How to Cancel Your Apollo Subscription (Without Losing Your Data)

Canceling Apollo takes four clicks, if your account has the button. The short version: open Admin Settings, click Plan overview, scroll to the bottom and click Cancel Plan, pick a reason, and confirm. The paid plan runs to the end of the term you already paid for, then drops to Apollo's free plan.

Leaving well takes more care, because Apollo is not a sender you switch off. It is the database half of your outbound stack, and the day the paid plan ends, the credits, the seats and some of the mailboxes go with it. The export checklist below is the part people skip and regret.

No hard feelings toward Apollo. It packs a 240M-contact database, sequences, a dialer and a free tier into one seat, and most outbound teams pay for it for good reason. But stacks get consolidated, budgets get cut, and sometimes the thing you need next is delivery rather than data. When that day comes, here is the clean exit.

What canceling actually does (and doesn't)

Four words get mixed up on Apollo's billing page, and each one does something different.

Canceling stops the renewal. Apollo's help center says your account goes into a pending cancellation status and the cancellation is processed at the end of your current plan term. While it is pending you keep using the account and the credits you have, you can still add seats and buy add-on credits, and a Reactivate plan button at the top of Plan overview undoes the whole thing. Once the term ends, the plan switches to a free plan and paid features disappear.

Downgrading is not canceling, and Apollo says so in bold. A downgrade takes effect immediately: you lose the higher plan's features on the spot, and if you drop from paid to free you are limited to one seat and lose the others 10 days later. No refund for the unused part of the term. If your goal is to stop paying at the end of the cycle, cancel. Do not downgrade.

Deactivating users does nothing to your bill. It frees a seat for someone else. The subscription and its seat count stay exactly as they were until you change them under Manage Subscription.

Deleting the account is a support request. There is no self-serve button for free or paid workspaces. An admin emails Apollo support and asks. Only do this if you need the data gone.

One line from the terms matters more than the rest. Section 4(c)(i) says each subscription term renews for the same length unless either side gives written notice of non-renewal at least 30 days before the end of the term. Apollo's pricing FAQ and cancel article describe a softer, end-of-cycle behaviour for self-serve accounts, and that is what most people experience. But if you are on an annual plan, or your account was set up by the sales team, treat the 30-day window as real. Cancel a month early, and keep the confirmation email.

And the money rule, section 4(c)(iv): subscriptions are non-cancelable during the term and all payments are non-refundable. No refunds for partially used service. Cancel on day 10 of a monthly plan and you have paid for 30 days, so use them.

Export these three things first

Do this while the plan is still paid, because two of these exports depend on it.

1. Your contacts and accounts

Apollo exports from the People search page, not from a settings menu. Go to Search > People, then filter to what you own: tick the saved-contacts filter, pick a saved search, or open a list. Select the contacts (or use the bulk selector at the top) and click Export.

A dialog asks whether to export all emails or verified emails only. Click Edit export CSV settings if you want more columns than the default set. Then click Export records.

Exports above about 1,000 contacts take a few minutes. Apollo emails you when the file is ready, and you can also find it under Settings > Import & Exports > CSV Exports, then click Download.

Three things Apollo's own docs warn about. The CSV does not keep the sort order you see on screen. Spreadsheet apps mangle phone numbers and ZIP codes, so import those columns as text. And exporting does not enrich: a contact with no email in Apollo has no email in the file, so run enrichment on anyone you care about before you export, while you still have credits.

The credit question. Depending on your plan, exporting saved contacts to CSV can consume export credits. Contacts that were already exported, that came in from your CRM, a CSV, manual entry or the API, or that have no verified email, cost nothing. Apollo's credit-usage page notes that export credits "may only apply to certain plans or legacy configurations", so check your own usage page before assuming either way. Unused credits expire at the end of the billing cycle and never roll over, which is one more reason to export now rather than after.

Accounts (companies) export the same way from Search > Companies, and any list has an Export action beside it that offers the same all-emails or verified-only choice.

If you have more than a few thousand contacts, the API is cleaner. POST /contacts/search returns your saved contacts at zero credits, 100 per page, up to 500 pages, so 50,000 records per query. Narrow with filters and paginate if you have more. It needs a master API key and a paid plan, which is why it sits on the pre-cancel checklist.

2. Your sequence results

The contact CSV says who you have. It does not say what happened to them. Apollo keeps that in three places, and the one you would reach for first is the one that cannot export.

The per-sequence Report page shows delivered, replied, interested and opt-out rates, but Apollo's help center says to use Analytics > Reports to export sequence data, because the legacy sequence report page has no CSV button. Build a report there, or open Analytics > Dashboards and use the ... > Export to CSV action on a widget.

The message-level history is what you need in the next tool, so you do not cold-open someone who replied to you last month. For that, use the API. GET /emailer_messages/search returns every outreach email with the contact, the sequence name, status, whether it was opened, clicked or replied, the subject and the body. Zero credits, same 50,000-per-query cap. Filter by sequence or date range and pull it in batches.

3. Your two opt-out lists

This is the export with legal teeth, and Apollo has two of them.

People who unsubscribed from your emails. When someone clicks the unsubscribe link in an Apollo email, they opted out of hearing from you, not from Apollo. Rebuild your lists in a new tool without that list and you will eventually email one of them again. That is a spam complaint, and complaints are the fastest way to burn a fresh domain.

Apollo does not put these on a page of their own. They live behind a search filter. Go to Search > People, open the filters, click Email unsubscribed and choose Yes, then export the result exactly as in step 1. The filter only works if your mailbox had an unsubscribe link enabled, which it should have. That file is your suppression list from now on.

People who asked Apollo to delete them. This one is different, and it is unique to a data vendor. When a person asks Apollo to remove them from its database, Apollo deletes their profile, but not from your saved contacts, your CRM, or the CSVs you exported, because you are the data controller for what you already pulled. Apollo keeps a rolling 30-day list of the people your team accessed who later opted out, at Settings > Removal requests (admins only). Click Export CSV.

The page itself says you must cross-reference it against your systems at least every 30 days and remove matching records unless you have an independent legal basis to keep them. Read that as: the contacts you export in step 1 come with a hygiene obligation attached, and this list is the only way to meet it. Export it on your way out, and scrub your step-1 file against it before you import anywhere.

The actual cancellation steps

You need to be an Apollo admin. From a member seat none of this is visible.

1. Log in to Apollo and open Admin Settings.
2. Click Billing and credits, then Plan overview. The Manage Subscription button here handles seats and add-ons; cancellation is lower down.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Cancel Plan.

4. In the pop-up, pick a reason from the dropdown. Keep current plan backs out; Continue to cancel goes on.

5. Review and confirm. Apollo notes that by canceling you agree you may not be able to rejoin at your current plan price.

The status flips to pending cancellation, and the plan keeps working until the term ends.

No Cancel Plan button? Apollo says only select paid teams get self-serve cancellation. If your account was opened with the help of the sales team, or the button simply is not there, email support@apollo.io or your account manager and ask for cancellation in writing. Do it more than 30 days before renewal on an annual plan, and keep the reply.

Cancellation does not pause anything. Sequences keep sending until the term ends. If you want outreach to stop today, pause or finish each active sequence yourself.

Gotchas that catch people

Add-on credits are a recurring charge. Extra credits bought under Manage Subscription bill at purchase and again at the start of every billing cycle, in full, never prorated, and they expire at the end of each cycle. If you reduce them, the reduction only lands at the next cycle. Canceling the plan ends them with it, but if you are staying on a smaller plan for a while, cut the add-ons first or you keep paying for credits that evaporate monthly.

Your Microsoft mailboxes do not survive the free plan. Apollo's pricing FAQ says non-paying plans can only connect Gmail accounts. If your team sends from Outlook or another provider, those mailboxes stop being usable the day the paid term ends. Reassign or pause anything scheduled from them.

Seats vanish on a schedule. Ten days after a paid-to-free drop, every seat but one is gone. Decide who keeps the admin seat before that, and make sure that person is the one who exported everything.

Deactivating the wrong user breaks scheduled emails. Apollo marks emails scheduled from a deactivated user's mailbox as Not sent. If people are leaving the team on the way out of the tool, reassign their sequences and unlink their mailbox first.

The credit card stays on file. Apollo will not let you remove the card unless you are on a free plan or your account is pending cancellation. So the order is: cancel first, then remove the card. Not the other way around.

Charged after you thought you canceled? Apollo's own position is that payments are non-refundable and there are no refunds for partial terms. Your recourse is the pending-cancellation confirmation and the support email thread, which is why both should exist before the renewal date. Invoices are under Admin Settings > Plan overview > Billing > Invoice history if you need them.

Where your sequences go next

You now have a contacts file, a sequence-results file, and two opt-out lists. What you do with them matters more than which tool you pick.

The honest question first. If you are leaving Apollo because replies dried up, moving the same email-only sequences to a different sender will not fix it. Apollo sends email fine. A five-step cadence performs about the same on any platform that can reach the inbox. What moves reply rates is turning up somewhere a fourth follow-up email cannot.

Say you run outbound for a B2B client. A 200-lead email-only sequence at a typical 2 to 3% reply rate gets you 4 to 6 conversations. Run the same list as email plus LinkedIn (a connection request, a profile view, then a message that references the email) and 8 to 12% is a realistic band. Same leads, same offer. A LinkedIn touch is personal in a way a fourth email never is, and Apollo's own help center says it does not complete LinkedIn tasks for you.

That is the migration CampaignStack is built for. Import the contacts CSV you just exported, or connect Apollo and pull a list straight in while the plan is still paid, and import both opt-out lists so they are enforced from day one. Rebuild each sequence as a workflow that mixes email and LinkedIn steps, with every LinkedIn send budget-capped and review-gated so your clients' accounts stay safe (the full explanation lives at campaignstack.io/safety).

Some things do not transfer. CampaignStack is not a contact database, so the search you ran on 240M profiles has no equivalent here; leads come from LinkedIn sourcing, imports, or a connected provider. The dialer has no equivalent either. And a fair number of teams find the right answer is to keep a single Apollo seat as the enrichment provider underneath and cancel the rest, which is a setup CampaignStack wires in on its own. If what you need is data at volume, keep Apollo. If what you need is conversations, and half of them should start on LinkedIn, keep reading.

Want the feature-by-feature version of this decision? The Apollo vs CampaignStack comparison covers pricing, what each tool automates, and where the data side ends and the delivery side begins.

Takeaway

Export your contacts, your sequence results and both opt-out lists while the plan is still paid, because the API, the credits and some of the mailboxes all end with it. Then cancel from Admin Settings > Plan overview > Cancel Plan, or by email if the button is missing, at least 30 days before an annual renewal. Downgrading is immediate and is not a cancellation.

If the reason you are leaving Apollo is account restrictions, the CampaignStack safety page lists the exact limits we enforce on every account.