Cold email follow-up planner: how many new leads a day fit once follow-ups stack up
In short: Enter your inboxes, the daily cap per inbox and the days between steps. See the most new contacts a day that fit once every follow-up is running, the day the load peaks and a day-by-day table of sends per step and per inbox. Limit: Every input is your own number; it doesn't know any provider's or tool's limits.
Follow-ups share the same daily cap as first emails. In a three-step sequence every new contact takes three sends, so once the follow-ups are running only a third of each day's sends can go to new contacts. 10 inboxes at 30 a day carry 100 new contacts a day, not 300. The planner works it out for your steps and gaps, day by day.
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Your own number, the same cap you set in your sending tool.
Sending days after the previous step, comma separated. "3, 4" is a 3-step sequence: day 1, day 4, day 8.
Leave blank to see the most that fits once every follow-up is running.
Replies, bounces and opt-outs, from your own past campaigns.
- New contacts a day that fit
- 100
- Sends a day at full load
- 300 of 300
- Full load from
- Sending day 8
- New contacts a month
- 2,167
Each new contact gets 3 emails over 3 steps, so 300 sends a day carry at most 100 new contacts a day. Once every step is running, 67% of each day's sends are follow-ups.
| Day | Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 | Total | Per inbox |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | · | · | 100 | 10 |
| 2 | 100 | · | · | 100 | 10 |
| 3 | 100 | · | · | 100 | 10 |
| 4 | 100 | 100 | · | 200 | 20 |
| 5 | 100 | 100 | · | 200 | 20 |
| 6 | 100 | 100 | · | 200 | 20 |
| 7 | 100 | 100 | · | 200 | 20 |
| 8 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
| 9 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
| 10 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
| 11 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
| 12 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
| 13 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
| 14 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 300 | 30 |
Days are sending days. Weekends or days your tool doesn't send on aren't counted.
Next step
Every day from day 8 carries 300 sends. Make sure they reach real mailboxes.
Follow-ups go to the same addresses as step 1, so a dead address bounces on the first email and takes a slot it never uses. Check the list you'll send to before the first 100 contacts start.
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Sample result
10 inboxes at 30 a day carry 100 new contacts a day in a 3-step sequence, not 300.
- New contacts a day
- 100
- Sends a day at full load
- 300 of 300
- 300 new a day
- Over the cap on day 4
What this means for you
Follow-ups share the daily cap; from day 8 two thirds of every day's sends are follow-ups.
- Follow-ups counted
- Day-by-day sends per step
- Day a plan goes over the cap
- Optional leave rate
- Sequence
- Follow-ups
- Capacity
By SimpleVerifier Team · Last updated · Runs in your browser; nothing you paste is sent to us
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How do I plan a cold email sequence's daily sending load?
- Enter how many inboxes you send from and the most each one sends in a day, first emails and follow-ups together: the cap you set in your sending tool.
- Enter the sending days between steps, comma separated. "3, 4" means step 2 goes 3 sending days after step 1 and step 3 another 4 days later.
- Leave new contacts a day blank to see the most that fit, or enter your plan to see the day it goes over the cap.
- Optionally add the share of contacts who leave after each email (replies, bounces, opt-outs) from your own past campaigns; later steps then send to fewer people.
Example
- You enter
- 10 inboxes at 30 emails a day each, a three-step sequence with 3 and then 4 sending days between steps, and no one leaving the sequence early.
- You get
- 300 sends a day carry at most 100 new contacts a day. Day 1 sends 100, day 4 sends 200, and from day 8 every day sends 300, 30 per inbox, two thirds of them follow-ups. Starting 300 new a day instead goes over the cap on day 4.
- Limits
- Up to 10 steps and 60 sending days; your own numbers; runs in your browser.
Why does a sequence go over the cap a week in?
Because follow-ups arrive on top of the new contacts. On day 1 only step 1 goes out. When the first contacts reach step 2, that day sends step 1 to the newest contacts and step 2 to the first ones; when step 3 starts, all three run every day. Daily sends climb until the last step begins and then stay flat. Start 300 new contacts a day on 300 sends of capacity and the cap is full on day 1 and over it the day step 2 starts.
Most sending tools don't fail when that happens; they push the extra emails to later days. Follow-ups then go out later than the gaps you set, and the delay grows each day. The fix is to start fewer new contacts: capacity ÷ emails per contact. The table shows the day the load is full, so you can see the ramp before it hits your inboxes.
How many new contacts a day can each inbox start?
Divide the inbox's daily cap by the emails each contact receives. At 30 a day and three steps, that is 10 new contacts per inbox per day. If replies, bounces and opt-outs remove some contacts after each email, later steps send to fewer people and the figure rises: with 10% leaving after each step, a contact takes 1 + 0.9 + 0.81 = 2.71 emails, and 30 a day carries 11.
The daily cap itself is your decision. Mailbox providers don't publish a safe cold email number per inbox; the cold email volume calculator explains the rules of thumb sending platforms give and works out how many inboxes a target needs. New inboxes still in warm-up have a lower cap; the warm-up calculator builds that ramp.
Do bounces change the plan?
Yes, twice. A hard bounce ends that contact's sequence, so later steps are a little lighter; that is what the leave rate covers. But the bounce itself is a wasted send from your cap and a mark against the inbox and domain that sent it, on step 1, when the sequence is at its biggest.
So the cheapest place to make room is the list: addresses that don't exist take a step 1 slot and give nothing back. Checking the list before contacts go into the sequence removes them, and every slot goes to a real mailbox.
Can I work it out in a spreadsheet?
Yes. With inboxes in B1, cap per inbox in B2, the number of steps in B3 and the share leaving after each email (as a decimal) in B4:
| Figure | Formula |
|---|---|
| Daily capacity | =B1*B2 |
| Emails per contact, no one leaving | =B3 |
| Emails per contact, with leavers | =(1-(1-B4)^B3)/B4 |
| Most new contacts a day | =FLOOR(capacity/emails_per_contact,1) |
| Sends on a given day | sum of new contacts started on each day that is a step's offset back, times the share still in the sequence |
Who uses this tool, and for what?
- Cold emailers
- Set the daily new-lead limit in a sequencer so follow-ups go out on the day they were planned.
- Agencies
- Tell a client how many contacts a month their inboxes can actually work through with a five-step sequence.
- SDR teams
- Decide between adding a step and adding inboxes, with the cost of each step in daily capacity.
- Founders
- Work out how big a list to buy or build for next month's outreach.
What can’t this tool tell you?
- Every input is your own number; it doesn't know any provider's or tool's limits.
- It assumes the same number of new contacts every sending day and a steady leave rate per step.
- Gaps are in sending days; holidays and paused days shift real dates.
- It counts emails, not inbox placement: a plan that fits the cap can still land in spam.
Common questions
- Do follow-ups count towards the daily sending limit?
- Yes. A mailbox's daily limit counts every message it sends, and the cap in your sending tool usually covers first emails and follow-ups together. Plan new contacts against the full load, not the day-1 load.
- How many follow-ups should a cold email have?
- That is a copy and complaint-rate question, not a capacity one; the trade-off is in the guide linked below. This planner shows what each extra step costs: one more email per contact, so fewer new contacts a day on the same inboxes.
- Are the gaps in calendar days or sending days?
- Sending days: the days your tool actually sends. If you send Monday to Friday, a gap of 3 from a Thursday lands on Tuesday. Set sending days a week to match, for the monthly figure.
- Why does the load stop growing?
- Once the last step has started, every day sends each step to one day's batch of contacts, so the total is new contacts a day × emails per contact, and stays there as long as you keep starting the same number.
- What leave rate should I use?
- Replies, bounces and unsubscribes per email from your own recent campaigns. If you don't know, leave it at zero: the plan is then the most conservative.
- Does this know my sending tool's limits?
- No. Every number is your own input, and it works the same for any tool that sends steps on a schedule from a shared daily cap.
Authentication and capacity are half of deliverability.
The other half is who you send to. Every hard bounce counts against the domain and inboxes you are sending from, and nothing in DNS can tell you which addresses on your list are dead.
- Bulk verification with real SMTP mailbox checks
- Hard bounces removed before a send, not discovered after
- Catch-all, disposable and role detection on every row
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