Every term, in plain English

New to cold outreach? Here's what each word in Doorstep actually means — no jargon, no assumptions. Skim it once and the rest of the app will make sense.

The basics

Lead

A business (or person) you might want to contact — a name, and ideally a way to reach them like an email or phone. Doorstep's whole job is finding good leads and helping you email them.

Cold email

An email to someone who hasn't heard from you before. Done well it's short, relevant, and personal; done badly it's spam. Doorstep is built to help you do it well.

Outreach

The overall act of reaching out to leads — finding them, writing to them, following up, and handling replies.

Dashboard

Your home screen: today's sends, drafts waiting for you, replies to handle, and the big buttons to find leads and prepare outreach.

Finding & enriching leads

OpenStreetMap (OSM)

A free, community-built map of the world's businesses. Doorstep searches it to find local businesses by area and type — no paid lead database needed.

Enrichment

Turning a bare name into a contactable lead — automatically finding its website, email, phone, Instagram, and business signals. Full guide →

Signals

Useful facts Doorstep notices about a lead — no website, an outdated site, a booking link, how long the domain's been registered. These become angles for your email.

Pitch angle

A specific reason to reach out, drawn from the signals — e.g. "they're on Instagram but have no real website." Good angles get replies.

CSV import

Bringing your own list of leads into Doorstep from a spreadsheet or CRM export, instead of (or as well as) the map. Full guide →

Enrichment provider

An optional outside service (Brave Search, Hunter.io, People Data Labs) you can plug in with your own free key to find even more — missing websites, emails, and company data.

Writing & sending

Draft

An email your Claude has written for a lead, waiting for you. Nothing is a real email until you approve it.

Review queue

Where drafts wait for your yes/no. You can edit a draft, approve it, or reject it with a note — and Claude rewrites it based on your feedback.

Approve

Your go-ahead to send a draft. Doorstep never sends anything you haven't approved.

Template

A starting-point email for a type of business. Claude personalises it per lead — it never sends a raw template.

Sequence / follow-up

A series of emails to the same lead over time (first email, then follow-ups). Doorstep remembers what was already said so step two never repeats step one.

Dispatch

The actual sending of approved emails — done automatically inside your chosen hours, within safe daily limits.

Sending window

The hours of day you allow emails to go out (e.g. 9am–6pm), so your sending looks human.

Deliverability — staying out of spam

Deliverability

Whether your emails actually land in the inbox instead of the spam folder. It's the make-or-break of cold email. Full guide →

Warm-up

Gently breaking in a new sending address so mailbox providers trust it — starting with very few emails a day and building up.

Warm-up ramp

The schedule of how fast that daily limit grows (e.g. 5, then 10, then 20 a day). A brand-new inbox sends only a handful per day.

Seed inbox

A friendly mailbox your inboxes exchange normal email with during warm-up — it opens, replies, and rescues messages from spam, which teaches providers you're legit.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Three small DNS records that prove your emails are really from you. Without them you go straight to spam. Your email provider's guide sets them up in about ten minutes.

Bounce

An email that couldn't be delivered (bad or dead address). Too many bounces wreck your reputation, so Doorstep watches them closely.

Suppression

An address Doorstep will never email again — bounced, invalid, or unsubscribed. It protects your sender reputation automatically.

Bounce-rate circuit breaker

A safety switch: if too many emails start bouncing, all sending pauses until you clean your list and resume.

Setup & licensing

Docker

The software that runs Doorstep on your own machine or server. The installer sets it up for you; you just run one command. Getting started →

Inbox

The email account your outreach sends from. You connect it with your email address and an app password.

SMTP / IMAP

The behind-the-scenes settings for sending (SMTP) and reading replies (IMAP). Pick your provider in the wizard and these fill themselves.

App password

A special password just for Doorstep, created in your email provider's security settings — not your normal login password. Safer, and easy to revoke.

Claude / setup-token

Doorstep writes emails using your own Claude subscription, so there's no AI bill from us. claude setup-token is the one-time command that connects it.

Demo mode

The free, uncapped-features trial — everything works, limited to 25 leads and 15 sends. A license lifts the caps in place.

License

Your one-time purchase key. The app is perpetual: it keeps working forever, offline, whether or not you ever renew.

Self-hosted

You run the software and your data lives on your machine — not on someone else's cloud. Your leads are a file you own. Why it matters →