How to Use Heepsy to Shortlist and Vet Micro-Influencers

The short answer: on Heepsy's free plan you can find and vet 10 micro-influencers a month without paying anything: 500 search results and 10 advanced profiles, no card (free plan article); emailing them from inside Heepsy starts on Starter at $89 on monthly billing (checked on 26 October 2026 on the pricing page). The steps: describe the creator in one prompt, narrow with filters set in one go, save candidates to a project, open advanced profiles only for finalists, contact them with your privacy note in the first message, and track every post for its ad label.

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Budget the month before you search:

1. Ten profiles is the real limit. The free plan opens 10 advanced profiles a month, and each one closes again when the cycle renews (credits article). For example, 30 candidates from search, minus 20 cut on the free card data, leaves 30 - 20 = 10 profiles to open.
2. Your own followers are the cheapest search. Look up the creators who already tag your brand by exact handle, at 1 credit each, then run lookalike searches from the ones you like.
3. Pass marks before profiles. Write down the minimum share of real followers, the audience country you sell to and how recently they must have posted. Deciding after you see a profile is how a likeable creator with the wrong audience gets through.

What you need

• A free Heepsy account: 3 seats and 1 project, with AI, lookalike and text search (free plan article).
• A brief in numbers: platform, follower band, country, niche. Heepsy's homepage puts micro-influencers at 10K to 100K followers and nano at 1K to 10K.
• Starter or above only if you want to send outreach from Heepsy: 300 outreach emails a month on Starter, per the pricing page.

Step 1: Describe the creator in one prompt

On the search page, choose the platform, then the AI mode, and write the brief as a sentence: "home-cooking creators in the Netherlands on Instagram, 10K to 100K followers, posting every week" (search article). This is the one AI step in the job, and the check that goes with it is yours: read each result card before anything is saved. Text match is the alternative for keywords in bios and captions; it uses OR logic, so pair it with a category filter.

Step 2: Set every filter, then search once

Open "All filters" and set the rest of the brief before you press Search; the button shows how many results are available as you add filters. Hover the info icon next to a filter to read what it controls (filters article). Each page of results uses 24 credits, and a changed filter or query is charged as a new search; reopening the same unchanged search is free (credits article).

Step 3: Save the candidates to a project

Click "Add to project" on a result and create the project from the dropdown (project article). Creators on pages you have already loaded go in for free; using "Select all" to pull in creators you have not loaded costs a credit per creator. The project keeps a list, a board, the content, payments and a live report for the campaign.

Step 4: Open advanced profiles for the finalists only

An advanced profile shows engagement against benchmarks, estimated cost per post, reach, posting frequency, days since the last post, follower growth, the split between real and suspicious followers, audience location, language, age, gender and interests, and a public contact email where the creator lists one (advanced profile article). Hold each one against your pass marks and note the verdict in the project. If a profile looks empty or renamed, click Refresh before spending another credit; Heepsy updates the username if the creator changed it (inactive profiles).

Step 5: Contact them, with your privacy note in the first message

On a paid plan, select the finalists in the project and click "New email" (outreach article). Creators receive it from reply-to@heepsy.com with the line "Invitation sent by brand via Heepsy" and an unsubscribe link, and reply from their own inbox (how creators receive it). Switch on a follow-up for those who opened the first email (follow-ups); it uses one more credit, while replies inside a thread use none.

You got each creator's details from Heepsy, not from the creator. Article 14 of the GDPR then requires you to tell them who you are, why you hold their data and where it came from, at the latest in the first message you send them (GDPR on EUR-Lex, Article 14(3)(b)). Two lines and a link to your privacy notice at the foot of the template cover it.

Step 6: Put the ad label in the agreement

The Dutch Advertising Code for social media and influencer marketing asks that a paid post opens with a label such as "AD" or "paid partnership" and names the brand, that a gifted product is marked as "gifted by @brand", and that a note in the bio is not enough (RSM, 2026 update). The same code puts a duty on you as the advertiser: make the creator aware of the rules, require them in the agreement and correct a missing label. Write the exact label into your outreach email so it is agreed before any product ships.

Step 7: Track every post and check the label

Select the creators in the project and click "Start tracking", then set the content type, date range, hashtags and mentions (content tracking). Posts and stories land in the project's content tab and its report. Starter tracks 5 creators at a time and Plus 100, and pausing a creator frees the slot (credits article). Open each tracked post on the day it goes live and look for the label in the first line.

What Heepsy's own articles warn about

• Refining is not free. Every new filter combination is charged as a new search, at 24 credits a page.
• Profiles close at renewal. An advanced profile you opened last month costs a fresh credit to read again.
• No bots. The terms forbid scrapers, crawlers and automated systems and end in a permanent ban without refund (scraping policy), so an outside AI agent must not drive Heepsy for you; its AI search is the automation you get.
• Small creators are invisible. Accounts under 1,000 followers, private accounts and those with fewer than two posts do not appear in search (minimum requirements).

Because a refined filter is billed like a fresh search, it is the credit meter, not the shortlist, that moves an account toward the next tier; write the filters on paper before the search page is open.

Doing it for free

Steps 1 to 4 run entirely on the free plan. For step 5, the advanced profile shows each finalist's public email, so ten messages from your own mailbox, with the same privacy note, cost nothing; Starter buys reply tracking, follow-ups and tracked posts, not access to the creators. The Heepsy glossary entry sets out each plan's limits.

FAQ

How many creators can I vet a month for free?

Ten, at the depth of an advanced profile; the basic search cards are free to read within your 500 results (free plan article).

Why can a creator I know not be found?

Heepsy indexes public accounts with at least 1,000 followers and two posts; you can still add a smaller creator to a project by hand to manage the collaboration (minimum requirements).

Does a follow-up use another credit?

Yes: one credit for the first message and one for each follow-up to a creator who has not replied; replies inside a thread are free (credits article).