Pacing & limits
Outpilot is engineered to not batch-burst sends. Real humans don’t fire 50 invites in 90 seconds. This page explains the controls that shape sending velocity.
Daily limits
Per-account caps you set in Settings → Limits & schedule. These are hard ceilings — the (N+1)th send of the day queues for the next day, regardless of which campaign asked for it.
Limits are per 24-hour rolling window, not per calendar day. Sending 20 invites at 8 p.m. Monday and another 20 at 9 a.m. Tuesday is fine — the windows don’t overlap.
Business hours
Outpilot only fires actions during the window you configure (typically Mon–Fri 09:00–18:00 in the account’s timezone). Outside this window, queued actions wait.
Edge cases:
- A wait step that expires outside business hours pushes the next action to the next business-hours start.
- Reconnect-required state pauses sends regardless of business hours.
- The Verify Email step doesn’t count against business hours since it’s an API call, not a LinkedIn action.
Spread within the window
Within business hours, Outpilot spreads sends across the day — it does not slam the limit at 9 a.m. and idle for 9 hours.
Specifically:
- Outpilot computes a target sends-per-hour based on
daily_limit / business_hours_in_day. - Adds 0–30s of jitter to each send so two consecutive sends never fall in the exact same second.
- Inserts micro-waits between back-to-back sends from the same campaign to space them at least 90s apart.
Result: 30 invites/day with a 9-hour window paces to roughly one every 18 minutes, with random jitter so no two actions look batched.
When you change a limit
Daily limit changes apply to the current rolling window immediately:
- Increase — queued actions deferred for “today” become eligible again, subject to the spread.
- Decrease — actions already sent today count toward the new lower cap. If you’re already over, no more sends today; the window slides naturally.
Multiple campaigns on the same account
Multiple campaigns share the same account-level limits. If two campaigns both want to send invites and you have 30 invites/day total, sends are interleaved fairly (roughly 50/50 by enrolled leads).
Adjust by pausing the lower-priority campaign or by lowering its sequence frequency (e.g. waiting 7 days instead of 3 between steps).
Auto-pause on errors
If Outpilot sees N consecutive failures from the same account (default N=5), it auto-pauses sending from that account and surfaces an alert on the dashboard. This protects you from compounding a restriction.
Common triggers:
- LinkedIn returns 429 (rate-limited) repeatedly.
- LinkedIn returns “session expired” — likely a reconnect needed.
- LinkedIn returns “account restricted” — read the LinkedIn message directly.
Resume manually after fixing the cause; pacing resumes from where it left off.
What a “send” counts as
For limit purposes:
| Action | Counts toward |
|---|---|
| Connection request (with or without note) | Connection requests |
| Connection request withdraw | (free) |
| Send message (DM) | Messages |
| InMail | InMails |
| Profile view | Profile views |
| Like / Comment on a post | Post engagements |
| Verify Email (Instantly) | (free — not a LinkedIn call) |
| Add to Instantly | (free) |
Branch steps and waits are always free.
Tips for raising limits safely
- Wait 14 days at your current cap. Account history matters.
- Maintain >30% acceptance rate. Below that, you’re getting reported — raising limits compounds the problem.
- Increase by 10–20% week over week. Don’t double overnight.
- Watch your dashboard for any LinkedIn warning. If anything surfaces, drop limits 30% and hold for a month.
- Connect a residential proxy — Outpilot does this by default, but if you’re connecting from a coworking space or VPN to LinkedIn directly, consistency matters.
Frequently asked questions
Why are my campaigns not sending right now?
In rough order of likelihood:
- Outside business hours — check the time + your business-hours config for the connected account.
- Daily limit hit — dashboard shows current vs. cap.
- Account in reconnect-required — the status pill on the LinkedIn account row will say so.
- Campaign paused — check the campaign’s Status toggle.
- Lead list empty — campaign has no unenrolled leads left.
Can I send “as fast as possible”?
Effectively no — even setting a 200/day limit will spread to ~one action every 2.7 minutes during business hours. The pacing engine is not a setting you can disable.
Does Outpilot enforce LinkedIn’s actual limits?
We enforce the limits you configure. LinkedIn’s real ceilings are account-specific (age, history, premium status, recent reports) and not published. Our suggested defaults are conservative for new accounts.