For freelance web designers

The usual routine is a map, a trade, and a long afternoon: open a business, look at the site, decide whether it is bad enough to be worth pitching, hunt for an email that is not a contact form, then write something personal enough that it does not read like the other nine pitches in that inbox. Two hours to produce maybe a dozen prospects worth calling.

It is unpaid time, it is the first thing to get skipped in a busy week, and skipping it is why the pipeline is empty a month later.

• You pick a trade and a location. It pulls the local business listings — including the businesses with no website, which never appear in a search result.
• Every business gets a website grade: no site, no mobile layout, no HTTPS, slow, or fine. A good site scores near zero and you skip it.
• It scores weakness against traction, so a busy business on a dated site outranks a quiet business on a bad one. That ordering is your call sheet.
• It crawls for a real contact address rather than handing you a contact form.
• It drafts the first email in your voice, referencing what is actually wrong with that business's site — not a template with the name swapped in.

There is a short style guide you write once. Every draft inherits your voice from it, so the tenth email sounds like the first one you approved rather than like a language model.

The app sends through the account already set up in Mail on your Mac, so SPF and DKIM align to your own domain and your sending reputation belongs to you. Hosted sequencers route you through a shared pool where a stranger’s bad week becomes your spam folder. The full argument is here.

Follow-ups go out on day 0, day 3 and day 7, and stop the moment somebody replies. If you close the app for a fortnight it does not come back and fire all three at the same prospect in the same minute — the pacing is enforced, not advisory.

US anti-spam law requires your name and a real mailing address in every commercial email. The app will not send until Settings → Outreach has both. If you work from home and would rather not publish that address, a PO box is the usual answer — worth sorting before you queue your first sequence rather than at the moment you press send.

And the client work still has to be yours. This finds the businesses and opens the conversation; nothing here writes a proposal or does a rebuild.

3 scrapes a month, free, no card, with unlimited drafting on top — enough to work one county properly and see whether the lead quality is real before you pay for anything. The plans are here.

The reliable channel that does not depend on an audience is outbound to local businesses whose sites are visibly costing them work — because you are not selling them on a problem they have to be convinced of. The catch is that finding those businesses means going through local listings one at a time, deciding which sites are bad enough to pitch, and hunting for an email that is not a contact form. It is a two-hour afternoon for maybe a dozen prospects, it is unpaid, and it is the first thing skipped in a busy week.

It runs that afternoon as one operation: pulls local business listings for a trade and area — including the businesses with no website, which never appear in a search result — grades every site, ranks weakness against traction so a busy business on a dated site outranks a quiet one on a broken site, crawls for a real contact address, and drafts a first email naming what is actually wrong with that business's site.

You write a short style guide once and every draft inherits your voice from it, so the tenth email sounds like the first one you approved. Drafts are editable before they send, and drafting runs on Apple Intelligence on your own Mac rather than being posted to a service.

3 scrapes a month free with no card and unlimited drafting on top — enough to work one county properly and see whether the lead quality is real. Paid plans are $9/month or $90/year for unlimited scrapes and sync across Macs, and $49/month for scheduled recurring scrapes on top. Sending is never metered on any plan.

Yes, and a recent one — macOS 26+ · Apple silicon. The drafting runs on Apple Intelligence on your own machine, which does not exist on Intel Macs or on Windows, and there is no web version. Better to read that here than after the download.

Your name and a real mailing address, in Settings → Outreach. US anti-spam law requires both in every commercial email, and the app refuses to send until they are filled in — a deliberate block rather than a dismissible warning. If you work from home and would rather not publish that address, a PO box is the usual answer, and it is worth sorting before you queue your first sequence.