Apollo vs. Instantly.ai: Which Cold Email Tool Wins? (2025)

The most ideal scenario for folks involved in cold emailing is to use a single platform for prospecting and sending cold emails to them.

When finding such a platform, you might find yourself stuck trying to choose between Apollo and Instantly.ai.

This Apollo vs. Instantly.ai debate is quite common among professionals looking for the best tool.

To help you cross this dilemma with the right answer, we have created this versus blog.

Here, we will compare Apollo and Instantly.ai’s capabilities to help you choose the right tool for your needs.

That’s not all!

We also have another tool in the list that is more cost-effective and feature-rich–overall, it’s a better alternative to Instantly.ai.

So jump in and start reading to know which is the best tool for your needs!

Apollo vs. Instantly.ai: Table of Contents

• Quick Comparison of Apollo vs. Instantly.ai
• TL;DR of Apollo vs. Instantly.ai: The Cold Email Battle
• Apollo vs. Instantly.ai: Finding The Right Cold Email Tool
• Who Is the Ultimate Winner: Apollo or Instantly.ai?
• A Better Alternative to Instantly.ai – Saleshandy
• Choose The Better Cold Emailing Software
• FAQs: Apollo vs. Instantly.ai

Quick Comparison of Apollo vs. Instantly.ai

TL;DR of Apollo vs. Instantly.ai: The Cold Email Battle

Here’s a quick breakdown of the entire blog:

1. If you’re looking for cold emailing software to help you automate your outreach and reach more prospects, you should consider Instantly.ai.
   
   It offers more features and better functionality than Apollo for sending cold emails.
2. When it comes to prospecting and enriching any existing data, Apollo is a clear winner.
   
   Apollo also has many advanced filters and signals that can help you find prospects relevant to your Ideal Customer Profile and buyer persona.
3. There is a 3rd contender in the Apollo vs. Instantly.ai battle – Saleshandy.
   
   If you’re looking for a budget-friendly cold email tool that allows you to add and manage unlimited clients and team members at no extra cost, you should seriously consider Saleshandy.

Apollo vs. Instantly.ai: Finding The Right Cold Email Tool

In this section, you’ll learn about the various features Apollo and Instantly.ai have to offer. 

Features that will help you find the right prospects and reach out to them with the perfect cold emails that compel them to reply.

We’ll also compare the pricing plans and the pros and cons of each tool and find which tool is best suited for which use case.

Here’s what’s on the table for comparison:

1. Finding Prospects
2. Creating Cold Email Sequences
3. Personalization Features
4. Email Warmup
5. Client Management (For Agencies)
6. Native Integrations
7. Pricing

Let’s dive in!

1. Finding Prospects

Many cold emailers today are looking for an all-in-one tool where they can do everything related to cold email outreach.

Imagine how much time and effort you could save if you could find relevant prospects and reach out to them immediately from the same platform!

A lot, right?

That’s exactly why many cold emailing platforms have started pivoting, offering a lead database along with their primary product.

Here, we will compare Apollo’s and Instantly.ai’s prospect-finding capabilities head-on to see who is better.

Apollo

Apollo is primarily a sales intelligence platform that also has engagement capabilities.

You can search and find your ideal accounts (companies) and also the decision-makers in them.

It has quite a vast database with 275 million contacts from over 73 million companies. So rest assured that you won’t run out of people to reach out to!

You can use the many advanced filters that Apollo has to find prospects who would be ideal to reach out to.

Moreover, in Apollo, you can create custom signals and scores. This will help you further drill down your search.

What Do Apollo’s Customers Have to Say?

Most users are satisfied with the filters (basic and advanced) that Apollo offers.

Some users have shared concerns about not always getting accurate information. 

However, they understand it’s challenging to keep such a vast database updated at all times and are quite happy with the information they get.

Instantly.ai

Instanlty.ai is a cold email automation tool with a lead database to help you find prospects and reach out to them without changing platforms.

Its database has around 160 million contacts. You also get various filters like funding type, lookalike domain, employee count, revenue, etc.

With these filters, you can find prospects who best fit your needs.

What Do Instantly.ai Customers Have to Say?

While the users appreciate the lead database, they feel it could be improved.

Some of the commonly shared feedback includes a desire for a larger database and more frequent updates to remove bad leads and avoid outdated information.

Overall, they believe that if you’re going to pay for access to a database, it should offer more comprehensive and up-to-date data.

2. Creating Cold Email Sequences

Next, let’s look at how easy it is to create cold email campaigns on both tools.

Apollo

You can create an unlimited number of cold email sequences in Apollo.

What’s more, Apollo offers you various ways to create your sequence. You can create a sequence using the following options:

1. AI-assisted: You can use Apollo’s AI to help you create a simple outbound email sequence.
2. Pre-formatted: Apollo has various pre-built templates that you can use.
3. Clone: This is a helpful option that you can use to duplicate an existing sequence.
4. From scratch: You can use this option if you manually want to create your sequence.

That’s not all!

With Apollo, you can also take a multichannel approach to reaching out to your prospects. The various steps that you can create in Apollo are:

• Automatic Email: The email you create using this option will be scheduled and sent to the prospect automatically.
• Manual Email: This option will create a task for you to customize each email. Also, the email will not be sent unless you schedule them explicitly for delivery.
• Phone Call: With this option, you can create a task to call your prospects. You can also edit and add your pitch in the notes section of the task.
• Action Item: You can use this option to notify you of any custom task or action you would like to do.
• LinkedIn Tasks: You can also automate some LinkedIn processes in Apollo. For this, you’ll need the Apollo Chrome extension. Some of the tasks that you can streamline and automate are:
  • Sending a connection request
  • Sending a  message
  • Viewing a profile
  • Interacting with a post

As you can see, Apollo offers a comprehensive way to help you create cold email sequences.

In addition to all these, Apollo’s AI feature can help you create personalized cold emails as well!

What Do Apollo’s Customers Have to Say?

Apollo’s users have shared that the tool lacks quite a bit when compared to other cold email outreach tools, and there is a lot of room for improvement.

Instantly.ai

In Instantly.ai, you can create an unlimited number of cold email campaigns with multiple steps.

Unlike Apollo, Instantly.ai does not offer multichannel touchpoints.

That said, with Instantly, you can quickly create cold emails using the AI Generator feature, but there’s a catch.

This feature is only available starting with Instantly.ai’s Hyper Growth plan.

Alternatively, you can use the inbuilt templates to create your cold email sequence quickly.

Instantly.ai’s templates are comprehensive and cover a lot of industries and niches.

What Do Instantly.ai Customers Have to Say?

Most Instantly.ai user reviews praise the tool for its cold emailing capabilities, allowing you to create sequences, A/B testing emails, and so on.

However, users also express that it is quite expensive when compared to other Instantly.ai alternatives.

3. Personalization Features

Next up on the list are the personalization features.

These are very essential when it comes to cold emailing as they help make your content more relevant to each and every prospect you are reaching out to.

Let’s see how they measure up against each other.

Apollo

In Apollo, you can personalize your cold emails using their “Dynamic Variables”. There are 3 types of dynamic variables.

• Basic variables like {{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{company}}, {{title}}, {{now_weekday}}, etc.
• Custom variables that you can create.
• And advanced variables that use conditions like {{#if first_name}}”text to show only if dynamic variable exists”{{#endif}}, etc.

In addition to this, you can also use Apollo’s AI assistant to create personalized openers based on the prospects’ data you have.

What Do Apollo’s Customers Have to Say?

G2 User Review: “Apollo.io is solving the challenges of prospect identification, outreach personalization, and workflow optimization in sales intelligence and sales engagement…”

Instantly.ai

In Instantly.ai, you can access the personalization feature “Variables” only after importing your leads.

Until then, the variables will not be mapped.

Some of the variables available in Instantly.ai are:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Company Name
• Personalization: You can insert your personalized introductions using this variable. However, you’ll have to upload your lead list as a CSV file with a column with personalized introductions.
• Website, etc.

You can also create custom variables easily.

There is also another feature called “Spintax” that allows you to create variations of text and phrases in your cold emails.

For example, the syntax {{RANDOM |Hi | Hello | Hey}} {{firstName}}, will randomly alternate between Hi, Hello, Hey when sending emails to prospects.

Moreover, the AI generator feature can also help create personalized cold email sequences for you.

What Do Instantly.ai Customers Have to Say?

G2 User Review: “My favorite thing about instantly is the straightforward and clean, user interface. It’s very easy to organize and create new campaigns and sequences, and their AI features for personalization are great.”

G2 User Review: “It solves the problem of client acquisition, it makes it so much easier to send out automated emails every day and with their variables and AI personalization you get really good results from them.”

4. Email Warmup

Email warmup is a critical part of cold emailing, especially if you are using newly created email accounts.

Sending cold emails without warming up your emails is a huge No-No!

It can affect your email deliverability and damage your domain reputation. So, let’s look at which tools score best in terms of warmup.

Apollo

Apollo does not have a dedicated email warmup feature.

This is a huge drawback for a cold emailing tool!

Apollo provides a roundabout way to warm up your email accounts. They recommend manually warming up your email accounts. Here’s what you can do:

• You can ask your closest contacts to reply to your emails.
• Run your new accounts through their Inbox Ramp-up feature. This gradually increases the number of emails you send over a period of two weeks.

Instead of this hassle, we recommend that you use a dedicated email warmup tool.

What Do Apollo’s Customers Have to Say?

There are quite a few mixed user reviews. Some users are saying there is a warm-up feature in beta, while others are saying the feature has been removed.

G2 User Review: What do you dislike about Apollo.io?
They removed their email warmup feature.

G2 User Review: What do you dislike about Apollo.io?
I don’t have anything like that at the moment. I saw the email warmup feature is in beta; this will be a full-fledged tool once it is out.

Instantly.ai

For warmup, Instantly.ai has a comprehensive warmup feature with a lot of settings that you can use to customize your warmup.

You can connect unlimited accounts and keep warming them.

In fact, Instantly.ai recommends that its users use the warmup feature even while cold emailing to maintain their email deliverability.

What Do Instantly.ai Customers Have to Say?

Instantly.ai’s email warmup feature has been well received by its users.

G2 User Review: What I love the most is the one-click warm up solution! Just connect my email addresses, click one button, and then 2 weeks later, my mailboxes are warmed up. It’s so easy to implement. Also, the UI is very intuitive.

G2 User Review: What problems is Instantly solved and how is that benefiting you?
“Warm up issues: I used to have warm up issues with my business emails, Instantly has really made that easy with just click of an icon…”

5. Client Management (For Agencies)

If you are an agency offering cold emailing, you know how important it is to have the right tool.

A good tool will help you scale your clients’ outreach and help grow your business as well.

Let’s look at how Apollo and Instantly.ai stack up as a go-to agency tool!

Apollo

The short version–Apollo is not for cold emailing agencies!

You can use it for prospecting, but as a cold emailing tool, it has no functionality to onboard and manage clients.

Instantly.ai

Instantly.ai can accommodate your agency’s needs. But there’s a catch!

For every client you onboard, you have to create a separate workspace where you can add your clients and the respective team to manage their campaigns.

You can only do this with their Hyper Growth plan, priced at $77.6 per month (when billed annually).

So, if you have 10 clients, you need to create 10 workspaces.

You would be paying a hefty price of $9,312 every year!

10 (number of clients) X $77.6 (Cost of plan) X 12 (annual billing) = $9,312

This number is just going to keep growing the more clients you get.

However, when compared to Apollo, Instantly.ai at least allows you to manage clients.

What Do Instantly.ai Customers Have to Say?

Some users are okay with paying a large amount to manage their clients (We think they are not aware of the much more reasonably priced Instantly.ai Alternatives)

While others are not happy paying so much.

G2 User Review: “What do you dislike about Instantly?
That it costs extra to add another workspace for clients to manage their campaigns.”

G2 User Review: “What do you dislike about Instantly?
I wish that we did not need a new subscription for a 2nd workspace, but I understand that is how it’s done in this space!”

6. Native Integrations

Integrations have become non-negotiable in the industry. 

A single tool cannot help you achieve your goals effectively. So, it’s quite important for all the tools you use to work together as a tight-knit solution.

This is possible only with the help of integrations. So, let’s look at the integrations supported by these tools.

Apollo

Apollo offers the necessary integration to CRMs that most cold emailers would look for. But there are other tools that can integrate with many other helpful software in the market.

Here’s a list of integrations that Apollo has to offer:

• Salesforce (CRM)
• HubSpot (CRM)
• Pipedrive (CRM – In Beta)
• Vidyard (Video personalization tool)
• Zapier (To help integrate with other tools)

What Do Apollo’s Customers Have to Say?

Apollo’s users are quite comfortable with the integrations it offers, but there are occasional reviews that it is not enough.

G2 User Review: “… Also, their integrations aren’t stellar, esp for bidirectional sync. That said, the integrations aren’t bad as it covers 70% of your needs, but I wish it could bidirectional sync with any platform.”

Instantly.ai

Instantly.ai provides you with 3 native integrations with CRMs while it integrates with other tools through API.

Here’s a list of integrations you’ll get with Instantly.ai

• HubSpot (CRM)
• Salesforce (CRM)
• Pipedrive (CRM)
• Google Calendar
• Slack (With Hyper Growth Plan)
• OpenAI (It is available in the base plan, but you cannot access it unless you get Hyper Growth)
• Zapier (With Hyper Growth Plan)

Note: At the time of writing this blog, all 3 CRM integrations are unavailable.

What Do Instantly.ai Customers Have to Say?

There are mixed reviews. Some users are quite happy, while others would like more integrations.

G2 User Review: “… The integrations are seamless too, simplifying the setup process a lot…”

G2 User Review: “Limited Integrations – More integrations with marketing automation platforms would be ideal.”

7. Pricing

Pricing is the most important part when it comes to deciding if the tool is right for your business.

The tool has to justify its Return On Investment (ROI).

Let’s compare and see which is the most economical tool for your needs.

Apollo

Apollo has 4 pricing plans. (Billed Annually)

• Free – $0
  • Email Sending Limit – 250 per day
  • Number of Mailboxes – 1
  • 600 Email credits per year
• Basic – $49 Per user per month
  • Email Sending Limit – 250 per day
  • Number of Mailboxes – 1
  • 2,400 Email credits per year
• Professional – $79 Per user per month
  • Email Sending Limit – Unlimited
  • Number of Mailboxes – 5 per user
  • Min. 120,00 email credits per year
• Organization – $119 Per user, per month (min 3 users)
  • Email Sending Limit – Unlimited
  • Number of Mailboxes – 15 per user
  • Min. 120,00 email credits per year

Apollo has a single plan for prospecting and sending cold emails, but many other features and tools come along with it.

The Free and Basic plans are hardly useful as you can connect only one mailbox. You cannot scale your outreach with these plans.

So you have to go for the Professional plan where you can have 5 accounts per user.

But it comes with other features like Dialer, Call recording, Website Visitor Tracking, etc., which you might not find useful.

So, the price is not justified as you would be paying for features you would not be needing.

Instantly.ai

Instantly.ai has separate categories of pricing, “Sending & Warmup” and “Leads”. Each has 4 pricing plans under them.

• Growth – $30 per month (Billed Annually)
  • 1000 uploaded Contacts
  • 5000 Emails monthly
  • No Client management feature
  • No advanced warmup capabilities
  • Can’t invite team members
  • No integrations
  • No Unibox (Centralized view for email sent and received)
• HyperGrowth – $77.6 per month (Billed Annually)
  • 25,000 uploaded Contacts
  • 100,000 Emails monthly
  • Can create workspaces to add clients and team members.
  • Integrations, API, and Webhooks
  • Unibox
  • AI Generator for creating emails

As you can see, you only get a lot of functions from the Hyper Growth plan on Instantly.ai.

When it comes to the Lead plans, Instantly.ai has a clear and unbiased plan. The more you pay, the more leads you can find on a monthly basis.

Who Is the Ultimate Winner: Apollo or Instantly.ai?

Now that you have seen all the complete comparisons, it’s time to see the winner.

It might be anti-climatic to know this, but here, Apollo and Instantly.ai both win – for different use cases.

When it comes to cold emailing – Instantly.ai is a clear winner.

Here’s why

Apollo takes home the win for prospecting and data enrichment!

Here are Apollo’s pros and cons that led us to this decision.

Where Apollo lacks, Instantly.ai can make up for it and vice versa.

That said!

Many users of Instantly.ai are quite happy with the quality of data, though it depends on the niche and region that you’re focusing on.

What we recommend would be to start with Instanlty.ai for your prospecting and cold emailing needs.

If you feel the data is quite lacking, you can pick up Apollo for prospecting.

Though this would set you back budget-wise, is this the best option available?

What if we told you there is another way to keep your costs down?

There is a more cost-effective (for businesses and agencies) alternative to Instantly.ai – Saleshandy.

Let’s take a look at how it shines where Instantly.ai lacks.

A Better Alternative to Instantly.ai – Saleshandy

Saleshandy is one of the excellent options to look for when you do not want to pay heavy bucks to Instantly.ai to find leads and scale up your cold email campaigns. 

Trusted by many cold email experts, Saleshandy is quite a powerful tool for setting up your cold email outreach like a pro!

For finding accurate B2B lead data, it offers 700M+ professional profiles and is also accompanied by an inbuilt email verification feature.

The data is extracted from 60M+ companies across the globe, making it one of the best B2B lead databases for startups and agencies. 

Other features include an AI outcome and reply categorization, unlimited teams and clients, sender rotation, unified inbox, sequence score, email personalization, automatic email warmup, and native integrations.

Next, let’s look at some key features that Instantly and Apollo lack.

Key Features Comparison – Saleshandy Vs. Apollo Vs. Instantly.ai

Let me help you with each feature and explain why Saleshandy is the right choice over Apollo and Instantly.

Some of the features we’ll be comparing are:

1. Unlimited Client Management
2. Add and Manage Unlimited Teams
3. AI Outcome (Analytics)
4. Pricing For Businesses and Agencies
5. UI/UX

1. Unlimited Client Management

Saleshandy

With Saleshandy, you can onboard and manage an unlimited number of clients right from the base plan – $25 per month (billed annually).

The best part!

You don’t need a separate workspace, and there is no additional cost for adding clients.

Moreover, Saleshandy offers white-labeling capabilities that meet your agency’s needs. You can completely customize the look of your dashboard with your logo and favicon.

You can also have your own custom domain for your clients to log in.

Instantly.ai

In Instantly.ai, you can start adding clients only from the Hyper Growth plan that costs $77.6 per month (billed annually).

You must create a separate workspace for each client, and you must pay $77.6 per month, again billed annually, for each workspace.

That is going to rack up your expenses quite a bit!

Apollo

No agency/client management feature!

As you can see, Saleshandy is a clear winner here, as you can manage unlimited clients at no additional cost or hidden costs.

2. Add and Manage Unlimited Team Members

Saleshandy

Again, here, with Saleshandy, you can invite as many team members as you like–again, right from the base plan.

You can assign roles such as Admin, Manager, Team Member, etc, and provide custom access.

Instantly.ai

With Instanly.ai, you can start inviting team members only from the Hyper Growth plan – $77.6 per month (billed annually)

Moreover, if you’re an agency, you would be paying $77.6 for each workspace to add members to manage that client.

So, that actually adds to the cost of adding team members as well!

Apollo

In Apollo, the pricing is straightforward; you have to pay the plan’s cost for each team member you invite.

So if you’re on the basic plan ($39 per month. Billed annually) and you want to invite 5 team members, then you will have to pay $2,340 yearly.

Again, Saleshandy is a clear winner here as it is a cost-effective alternative to Instantly.ai and Apollo.

3. AI Outcome (Analytics)

Saleshandy

Now, Saleshandy will automatically use AI to scan replies from prospects and add them under one of the categories based on the tone and intent.

• Interested
• Not Interested
• Meeting Booked
• Out of Office
• Closed
• Not Now
• Do Not Contact

This will save you a lot of time, which you can use to close more deals.

Instantly

Instantly also has a similar feature that can help you categorize emails based on the prospects’ replies.

But it is not that accurate.

Apollo

Offers excellent and detailed analytics, but it comes with a learning curve to decode it.

Here, Saleshandy also wins by providing an easy and effective way to see the outcomes of your cold email campaigns.

4. Pricing For Businesses and Agencies

Saleshandy

Saleshandy has two pricing plans.

1. Cold Emailing
2. B2B Lead Finder

The basic plan starts at $25/month and includes unlimited email accounts and agency clients.

Saleshandy’s Lead Finder plans start at $66 per month, billed annually.

Instantly

The basic plan (Growth) starts at $30/month with unlimited email accounts.

However, for agencies, the starting plan is Hyper Growth, which starts at $77.6 per month.

Apollo

The basic plan starts at $39 per month for a 250-email-sending limit (daily) and 1 mailbox to connect.

You also get 2,400 email credits per year with this plan.

In the pricing part, Saleshandy wins as the most economical tool for businesses and agencies.

It offers just the necessary features you’ll need to prospects and send cold emails while being reasonably priced.

5. UI/UX

Saleshandy

Saleshandy has a very friendly and simple UI/UX.

From the moment you start using it, you’ll notice how effortlessly you can navigate the platform.

Many users have highlighted how well-planned and easy-to-use the interface is.

It allows you to focus on your core tasks without getting bogged down by a complicated interface.

Instantly

You’ll also find that Instantly.ai has a simple and clean UI/UX interface.

Most new users have started that it hardly took them much time to learn thanks to the simplicity of Instanly.ai’s design.

Apollo

Too many features make the UI look clumsy and cluttered.

Sometimes, the UI is confusing, and certain features are not easily accessible.

For example, the mailbox rotation feature is important for scaling your email outreach, but it’s not easily accessible.

We had to contact Apollo’s support to find the feature.

Here, Saleshandy and Instantly.ai win in the UI/UX part.

Choose The Right Tool For Cold Emailing

In the battle between Apollo Vs. Instantly.ai, we have learned that Apollo is much better suited for prospecting, while Instantly.ai is for cold email outreach.

That said, if you’re looking for a cold email tool that is far less complicated, cost-effective, and allows you to manage unlimited clients and teams, you should look at Saleshandy.

It has far less complicated features and allows you to manage unlimited clients and team members.

Apart from this it also has powerful features like unified inbox, email personalization, and user-friendly UI/UX. 

Pricing is one factor that helps Saleshandy stand out as a winner. Compared to Apollo and Instantly, it offers more features in a lower price range.

You should sign up for the free trial of Saleshandy to see how it can be the right tool for your needs.

FAQs: Apollo vs. Instantly.ai

Is there anything better to opt for than Apollo and Instantly?

Well, if you want both a lead database and a cold email campaign set up in a single tool, you must try Saleshandy. It has a 700M+ lead database to help you scale up your cold emailing campaigns effectively. 

Which cold emailing tool is best for managing unlimited clients?

Well, Saleshandy is the only tool that helps manage unlimited clients and is an ideal tool for large-scale agencies. Most importantly, there is no additional cost for adding clients.

Does Saleshandy offer the unlimited team feature?

Yes, Saleshandy helps lead gen agencies add unlimited teams and team members to manage cold email campaigns. The admin can add managers and team members and assign roles and authorities. 

Who tool helps with an accurate B2B lead database?

Apollo is definitely one of the most recommended tools for B2B lead databases. Also, Saleshandy has an extensive database of 700M+ with advanced filters to search your ICPs in minutes.