Buying email accounts in Clay

Cold outbound often requires sending a high volume of emails to inboxes that may not engage — and over time, that can damage the reputation of the domain you're sending from. Buying email accounts in Clay lets you scale your sending capacity by purchasing alternative domains and email accounts directly with Clay credits, without sacrificing deliverability.

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‍Buying email accounts

From the Campaigns homepage, go to the Email accounts tab and click Add email account. In the Add email accounts modal, select Buy managed accounts and click Continue to open the purchase flow.

1. Choose a provider and search for alt domains. Use the Gmail / Outlook toggle at the top of the panel to set which provider your new inboxes will run on. Then search for available alternative domains and select the ones you want to add to your order — Clay loads your workspace's company domain as a starting point.
   • If you aren't sure how many domains to buy, open How many domains do I need? and enter a Weekly sends target. Clay turns it into a Domains count and adds a 5% availability buffer on top.
   • Selecting a domain adds three sender accounts to your order. You can raise that to five per domain with Add email account on the domain's row in the preview panel.
   • A single order covers up to 50 domains.
   • The preview panel on the right shows your current order, including per-domain pricing (yearly) and per-account pricing (monthly).
2. Add personas. Personas map directly to the reps who will manage replies coming into these inboxes.
   • Each persona has to be linked to a workspace user through Assign user, which pulls in that user's name and profile picture. You can edit the first and last name from there, and a profile picture is required.
   • Auto-balance personas is enabled by default and distributes email accounts evenly across personas. Turn it off to assign accounts manually per domain or to customize email prefixes.
3. Add contact details. Enter the registration details that will be attached to the new accounts — email, first and last name, company name, full mailing address, and phone number.
   • Set your Forwarding domain — this is the domain where purchased domains will redirect. Clay recommends using your company's primary domain (e.g., clay.com).
4. Review your order summary. The summary shows the total credits you can expect to be charged annually and monthly. Confirm your purchase when you're ready.

Ramping up new accounts

You can send from purchased accounts the day they arrive. Clay raises each account's daily send limit on a fixed schedule as the inbox ages, starting at 3 emails a day and reaching full capacity at 20. Day 1 is the day the order was fulfilled.

While an account is below 20 emails a day, it shows a Warming badge in the Email accounts tab. Once it reaches 20, the badge changes to Warm.

Update send limit is greyed out for purchased accounts, in both the row's actions menu and the bulk actions menu, because Clay manages these limits for you. If you update the send limit across a mix of purchased and connected accounts, Clay applies the change to the connected accounts and tells you how many it skipped.

Managing your orders

Every purchase gets its own row on the Account orders tab of the Campaigns homepage, one per domain. The Status column tracks where each order stands:

• Placing order and Pending fulfillment — the order is going through, and the accounts aren't ready to use yet.
• Active — the accounts are provisioned and waiting in your Email accounts tab.
• Failed fulfillment, Failed activation, and Billing failed — the order didn't complete.
• Canceled — the order was cancelled and its accounts removed.

Each row also shows Next billing, the date of the next monthly charge, and Lifetime payments, the credits the order has cost you so far. Expand a row to see its full Status history.

To end an order, use Cancel order in the row's actions menu. If your workspace uses credit budgets, that menu also offers Change budget, which points the order's future charges at a different Budget.

FAQs

Can I add more email accounts to a domain after I've purchased it?

No. Once a domain is purchased, you cannot add additional email accounts to it. Select your desired number of accounts (up to 5 per domain) before confirming your order.

What happens if I cancel a domain before the year is up? Will I get a refund?

Clay does not offer partial refunds for domains cancelled before the end of their yearly billing period. Cancelling with Cancel order stops the recurring charge going forward rather than refunding the days you've already paid for.

What happens if I delete one email account within a domain?

Deleting a single email account from a domain will delete all email accounts in that domain. Proceed with caution.

The confirmation dialog lists every address that will be removed and asks you to acknowledge the total before it goes ahead. Deletion is permanent for purchased accounts — unlike accounts you connected yourself, they can't be re-added afterwards.

How are credit costs calculated?

Credit costs are calculated using your workspace's cost-per-credit (CPC) against target prices of $4.50/account/month and $15/domain/year.

Do I need to warm up purchased accounts myself?

No — and you won't find warmup controls for them. Clay enables warmup on purchased accounts when it provisions them and owns it from then on, so the warmup settings in the Email accounts tab apply only to accounts you connected yourself.

Where are the purchased email accounts from?

Clay fulfills orders through Smartlead, which in turn uses Zapmail to provision and manage the email accounts.

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