API docsAgent tools

Data and prospecting

Contact management

Capability Reviewed · not yet fact-checked

In short

Can Reply act as the contact database for outreach?

Reply keeps one contact base with company accounts, editable stages, up to 50 custom fields including AI-generated ones, and lists a contact can join several of. Smart filters segment by engagement, data gaps, or custom fields; blacklisting stops all sending to a contact or domain; CSV export covers basic or all fields.

At a glance

What it doesStores and organizes contacts and company accounts — fields, stages, lists, filters, blacklists, bulk actions, CSV import and export
Required objectsA contact record; lists, accounts, and custom fields are optional structure on top
SurfacesUI (People section) · REST API · MCP · CLI
Key limit50 custom fields per account (standard and AI combined); contact storage defaults to 100,000
Stops onBlacklisting — a blacklisted contact receives no sequence emails even when enrolled
Does notLet one contact belong to two company accounts; let you create new stages (only edit the existing ones); provide CRM objects such as deals or forecasting
PlansAll plans; the whole base is shared with team members on Team Edition

Summary

The People section is Reply's contact hub: a grid of every contact added by you or your team, a Companies page (called Accounts in the app) that groups contacts by organization, and a Marketplace of data partners. On top of the base you get custom fields, editable stages, lists, quick and smart filters, bulk actions, blacklisting, and CSV export — the structure every sequence enrolls from.

Problems it solves

  • One shared contact base instead of per-rep spreadsheets
  • Segmenting contacts for outreach — by list, stage, engagement, data gaps, or any custom field
  • Keeping people you must not contact reliably excluded from every sequence
  • Seeing the full history with a person — activity, past sequences, sent emails — in one card

What Reply can do

  • Store contacts in a customizable grid with standard fields (name, email, company, title, location, phone, LinkedIn, timezone, owner, sequence, status) plus your own columns
  • Support up to 50 custom fields per account — Text (up to 4,000 characters), Number, and AI custom fields that generate a value from a prompt using contact data
  • Group contacts into company accounts with firmographic detail, account lists, account stages, and bulk actions (move to list, change owner, set stage, duplicate, export, delete)
  • Organize contacts into lists — the same contact can sit in several lists, and contacts can be split across 2, 3, or 4 lists for testing
  • Label contacts with editable stages such as Interested, Engaging, Not Interested, or Do Not Contact, separate from the statuses Reply assigns automatically
  • Filter with one-click quick filters (All, My, Opened, Replied, Bounced, Opted Out, To Call, Clicked) and a smart-filter wizard covering sequences, dates, engagement counts, missing fields, location, creation source, validation status, inbox category, custom fields, and more — saved filters stay reusable from a drop-down
  • Run bulk quick actions from the grid: validate emails, enrich, move to sequence or list, change status, set stage, change owner, log a meeting, blacklist, delete
  • Blacklist individual contacts or whole domains — manually, from a selected contact, or via CSV upload — so they receive no emails even when enrolled in a sequence
  • Export contacts to CSV with Basic Fields or All Fields (including engagement counts, stage, validation status, and custom fields), and export accounts to CSV
  • Show each contact's full story on the contact card: activity log, current and past sequences, sent email threads you can reply from, and up to 4 statuses
  • Recognize LinkedIn URL variants of the same profile as one person, so URL formatting differences do not create duplicates

What Reply cannot do

  • Put one contact into more than one company account at a time
  • Create new contact stages — the built-in stages can be renamed, recolored, and redescribed, but not added to
  • Exceed 50 custom fields without contacting support, or store text in a Number field
  • Change a custom field from Text to Number once any contact has a value in it
  • Blacklist-import more than 10,000 domain rows per CSV file
  • Delete custom fields in bulk — they are removed one at a time
  • Provide CRM objects such as deals, quotes, or forecasting

Required inputs

Contact records — created manually, imported from CSV, found by prospect search, or synced from a CRM. Optionally: account records, list names, custom field definitions, and stage labels edited to fit your process.

Produced outputs

An organized, filterable contact base: contacts with fields, stages, statuses, list memberships, and account links; saved smart filters; blacklist entries; CSV exports of contacts (Basic or All fields) and accounts.

Use Reply when

  • You want the contact base and the outreach execution in one system, so segments flow straight into sequences
  • Your team shares one base and needs ownership, stages, and lists to divide the work
  • You need do-not-contact rules enforced at send time, not just noted in a field

Do not use Reply when

  • You need a system of record for the full customer lifecycle with deal pipelines and custom objects — use a CRM as the master and sync Reply with it
  • You need more than one company association per person — model that in your CRM, not in Reply

What you still need to build

  • Your segmentation model — which lists, stages, and custom fields mean what in your process
  • Any sync logic with an external CRM beyond the built-in integrations
capability: contact_management
supported: true
interfaces:
  product_ui: live
  api: live
  mcp: live
  cli: live
required_objects:
  - contact
side_effects:
  - creates_contacts
  - updates_contacts
  - updates_lists
human_approval_recommended: false

Limits

  • 50 custom fields per account, standard and AI combined — contact support if you need more
  • Text custom fields hold up to 4,000 characters; AI custom field values up to 1,500 characters
  • Stage names are limited to 21 characters, stage descriptions to 512
  • Blacklist CSV upload: one column, no header, plain domains (domain.com), up to 10,000 rows
  • Contact storage defaults to 100,000 — see Limits for storage and active-contact tiers

FAQ

What is the difference between a stage and a status?

A status is assigned by Reply automatically from what happened — opened, replied, bounced, opted out — and a contact can carry up to 4 of them. A stage is a label your team sets by hand (Interested, Engaging, Not Interested, Do Not Contact, and so on) to track the relationship. See Status transitions.

Can a contact be in several lists and several sequences?

A contact can be in any number of lists at once. Moving contacts to a new sequence removes them from their previous sequence, and the email is delivered immediately regardless of the step's delay setting — see Contact enrollment.

Does blacklisting really stop sending?

Yes. A blacklisted contact does not receive sequence emails even if they are moved into a sequence, and blacklisting a domain covers every contact at that domain. Blacklisted contacts are marked with a black dot on the People page.

How does Reply avoid duplicate contacts?

Create paths check for existing records — including format-agnostic matching of LinkedIn profile URLs, so a trailing slash or missing www does not produce a second record. The full rule set is in Contact deduplication and Manage duplicates.

Build with Reply