Getting started

Create an account at ballast.to/signup with your email and a password, then open the link in the verification email. Ballast walks you through five short questions:

1. Which domain do you send from? Type the domain your mailboxes live on. Ballast checks MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and 9 blacklists while you watch, and suggests a workspace name from it.
2. Name your workspace. A workspace holds mailboxes, leads and campaigns. Agencies usually make one per client.
3. What do you sell? Ballast reads your domain's homepage and drafts what you sell, who it's for, the problem, proof and the ask. Edit it and continue, or skip it with "I'll do it later". It feeds Write with AI.
4. How many emails a month? Pick your busiest month; Ballast suggests the smallest plan that covers it.
5. Pick your plan and pay through Dodo Payments, our merchant of record. Every plan has every feature. See Billing and plans.

Teammates you invite later skip these questions and land in the workspace.

Open Domains. Each domain gets a grade from A to F and one row per check with the fix for anything missing. Get every sending domain to A or B before you send: a missing DMARC record or a blacklist listing costs you more than a slow start. Ballast checks every domain again each night.

Details in Domains and the deliverability report.

Open Mailboxes, then Add mailbox. Pick Google Workspace or Gmail (app password), Microsoft 365 or Outlook (sign in with Microsoft), or any other provider over SMTP and IMAP. Ballast tests the login before saving. Many mailboxes at once? Import a CSV from the same dialog.

Each new mailbox starts at 5 emails a day and adds 2 a day until it reaches its daily limit (30 by default). Step-by-step guides are in Connect a mailbox, and the limits in Mailboxes.

In its first 7 days a workspace can connect up to 5 mailboxes and send up to 1,000 emails a day. Both lift on their own after that.

Open Leads, then Import. Any CSV works; exports from Instantly, Smartlead, Lemlist, Apollo and Clay are recognised and their columns mapped for you. Ballast removes duplicates, skips suppressed addresses and runs free checks on every address (syntax, typos of big providers, disposable domains, domains with no mail server, shared inboxes like info@). Put the import in a list so you can add it to a campaign in one go.

To confirm each mailbox really exists, connect your own verifier key in Integrations. More in Leads.

Open Campaigns, then New campaign. The editor has five tabs:

1. Sequence: up to 10 steps, each with up to 5 variants (A to E). Insert variables by typing {{, vary wording with spintax like {Hi|Hello}, and check the preview against real leads. Put {{unsubscribe}} in the first email; launch is blocked without it.
2. Leads: add leads from your lists or from all leads.
3. Schedule: sending days and hours, in each lead's time zone, plus optional start and end dates.
4. Settings: mailboxes to send from, provider matching, stop on reply and the other options.
5. Analytics: results by step, variant, mailbox and provider once it runs.

Stuck on the copy? Write with AI drafts a whole sequence from your offer profile. Everything about the editor is in Campaigns.

Press Launch. The launch sheet lists what must pass (sequence, a way to opt out, at least one working mailbox, leads to contact, a valid schedule) and what is only recommended (domain setup, mailbox health, verified leads). Each item links to its fix. Once launched, each mailbox sends at most its daily limit, with a random gap between emails, only inside the lead's working hours.

Replies from every mailbox land in Unibox, usually within a minute. Out-of-office replies pause the lead's sequence until they're back, "stop" replies unsubscribe the lead, and you answer from the same thread. Turn on AI labels in Settings, General if you want replies sorted into Interested, Not interested and the rest. See Unibox and AI labels.

New mailboxes ramp up slowly on their own. You can also turn on warmup for a mailbox in its settings: it trades a few emails a day with other mailboxes in the Ballast pool, inside its daily limit. See warmup.