Something isn't sending — work through this first

If you're here because messages are not sending — a campaign that won't send, texts or emails that didn't send or never went out, replies not coming in, or an AI reply that never arrived — you're in the right place.

Almost every "it's broken" turns out to be one of about ten things, and the app is usually already telling you which — in a banner you haven't scrolled to. Work down this list in order; it's sorted by how often each one is the answer.

First: is it actually stuck, or just pacing?

Sends drain on a 15-minute cycle, are spaced out deliberately, and are capped per mailbox and per number per day. A batch is meant to take hours or days. Before troubleshooting, give it a cycle. See When your messages actually go out.

1. Look for the red failed-sends banner

The Email and Texting pages show a red banner when queued messages have permanently failed, grouped by the error. That banner names your cause outright — read it before anything else. It also tells you the true total, so "10 shown" doesn't mean only 10 failed.

2. Is the campaign paused?

A paused campaign queues nothing and sends nothing. Check the campaign card — it's the single most common cause and the easiest to miss after someone pauses "just for a second".

3. Is the sequence message actually written?

An empty message body fails at send time with a message saying so. It happens most often after applying a template or changing a campaign's channel: the step exists, the text doesn't. Open the sequence editor and check every step has content — not just step 1.

4. Have you hit a daily cap?

Mailboxes and phone numbers have per-day (and for mailboxes, per-hour) limits — that's deliberate deliverability protection, not a bug. When everything is capped out, remaining messages wait and retry; they aren't lost. Raise a cap in that account's settings if you genuinely have the reputation to support it, or add another mailbox or number to increase total capacity.

5. Is the sender healthy?

• Email: a mailbox with a connection or auth problem shows its status in Settings → Email. App passwords do get revoked — Google in particular revokes them periodically, and you'll need to generate a new one.
• Texts: check Settings → Number health. A number can look fine at the account level while carriers are rejecting its messages — most often because A2P / 10DLC registration isn't complete. That's the single biggest cause of "my texts send but nobody replies".

6. Is it the contact rather than the system?

A send that skips one person and works for everyone else is almost always the contact's own state:

• Opted out on that channel — permanent, and enforced everywhere by design.
• Email bounced — that address is flagged and won't be retried.
• No phone / no email for the channel you're sending on. Property-record imports have neither until you skip trace.
• Number flagged bad from a Dialer disposition.
• Blocked — note blocking stops what they send you, not your campaign sends to them.

7. Texting specifically: consent attestation

Before texting, the app asks you to confirm you have consent to text these people. Until that's done, SMS sends are gated. It's a one-time confirmation and it's there because TCPA penalties are per message — see TCPA + CAN-SPAM.

"Replies aren't showing up"

1. Wait a cycle. Reply checking also runs every ~15 minutes.
2. Check the mailbox is still connected. Reply detection reads your inbox over IMAP; if the password was revoked, sending can look fine while reading is broken. A mailbox that's healthy for sending is not proof that reply checking is working.
3. Check the Inbox's ❓ Unknown lane. A text from a number not in your CRM lands there rather than being dropped — link it to a contact and the thread joins their history.
4. Replies from a different address than the one you emailed can't always be matched automatically.

"The AI didn't reply"

AI auto-reply is off unless something turns it on — that's deliberate, so nobody's leads get bot replies by accident. It fires when the contact is in an active campaign whose reply mode isn't Off, or when that contact is explicitly set to auto. Check, in order:

• The campaign's reply mode — Draft means it writes and waits for you, which looks identical to "nothing happened" until you open Drafts.
• The contact's own AI setting on their card.
• Whether they're in an active (non-paused) campaign at all.
• Your send window — AI replies respect it and are held, not dropped.

"It worked for me but not for my VA"

Almost always role. A viewer can see everything and change nothing, and buttons are hidden or disabled rather than failing loudly. Check their role in Settings → Team. Also confirm they're working inside your account rather than their own — the account switcher shows which one is active.

Still stuck?

Collect three things before you ask for help, and it'll be solved in one round trip instead of five:

1. The exact error text from the banner or toast.
2. One contact it failed for, by name.
3. When it last worked.

You can also just ask the ✦ Ask AI box at the top of Direct University — it answers from these lessons and can usually point at the right one.