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

Canceling Instantly is one button per tab. The short version: go to Settings, then Billing, click the tab for the plan you're on (Email Outreach, Instantly Credits, CRM or Inbox Placement), scroll to the bottom, hit Cancel Plan and confirm. Then check the Email accounts & Domains section for any done-for-you or pre-warmed inboxes, because those bill on their own schedule and the first button doesn't touch them.

Leaving well takes more than that. Instantly deletes an expired workspace and shuts the door on exports the day your plan ends, so the export checklist below is not optional reading. One of those exports, your blocklist, protects you legally long after you've stopped thinking about Instantly.

No hard feelings toward Instantly. It's the strongest pure cold-email engine on the market, and unlimited inboxes with unlimited warmup on a $47 plan is a deal nobody else matches. But stacks get consolidated, and sometimes the channel was the problem rather than the tool. When that day comes, here's the clean exit.

What canceling actually does (and doesn't)

Instantly runs several subscriptions side by side, and the timing rules differ per subscription. That's where most of the "I canceled but still got charged" stories come from.

Canceling Email Outreach or Instantly Credits schedules the cancellation for the end of the billing cycle. You keep full access until then. The billing page switches from "Renews on [date]" to "Cancels on [date]", and a Resume Subscription button appears underneath, so you can change your mind until the cycle ends.

Canceling CRM or Inbox Placement ends the plan immediately, not at the end of the cycle. If you still need the CRM for a week, cancel it last.

When the Email Outreach plan expires, your connected accounts, warmup and campaigns all pause automatically, and you lose access to the dashboard. With it goes the export button: Instantly's help center says you cannot export data after the plan expires, and the only way back in is to resubscribe.

Your data is not promised to you. Instantly's terms say that on termination they may delete your data under their retention policy and are under no obligation to retain or recover it. In practice their help center goes further: if you have a single workspace, it is deleted automatically once it expires. If you have several, the expired one shows a "Delete Workspace" button that the owner can press. Either way, treat the day your plan ends as the day the data is gone.

There is no pause option. Their help center is explicit: you can only cancel to stop future charges.

There are no refunds. Section 5.3 of the terms rules out refunds of any kind, partial or prorated, for plans, credits and add-ons alike. If you cancel the day after a renewal, that cycle is paid for.

Export these three things first

Instantly's own docs say it plainly: export everything before the subscription expires. In the order that matters:

1. Your leads

The complete export lives in the CRM, not in the campaign. Go to CRM, click All Leads, tick the header checkbox and choose Select all results, then open Row actions (top right) and click Download selected. One CSV with every lead across every campaign and list.

This file carries more than names and emails: the campaign and list each lead belongs to, lead status, interest status (Interested, Not interested and so on), verification result, and which sending account last contacted them. That last column is the one your next tool needs, because it tells you who has already heard from you.

The Leads tab inside a campaign has its own Download button, but the CSV is thinner (campaign name, status, variables, verification, interest status, last contacted from). Use it for a single campaign, use the CRM for the backup.

2. Your sending activity

Open a campaign, go to the Analytics tab and scroll to the Activity section. Click the download icon next to the Filter button. The CSV lists every event per lead: which account sent what step, opens, link clicks, replies, bounces, auto-replies, with timestamps.

This is your audit trail. It's the proof of performance you show a client, and it's the list of people who bounced or replied, so you don't re-import a dead address or cold-email someone you're mid-conversation with. There's also a summary export (the three dots at the top right of Analytics, then Download Analytics) if you only want the headline numbers.

One campaign at a time, unfortunately. There's no workspace-wide activity export in the UI.

3. Your blocklist and your unsubscribes

This is the export with legal consequences, and in Instantly it is two lists rather than one.

The blocklist is workspace-wide: every address and domain you or your team told Instantly never to contact. Go to Settings, open the Blocklist tab, tick Select all and click Download CSV. You get the addresses and the date each was added.

The unsubscribes are a lead status, not a list. When someone clicks the unsubscribe link, their lead status changes to "Unsubscribed". They only land in the blocklist if the "Unsubscribed leads" toggle under AI Blocklist Triggers is on, and you should check rather than assume. So run one more export: in the CRM, open Filters, set Lead Status to Unsubscribed, select all results, and download. Do the same for Bounced while you're there.

Why bother: those people opted out of hearing from you, not from Instantly. Rebuild your lists in a new tool without carrying the suppression over, and sooner or later you email someone who asked you to stop. That's a spam complaint, and complaint rate is the fastest way to burn a fresh domain.

Worth grabbing too

• Your sequences. Open the campaign, click the three dots at the top right, Share campaign, Copy link. Opening that link from another Instantly workspace copies the steps, schedule and settings (not the leads or replies). It's meant for moving between Instantly workspaces, but it's also the quickest way to get your copy out in one piece; otherwise the Campaign API endpoint returns every step as text.
• Your email accounts. On the Email Accounts dashboard, select all, three dots, Download CSV. Handy when you reconnect the same inboxes elsewhere.
• Unibox replies. No export in the interface at all; the Email API endpoint is the only way to pull them in bulk. If those threads matter, budget an hour for it.

The actual cancellation steps

1. Log in and go to Settings, then Billing (or straight to app.instantly.ai/app/settings/billing).
2. Click the tab for the subscription you want to end: Email Outreach, Instantly Credits, CRM or Inbox Placement.
3. Scroll to the bottom of that tab and click Cancel Plan.
4. Confirm when prompted.
5. Repeat for every tab that shows a "Renews on" date. Each subscription is canceled on its own.

6. Check the result. The Current Plan card should now read Cancels on [date] (or "Free trial", which means nothing is active). If it still says Renews on [date], the cancellation did not go through.

7. Changed your mind? Resume Subscription sits at the bottom of the same tab until the cycle ends.

8. Now the part the first button doesn't cover. In the left menu of the billing page, open Email accounts & Domains. Any done-for-you, Airmail or pre-warmed inbox you bought from Instantly is listed here under its domain. Click the domain, then Cancel on each account (or Cancel all). Once every account on a domain is canceled, the domain is canceled with it. The status should flip to "Canceled".

If you're doing this after the plan already expired and the dashboard is gone, the expired page has a Cancel All DFY Accounts link near the bottom.

Your campaigns keep running until the cycle ends. If you want sending to stop today, pause the campaigns yourself.

Gotchas that catch people

• Every tab is a separate subscription. Email Outreach, Instantly Credits, CRM, Inbox Placement, and the legacy Website Visitors plan each bill and cancel on their own. "I canceled but still got charged" is usually one tab left on "Renews on".
• Every workspace is a separate subscription too. If you run client workspaces, switch to each one and repeat the steps. A workspace with no active plan expires on its own.
• Bought inboxes renew on the 15th, separately. Instantly's own numbers: domains $15 a year, Airmail accounts $4 a month, done-for-you Google accounts $5 a month, pre-warmed accounts $10 a month, all billed apart from the main plan and all canceled from Email accounts & Domains, not from the plan tab.
• Canceling a bought inbox is immediate, and it takes the mailbox with it. Campaign and warmup stop for that account right away, its Unibox conversations are deleted after a 24-hour grace period, you lose the Gmail mailbox shortly after, and any forwarding you set up stops. Export those threads first if they matter.
• Add-ons need a human. The help center says to contact chat support before the renewal date to cancel Email Outreach or Instantly Credits add-ons. There's no button.
• Unused credits expire and are not refunded. Credits on a monthly plan expire two months after purchase, on an annual plan after one year. Spend them or write them off.
• A past-due invoice survives cancellation. If a renewal payment failed, the system keeps retrying that invoice even after you cancel. Check Payment & Invoices and ask chat support to void it.
• Cancel before the renewal date, not after. Cancel a day late and you've paid for a full cycle you can't get back.
• You need the right role. Owners and Admins can manage billing; Editors and view-only members can't. Only the Owner can delete a workspace.
• Free trials may not show a Cancel button. They expire on their own, and the workspace with them.

Where your sequences go next

You now have a leads file, an activity log, a blocklist and an unsubscribed list. What you do with them matters more than which tool you open next.

If you're leaving because replies dried up, moving the same email-only sequence to a different sender won't fix it; a five-step email cadence performs about the same everywhere. What moves reply rates is showing up in more than one place.

Say you're an agency running outbound for a B2B client. A 200-lead email-only sequence at a typical 2-3% 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 8-12% is a realistic band. Same leads, same offer. A LinkedIn touch is personal in a way a third follow-up email never is.

That's the move CampaignStack is built for. Import your Instantly leads directly through the Instantly integration or from the CSV you just exported. Upload the blocklist and unsubscribed files as their own list and add it to your workspace exclusions, so the people who opted out are checked at every send as well as at import. Then rebuild your sequences as workflows that mix email and LinkedIn steps, with every LinkedIn action budget-capped and review-gated so the account you're sending from stays safe. The full explanation of how that works lives at campaignstack.io/safety.

Instantly's infrastructure (unlimited inbox rotation, six-figure monthly volume) is not what CampaignStack does; email here sends from your own Google accounts on per-account daily budgets. And the sequences themselves don't transfer as a file; you rebuild them, which usually fits in an afternoon with the copy you saved.

Want the feature-by-feature version of this decision? The Instantly vs CampaignStack comparison covers pricing, what each tool does on LinkedIn, and the case for keeping Instantly as your email sender while moving the rest.

Takeaway

Export your leads from the CRM, your activity log per campaign, and both your blocklist and your unsubscribed leads before anything else. Then cancel each billing tab, cancel any bought inboxes under Email accounts & Domains, and confirm every card says "Cancels on". Instantly deletes an expired workspace and locks exports the day the plan ends, so your suppression list only protects you if it leaves with you.