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A pipeline stage is a label you define and control: where a contact sits in your own sales process. Every workspace starts with three stages: Lead, Engaged and Customer. You can rename them, add your own, reorder them, and give each one a colour.
A stage is not a lifecycle stage. Two of the default stages happen to be called Lead and Customer, but they have nothing to do with the Leads / Clients lifecycle on the contacts list. Nothing syncs the two. Moving a contact into the Customer stage does not make them a client, and converting a contact to a client does not move them along your pipeline. See Contacts overview for the lifecycle side.
Prefer to watch first? This walkthrough covers setting up your stages and moving contacts through them.

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Set up your stages

Stages are configured on the pipeline itself, not in Settings.
1

Open the pipeline

Go to Contacts and switch to Pipeline View. Each stage is a column.The Pipeline View with No Stage, Lead, Engaged and Customer columns and contact cards in them
2

Add the stages you use

Select Add stage, give it a Stage name, and pick a colour. Add as many as your process needs: a clinic might use Enquiry → Consultation booked → Treating, a salon New → Booked → Regular.The Add stage panel at the end of the pipeline with a colour swatch, a stage name typed in and the Add button
3

Rename, recolour and reorder

Edit any stage in place to change its name or colour, and reorder the columns so they read left to right in the order your work actually happens.
4

Remove what you don't use

Delete stage removes the column. The contacts in it are not deleted; they move to No Stage, which is where every contact starts until you place them.

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Move contacts through the pipeline

There are several ways a contact gets a stage.

Drag on the pipeline

On Pipeline View, drag a contact card from one column to another. This is the fast way to work a list.

From the contact

Open a contact and use Pipeline stage to pick a stage. Useful when you’re already reading the conversation history.

When you add or edit a contact

The new contact and edit contact form has a Stage select, reachable from List View and from a pipeline card’s edit action.

On CSV import

The importer’s stage column matches an existing stage by name. See Import contacts from CSV.

From an automation

The Update Contact Stage flow node moves a contact when they reach that step, and an AI node can be given the Move CRM stage tool. See Automations.

Over the API

PUT /api/v1/contacts/{contact}/stage sets it programmatically, and behaves exactly like a change made in the app.
A stage name in a CSV must match one of your stages exactly. A name that doesn’t match is not created and is not reported; the contact simply imports with no stage. Check your stage names before a large import.
The pipeline board shows at most 300 contacts and has no pages. If your workspace has more than that, the 300 slots go to the most recently active contacts rather than the most recently added: a contact ranks by when you last heard from or messaged them, falling back to their creation date only when there has been no activity at all. That is deliberate, so a long-running deal is not pushed off the board by a batch of never-contacted imports. Nothing is lost; the missing contacts are still on List View, where you can filter by Stage and page through everything. Use the pipeline as a working board, not as a full contact list.

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How stages are used elsewhere

Stages are a filter, and that is their real value.
  • Segments. A segment can require a Contact stage. A segment is a saved filter, not a fixed list, so it is re-evaluated every time it runs: move a contact into a stage today and they are in that segment’s next broadcast without you touching the audience. See Tags and segments and Broadcast audiences.
  • The contacts list. Filter by Stage on List View, including No stage, to find everyone you haven’t placed yet.
  • Automations. The Pipeline stage changed trigger starts a flow when a contact moves to a different stage: on the contact page, on the pipeline board, through the API, in an Update Contact Stage step or through the AI Move CRM stage tool. Bulk actions and CSV imports do not start it, and neither does a move to the stage the contact is already in.
  • Webhooks. Every stage move sends a contact.stage_changed event carrying both the new stage and the previous one, so an external system can react to it. That covers dragging on the pipeline, the Pipeline stage picker, the contact form, the stage API endpoint, a stage field sent to the general contact update endpoint, the Update Contact Stage flow node, the AI Move CRM stage tool and bulk Set stage. The contact form and the general update endpoint also send contact.updated. A move to the stage the contact is already in, deleting a stage, a merge and a CSV import send nothing. See Webhooks.
The most reliable way to make a pipeline do work for you is to pair it with a segment: a stage says where someone is, and a segment turns that into a WhatsApp broadcast audience you never have to rebuild.

Tags and segments

Turn a stage into a reusable broadcast audience.

Contacts overview

How the lifecycle axis differs from your pipeline.

Import contacts from CSV

Bring contacts in with a stage already set.

Automations

Flows, triggers and what they can act on.