Enrichment + sender stack

Apollo + Instantly: what you paid for, and what happened after sending

Run Apollo email lookups with per-person budgets and a spend log, then see the same people's Instantly sends, replies and bounces. What was spent and what came back, in one product.

Start 7-day free trial Talk to us

7-day free trial • No credit card required • 5-min setup

The question this page answers

We spend Apollo credits finding emails and then send from Instantly. Who is spending what, and what are those reps getting back?

Why Apollo and Instantly do not line up on their own

Used for enrichment, Apollo knows which lookups were run and what each one returned. Once a found email leaves as a row in a list, Apollo has no record of whether it was mailed from another tool, bounced or replied.

Instantly knows the email address of every lead, the campaign they are in, which mailbox sent each step and whether a reply or a bounce came back. It does not know where an address came from or what it cost to find.

So the cost of a list sits in one tool and the result of that list sits in another, under two budgets, and the two are usually compared at renewal time if at all.

How OutboundManager joins Apollo and Instantly

An admin adds the Apollo key under Settings → Enrichment and gives it a place in the waterfall. Anyone on the team can then run a pasted list or a CSV from Enrich.
Every lookup records the credits it used against the person who ran it, the provider and the month. When a row has a company domain, an email Apollo returns on another domain is rejected.
Finds are cached for 90 days, and rows that already have an email are skipped, so the same person is not paid for twice.
"Save to contacts" stores each found email as a contact, de-duplicated on email address and then LinkedIn URL.
You download the results as a CSV and load them into Instantly yourself. OutboundManager never creates campaigns or adds leads to a sender.
Each Instantly sync brings back sends, replies and bounces. A send to an address Apollo found lands on the contact saved in step 4, because both are keyed on the same email address.
Every Instantly send carries the mailbox that sent it, and each mailbox is mapped to a rep.

A worked example

A rep pastes a list of names and company domains into Enrich. Apollo is in the waterfall, and each email it finds is logged against the rep with the credits it used. The rep downloads the CSV, loads it into an Instantly campaign and sends. A week later the usage log shows what that rep spent with Apollo this month, and the scorecard shows the same rep's Instantly sends, bounces, replies and positive replies.

What you can see once both are connected

Apollo credits used per person, per provider and per month in the enrichment usage log
The same person's Instantly sends, replies, positive replies and bounces on the rep scorecard, for the same period
Emails found by Apollo saved as contacts, so a later Instantly send to that address lands on the same contact
Monthly credit budgets per person and per workspace, checked before a run starts

What is not there: a report of bounce rate or reply rate by the provider that found the email. Apollo spend and Instantly results are shown on two screens (enrichment usage and the rep scorecard) for the same people and the same weeks; they are not divided into a cost per reply for you.

Set it up

Connect Apollo

In Apollo, open Settings → Integrations → API and create an API key. A master key also lets OutboundManager show your usage.
In OutboundManager, an admin opens Settings → Enrichment, finds the provider card and clicks Add key.
Paste the key. It is checked against the tool automatically; click Save once it shows Key works. The key is stored encrypted.
Set its place in the waterfall and the monthly credit budgets on the same page. Managers can then run lists from Enrich.

Apollo integration: what syncs and its limits Apollo documentation (opens in a new tab)

Connect Instantly

In Instantly, go to Settings → Integrations → API Keys and create an API key (API v2).
Give the key read access: the all:read scope, or read scopes for workspaces, campaigns, accounts, leads and emails. To answer replies from OutboundManager, also add emails:create (or all:create).
In OutboundManager, an admin opens Settings → Connections and clicks Add connection.
Pick Instantly. Paste the API key. It is checked against the tool automatically; click Save once it shows Key works. The key is stored encrypted.
Open Settings → Reps & senders and give each sender a rep. Suggested matches by email are offered; re-mapping later moves the history with the sender.

Instantly integration: what syncs and its limits Instantly documentation (opens in a new tab)

After both are connected

Map senders to reps. In Settings → Reps & senders, give every mailbox, LinkedIn account, dialer seat and HubSpot owner a rep. Re-mapping later moves the history with the sender.
Set weekly targets per rep on the same page, so the scorecard shows each number against a target and the overview flags reps under 60% of it.
Set monthly credit budgets per person and per workspace in Settings → Enrichment. A run that would pass a budget is refused before it starts.

Good to know

Apollo + InstantlyEnrichment runs are started by a person from Enrich. Nothing is looked up automatically from Instantly leads.
ApolloEmail only. Apollo phone numbers need its webhook flow, which is not supported here.
ApolloApollo charges 1 credit for a match with an email, including one rejected because it is at another company.
ApolloPersonal emails are never requested.
ApolloAPI access and credits depend on your Apollo plan.
InstantlyAPI keys are an Instantly plan feature. If you cannot create one, check your Instantly plan.
InstantlyInstantly limits its email endpoint to 20 requests a minute, so a large first backfill is spread over several sync runs.
InstantlyOpens and clicks are not imported. Reply rates are per send, counted from real replies.
InstantlyReplies sent from OutboundManager are stored as replies, never counted as outreach.

Apollo + Instantly questions

Does OutboundManager push enriched leads into Instantly?

No. It never creates campaigns or adds leads to a sender. You download the enriched list as a CSV and load it into Instantly yourself; the Instantly sync then brings back what was sent.

Do I need an Apollo sequence or an Apollo sending plan for this?

No. Apollo is used here for lookups only, through an Apollo API key. API access and credits depend on your Apollo plan.

Can I see bounce rate or reply rate by where the email came from?

Not today. Apollo credits are logged per person, provider and month, and Instantly sends, bounces and replies are counted per rep and campaign. There is no report that splits bounces or replies by enrichment provider.

Do I pay OutboundManager for Apollo credits?

No. You bring your own Apollo key and Apollo bills you as usual. OutboundManager records the credits each lookup used so the spend is visible per person and per month.

The two tools on this page

See all stacks · See all integrations

See Apollo and Instantly in one set of numbers.