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Guides & tutorials

Set up cold email that actually lands

Step-by-step FirstSales guides — warm up your domain, authenticate your mailbox, launch campaigns, and hit 87% inbox placement.

Email Warm-up

How to Set Up Email Warm-up in FirstSales

Turn on AI warm-up for a new mailbox so your cold-email domain builds sender reputation before you send real campaigns.

8 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to Create an Autopilot Meeting Campaign in FirstSales

Launch an Autopilot campaign with the Meeting goal — the AI finds contacts and writes every email to book calls. Covers all seven builder tabs.

9 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to Create an Autopilot Get-Reply Campaign in FirstSales

Launch an Autopilot campaign with the Get Reply goal — the AI finds contacts and writes every email to start conversations. No calendar needed.

8 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to Create a Template Get-Reply Campaign in FirstSales

Launch a Template campaign — you write the email sequence and bring your own contacts. Covers all six builder tabs and how it differs from Autopilot.

8 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to Create a Maps Scraper Based Campaign in FirstSales

Source local businesses from Google Maps with the Maps Scraper harvester tool. Covers search terms, locations, email enrichment, and saving to a list.

8 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

How to Build a Campaign Email Sequence in FirstSales

Build the email sequence for a campaign — initial email plus follow-ups, delays between steps, merge tags, and A/B variants in the Workflow builder.

7 min·Beginner

Mailboxes

How to Connect a Mailbox in FirstSales

Connect a sending mailbox via Google, Microsoft, or SMTP/IMAP, authenticate the domain, and turn on warm-up before your first send.

7 min·Beginner

Mailboxes

How to Add Multiple Mailboxes in FirstSales

Add several mailboxes and let campaigns rotate sends across them at modest daily limits so volume scales without torching sender reputation.

7 min·Intermediate

Email Warm-up

How to Troubleshoot a Low Warm-up Score in FirstSales

Diagnose a stuck or falling Warmup Score — authentication gaps, over-sending, and reputation damage — and get a mailbox back to Healthy.

8 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

How to Set Up SPF, DKIM & DMARC in FirstSales

Authenticate your sending domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so your cold email is trusted, reaches the inbox, and isn't rejected as spoofed.

8 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

How to Improve Inbox Placement in FirstSales

Land in the inbox, not spam — domain auth, warm-up, Sender Health, contact cleaning, and content that doesn't trip filters, in one playbook.

9 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

How to Set Up Bounce Protection in FirstSales

Stop bounces before they hurt your reputation — turn on contact cleaning, re-clean old lists, and read soft/hard/blocked bounces in the inbox.

8 min·Beginner

Personalization

How to Use Personalization Variables in FirstSales

Use {{merge tags}} with fallbacks, standard and custom fields, and know when to reach for Autopilot AI writing instead of templated tokens.

7 min·Beginner

List Management

How to Clean & Verify Your Contact List in FirstSales

Verify addresses before you send — turn on contact cleaning, understand the five checks and the per-contact cost, and re-clean older lists.

7 min·Beginner

Integrations

How to Set Up Integrations in FirstSales

Connect email, calendar, LinkedIn, and Telegram from the Connectors page — plus what's coming soon and how to automate with the REST API.

6 min·Beginner

Analytics

How to Read Campaign Analytics in FirstSales

Read the Engagement strip, Sender Health, and per-contact journey — and know why reply rate beats open rate for judging a cold campaign.

8 min·Beginner

Developer & CLI

FirstSales API Quickstart

Generate an API key and make your first calls — create contacts, enroll them in campaigns, and pull replies from the inbox over the REST API.

9 min·Advanced

Campaigns

How to Use AI Leads to Source Contacts in FirstSales

Describe your ideal customer in plain language and let the AI Leads harvester find matching people with work emails, on a recurring schedule, into a list.

9 min·Intermediate

Developer & CLI

FirstSales CLI Quickstart

Install the FirstSales CLI, authenticate with an API key, and run your first safe commands — whoami, org/workspace discovery, dry-run, and idempotency.

8 min·Advanced

Developer & CLI

Using FirstSales with Claude Code

Drive FirstSales from Claude Code through the CLI — install, authenticate, inspect before mutating, and never expose your API key in the agent's output.

8 min·Advanced

Developer & CLI

Using FirstSales with Codex

Connect Codex to FirstSales over the REST API (or CLI in a shell) — first whoami call, scoped keys, idempotent writes, and stopping on unsupported operations.

8 min·Advanced

Developer & CLI

Using FirstSales with Gemini

Wire Gemini to FirstSales via the REST API with narrow function tools — read before write, per-tool scopes, and safe, verifiable mutations.

8 min·Advanced

Developer & CLI

Using FirstSales in CI/CD & Scripts

Run the FirstSales CLI in pipelines — masked secrets, fail-fast auth, dry-run on PRs and apply on main, idempotent steps, and guarded destructive actions.

8 min·Advanced

Developer & CLI

Manage Contacts with the FirstSales CLI

CRUD contacts, lists, and tags from the command line — idempotent creates, bulk imports, exports, and deliberate deletes scoped to an org and workspace.

8 min·Advanced

Team & Workspace

How to Invite & Manage Team Members in FirstSales

Invite teammates with the right role and workspace access, track and cancel pending invites, and onboard whole companies with invite links or domain allowlists.

7 min·Beginner

Team & Workspace

How to Use Roles & Permission Groups in FirstSales

Understand the five built-in roles, build custom permission groups from the resource matrix, respect the creator ceiling, and scope access per workspace.

7 min·Intermediate

Team & Workspace

How to Manage Organizations & Workspaces in FirstSales

Switch, create, and configure organizations and workspaces — when to split into a new workspace vs. a new org, and how member access is scoped.

7 min·Beginner

Developer & CLI

How to Create & Manage Developer API Keys in FirstSales

Mint least-privilege API keys with per-resource scopes, use them with the CLI and REST API, and rotate or revoke them safely without an outage.

7 min·Intermediate

Billing & Credits

How Credits, Plans & Billing Work in FirstSales

Understand credit costs per action, the four plans, buying top-ups via Dodo, reading usage history, and why there's no surprise auto-recharge.

8 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to Build a Knowledge Base for AI Drafts in FirstSales

Create a Knowledge Base, crawl your site, add sources and uploaded documents, and attach it to a campaign so AI drafts are grounded in real product facts.

8 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

How to Create Offerings the AI Pitches in FirstSales

Define a product or service — name, description, detailed pitch, key benefits, and URL — and attach it so the AI drafter promotes exactly what you sell.

6 min·Beginner

CRM & Pipeline

How to Use FirstSales as a Lightweight CRM

Run a pipeline from Contacts, Lists, Tags, and journey status — track stages and replies without a deal board, and know when to reach for a full CRM.

8 min·Beginner

Deliverability

Recover from a bounce spike

Your bounce rate crossed the line and a campaign auto-paused. Diagnose the cause, clean the list, throttle down, and re-warm before you resume.

8 min·Advanced

Deliverability

Emails landing in spam — the checklist

Low opens and replies going quiet usually mean the spam folder. Work this checklist: authenticate your domain, add a tracking domain, warm up, and fix the content.

9 min·Advanced

Email Warm-up

Warm-up score stuck or blocked

Your warmup score won't climb, or the mailbox shows Blocked/Paused. Read the phase, give it time, fix the mailbox connection and DNS, and let the ramp finish.

6 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

My campaign isn't sending — diagnose it

Campaign is Active but nothing goes out. Walk the four-point checklist: sender connected, schedule window open, credits available, and the approval queue not holding drafts.

7 min·Intermediate

Analytics

Low reply rate? Tune the SDR & sequence

Sends land fine but nobody replies. Read the analytics, tune the AI SDR's tone and structure, A/B test your templates, and tighten targeting until replies come back.

8 min·Advanced

Billing & Credits

Out of credits mid-campaign — what happens & how to fix it

You hit zero credits and operations start getting skipped. See exactly what pauses, what each action costs, and how to top up and get running again.

4 min·Beginner

Deliverability

Add SPF, DKIM & DMARC on GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare & Route 53

The DNS records FirstSales gives you are the same everywhere — only the registrar's UI differs. Cloudflare is one-click; here's where the TXT/CNAME fields live on each of the big four.

8 min·Intermediate

List Management

Avoid double-touching & suppress bad contacts

Stop emailing the same person twice — or emailing people who bounced or opted out. Dedupe on import, exclude with segmentation, and let bounce/unsubscribe statuses suppress automatically.

6 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

Solo-founder playbook: founder-led outbound on autopilot

One founder, one or two mailboxes: warm up, ground the AI in your product, launch an AI-drafted campaign to a small ICP list, triage replies, and book meetings — with the app doing the heavy lifting.

12 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

Agency playbook: run many clients with workspaces, roles & per-client reporting

Give each client its own workspace and mailboxes, scope your team with roles and permission groups, run separate campaigns per client, and report per client — all under one organization.

14 min·Advanced

Getting Started

SDR-team playbook: shared workspace, roles, sender pool & approval workflow

Run an SDR team in one workspace: managers and members, a per-rep sender pool, a content-approval workflow so drafts get a human yes before sending, and a shared inbox worked toward booked meetings.

12 min·Advanced

Getting Started

Local-business playbook: build a local list with the Maps Scraper and get replies

Source a local ICP from Google Maps by trade and city, enrich and verify the contacts, run a simple campaign, and work the replies — the practical path for local and brick-and-mortar outreach.

12 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

RevOps playbook: automate outbound with API keys, the CLI & CSV

Mint scoped API keys, import and sync contacts programmatically, drive campaigns from the CLI, wire it into CI/CD, and monitor key usage and credit runway — using the REST API and CSV, the surface that's live today.

14 min·Advanced

Getting Started

Recruiter playbook: source candidates, personalize with AI, schedule interviews

Build a candidate ICP by title and seniority, personalize outreach with the AI SDR, work replies in the inbox, and schedule interviews with a Meeting-goal campaign and a connected calendar.

12 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

How to migrate from Instantly to FirstSales

Move your contacts, mailboxes, and sequences off Instantly and into FirstSales with a clean CSV import, reconnected inboxes, and a fresh warm-up.

10 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

How to migrate from Smartlead to FirstSales

Move your leads, mailboxes, and sequences off Smartlead into FirstSales with a clean CSV import, reconnected inboxes, and a fresh warm-up.

10 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

How to migrate from Apollo to FirstSales

Bring your Apollo contact lists into FirstSales with a clean CSV import, then send and warm up from your own mailboxes.

10 min·Intermediate

Getting Started

How to migrate from lemlist to FirstSales

Move your leads, custom variables, mailboxes, and sequences off lemlist into FirstSales with a clean CSV import, reconnected inboxes, and a fresh warm-up.

10 min·Intermediate

Integrations

Get alerts in Telegram

Connect Telegram to receive campaign approval prompts and account alerts on your phone.

5 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

Monitor sender health & bounce rates

Read the per-mailbox health cards in campaign analytics — warmup score and bounce rate — and know when a sender is at risk.

6 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

Unsubscribe & opt-out handling

How FirstSales adds an unsubscribe link to every email, tracks opt-outs, and marks unsubscribed contacts so you stay compliant.

6 min·Intermediate

Billing & Credits

Delete your data: contacts, workspace & org

Self-serve data deletion — bulk-delete contacts, or schedule workspace/organization deletion with OTP verification and a 72-hour grace window.

5 min·Intermediate

Team & Workspace

Secure your account: password, roles & API key scopes

The real security controls: change your password with email-OTP verification, apply least-privilege roles, scope API keys narrowly, and suspend or remove members.

5 min·Intermediate

Developer & CLI

Monitor API keys: logs & usage

Inspect Developer API request logs and usage stats — per-key and per-route request counts, error rates, and latency — to debug integrations and spot abuse.

6 min·Intermediate

List Management

Import contacts from CSV (column mapping)

Upload a CSV, map its columns to FirstSales fields, and bulk-import contacts into a list — with automatic email cleaning.

6 min·Beginner

List Management

Organize contacts with Lists & Tags

Use lists and tags to segment contacts, bulk-tag in one action, rename or merge tags, and move contacts between lists — safely, without accidental campaign enrolment.

6 min·Beginner

List Management

Export & move contacts between lists

Export your contacts to CSV and move or copy contacts between lists using the Transfer flow.

4 min·Beginner

List Management

Configure contact verification checks

Turn on automatic email cleaning, understand the five deliverability checks, read a contact's clean/risky/dirty status, and re-test contacts on demand.

6 min·Intermediate

Inbox & Replies

Triage replies in the Inbox (Unibox)

Work every reply from one shared inbox: filter by tab, read the row status pills, and understand each contact's journey status.

7 min·Beginner

Inbox & Replies

Handle out-of-office & auto-resume

Turn on out-of-office detection so a contact's sequence pauses when they auto-reply away and resumes when they're back — a Template-mode reply-handling setting.

5 min·Intermediate

Inbox & Replies

Stop-on-reply & automatic opt-out handling

Stop a sequence the moment a contact replies, and let FirstSales classify opt-out language as an unsubscribe so those contacts drop out automatically.

5 min·Beginner

Inbox & Replies

Auto-pause unengaged contacts

Automatically pause a contact's sequence after a set number of emails with no opens, clicks, or replies — so you stop spending sends on cold contacts.

5 min·Intermediate

Inbox & Replies

Work the draft approval queue

When a campaign requires approval, review AI drafts in the Inbox's Needs Approval tab and approve, edit, or reject each one — from the app or the CLI.

6 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

How to tune the AI SDR in FirstSales

Set the AI SDR's tone, writing style, email structure, follow-up strategy and CTA so drafted emails match your sales voice.

8 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

How to review or auto-send campaign emails in FirstSales

Choose whether AI-drafted emails send automatically, require your approval, or auto-send if you don't respond — and route approval prompts to Telegram.

6 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to set a campaign's sending schedule in FirstSales

Set the fallback timezone and sending days for a campaign, and let smart scheduling pick optimal send times.

6 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to assign mailboxes and signatures to a campaign in FirstSales

Select which email accounts send a campaign and control the signature per sender, so mail rotates across your verified mailboxes.

6 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

How to add CC and BCC to campaign emails in FirstSales

Add CC and BCC addresses that are copied on every email a campaign sends.

4 min·Beginner

Campaigns

How to segment and exclude contacts in a FirstSales campaign

Choose which lists a campaign targets and exclude contacts by list, campaign, tag, or active/completed enrollment so you never double-touch a prospect.

7 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

How to use Quality Filter and If/Else branching in FirstSales

Route contacts by a minimum quality score or by field conditions so only the right prospects continue down each branch of your campaign.

8 min·Advanced

Getting Started

Getting Started: Your First-Run Checklist

Go from empty workspace to a live campaign — set up your org, connect a mailbox, warm it up, add offerings and a knowledge base, then launch.

8 min·Beginner

Getting Started

Your First Campaign in 15 Minutes

The fast path: source an audience with AI Leads, set your goal and content source, assign a sender, approve, and launch — a live autopilot campaign in one sitting.

8 min·Beginner

Billing & Credits

Buy Credits: One-Off Top-Ups

Add credits on demand without changing your plan — pick an amount, get 100 credits per $1, and check out in a couple of clicks.

4 min·Beginner

Billing & Credits

Apply a Promo Code & Request a Refund

Redeem a promo code from the billing page, and understand how refunds work — self-serve for stray payments, and how to reach support for the rest.

5 min·Beginner

Billing & Credits

Manage Your Subscription: Change Plan, Auto-Renew & Cancel

Upgrade, downgrade, switch to annual, toggle auto-renewal, and cancel — all from the Billing Plan tab, plus what grace periods mean when you stop.

5 min·Beginner

Analytics

Read Your Credit Runway & Usage History

See how long your credits will last, what's consuming them, and per-campaign and per-workspace usage — plus export the full history to CSV.

5 min·Beginner

Integrations

Stay Ahead of Problems with the Alert Center

The Alert Center flags disconnected mailboxes, low credits, past-due billing, and missing email authentication — with one-click fixes, snooze, and resolve.

6 min·Intermediate

Mailboxes

Connect any inbox via SMTP/IMAP

Add a non-Google/Microsoft mailbox with server credentials — test the connection, then send and read replies through it.

7 min·Intermediate

Mailboxes

Bulk-add mailboxes via CSV

Upload a CSV to add many SMTP/IMAP mailboxes at once, with column mapping and per-row validation before import.

6 min·Intermediate

Mailboxes

Set daily send limits & auto-adjust per mailbox

Control how many emails each mailbox sends per day — set a fixed limit, let auto-adjust manage it nightly, or cap it with a send ceiling.

6 min·Intermediate

Mailboxes

Fix a disconnected mailbox

Reconnect a Google or Microsoft mailbox when its authorization lapses, or re-test a credential mailbox — so sending never silently stops.

4 min·Beginner

Integrations

Connect Google or Outlook Calendar

Connect a calendar via OAuth so meeting-booking campaigns can put times on your real calendar — with auto-provisioned Teams links on Outlook.

5 min·Beginner

Deliverability

Set up a custom tracking domain (CNAME)

Point a subdomain at FirstSales with one CNAME record so open, click and unsubscribe tracking runs on your own domain — with SSL provisioned automatically.

8 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

Turn on Managed DKIM for a mailbox

Let FirstSales generate and rotate DKIM keys for you — add one CNAME record and it handles the rest. Available for SMTP/IMAP and relay mailboxes.

6 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

Apply email DNS to Cloudflare in one click

If your domain is on Cloudflare, FirstSales can add your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records for you with a scoped API token — no copy-pasting into your DNS panel.

6 min·Intermediate

Deliverability

Auto-pause a campaign when delivery degrades

Set bounce and spam-complaint thresholds so a campaign pauses itself before a bad sender reputation spreads — your deliverability safety net.

7 min·Advanced

Deliverability

Scale your sending volume safely

Grow daily send volume without burning domains: add more mailboxes to the sender pool, let auto-adjust and warm-up ramp each one, and keep delivery protection armed.

10 min·Advanced

Campaigns

Add wait/delay steps between emails

Insert a Wait/Delay node to space out follow-ups by a set number of days.

4 min·Beginner

Campaigns

Launch readiness: required vs optional components

The six components a campaign must have before it can launch, plus the optional ones worth adding.

5 min·Beginner

Campaigns

Send a test email before you launch

Preview merge tags and send a real test email to yourself from a campaign template before going live.

4 min·Beginner

Campaigns

Pause, resume & complete a campaign

How the campaign action button changes with status — Save, Test, Launch, Pause, Resume — and what each does.

4 min·Beginner

Campaigns

Book meetings: connect a calendar to a campaign

Set a campaign goal to Meeting and attach a Google or Outlook calendar so the AI can offer real booking slots.

6 min·Intermediate

Campaigns

A/B test subject lines & bodies (Template mode)

Create multiple email variants in a Template-mode campaign and compare their performance in analytics.

7 min·Intermediate