Why my InMails are paused — credit exhausted

Short answer

Your LinkedIn Sales Navigator account ran out of monthly InMail credits. WarmySender's account-level circuit breaker noticed the LinkedIn-side Not enough credits response and paused all further InMail dispatch on that account until the next monthly reset (the 1st of the next calendar month, UTC) or until you top up credits manually. Other action types — invites, messages, view-profile, engage-post, endorse-skill — continue to flow normally on the same account.

This is by design. Continuing to attempt InMail sends into an empty credit bucket would burn LinkedIn API quota, fill your campaign-events log with skip noise, and risk LinkedIn-side rate-limit retaliation for what is fundamentally a "tried to do something the account literally cannot do" pattern. Pausing is the safe move.

How to verify (dashboard + DB-side)

• Dashboard: open the affected campaign's Activity tab. Look for Skipped: account InMail credits exhausted events stamped at the time the pause began.
• LinkedIn account row: the column linkedin_accounts.inmail_credits_exhausted_at is NOT NULL when the breaker is armed. NULL means the breaker is not currently armed (either credits are available or no credit failure has been observed since the last reset).
• Production logs (operators only): grep for "source":"inmail_credit_breaker" with "action":"set" for the arm event and "action":"skip" for each per-prospect deferral.
• Sales Navigator UI: open linkedin.com/sales → Account → InMail credits. Compare the visible balance to the breaker stamp's date. If the balance shows ≥ 1 credit but the breaker is still armed, see "Manual top-up resume" below.

When the pause clears (automatically)

The breaker clears automatically in two cases:

• Monthly reset: Sales Navigator's InMail credits reset on the 1st of every calendar month (UTC, per LinkedIn documentation). On the first InMail dispatch on or after that reset, WarmySender notices the breaker timestamp is older than the start of the current month and clears it before dispatching. Logged with {"source":"inmail_credit_breaker","action":"clear","reason":"monthly_reset"}.
• Recent successful evidence: if a successful InMail event lands in linkedin_events within the last hour AFTER the breaker was set (e.g. you topped up credits and a different campaign on the same account succeeded), WarmySender clears the breaker before dispatching the next prospect. Logged with {"source":"inmail_credit_breaker","action":"clear","reason":"recent_success_evidence"}.

Manual actions you can take today

• Top up credits in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Open Sales Navigator UI → Account → Buy more InMail credits. Once you have credits and a successful InMail goes through (any campaign on that account), the breaker clears within an hour.
• Switch the affected step to send_message. If your prospects are 1st-degree connections, regular LinkedIn messages don't consume InMail credits. Browse documentation for how to edit a sequence step.
• Route via a different LinkedIn account. If you have multiple Sales Navigator seats in your workspace, switch the campaign's LinkedIn account to one with available credits.
• Wait for the monthly reset. If your campaign is not time-sensitive, the breaker clears automatically on the 1st. Other action types on the same account continue to run in the meantime.

What stays running while InMails are paused

The breaker is InMail-specific. On the same account, all of the following continue normally:

• Connection invites (send_invite)
• Direct messages to existing connections (send_message)
• Profile views (view_profile)
• Post engagements (engage_post)
• Skill endorsements (endorse_skill)
• Wait-for-accept and wait-for-reply step types

This is intentional. Account safety always wins, but pausing the entire account because one specific action type can't proceed would be over-correction. Per the LinkedIn rate-limits guide, each action-type category has its own daily/weekly cap and breaker.

Related documentation

• Operations-side deep-dive on the same breaker — code paths, structured logs, recovery scripts.
• Why a prospect was marked failed on a circuit breaker error — different breaker (temporary safety mode).
• Why my InMail counter shows different from my actual sends — counter-drift semantics.
• Why my account shows connected but isn't sending — broader account-state troubleshooting.

Account safety note

This breaker is a refusal-to-send pattern. It cannot cause a duplicate send, bypass a cap, or flip an account into a worse state. It only DEFERS dispatch. The worst-case outcome is "InMail step skipped, prospect waits a few days for monthly reset" — which is exactly what would happen if you noticed the credits-exhausted state manually and paused the campaign yourself. The breaker just makes that response automatic and keeps your other action types unaffected.

Frequently asked questions

Why are my InMails paused but my invites and messages are still going?

The InMail credit-exhausted breaker is action-type-scoped. Sales Navigator InMail credits are a separate monthly bucket from connection invites and 1st-degree messages, so when the InMail bucket hits zero, only InMail dispatch is paused. Invites, messages, view-profile, engage-post, and endorse-skill continue normally on the same LinkedIn account.

When will my InMails resume?

Automatically on the 1st of the next calendar month (UTC), when Sales Navigator resets your InMail credit allowance. Or sooner if you manually buy more credits — once a successful InMail event lands in our event log on the same account, the breaker auto-clears within an hour. The dashboard will show the resume time on the affected campaign.

How do I verify the breaker is the cause and not a different problem?

Open the campaign Activity tab and filter for "Skipped: account InMail credits exhausted" events. If you see them, the breaker is the cause. If you see no events at all on a stalled InMail step, check the LinkedIn account status — it may be disconnected or restricted (a different cause). The why-account-shows-connected-but-not-sending page covers other failure modes.

Can I force the breaker to clear early?

You can clear it indirectly by sending one successful InMail through any other path (e.g. directly via LinkedIn itself, or via a different campaign that uses the same account). Once the success event lands, the breaker clears within an hour. We do not expose a "force clear" button because doing so without confirming credits are available would just immediately re-arm the breaker on the next failed send.

Will this affect my campaign analytics?

No. Skipped prospects remain in the campaign with their step state preserved — they will retry on the next monthly reset. Campaign sent / accepted / replied counters are unaffected (they only count successful dispatches, not skipped ones). Skip events are visible in the Activity tab for transparency but do not count toward your daily limits or any cooldown calculation.

What is the difference between the credit-exhausted breaker and the platform's temporary-safety-mode circuit breaker?

The credit-exhausted breaker is account-specific and InMail-specific — it pauses one action type on one account due to a per-account credit balance hitting zero. The temporary-safety-mode breaker is workspace-level and triggers on a burst of upstream errors across multiple accounts in a short window (a sign that something is wrong with our LinkedIn integration or LinkedIn-side service). They are tracked, classified, and recovered independently. See why-prospect-marked-failed-on-circuit-breaker for the temporary-safety-mode companion explainer.