TL;DR
- Instantly auto-pauses campaigns above a 5% bounce rate (after 200 sends). It's on by default.
- Its built-in verifier costs 0.25 credit per lead. That's about $0.0078 per lead on the Growth plan, and those monthly credits expire.
- Verify with MailExchange before import: from $0.0058 per email, credits never expire, and unknowns are refunded.
Why verify before Instantly?
Every lead that bounces counts against the sending accounts and domains you've spent weeks warming up. Instantly protects you by pausing a campaign once bounces pass 5%, but by then the damage to that domain's reputation is already done. Instantly's own advice is to keep hard bounces at 2% or lower.
Lead databases go stale fast. People change jobs, companies rename domains, and many "verified" exports still contain dead and catch-all addresses. Cleaning the list before import is the cheapest bounce protection there is.
How to verify leads for Instantly
- Export your leads as a CSV from Apollo, Clay, a lead vendor, or Instantly itself (Leads → Export).
- Upload the CSV to MailExchange. Duplicates are removed free, and every row gets a state and a reason.
- Keep the deliverable rows. Decide what to do with the risky ones (see below), and drop undeliverable.
- Import the clean CSV into Instantly. You can leave Instantly's own "Verify leads" box unticked, since you've already paid for verification once.
What to do with risky (catch-all) leads
Catch-all domains accept every address, so a "yes" from their mail server doesn't prove the person exists. B2B lists are full of them. Instantly marks these leads Risky and doesn't contact them by default. MailExchange labels them risky: catch-all separately from role addresses (info@, sales@) and disposable inboxes, so you can choose:
- Skip them on new or fragile domains.
- Send them from a separate campaign on your most established domains, at a lower daily volume, and watch the bounce rate.
More detail: should you send to catch-all emails?
Cost: Instantly credits vs MailExchange
| Option | Cost per verified lead | Credits expire? | Unknowns refunded? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instantly Nano ($9, 150 credits) | about $0.015 | Monthly credits expire after 2 months | No |
| Instantly Growth ($47, 1,500 credits) | about $0.0078 | Monthly credits expire after 2 months | No |
| Instantly Hypergrowth ($97, 5,000 credits) | about $0.0049 | Monthly credits expire after 2 months | No |
| MailExchange 5K ($29) | $0.0058 | Never | Yes |
| MailExchange 100K ($299) | $0.0030 | Never | Yes |
Instantly figures are from Instantly's help center and its credit plans (annual billing), checked 2026-10-17. Instantly credits are also used for finding emails, so verification competes with lead finding for the same balance.
Automate it with the API
If your leads flow in from a script or Clay, call the MailExchange API first, then push
only deliverable leads with Instantly's POST /api/v2/leads/add. A ready-made connector is on our roadmap. Tell us if you want early access.