Front Sequences Not Sending (or Inflating Your Analytics): Fixes

Symptom → likely cause, at a glance

1. The From channel isn't eligible (the "No results" trap)

The most common blocker is that Front won't let you pick a sender at all. When you open Sequences → Create sequence, the From channel field is mandatory, and if that picker returns No results, you're stuck at the very first step — no amount of retrying the send will help, because there's nothing to send from.

Per Front's guide to understanding sequences, the From channel must be an email channel. Specifically, a personal sequence needs "any individual inbox containing an email channel," and a workspace sequence needs "any shared inbox as long as it's an email channel. SMS, chat, etc. are not supported." So if your only connected channels are SMS, live chat, WhatsApp, or a social channel, the picker will legitimately show nothing. It's not a bug — it's Front telling you no channel here is eligible to be a sequence sender.

Fix: connect (or select) an actual email channel — a shared Gmail/Office 365 mailbox for a workspace sequence, or an individual email channel for a personal one. If you're unsure what channel types you have, Front channels explained covers how each one behaves and which are email vs. non-email.

2. Sequences are gated behind your plan

If the Sequences area is missing entirely — not just empty — it's a plan question, not a settings one. Front is explicit that sequences are "available on the Professional plan or above," per the sequences documentation. On a Starter plan or a trial provisioned below that tier, you won't see the feature at all.

Fix: confirm your workspace is on Professional or higher before troubleshooting anything else. This is worth checking first if a teammate "can't find sequences" — often they're simply on a plan that doesn't include them, or looking at a workspace where the feature isn't enabled. There's no configuration toggle that unlocks a gated tier.

3. Stage A never fires (schedule, recipients, or a dead channel)

Once you can build a sequence, the most common "nothing sent" cause is the schedule on Stage A. When you build stages, Front asks you to "choose a date and time to send Stage A," per its how to create a new sequence walkthrough. Two things trip people up here:

• You never clicked Start sequence. Building the stages isn't the same as launching. The sequence only begins once you confirm with Start sequence.
• The scheduled time is in the future — or already passed. If Stage A is scheduled for later, it simply hasn't sent yet. Conversely, Front notes that "if the time you select passes by the time Stage A is sent, then it will be sent immediately," so a stale time won't hold it back.

Two more things to rule out: an empty or malformed recipient list (a bad CSV import can silently drop rows — Front caps a sequence at 200 recipients), and a disconnected sending channel. If the email channel behind the sequence has lost its OAuth connection, outbound sends fail across the board, not just for sequences. When a whole channel goes quiet, it's worth confirming Front itself is healthy first — is Front app down shows how to check status before you assume the sequence is the problem.

Fix: re-open the sequence, verify Stage A's send time, confirm your recipient list actually loaded, reconnect the sending channel if it shows a broken state, and then Start sequence.

4. Follow-ups keep sending after someone already replied

This is the most confusing sequence failure, and it has one specific cause: the "No threading" channel mode. Normally, sequences stop themselves. Per Front, "if a recipient sends a reply to a sequence stage, subsequent stages will not send out to their email address" — the campaign automatically halts for anyone who answers. (One nuance worth knowing: automatic replies like out-of-office messages do not count as a reply, so an OOO won't wrongly stop the sequence.)

But there's a real exception that catches teams out. Per Front's sequence guidance, "when a sequence is sent from a channel configured with 'No threading' mode, then replies from recipients do not prevent the next sequence stage from being sent. The replies are not registered as replies to the sequence, so subsequent sequence stages will still be sent." In other words, if your sending channel has threading turned off, Front can't match the incoming reply to the outgoing sequence, so it keeps firing follow-ups at people who've already responded — an easy way to annoy prospects.

Fix: check the sending channel's threading mode under Settings → Channels → [your channel] → Settings. If it's set to No threading, switch it to a threading mode so replies register against the sequence and stop-on-reply works as intended. If you can't change threading for that mailbox, avoid using it as a sequence sender.

5. Big campaigns "didn't fully send" — the throttle and the cap

A sequence that looks half-sent is often just still sending. Front rate-limits outbound to protect deliverability: per the sequences documentation, a sequence is capped at 200 recipients, and "a sequence containing 200 recipients can take up to ~25 minutes to send completely" — Front waits about 7.5 seconds between each Gmail or Office 365 send (roughly 1 second for other providers). So a large Stage A genuinely takes time to work through the list.

Fix: give a large send its full window before assuming it failed, and split anything over 200 recipients into multiple sequences. This throttle is also your friend for deliverability — blasting hundreds of identical emails in seconds is exactly what gets a domain flagged.

6. The analytics side-effect: sequences inflate "New conversations"

Even a perfectly working sequence can make your reports look wrong — and this one isn't a failure at all. Here's the mechanic most teams miss. Per Front's analytics FAQs, "when sending a Sequence out of Front using a shared email address, analytics will count each individual outbound message towards the shared inbox's New conversations metric, which also rolls up into the Active conversations metric."

Read that carefully: every recipient of every stage is a separate outbound message, and each one is counted as a new conversation. Send a three-stage sequence to 150 people and, over its life, that's up to 450 outbound messages — every one of which lands in your New conversations (and Active conversations) totals. If you don't know this, a routine outreach push looks like a sudden inbound surge, and any "conversations per agent" or "volume" chart is quietly distorted.

Fix — read the report correctly:

• Segment sequences out. Filter or tag sequence-originated conversations so you can view inbound support volume separately from outbound campaign sends.
• Watch the metric definition. "New conversations" here means conversations created, not inbound requests received — outbound sequence sends legitimately create conversations.
• Compare like with like. When you report week-over-week volume, note whether a sequence ran; a spike that lines up with a campaign launch is the sequence, not real demand.

For the bigger picture of how conversations, inboxes, and metrics fit together, Front shared inbox explained is the model to keep in mind, and Front rules explained covers the automation engine that sits alongside sequences.

Where an AI layer quietly shrinks the problem

Most of these headaches trace back to the same root: sequences are fire-and-forget automation. They send on a schedule and stop on a reply, but they can't read the reply, and every one they send is another conversation someone has to work — and another tick on your New conversations chart.

That's the seam an AI agent layer fills. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists to do the reasoning fixed automation can't. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Front you already use through the live Macha–Front connector — it doesn't replace Front, your channels, or your sequences. When a sequence recipient replies, instead of that response just reopening a thread for a human, Macha's agent reads the intent, pulls real context through a custom tool that turns your REST API into something the agent can call, and drafts or sends a grounded answer. Fewer of those replies become manual tickets, so the conversation volume behind your inflated analytics actually comes down. Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, never per resolution — you pay for the work the agent does, not a made-up outcome.

FAQ

Why does the From channel say "No results" when I create a sequence? Because none of your connected channels is an eligible email channel. Front requires an email channel to send a sequence — a shared email inbox for workspace sequences, or an individual email channel for personal ones. SMS, chat, and social channels are not supported as sequence senders, so if those are all you have, the picker shows nothing.

Why do my Front follow-ups keep sending after the person replied? The sending channel is almost certainly in "No threading" mode. In that mode Front doesn't register the incoming reply as a reply to the sequence, so subsequent stages still send. Switch the channel to a threading mode so stop-on-reply works.

Why did my sequence spike my "New conversations" in analytics? That's expected behavior. Front counts each individual outbound sequence message sent from a shared address toward the shared inbox's New conversations metric, which also rolls up into Active conversations. Segment or tag sequence conversations so campaign sends don't get read as inbound support volume.

Which Front plan do I need for sequences? Sequences are available on the Professional plan or above. If the Sequences area is missing entirely rather than empty, that's the reason.

Does an out-of-office auto-reply stop my sequence? No. A genuine reply stops the remaining stages for that recipient, but automatic replies like out-of-office messages do not count, so the sequence continues.

Want the replies your sequences generate to resolve themselves instead of piling up? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Front in minutes.