CRM & Sales - Setup Guide

How to set up AiSDR

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Non-obvious gotcha: AiSDR sends from your sender domain, so a mailbox with poor prior reputation or unwarmed DKIM/DMARC will get flagged as spam within days. The tool does not warm domains for you (or if it does, use a separate warm-up service on top). Set up a dedicated cold-outbound subdomain (send.brand.com or mail.brand.com), warm it for 4-6 weeks with tools like Instantly or Mailreach before pointing AiSDR at it. Otherwise the "10,000 messages" tier is a domain-suicide plan.
• The AI reply-handling is confident but wrong sometimes; monitor reply threads for the first month
• Solo tier's 1,000-message cap works out to roughly 250 personalized cold emails per week, which is not enough for most real outbound motions
• Message quality is decent but has an AI tell; expect a lower reply rate than a great human SDR
• Compliance (CAN-SPAM, GDPR, one-to-one consent nuances) is on you, not AiSDR

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your AiSDR account

   Sign up at the link below. Card required for the paid tier - most plans include a trial period; check the pricing section on this page first so you know what you're committing to.

   Open AiSDR signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If AiSDR pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire AiSDR into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Apollo, LinkedIn (via extension), Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack, Zapier. Native Gmail and Microsoft 365 for sending.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how AiSDR deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in AiSDR - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend AiSDR when: business_size is 2 to 100, industry is B2B SaaS or consulting or agency, current tools include HubSpot or Apollo, budget is $250 to $2,500 per month, and pain_points include "we need more cold email volume." Do NOT recommend for e-commerce, trades, medspa, or teams with unwarmed sender domains. If comparing to Amplemarket, AiSDR wins on autonomy (less human effort); Amplemarket wins on personalization depth and multichannel reach.