Campaign is not sending

Your Distro campaign isn't sending emails. Check its status, schedule, daily limit, sender connection, recipients and plan, and fix the cause.

Updated October 11, 20263 min read

Start on the campaign's page in Outreach → Campaigns. This article is about email campaigns; for LinkedIn, see LinkedIn campaign is not running. The status badge, the Next email time on the Overview, and the Delivery tab usually point straight at the cause.

Quick check

What you see	Likely cause	Go to
Status Draft or Ready	The campaign was never sent	1
Next email shows a future time	Start time, sending window or daily limit	2, 3
Status Paused	Paused	4
Needs mailbox reconnect in Delivery	Sender mailbox disconnected	5
Recipients Excluded or Blocked	Recipients not eligible	6

1. It was never sent

Draft and Ready campaigns don't send. Open the campaign, click Send emails and confirm. If you see A few things to fix first, each line tells you what to change, for example "No eligible recipients." or "No sender mailbox is configured." The first time, you also need to accept the responsible use policy. See Create your first cold email campaign.

2. It's scheduled to start later

If you used Schedule send, nothing goes out before that time. The campaign still shows Active. The Settings panel showed "Starts" plus the date before launch; after launch, check Next email on the Overview.

3. Outside the sending window, or the daily limit is reached

Emails only go out on the campaign's sending days, inside its hours, in its timezone. Outside them, emails wait and the Overview shows when the Next email is due.

Once the campaign has sent its Max emails per day (first emails and follow-ups together), the rest wait until the next sending day. During the free trial, every campaign sends at most 50 emails a day. Also check the timezone: 09:00–17:00 in a timezone far from yours can look like "not sending" during your day. See Schedule a campaign.

4. It's paused

Click Resume on the campaign page. See Pause, resume or end a campaign.

5. The sender mailbox is disconnected

If Google access was removed or expired, Distro can't send. The Delivery tab shows emails as Needs mailbox reconnect, and on Sending accounts the sender shows Reconnect Google account or the Google account shows Reconnect or Missing permission. Reconnect the Google account; Distro retries the held emails after that. See Google account disconnected, permission error or connection failed.

If Google itself is refusing sends because of its own limits, see Google sending limit reached.

6. Recipients aren't eligible

Distro never emails people who unsubscribed, bounced, are on your Do Not Contact list, are archived, or have an invalid address. If every selected person falls into one of these, the campaign can't be sent ("No eligible recipients."). Before each email Distro checks again, so someone who unsubscribes or is blocked later shows as Unsubscribed or Blocked.

If the campaign skips recipients who are missing a personalization field (always the case after using Write with AI), people without that field show as Excluded. Fill in the field for those contacts, or add a fallback.

7. Your trial ended or there's no active plan

Campaign emails are held while the account has no plan or the trial has ended. Nothing is lost: once you choose a plan, sending continues from where each person was. See Plans, trial and billing.

Still stuck?

The Delivery tab shows how many people are In progress, Waiting, Stopped or Failed, and what Google did with each handed-over email (Accepted by Google, Retry scheduled, Blocked, Failed). If emails stay unsent and none of the above applies, contact support from Help & support with the campaign name.