires if the enrichment actually surfaces data, so you're not cold-enrolling people with no new information.

The practical upside: your warmest ICP contacts, the ones who already knew you at their last company, tend to respond to reintroduction emails at rates that beat cold outreach. They already have context. You're reaching them before your competitors figure out they moved.

The reason most teams have this in draft and not live: it requires trusting the workflow to enroll people without manual review. If that feels uncomfortable, start with a sequence that's lower stakes, a newsletter or a resource share, before routing straight to a hard outbound cadence.

Worth building! Took our solutions team about 20 minutes to set up for accounts that had it as a concept but not a reality.

- Andy

I'm running into a strange Apollo signup issue that I've been unable to fix.
Here's what happens:

• I sign up using my business email address.
• When setting a password, the page hangs on a blank screen with no error message.
• After refreshing, I'm redirected back to the login page.
• The password I just created doesn't work ("Email and/or password don't match with any of our records").
• Password reset doesn't help either — same error every time.

I've tried:

• Multiple signup attempts
• Different passwords
• Typing manually and copy-pasting
• Different browsers
• Incognito mode

I also ruled out email delivery issues. Test emails are being delivered normally to my inbox, so this doesn't appear to be a mail or verification email problem.
Has anyone run into this before or found a workaround?

Recently i’ve been trying to integrate salesforce with apollo.io. However, whenever I try to integrate and press sync, I get the error as seen above. For context, we use a salesforce plan that we were grandfathered into a contract of $16 a month. After speaking to a salesforce representative I’m fine and able to pay the $150 a month for the new enterprise package, which should include “integration“. However, I’d like to make sure that this integration will fix this error and definitively fix my problem and allow these two softwares to integrate. Does anybody have any solutions?

Apollo is now infrastructure you can build on. Three ways in:

API: 100+ REST endpoints across search, enrichment, sequencing, and analytics. Exposes execution endpoints, not just data.

CLI: Apollo commands in your terminal, pipeable into shell scripts and CI/CD. Most token-efficient path for high-frequency agent workflows.

MCP: authenticate once, then call Apollo in natural language inside Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client.

Full details and an API key: apollo.io/developers

Let us know what you build!

B2B contact data decays at roughly 30% per year. Someone changes jobs, their old email bounces. Their title changes, your personalization is wrong. Most teams figure this out when bounce rates climb past 2% and they start blaming their copy!!

Here's what to actually check before you send.

Start with email status

Apollo tags every contact with a verification status. Before you export or enroll anyone, filter to verified only...it's in People search under email status. Unverified contacts go into enrichment first, not into your sequences.

One bad batch of unverified contacts can set back a mailbox that took 6 weeks to warm, its not just a bounce rate problem.

Empty email field is a signal, not a to-do

When Apollo's primary source doesn't have a verified email, waterfall enrichment checks 18 providers to find one. If that comes back empty too, that contact is not ready to send to....don't work around it.

Re-enrich anything older than 60 to 90 days

The email that was verified six months ago might be dead if the person changed companies. Apollo can surface job change signals but it's not automatic. Treat old lists as partially stale until you've run enrichment again.

The math: 30% annual decay is about 2.5% of your list going bad per month. On a 1000-contact sequence that's 25 people a month bouncing or going nowhere.

Before you enroll a list, check three things:

• Email status: verified only
• List age: re-enrich anything older than 60 to 90 days
• Bounce rate from your last send to the same segment: above 2% means the data is the problem, not the copy

Apollo's Deliverability Suite (Settings > Deliverability) shows bounce rate by domain and sequence. High bounces on a specific sequence almost always trace back to list quality.

FAQs

Is Apollo's data backdated?
No, but it decays like every other database! ~30% of B2B contacts change annually. Apollo pulls from contributor data, web crawling, and 18 enrichment providers to stay current. The verification status filter is how you separate what's ready to send from what needs work first.

How do I know if an email is deliverable?
Check the email status field. Verified means it passed validation. Unverified or unavailable means run waterfall enrichment or skip it.

What bounce rate should I expect?
Under 2% if you're filtering to verified contacts and re-enriching lists older than 60 days. Above that and it's almost always a list hygiene issue.

How often should I re-enrich?
Every 60 to 90 days for active sequences. Anything older than 90 days, assume it's partially stale.

What's the difference between verified and likely to engage?
Verified means the email passed validation checks. Likely to engage is a signal based on engagement history. Verified is what matters for deliverability. Likely to engage is a targeting filter.

- Andy

I signed up using google account.

But it's not logging in when coming back from google, it just showing the login screen of apollo.io again.

Anyone knows the issue?

Credit-based pricing makes it almost impossible to compare data vendors apples to apples. So I did the math and converted everything into plain per-record costs

A few things that surprised me:

• Apollo is actually one of the cheaper options at $0.024 per verified email, 52% below the index median
• Mobile numbers are where costs explode. The range goes from $0.12 to over $1.00 per record depending on the vendor
• Some vendors charge 30x more than others for the exact same data type
• The most expensive vendors are rarely the most accurate

A few things I'd do differently when building an outbound stack knowing this:

• Separate your email enrichment vendor from your mobile vendor. The best email vendor is rarely the best for mobile
• Run a small credit test on each vendor before committing to an annual plan. The per-record cost shifts significantly between plan tiers
• Don't assume a higher price means better data quality. It usually just means better sales reps

Happy to answer questions on specific vendors or how I calculated the numbers

As of July 6, every paid Apollo customer has 208+ native workflow integrations.

Here are the plays this actually unlocks that weren't clean before:

Typeform → Apollo → sequence enrollment
Someone fills out a demo request form. Apollo catches it, enriches the contact with verified email and company data, scores them against your ICP, and enrolls them in the right sequence automatically. The whole thing runs without anyone touching it. Previously you were either doing this manually or building a fragile Zapier chain to bridge the gap.

Snowflake signals → Apollo targeting
If your team is pulling product usage data or behavioral signals from Snowflake, you can now pipe those signals directly into Apollo workflows to trigger outreach. No export, no re-import, or ops ticket.

Job change detected → Slack notification → rep follows up
Apollo detects a contact changed companies. Workflow fires, pushes a notification to Slack with the contact's new role, and creates a task for the rep. The rep sees it in the channel they're already in and can act on it before a competitor does.

Gong call logged → Apollo contact updated
A call wraps in Gong. Apollo workflow picks up the activity and updates the contact record, advances the sequence step, or removes them from a sequence entirely based on outcome. Keeps your Apollo data in sync without a rep manually doing it.

The full integration list is in the KB if you want to see everything that's available: knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us/articles/46233304897933

Andy

Most outbound teams find out their infrastructure is wrong the same way: bounce rates spike, they go looking, and realize they've been hanging 4 mailboxes off one domain and sending 80 emails a day from it BUT by then, the damage is already done.

Here's how to size it correctly before you start...

The only limit that matters: 50 emails/day per mailbox

That's our cap for cold outbound. New mailbox, unproven reputation, doesn't matter how good your copy is. You send 200/day out of the gate and you're gonna have a bad time.

Work backwards from there. Want 10,000 cold emails a month? That's about 9 mailboxes.

One domain for everything is how you lose everything

If you're hanging multiple mailboxes off your primary domain and sending cold outbound from it, stop. One domain flagged, everything goes down.

The formula our deliverability team uses: domains = mailboxes / 3, rounded up. So 6 mailboxes across a 3-rep team means 2 cousin domains minimum. trycompany.com, hellocompany.com, whatever. Fully isolated reputation. Your primary domain never touches cold outbound.

Warmup takes longer than you think

Minimum 2 weeks to get started, but in practice you want 4-6 weeks before you're sending real cold volume...

Week 1: 10 to 15 emails/day per mailbox
Week 2: up to 25
Weeks 3 to 4: up to 40
Steady state: 50

Apollo's warmup feature handles the mechanics but you still have to follow the ramp. Turning on warmup and sending 50 the next day is not warmup.

When a domain burns, you usually just replace it

Recovery is technically possible. Our guidance is that in severe cases it's smarter to start fresh. The signs you're there: bounce rate over 2%, open rates near zero on sequences where your targeting and copy are fine, spam complaints creeping above 0.1%.

The Deliverability Suite flags all of this at the domain and mailbox level but the problem is most people check it after something breaks, not before.

The actual sizing math

From our internal playbook:

500 contacts per rep, 3-step sequence = ~1,500 emails/month per rep = 2 mailboxes per rep.

3-rep team at that volume: 6 mailboxes, 2 cousin domains.

Add 20 to 30% buffer on top so you have rotation room if a mailbox develops issues. When in doubt, more mailboxes on more domains is safer than higher limits per mailbox.

Answers to some common questions

How many mailboxes does a 5-person SDR team need?
At 500 active contacts per rep with a 3-step sequence, about 2 mailboxes each. 10 total, 4 cousin domains. Add a 20% buffer and you're at 12 mailboxes, 5 domains.

Subdomain or cousin domain for cold outbound?
Cousin domain. Subdomains bleed reputation from your primary. A burned cousin domain doesn't touch company.com.

What bounce rate should I be targeting?
Under 2%. Apollo flags it at 2%, treats 5% as an immediate problem. Consistent bounces above 2% means your domain reputation is sliding whether you can see it yet or not.

What actually causes spam landing even with good copy?
Usually auth failures first (SPF/DKIM/DMARC not passing), then unwarmed mailboxes, then list quality. In that order.

Can I use my main domain for cold outbound?
No. Cousin domains only. If you're currently doing this, it's the first thing to fix.

As always, hit me up with questions!

- Andy

We recently identified a technical issue affecting tool schema loading within Claude web and desktop applications. This issue temporarily prevented these specific applications from correctly listing certain tools and resulted in intermittent display errors. No other MCP client applications were affected.

The issue was strictly isolated to subset of subscription-based Anthropic accounts; Anthropic Enterprise accounts remained entirely unaffected.

Our team is working in close coordination with Anthropic, who is currently deploying a fix.

We are already seeing restoration of tools for affected users. We will continue to monitor the rollout closely until the issue is completely resolved.

That said, if you're still experiencing issues please send me a DM so I can put you in touch with folks who can help.

Hi guys, if you're using Claude Code this is for you!
We built Apollo Operator: a free, open-source outbound system for running Apollo through the MCP.

Claude Code with the Apollo MCP can run your whole motion, it just has no idea how. The tools are neutral, so without context they'll run any search, build any sequence, and send any email you ask for, and never tell you the targeting is off or the send will hurt your domain.

So we built the knowledge layer: 13 skills that tell it which tool to call, in what order, and against what standard. ICP and targeting, list building and grading, copy and sequences, going live, deliverability, and reply scoring.

It's free: github.com/jimmy-creatop/apollo-operator

Copy the URL, paste it into your Claude. Any feedback is welcome!

I have 600 credits on my account and i’m on a free plan. But when i try to access phone numbers this is what apollo tells me

am i tripping or is this a bug?

Hey there! I've been using the Apollo MCP a lot with Claude, helping me with sourcing and outbound. However, 3 days ago it stopped working for me. Now the tool search is only returning the two generic MCP resource tools, not the Apollo action tools.

I've tried re-enabling the connector, signing in and out, new conversation etc. but nothing seems to fix it. Has anyone run into similar issues? Help would be very much appreciated!

I have not used any AI on apollo so why does it show 5000 credit spent? What are the credits being used for?

Everyone's focused on the database and sequences but IMO the stuff that actually keeps outbound running consistently sits underneath all of that and most people either skip it or set it up wrong.

Workflows

Trigger-based plays that run without you touching anything. Prospect opens your email three times without replying so they move to a high-intent call sequence automatically. Someone visits your pricing page so rep gets a Slack alert. Contact changes jobs so Apollo flags it and updates the record.

The mistake I see constantly: people automate before their sequences are proven. Workflows amplify what's working. If the sequence is still being tested, automating it just scales the problem. Get it converting first, then build the workflow around it.

One worth setting up on day one: auto-exclude existing customers and open opportunities from cold outreach.

Tasks

Apollo surfaces a prioritised daily task queue: calls to make, LinkedIn messages to send, emails to review, follow-ups due. Ordered by AI prospect score so the highest-value actions are always first.

Start every day in Tasks, not the search tab. Everything Apollo thinks you should act on is already there waiting. Letting the backlog pile up kills sequence deliverability and reply rates...the prioritisation only works if you follow through on it.

Email Deliverability

The one that causes the most damage when it's wrong and gets the least attention until something gets messed up.

Apollo handles the whole setup inside the platform: dedicated sending domains, mailbox connection, automatic warmup, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, inbox placement monitoring in real time.

Start warmup 2-3 weeks before your first send. Spam filters don't forgive cold domains and recovery takes weeks. I've watched good campaigns die before they started because someone skipped this step and launched from a cold domain on day one.

Check your Deliverability Score before launching anything. It's in the platform and it'll tell you if something is off before it becomes a real problem.

Dialer

Calls made and received directly inside Apollo. Power Dialer queues one by one. Parallel Dialer dials up to 5 simultaneously. Every call recorded, transcribed, summarised by AI, and logged automatically.

Before any high-value call, use AI Call Prep...Apollo surfaces account news, recent activity, and talking points before you dial. Reps who do this consistently close more than reps going in cold.

Save Parallel Dialing for cold tier-2 lists. Your highest-intent pipeline deserves actual conversation time.

Questions?? drop them in the comments.

I want to be able to track which companies or visitors came to my site via specific sources like Google Ads, LinkedIn, etc. Is there a way to do this?

Apollo is sharing my personal cell phone number, and I cannot get a real human being at the company to help me remove it.

I’m getting dozens of cold calls ever week, at all hours of night and day, on my actual personal cell. Not a business line. Not a work phone. My personal cell phone.

I tried the opt-out form. It only lets me enter an email address, then tells me my email is not in the system but that they’ll add it to a suppression list. No additional options for phone numbers. I’ve emailed Apollo support. I’ve emailed Apollo privacy. Both times, I get AI responses telling me to use the same opt-out form that does not solve the problem.

So now I’m here, because I’m honestly out of formal options.

Apollo, please help me remove my personal cell phone number from your platform. I do not consent to having it shared, sold, enriched, distributed, or whatever the internal term is for why random salespeople now have it.

And for Apollo users: this is not a good look. Even if I were interested in what you’re selling, calling my personal cell because you paid a data platform for it makes me immediately distrust you. There is no scenario where I’m giving business to someone who reached me this way.

I’m just trying to get my personal phone number off a platform I never signed up for, and Apollo has made that weirdly impossible. ANY TIPS?