Sending from Apollo? Here's what changes if you route sends through Norbelys
Apollo is a data platform, not a delivery one. A practical guide to keeping Apollo for sourcing while routing the actual sending through Norbelys instead.
By Norbelys Chirinos, Co-founder
Founder-reviewed ·How we research and correct articles
If you’re reading this, you’re probably not trying to replace Apollo — you’re trying to fix what happens after you hit send from it. Apollo’s ~200M-contact database, filters and enrichment are genuinely hard to beat; that’s not the part people move away from. What moves people is the delivery side: standard pixel-counted opens, sending limits you have to watch yourself, and deliverability that isn’t the product’s core business because Apollo is, first and foremost, a database company.
So this isn’t a “switch from Apollo” guide, because switching off Apollo usually isn’t the right move. It’s the guide for the more common situation: keep Apollo doing what it’s uniquely good at — finding your next 500 right people — and point the actual sending at Norbelys instead.
Data problem vs. delivery problem
Before touching any settings, it’s worth naming which bottleneck you actually have, because the fix is different:
- Can’t find the right people? That’s a sourcing problem — Apollo’s job, not Norbelys’s. Norbelys doesn’t sell contact data, on principle.
- Have the list, but nobody replies? That’s a delivery-and-truth problem — landing in the inbox, and trusting the numbers once you’re there. That’s the whole reason Norbelys exists.
Most teams reading this are in the second bucket, and the honest fix is running both tools together rather than picking one.
The stack that actually works: source in Apollo, send with Norbelys
The rational play, in three steps:
- Source and qualify in Apollo. Filters, enrichment, intent data — this is the moat, and there’s no reason to give it up.
- Bring contacts into Norbelys. Either sync through your CRM — the HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce integrations are live — or export a CSV directly from Apollo and import it. Both paths land the same way: matched by email, updated in place, never duplicated.
- Send from Norbelys. Pacing, per-recipient timezone scheduling, warmup, and the reputation brake take over from there. Replies and closed deals flow back to the CRM, attributed to the campaign that started the conversation.
Data where data is best. Sending where sending is safest.
What maps to what
| Apollo | Norbelys |
|---|---|
| Contact database & enrichment | Not included — bring contacts in via CRM sync or CSV |
| Sequences (sending layer) | Campaigns |
| Standard pixel-counted opens | Human-verified opens/clicks, bot-filtered |
| Sending limits (mostly manual monitoring) | Automatic reputation-based sender slow-down |
| Credits + per-seat pricing | Flat plan, unlimited seats and mailboxes |
| DMARC — not the product | DMARC monitoring, included in every plan |
| Warmup — not the product | Email warmup, included |
The gap worth naming honestly: Apollo’s database is the moat, and Norbelys doesn’t try to compete with it. If in-app sourcing is core to how you work, keep Apollo doing that job — this guide is about moving the sending, not replacing the whole workflow.
Getting connected: the practical steps
Before you route a single send through Norbelys:
- Export or sync your Apollo lists. If you’re on HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce, connect that CRM to Norbelys and pull contacts through the sync rather than a one-time CSV — that way updates keep flowing both directions instead of going stale after the first import.
- Connect your sending mailboxes fresh. Gmail and Microsoft 365 connect with one-click OAuth; anything else connects over SMTP with replies read over IMAP. This is a new connection to Norbelys, not a transfer of whatever Apollo had configured.
- Turn on warmup before ramping volume, especially for any mailbox that hasn’t been sending steadily. Warmup is included on unlimited mailboxes at every plan tier, so there’s no reason to skip it to save cost.
- Rebuild your sequence copy in Norbelys, or let Norbe draft a first pass from a brief — sequence steps and A/B variants don’t transfer automatically between platforms, since the two products don’t share a sequence format.
- Re-attach your suppression list before the first campaign sends. Whatever people have opted out of in your existing workflow needs to carry over — this is the one step that protects you legally, not just operationally.
- Run a small test batch first. Compare replies, not just opens, before scaling back up to full volume.
Once contacts are flowing in via sync and a small batch is landing correctly, Apollo keeps doing sourcing and Norbelys takes over sending — no need to cancel anything on Apollo’s side, since the two tools aren’t in competition for the same job.
What’s genuinely different once Norbelys is sending
| Feature | Norbelys | Apollo |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | Sending & deliverability | Contact database & sourcing |
| Contact database included | — | ~200M contacts |
| Unlimited mailboxes & seats | ✓ | — |
| Pricing meter | Flat plan; only sends are metered | Per seat + credits for data |
| Open/click tracking | Human-verified only, bot-filtered | Standard pixel counting |
| Reputation protection | Automatic slow-down & pause per mailbox | Sending limits; mostly manual monitoring |
| DMARC monitoring | Included in every plan | Not the product |
| Warmup + AI-drafted sequences | Included | Not the product |
| CRM sync for revenue attribution | HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, live | Inside its own all-in-one suite |
Your open rate will change shape, not just size. Apollo counts a pixel fire as an open — Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection prefetch included — the standard way most tools do it. Norbelys verifies each open and click as it happens and only counts humans, with the filtered noise itemized rather than hidden. Expect the number to drop; that’s the tracking becoming honest, not the campaign getting worse. See why we count opens differently for the mechanics.
Reputation stops being something you watch manually. If bounces or complaints spike on a mailbox sending through Norbelys, the mailbox slows or pauses automatically before the damage compounds, and you hear about it from Norbelys rather than discovering it in Gmail’s postmaster tools.
The bill decouples from your team size. Apollo’s per-seat-plus-credits model means cost grows with headcount and data hunger. Norbelys’s flat pricing — $29/$79/$239 monthly, billed annually — covers unlimited seats and mailboxes; the only meter is how much you send.
What doesn’t change
Your CRM stays the system of record for deals and pipeline — Norbelys writes replies and campaign attribution back into it rather than trying to replace it. And your Apollo sourcing workflow keeps running exactly as it does today; nothing about this move touches how you find people, only what happens after you’ve found them.
Questions people ask before pairing the two
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to stop using Apollo to start sending from Norbelys?
No. The recommended setup keeps Apollo for sourcing and enrichment and routes sending through Norbelys — the two tools solve different problems and the honest recommendation is to pair them rather than pick one. Nothing about connecting Norbelys requires closing your Apollo account.
How do contacts actually get from Apollo into Norbelys?
Two live paths: sync through a connected CRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce), which keeps contacts and replies flowing in both directions, or a direct CSV export/import for a one-time or smaller list. There's no live, direct Apollo-to-Norbelys sync today — the CRM is the bridge.
Will my Apollo sequences carry over automatically?
No. Sequence structure and copy need to be rebuilt in Norbelys, or drafted fresh with the AI operator from a brief. Contacts and CRM-side data are what sync; sequence logic is product-specific to each platform and isn't portable.
Why would I pay for both Apollo and Norbelys instead of one all-in-one tool?
Because the two jobs — finding the right people and protecting your domain while you email them — are genuinely different disciplines, and a single all-in-one tool usually does one of them better than the other. If sourcing depth and deliverability depth both matter to your outbound motion, pairing a specialist for each tends to beat a generalist at both.
Does Norbelys's pricing change if I bring a very large Apollo-sourced list?
Norbelys plans meter contacts, monthly sends and active campaigns — see the full breakdown in norbelys pricing explained. A large one-time import from Apollo counts toward your contact limit the same way any import would, so check that your plan's contact ceiling fits the list size before importing.
If sourcing is genuinely your bottleneck, Apollo remains the rational buy — that’s not a hedge, it’s the honest answer on the Apollo comparison page. If you already have the list and the problem is what happens after you hit send, that’s the whole job Norbelys is built for.