Frequently asked questions

Sestaro is a B2B professional contact database. You search and filter for free, then spend one sestaro to unlock a contact's email.

Sales teams, recruiters, marketers and agencies who need targeted professional contacts for their outreach.

You do not pay for a frozen batch: you search, filter and only spend a sestaro on the contacts you choose to unlock. Exports are de-duplicated and the same contact is never charged twice.

You sign up with your email, confirm your address, and immediately receive 175 sestaros: a 100-sestaro welcome gift plus your first monthly quota of 75. No credit card is required.

No. The account, the 100 starting sestaros and the 75 sestaros refilled every month cost nothing, with no credit card and no commitment. You only pay if you choose to buy more sestaros.

Search, every filter and the record preview are free and unlimited. You only spend a sestaro when you unlock an email.

Sestaro is a web application: it works in any modern browser, on desktop and mobile, with nothing to install.

Yes. The interface, emails and documents are available in French and English, and you can switch language at any time from the site header.

The sestaro is the platform's currency: 1 sestaro = 1 unlocked contact, with their email.

Search, filters and previews are free. Unlocking a contact's email costs one sestaro, and enriching a file costs one sestaro per enriched contact.

No. The sestaros you buy never expire and stay available on your account for as long as you need them.

You buy one-time sestaro packs, or you subscribe to a plan. Details and quantities are on the pricing page.

The price depends on the pack or plan you choose: the larger the volume, the lower the unit cost. See the pricing page for current details.

No. You only spend a sestaro when an email is actually unlocked. A record without an email costs nothing.

On paid plans, if our mailbox check proves that an unlocked email is dead, the sestaro you spent is automatically refunded, and the record is removed from the database so nobody pays for it after you. We never charge for an invalid address: that is our transparency commitment. The free account does not include this real-time check, so it does not include the refund either.

Never. A contact you have already unlocked stays accessible and re-downloadable for free, without spending another sestaro.

They are B2B professional records sourced from public and professional sources, across many countries.

More than 40,880,254 professional contacts across 159 countries. The index grows regularly with new countries and new records.

A record gathers name, job title, company, industry, company size, country and region, a professional email when available and, in some cases, a LinkedIn profile.

Yes, as a waterfall. Every email first goes through an in-house check included everywhere, free account included: syntax, domain (MX record), and a filter for disposable, generic and role addresses. Paid plans add a real-time mailbox check at unlock time: we ask the recipient mail server whether the mailbox actually exists. Three possible verdicts, shown on the record: safe (mailbox proven reachable), risky (the server accepts everything, impossible to decide), dead (your sestaro is refunded and the record leaves the database). The free account stops at the standard check.

Each email shows a status: valid domain, domain without a mail server, disposable address, role address or invalid syntax. You know how reliable an address is before you act.

Data is not guaranteed in real time: datasets have varying collection dates depending on the country. We favour transparency and show reliability signals rather than a promise we could not keep.

The index grows regularly, with new countries and new records added. The counter shown at the top of this page reflects the current volume.

Each record shows a score based on its completeness and reliability signals. You can spot the most usable contacts at a glance before spending a sestaro.

Sestaro focuses on verifiable professional emails. Other qualification signals, such as job title, company, industry and LinkedIn profile when available, are also on the record.

Yes. Your exports are de-duplicated: the same contact is never delivered twice in the same file, nor charged again.

Sestaro is self-hosted on our own servers located in Europe (Germany). Your data is not resold to third-party platforms.

You enter keywords and refine with filters. Results appear with the email masked and the quality score, ready to be unlocked.

You combine firmographic filters: job title, industry, country, region, company size and more, to target your contacts precisely.

Yes. You can work by accounts: search for a company and find the contacts attached to it, then organise them into lists.

Yes. Each result shows the job title, company and quality score, with the email masked. You only spend a sestaro if you choose to reveal it.

No. Search and filters are unlimited and free, whatever your sestaro balance.

Broaden your criteria: drop an overly narrow filter, add nearby countries or industries. Combinations that are too tight sharply reduce results.

Yes. You can stack several values on the same facet to cover multiple countries, industries or company sizes in a single search.

From the results, you click unlock: one sestaro is spent and the verified email appears, added to your history.

Yes. You select several records in the results and unlock them in a single action. The cost stays one sestaro per contact actually unlocked.

A history keeps every record you have unlocked. You can browse, search and re-export them at any time.

Yes, for free. An unlocked contact can be re-downloaded as many times as needed, without spending another sestaro.

You group your contacts and accounts into named lists, which you reuse for your exports and campaigns.

You export a list or your history as CSV, ready to import into your CRM or email tool.

List exports are in CSV, and each contact can also be downloaded individually as a vCard.

Yes. The same contact never appears twice in an export, even if it is in several lists or searches.

Yes, on a paid plan. You write your messages, you set the follow-ups, and Sestaro sends them at the pace you decided. Search and unlocking stay independent: you can perfectly well export to CSV and work elsewhere.

Your own sending server, with your SMTP credentials. Sestaro never relays a message on your behalf. Your recipients see your address, your domain, and the reputation you build stays yours.

You declare a sending domain and your SMTP credentials. The screen then gives you the exact list of DNS records to publish, and queries your own zone's nameservers to confirm that SPF, DKIM and DMARC answer. You edit your zone, we verify: we never manufacture a key on your behalf.

Yes. An account declares as many sending domains as it has brands, each with its own authentication and its own warm-up, and you pick which one carries each campaign.

A series of messages with whatever delay you want between each one. Every step can be conditional: it only goes out if the contact did not open, did not click or did not visit your site at the previous step.

As soon as the contact replies and you mark it as such, as soon as they unsubscribe, and as soon as a hard bounce proves the address no longer exists. You can also pause a whole campaign and resume it later.

Yes. You set a sending window: business days, office hours, time zone. Departures are spread inside that window, never bunched on the same second, which would look like a bulk blast to the servers receiving you.

Yes. You import a CSV file or type your records in by hand into your lists. Your own data costs zero sestaros: sestaros only pay to unlock a record from our index.

A subset of your subscribers defined by their behaviour: opened in the last thirty days, never clicked, already in another sequence, came from a form, unsubscribed. Several criteria, combinable. They apply to people you have already written to, not to the directory: job title or country are filtered in search, not in a segment.

Ready-made templates, in English and in French, and a visual editor with content blocks: heading, image, button, columns, callout, quote, signature. Your existing MJML templates import as they are. First name, company and job title fill themselves in, and an empty field never leaves a hole in the sentence.

Yes. You see the rendering, you send yourself a real copy through your own server, and the screen shows the spam score of the message before it leaves. A test send writes nothing: no statistic, no enrolment, no counter.

Opens, clicks and visits to your site, step by step and contact by contact, with a CSV export of the report. Image proxies and the Apple Mail privacy relay are recognised and do not count as readers. A click counts as an open, otherwise the rate would lie for everyone who blocks images.

A gradual increase of the daily volume on a new sending domain, capped at a doubling per week. A domain that sends a thousand messages on day one gets filed as junk; warm-up avoids that, and it freezes the climb on its own if your bounce rate crosses a threshold.

They come back to a return address that belongs to us, and are classified by refusal code: an address that does not exist is not the same thing as a policy refusal from the server on the other side. Dead addresses enter the suppression list and never receive anything again.

The unsubscribe link is in every message and works in one click, immediately and permanently. We do not keep the address in the clear: an encrypted fingerprint is enough to guarantee it never goes back into a campaign.

Yes. You create a capture form to paste on your site, or a landing page hosted on our side if you have no site to edit. Subscribers land in your lists and can trigger a sequence automatically.

No, it is for paid plans only. Our bounce and tracking domains travel inside every message sent: we only open them to identified accounts. Search itself stays free and unlimited.

A persona is a saved search with all its filters. You replay it in one click without reconfiguring your criteria.

You enable alerts on a persona: Sestaro emails you when new contacts matching that persona appear in the database.

Alerts are evaluated daily and you only receive an email when there are actually new contacts to report.

Yes, at any time. Each persona has an alert switch you turn on or off without losing the saved search.

Yes. You upload a CSV file, we match it against our database and enrich it with the available information.

Matching relies first on the LinkedIn profile, then on the email, then on the name and company pair, to find the right record.

Enrichment is charged per sestaro, only on contacts that were actually enriched. Lines with no match cost nothing.

You upload a CSV file, then map your columns to the expected fields before running the enrichment.

Yes. A REST API lets you embed contact search and unlocking directly into your own tools.

You generate your tokens from your account area. Each call authenticates with that token, which you can revoke at any time.

Yes. Unlocks through the API are capped per day and per account, to protect the database against mass extraction.

Yes. Webhooks push your unlocked contacts to your CRM in real time, as soon as an unlock happens.

Yes. Each delivery is signed (HMAC): your system verifies the signature to make sure the data really comes from Sestaro.

Yes, through webhooks: you plug the stream of unlocked contacts into Zapier to route it to thousands of apps.

Yes. Processing of B2B data relies on the legitimate interest of prospecting, with rights and safeguards for the individuals concerned.

The legitimate interest of B2B prospecting. We only process professional data, not private-life data.

An opt-out form lets a contact be taken out. We then keep an encrypted fingerprint of their email only, to stop them from reappearing when the data is refreshed.

Anyone can request access to their data or its erasure. We handle these requests (DSAR) and take the record out of the index and of the relevant customer unlocks.

We apply a defined retention policy, detailed on our dedicated data retention page.

Yes. A data processing agreement is available on the site to frame our relationship as controllers and processors.

No. Sestaro uses no advertising tracker: only a session cookie strictly necessary for the site to work is set.

You remain responsible for your campaigns and for complying with the rules applicable in your country. We encourage you to target precisely and to honour any unsubscribe request.

Payments are securely processed by Stripe, by card. Sestaro never stores your card details.

Both. You buy one-time sestaro packs, or take a subscription if you use Sestaro regularly. Details are on the pricing page.

A management portal lets you change your payment method, download your invoices and cancel your subscription at any time.

Yes. An upgrade applies immediately on a prorated basis, and a downgrade takes effect at the end of your current cycle.

Yes. Each payment generates a numbered PDF invoice, available in your billing area.

Yes. The VAT regime is computed from your billing profile, with live validation of your EU VAT number through VIES.

A refund remains possible. From your account area, the Support screen attaches your plan and your balance to the request: that is the shortest route. Without an account, the form on the Contact page does the same.

If a subscription payment fails, you receive an email with a link to the portal to fix your payment method.

Yes, when you have one. The promotion code field appears at checkout.

You enable app-based two-factor authentication (2FA), with backup codes to keep offline so you never lose access.

Yes. You can view the list of your active sessions and log out remotely from one device, or everywhere in a single action.

Everything is set from your account area: password, email address, interface language and billing profile.

Sign-up is protected by an anti-bot check and by disposable-address filtering, to keep the platform clean.

You close your account from your account area: your personal data is erased, under the right to erasure.

Two routes, depending on where you stand. You have an account: the Support screen in your account area sends your message together with your account id, your plan and your balance, so we answer without asking you to repeat anything. No account yet: the form on the Contact page, or contact@sestaro.com if you prefer your own mailbox.

We do not promise a guaranteed response time. We reply as soon as we can; including your request and its context in your email speeds things up.