Who this is for: self-serve plans (Free, Starter, Pro, Enterprise). If you bought a Cleanlist AppSumo lifetime deal, your features, limits, and pricing are different. See the AppSumo documentation instead. Support agent: confirm whether the user is self-serve or AppSumo before giving plan-specific advice.
TL;DR: Register at app.cleanlist.ai, fill in one short form, connect your tools (or skip), then start the 14-day Pro trial (card required, $0 today, 250 credits or 350 with a work email) or Continue on Free (50 credits a month). Clu then researches your company and suggests where to start. Create a list in Lead Lists, import with Actions → Import → Import from CSV, and enrich with Find Email (1 credit per email found) and Find Phone (10 per phone found).
Getting Started
Every new Cleanlist workspace starts on the Free plan and is offered a 14-day Pro trial. The trial needs a card but charges $0 today, includes 250 credits (350 if you sign up with a work email) and 100 searches, and becomes Pro at $89 per seat per month unless you cancel. Free stays available with 50 credits a month and up to 3 seats.
This guide takes you from sign-up to your first enriched list in about 15 minutes.
Cleanlist runs on a computer browser. Below 1,024 pixels wide (phones and tablets) you'll see Open Cleanlist on Desktop after you sign in.
1. Create your account
- Go to app.cleanlist.ai (opens in a new tab). The sign-up page reads "Become a Cleanlist.ai member" and "14-day Pro trial with 250 credits".
- Register with your email address or with Google. Use your work email for 100 extra trial credits ("Register with your work email for 100 extra credits").
- Verify your email if asked.
Joining a teammate's workspace? Use the link in your invitation email. You join their workspace directly, fill in a short form (no company website needed), and land on Home. You don't get a separate trial; you share their plan and credits.
2. Onboarding (3 steps)
The onboarding page shows three dots for the steps, with Sign out if you need to leave.
Step 1: About you
"Let's find your next customers." Fill in:
- Your name (first and last, prefilled when we have it)
- What's your job function? (Sales, Sales development, Revenue operations, Marketing, Founder or executive, Recruiting, Agency, Other)
- Your company website (prefilled from a work email)
- How did you hear about us?
Click Continue. Cleanlist creates your workspace, named after your company website, and Clu starts researching your company in the background.
Step 2: Connect your tools
"Connect your tools." Connect what you already use, or click Skip for now (the button reads Continue once something is connected). You can connect all of these later from Integrations.
| Group | Tools | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Communications | Slack | "Chat with Clu and get your agents' results in Slack." |
| CRM | Salesforce or HubSpot (one) | "Push enriched leads to your CRM and skip people already in it." |
| Mailbox | Gmail or Outlook (one) | "Send sequences from your own inbox." |
| More tools | Google Calendar, Notion, Fathom, lemlist | Connect them now, or later from Integrations |
A Free workspace may connect a CRM, one mailbox and Slack during its first 14 days, but using them needs a plan that includes them: CRM sync and Clu in Slack are on Pro and Enterprise, and sending sequences needs Starter or Pro.
Step 3: Pro trial or Free
"Try Cleanlist Pro free for 14 days." The page lists what Pro includes, with Compare all plans to see every plan side by side.
- Start free 14-day trial opens Stripe Checkout. You add a card, nothing is charged today, and the 14 days start when the card is saved. The fine print reads "$89/mo after your trial ends. Cancel anytime before and you won't be charged."
- Continue on Free asks once, "Skip your free Pro trial?", and lists what Free doesn't include. Choose Keep my free trial or Skip, continue on Free.
| Pro trial (14 days) | Free | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 today, card required. Becomes Pro at $89 per seat per month unless you cancel. | $0, no card |
| Credits | 250 (350 with a work email) | 50 a month |
| Searches (Find People) | 100 | 5 in total |
| Seats | 3 | Up to 3 |
| Lead lists | 5 lists of up to 300 leads | Up to 100 leads per list |
| Agents, Sequences, LinkedIn steps | Build them; launching needs a paid plan | Not included |
| HubSpot and Salesforce sync, Clu in Slack, Knowledge | Included | Not included |
| API keys, credit top-ups | Not during the trial | API keys not included |
If you skip it, the trial offer stays available for a while: a bar at the top of the app reads "You still have a free 14-day Pro trial" with Try Pro free. Cleanlist offers one trial per company email domain every 30 days, and none for an extra workspace you create yourself; in those cases onboarding skips this step.
Everything about the trial, including starting a paid plan early and cancelling: Pro free trial.
3. Clu's first chat
After onboarding you land in a full-screen chat with Clu, Cleanlist's in-app assistant. Clu doesn't ask you questions here. It sets up your workspace from your website, and you watch the steps as it works:
- Reading your website
- Searching the web for your company
- Looking up your company
- Counting your sales team
- Sizing your market
- Saving your company profile
Then: "Your workspace is ready." You get:
- A company profile card: your ideal customer profile with how many matches it finds (and Open in Search to see them in Find People) and your buyer personas. Admins can change the profile later in Agents → Profile.
- Four ways to start, as tiles:
| On the Pro trial or a paid plan | On Free |
|---|---|
| Watch Clu build a list | Watch Clu build a list |
| Build your first list | Build your first list |
| Start your first sequence | Find your target accounts |
| Put it on autopilot | Get someone's email and phone |
- A 30-minute setup call with a member of the Cleanlist team, marked +500 credits, with Book. The 500 credits are added once the Cleanlist team approves your booking. If you're on Free with the trial still open, the bar at the top of the app also offers Book onboarding, +500 credits.
This setup chat is free and doesn't create any agents. Only the person who signed up sees it.
You can come back to Clu any time: ⌘J (Ctrl+J), New chat in the sidebar, or the chat box on Home. See Clu and Using Clu.
4. Create your first lead list
- Open Lead Lists in the sidebar (or press G then L).
- Click New → New Lead List, enter a List name and click Create list. You land in the empty list ("This list is empty").
- Open the Actions drawer: the Actions button in the list toolbar, or ⌘A (Ctrl+A). Go to the Import tab and choose Import from CSV.
- Drop in a CSV or Excel file (.csv, .xlsx or .xls). Each row needs a LinkedIn URL or a name and company. Download template gives you a sample file.
- In Map your columns, match your file's columns to LinkedIn URL, Full name, First name, Last name, Company name and Domain / website.
- Under Enrichment Type, tick Email (1 credit per email found), Phone (10 credits per phone found), both, or neither.
- Click Start Enrichment (if you ticked Email or Phone) or Import Records.
Importing itself is free, and leads already in the list are skipped. On Free and Starter, a plain import (no Email or Phone ticked) also looks up each row's job title, company and location for 0.2 credits per row found; rows not found are free. On Pro, Enterprise and the Pro trial, your file's other columns are kept as columns instead.
Other ways to add leads (all from the list's Actions → Import tab unless noted):
- Manual entry: add a few people by LinkedIn URL or by first name, last name and company domain.
- Find People (sidebar): search by title, company, location and more, then Add to list. Adding is free; you choose whether to enrich. Each search counts against your plan's search allowance.
- Ask Clu: "Find heads of sales at fintech companies in London" turns into Find People filters you can review.
- Import from Google Sheets: inside Import from CSV, once you've connected Google Sheets in Integrations.
- Import from CRM (Pro and Enterprise): pull contacts from HubSpot or Salesforce. Importing is free; enrichment you choose costs its normal price.
- Chrome extension: look up a LinkedIn profile or a company website and save people to a list. See Chrome extension.
- Sales Navigator: export your leads to CSV and use Import from CSV. See Sales Navigator CSV import.
Full walkthrough: Import a CSV or Google Sheet.
5. Run your first enrichment
If you didn't enrich during the import:
- In the list, open Actions → Enrich.
- Choose Find Email (1 credit per email found) or Find Phone (10 credits per phone found).
- Click the run button and pick Run on all N unfilled rows (or Run on [N] rows to test on a few first).
Cleanlist asks its data providers one after another and stops at the first one that finds the data (waterfall enrichment). You pay only when something is found; misses are free. Results fill in as they arrive, and the Status column shows each email's validity (Verified, Likely valid, Risky, Invalid or Unknown).
When you're done, take the data out with Actions → Export → Export CSV (every plan) or Export to CRM (Pro and Enterprise). See Exporting your data.
6. Where to go next
| I want to | Go to |
|---|---|
| Find new prospects | Find People |
| Let Clu do the work in plain language | Using Clu |
| Research or score leads with AI | Skills (Actions → Skills) |
| Automate prospecting on a schedule | Agents and Build your first agent (Pro) |
| Email and call my leads from Cleanlist | Sequences and Build a sequence (Starter and up) |
| Connect HubSpot or Salesforce | HubSpot and Salesforce (Pro) |
| Invite my team | Organizations and teams |
| Learn my way around the app | Finding your way around Cleanlist |
| Compare plans and credit costs | What's included by plan and Credits and pricing |
Need help?
- Help and support at the bottom of the sidebar opens live chat with the Cleanlist team. You can also ask Clu to connect you with a person.
- Email support@cleanlist.ai.
- Join our Slack community (opens in a new tab).
- Watch the tutorials.