Frequent Questions

What's the difference between Autofloss and Instafloss and what are the pros and cons of each?

1min



Autofloss and Instafloss are both features of mailfloss that verify (floss) new subscribers. There are some differences that this article aims to highlight.

  1. Autofloss is available on all subscription plans, whereas Instafloss is not available on the Lite plan by default, but is available as a Lite plan add-on.
  2. Autofloss checks new subscribers from the previous day and runs daily. Instafloss checks in real-time.
  3. Autofloss is available on all email service providers (ESPs) except Customer.io, Mailigen, Remarkety, Braze, and Iterable. Instafloss is not available for Constant Contact.
  4. For some ESPs, Autofloss has the ability to selectively check specific lists or tags. With Instafloss, verification happens across all lists and the entire account with some exceptions.
  5. Autofloss pulls subscribers from the connected ESP, and is more certain to gather all of the subscribers. Instafloss, especially from some ESPs, is retrieved on a best-effort basis and is not guaranteed to run for every single new subscriber. Based on our tests, Instafloss successfully receives about 99% of new contacts.
  6. For reporting, Autofloss will display in the dashboard for each floss it runs. With Instafloss, all the flosses are aggregated from the previous day and will show up as one session in the dashboard.
  7. With some ESPs, using Autofloss there may be redundant or duplicate contacts from previous days' floss. With Instafloss, there is less redundancy but may still be some as some ESPs will send the contact over in quick succession sometimes.
  8. For some ESPs including MailUp, Gist, Campaigner, Remarkety, AWeber, DailyStory, Wishpond, Moosend, Sendlane, Braze, Iterable, Customer.io, Klaviyo, and GetResponse, there are additional steps required to setup Instafloss.



So should you use Autofloss or Instafloss? If you had to pick one, use Instafloss since you can verify, fix, update, or remove the contact in real-time. Otherwise, if real-time isn't needed or if you have Manual Mode turned on, choose Autofloss.