I Tried the 9 Best Instantly Alternatives: Here is What I Found

Instantly.ai is one of the leading cold email software used by many companies and agencies.

But it is super expensive!! 

Why? 

Well,

• To access many necessary cold email features, such as email verifier, you have to pay additionally from your base subscription plan.
• If you are an agency, then you have to buy separate workspaces to add and manage your clients.

Apart from being heavily priced, many users have complained (and I agree) that Instantly’s interface is complex to navigate and can be buggy sometimes. 

That’s why I decided to find Instantly.ai alternatives.

I tested out 15+ cold emailing tools and finalized 9 to be the perfect alternatives to Instantly.ai.

In this blog, I’ll:

• List out 9 cold email tools  you can use instead of Instantly.ai
• My personal review after using each tool
• Show you how each of them compares to Instantly

So if Instantly isn’t a good fit for you, check out our blog to find your best options.

Let’s get started! 

Instantly Alternatives- Table of Contents

• Comparison table of top 3 Instantly alternatives
• Top 9 Alternatives to Instantly.ai 
• Pick The Best Instantly Alternative 
• FAQs

Overview of Top 3 Instantly Alternatives in 30 Seconds

Don’t have enough time to read the entire blog?

That’s ok; here’s a sneak peek of how these cold email tools are better than Instantly!

Top 9 Alternatives to Instantly.ai 

I have tried all these tools during their trial periods, reviewed user feedback, evaluated pricing plans to check their cost-effectiveness, and compiled my findings to share an unbiased review of these Instantly alternatives.

Here’s a list of the top 9 Instantly alternatives:

1. Saleshandy
2. Lemlist
3. Woodpecker
4. Smartlead.ai
5. Reply.io
6. Apollo.io
7. QuickMail
8. MailShake
9. Snov.io

Keep scrolling to get a detailed review of these Instantly.ai alternatives!

1. Saleshandy

G2: 4.6/5 ⭐(630+ reviews) 
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐(120+ reviews) 

Saleshandy offers all the cold emailing features that Instantly does, but at much more affordable prices.

If you’re an agency looking for a more scalable and cost-effective alternative to Instantly, I highly recommend Saleshandy.

Here’s why:

With Instantly, you have to buy separate workspaces to manage each client! 

Also, you have to buy Instantly’s Hypergrowth plan at $77.6/month to access agency features like workspaces, agency view, etc. 

For instance, you are an agency with 8 clients, and the cost breakdown is as follows:

• $77.6/month × 8 clients = $620.8/month
• Annual cost = $7,449.6

PS: This excludes add-ons like email verification credits, CRM access, website tracking, and B2B lead finder. 

Yes! The cost is too much!! 

However, this is not the case with Saleshandy! 

You can manage and add unlimited clients from a single platform (no separate workspaces needed)

If you purchase Saleshandy’s Outreach Pro plan at $74/month, you will pay just $888/year to manage the same 8 clients. 

Also, with Saleshandy’s Outreach Pro plan ($74/month), you get the following:

• Unlimited email accounts
• Unlimited clients
• Unlimited team members
• 500 Email Finder Credits
• 125,000 Emails Per Month
• 10,000 Email Verification Credits

This means you are only paying the platform subscription fee without any additional costs!

Saleshandy is the most ROI-friendly cold email software in the market!

Key Features 

• Unlimited Client Management: You can add and manage unlimited clients from a single workspace without additional costs.
• Automate Multi-Step Email Sequences: With Saleshandy, you can create personalized, multi-step email sequences with unlimited follow-up emails. 
• B2B Lead Finder: It has a B2B database with a global coverage of 700M+ profiles and 60M+ companies. (which is almost 4X bigger than Instantly’s B2B database) 
• Email Deliverability Suite: Saleshandy has various features, such as automated email warm-up, sequence score, and sender rotation, that work on a human-like email-sending mechanism to build the optimum sender’s reputation.
• Unified Inbox: It offers a built-in reply management feature that automatically categorizes replies, such as “meeting booked,” “interested,” etc., and allows you to reply and forward messages. 
• Personalization Features: Saleshandy provides Merge Tags, Spintax, and Variable Tags features to send personalized emails at scale. 

Pros

• You can add unlimited email accounts, clients, and team members without paying any additional money.
• UI/UX is intuitive, and the interface is easy to navigate. 
• Unused Lead Finder credits roll over to the next billing cycle.
• You can set up a Do Not Contact list.
• Build and manage unlimited teams. 
• White labeling for agencies is available. 
• Native integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Zoho. 
• It has a free LinkedIn Chrome extension. 
• Customer support is great (vouched by 5000+ happy Saleshandy customers). 

Cons

• Only 7 days of free trial. 

Saleshandy is the best Instantly Alternative for: Lead generation agencies, businesses, and solopreneurs looking to generate more leads through scalable cold email campaigns. 

It offers good value-for-money plans and lets you try its product for 7 days before purchasing. 

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Outreach Starter: $25/mo 
• Outreach Pro: $74/mo 
• Outreach Scale: $149/mo 
• Outreach Scale Plus100k: $219/mo

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

2. Lemlist

G2: 4.5/5 ⭐(260+ reviews) 
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐(380+ reviews) 

If you want to broaden your outreach channels, you can choose Lemlist as an alternative to Instantly.
With Lemlist, you can send cold emails, reach out to your prospects through LinkedIn, and cold calling.

While I was trying out Lemlist during its trial period, I found that its UI/UX is complex, and you will need a decent amount of time to understand how the product works and how you can connect your email accounts, create sequences, and find leads.

Moreover, if you are looking to switch from Instantly because of pricing, then I would suggest not to go with Lemlist. Because Lemlist has a per-seat pricing plan and you can’t add unlimited email accounts. 

Lemlist’s highest-paid pricing plan, priced at $129/month, caps you at 15 sending emails per user.

And if you run an agency, just imagine the price you will pay to handle clients and add team members! (THE CALCULATION WILL BLOW YOUR MIND) 🤯

Rough maths tells us that with Lemlist, you will be spending $46,440 yearly to handle 10 clients. 

$129 X 10 (1 client = 1 team) X 3 (User = team members) = $3,870/mo  or $46,440/year. 

Therefore, why not choose a better alternative to Instantly? 

Add unlimited email accounts and manage unlimited clients with Saleshandy ~ Sign up for FREE (No credit card required).

Key Features

• Advanced Personalization Features: It allows you to personalize texts, images, videos, and landing pages in your email copies. 
• Unified Inbox: You can track all your multichannel interactions in a single view.
• Email Finder: To help you find emails from your prospects, it has a database and Chrome extension. 
• AI Features: Lemlist has various AI features that help you create multichannel sequences and personalized email copies. 

Pros

• Integrations with various CRMs, enrichment & workflows are available. 
• It has a built-in email scheduler (lemcal) that allows you to schedule and manage appointments. 
• With a built-in email verifier, you can verify leads. 
• Lemlist has an extensive template hub. 

Cons

• It offers per-seat pricing, which can quickly become expensive. 
• The interface is complex. 

Lemlist is the Alternative to Instantly for Businesses looking to launch multi-channel outreach campaigns. 

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Free Forever Plan: $0/mo 
• Email Starter: $32/mo/1 sending email/user  
• Email Pro: $55/mo/3 sending email/user 
• Multichannel Expert: $79/mo/5 sending email /user
• Outreach Scale: $ 129/mo/15 sending email /user 

What Do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

If you want to get a detailed overview of Lemlist Vs Instantly then read our blog.

3. Woodpecker

G2: 4.3/5 ⭐(60+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐(30+ reviews)

The next Instantly alternative on our list is Woodpecker.

Just like Instantly, you can connect unlimited email accounts and invite unlimited team members at no additional cost. However, where it will limit you is in how many prospects are contacted.

For instance, in its cold email plan priced at $29/month, you can connect unlimited email accounts, but you can only contact 500 prospects. The rest is a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you can adjust the limits and the price will increase accordingly.

So, while I was using Woodpecker, I found that it has an easy-to-navigate interface and you can easily launch condition-based campaigns.

Also, you can A/B test the 5 best versions of your email copy that you can either write yourself or take help of AI. With Woodpecker you can automate your cold email sequences and manually add tasks for Calls, SMS, and LinkedIn.

However, what shocked me was the turnaround time Woodpecker’s customer support took to answer my queries. I raised some questions to their customer support, but they took more than 20 minutes to answer my queries. (Obviously, I wasn’t happy with it)

Also, what grabbed my attention (to be disappointed only) while I was exploring its pricing plans, was that API, webhooks, and integrations are not included in any of their pricing plans. You’d need to pay an additional $20/month if you want to use any of these functionalities.

And if you are running an agency and considering Woodpecker as an Instantly alternative, you should know that you need to pay $27/month to add each client, and an additional $5/month for white-labeling.

Key Features

• Centralized Inbox: You can see messages from all mailboxes in one place, and messages are automatically organized into folders such as ‘interested,’ ‘auto-replied,’ or ‘bounced,’ etc.
• AI Email Writer: It allows you to generate unique email copies with the help of generative AI at scale.
• Adaptive Sending: This feature anticipates that your email provider is going to block you and prevents your email account from getting blocked.

Pros

• It allows you to adjust the daily sending limits.
• With its A/B testing, you can test up to 5 versions. 
• You can verify unlimited email addresses via Bouncer.

Cons

• To access their integration feature, you need to pay an additional $20. 
• Customer support takes time to respond. 
• You need to add $27/month to add clients. 

Check out these Woodpecker Alternatives if these Woodpecker’s limitations are bothering you.

Woodpecker is the Instantly.ai Alternative for Startups who want to start with their outreach campaigns.

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Cold Email: $20/mo
• Agency: $33/mo
• Custom: Custom

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

4. Smartlead.ai

G2: 4.7/5 ⭐(200+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.3/5 ⭐(4+ reviews) 

Smartlead is an on-par Instantly competitor. 

It allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and warm up unlimited mailboxes. However, the email verification credits are not included in your subscription plans; you need to pay additional money (the pricing starts from $15/mo)

Anyways, sharing my first hand experience of setting up my sequence with Smartlead – well, the process is quite straightforward, and easy to follow. 

Moreover while adding a follow up email you can either add a follow up email or manual task like LinkedIn message or call etc. 

To create email copies, you can either integrate GPT-4 by using an API key or use their template hub.

Although the steps to create sequences with Smartlead are straightforward, I was disappointed by a few glitches that I encountered here and there. 

PS: Many users on G2 have also complained about it!

Also, as an agency, you will be paying $29/client/month, which we can say is fairly reasonable in comparison to paying $77 to create another workspace with Instantly.

But… why shell out money when you can add unlimited clients at no additional cost with Saleshandy! Sign-up now

Want to know how Saleshandy is better than Smartlead? Checkout this Smartlead vs Saleshandy

Key Features

• SmartDelivery: With this feature, you can automate and run deliverability tests. 
• Unified Master Inbox: You can manage all your conversations from one place. 
• Dynamic IP Rotation: This feature ensures warmed-up IP allocation for every campaign.

Pros

• Native integrations with HubSpot, Clay & Listkit. 
• It has a mobile app
• UI/UX is appealing.
• Integrating capabilities is powerful. 

Cons

• The platform is buggy. 
• Custom pricing is only available for monthly billing. 

Smartlead.ai is one the best Instantly alternatives for: Solopreuners and mid size businesses who want to take their cold email game up a notch. 

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

SmartLead’s pricing is divided into two sections: 

Cold Outreach

• Basic Plan: $32.5/mo 
• Pro Plan: $78.3/mo 

There is a Custom Plan as well,  which is priced at $174/month

SmartDelivery

• Growth: $128/month
• Pro: $246/month
• Expert: $584/month

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

5. Reply.io

G2: 4.6/ 5 ⭐(1300+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/ 5 ⭐(90+ reviews)

You can consider Reply as an alternative to Instantly if you are looking for a sales engagement platform. It is an AI-powered platform that helps you to automate all stages of sales cycle: Discover, Engage and Convert. 

However, what impressed me was its analytical and reporting features! It generates in-depth graphical reports that make it easy to track all the important features. 

Moreover, what I feel is that you will need sometime to get used to the platform because it has lots of features and it takes time to get used to them. 

Key Features

• AI-powered features: It offers various AI powered features that help you to generate ice breakers, build sequences, handle replies, etc. 
• Meeting Scheduler in Sequences: With its built-in meeting scheduler, you can book meetings directly from your sequences. 
• Prospecting Suite: To help you find the right and targeted leads, it offers features like Live Data, real-time data search, etc. 

Pros

• You can warm up unlimited email accounts.
• It allows you to launch multi-channel sequences. 
• Reply has an email finding  Chrome extension. 

Cons

• Linkedin automation is charged per user, and in agency plans, it is charged as an add-on.
• You can only add unlimited clients in the Agency plan, which is priced at $166

Reply.io is the Instantly Alternative for: For businesses and agencies who want a complete sales engagement platform to crush their revenue quotas.  

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

Sales Engagement

• Email Volume: $49/mo
• Multichannel: $89/user /month
• Agency: $166/mo

Apart from this, Reply also charges additionally for 

• AI SDR New
• Live Data 
• AI Chat

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

6. Apollo.io

G2: 4.8/5 ⭐ (6,800+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐(340+ reviews)

If you are looking for an Instantly.ai alternative that has advanced prospecting capabilities and basic cold emailing capabilities then I would suggest that you choose Apollo.io. 

It has a robust database and Chrome extension that allows you to find your prospects’ contact information accurately.

However, I was not very impressed with its cold emailing features, such as building sequences and adding manual tasks for cold calls and LinkedIn outreach. 

Why? 

Because the grid for creating sequences, making calls and completing tasks is a bit messy. There’s a lot of information there and a lot to do, which simply wasted my time to figure out what to do!

Also if you are running an agency then I would recommend that you consider Apollo for prospecting but for launching outreach campaigns I don’t think it is a great choice! 

Key Features

• B2B Database: It has a B2B database of 275M contacts and 73M companies.
• Sales engagement: You can reach out to your prospects through emails, calls, automated LinkedIn tasks, and more.
• Scores and Signals: With this feature, you can find leads with the highest probability of converting using signal-based prospecting. 

Pros

• Free Chrome extension. 
• It has conversation intelligence software. 
• You can manage your entire sales cycle with Apollo.io. 

Cons

• Significant limitations exist in the number of export credits allowed per year.
• Cold emailing capabilities are basic and not suitable for agencies. 

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Free: $0
• Basic: $49/user/mo
• Professional: $79/user/mo
• Organization: $119/ user/mo

Apollo.io is the Instantly Alternative for: Teams looking to get accurate email addresses and phone numbers of their prospects. 

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

7. QuickMail

G2: 4.7/5 ⭐ (95+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.7/5 ⭐(20+ reviews) 

QuickMail is another Instantly alternative you can consider if you are looking to do multichannel outreach. However, during my research, I found that the platform becomes expensive as you scale.

Because it allows you to connect limited:

• Email accounts
• LinkedIn accounts
• Clients

In its pricing plans.

Unlike Instantly, which allows you to connect unlimited email addresses, you can’t do this with QuickMail. With its Single Basic plan, priced at $49/month, you can connect 5 Email Addresses and 1 LinkedIn Account.

Whereas, just like Instantly, it charges additionally for creating workspaces. With the Basic Agency plan, priced at $399/month, you can add only 5 workspaces for free; for the rest, you have to pay $49.

Key Features

• Reply Handling: It automatically detects the sentiment of your prospects and generates a reply for it. 
• Deliverability AI: This feature automatically analyzes the inbox performance of your email accounts and changes the way you send emails. 
• Inbox Rotation: It automatically rotates the email accounts in a sequence to maintain the daily email-sending limits. 

Pros

• It has advanced analytical capabilities. 
• Comprehensive integrating functionality. 
• You can warm up your email accounts for free with MailFlow. 

Cons

• Pricing plans are not suitable for scaling teams. 
• It offers native CRM integrations with only HubSpot & Pipedrive.

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

Single Plans

• Basic Plan: $49/month
• Pro Plan: $89/month
• Expert Plan: $129/month

Agency Plans: 

• Agency Basic Agency: $399/mo
• Agency Pro Plan: $599/mo
• Agency Expert Plan: $799/mo

QuickMail is the Instantly Alternative for: Businesses who are looking for an affordable multichannel platform.

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

8. MailShake

G2: 4.7/5 ⭐(200+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/5 (110+ reviews) 

I would recommend Mailshake as an Instantly alternative if you are looking for a cold email automation tool that also provides decent multichannel capabilities.

However, unlike Instantly, you can’t add unlimited email accounts with Mailshake. Email account limits vary as per the pricing plan.

Moreover, it does allow you to reach out to your prospects via LinkedIn and cold calls, but compared to other sales engagement tools, it has limited features.

Apart from this, I was not able to explore the product much because it does not provide a free plan; therefore, I cannot really comment on how the product looks from the inside. 

Key Features

• Phone Dialer: As part of Mailshake’s sales engagement plan, you get access to a power phone dialer that you can use to call prospects and engage with them.
• Multichannel Sales Engagement: With Mailshake, you can reach out and engage with your prospects through multiple channels such as emails, LinkedIn, and phone calls.
• Personalization Features: Mailshake has features like text replacement (mail merge) and Spintax that you can use to personalize your email copies and make them more relevant to your prospects.

Pros

• You can reach out and engage with prospects through multiple channels (emails, LinkedIn, and phone calls)
• The interface is easy to use. 
• Mailshake has a centralized email reply management system. 
• You can find relevant prospects to reach out to along with their email addresses using Data Finder.

Cons

• There is no free trial or free plan. You have to pay upfront.
• If you downgrade your subscription or remove seats, you will not receive a refund. Instead, you will be given credits that can be adjusted with your next billing cycle.

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Starter: $25 /mo
• Email Outreach: $45/mo
• Sales Engagement: $85 /mo

MailShake is the Instantly Alternative for:  Large teams for whom budget is not the concern. 

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

9. Snov.io

G2: 4.6/5 ⭐(400+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐(200+ reviews)

Snov is a great tool to find email addresses. You must be wondering why I have added it to the list of Instantly alternatives, right?

Well, over the past few years, it has evolved a lot and also offers cold emailing and LinkedIn capabilities. Moreover, with Snov, you can add unlimited follow-ups, email campaigns (+AI), sender accounts, and mailbox rotation.

While I explored the product during the free period, I was impressed by its ability to create drip campaigns, as it made it easy for me to take a look at my sequence at a glance. Also, I was able to easily find leads on LinkedIn and directly create a sequence.

Key Features

• Email Finder: You can find the email addresses of your prospects with a B2B database and email finder. 
• Cold Email Automation: You can create unlimited cold email accounts and add as many follow-ups as you want.
• LinkedIn Automation: To take a multichannel approach, you can automate various LinkedIn processes. 

Pros

• It has an in-built email verifier. 
• Unused credits will be rolled over to the next month. 
• You can also find email addresses using your social media URLs.
• With Snov, you can add unlimited email accounts and team members. 

Cons

• It has basic email personalization and warm-up functionality. 
• Email verification credits are not included in the pricing plans. 

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually) 

• Free Trial: $0/mo
• Starter: $30/mo
• Pro 5K: $75/mo

Snov.io is the Instantly Alternative for: Business looking for an email finder tool that offers cold emailing capabilities as well.

What do Users Have to Say?

Source: G2

Pick The Best Instantly Alternative 

I have concluded my unbiased review of all the Instantly alternatives!

So, which one is the best Instantly alternative?

Well, the answer depends on your outbound requirements. 

Do you want to scale your cold email outreach, do multi-channel targeting, or want a tool to streamline your entire sales process?

However, if you are still unsure which of these Instantly alternatives to choose, you can sign up for Saleshandy. It has a 7-day free trial, which can help you make a decision faster.

Instantly Alternatives- FAQs

1. Can I migrate my data easily from Instantly to any of these alternatives?

You can easily migrate your data smoothly to any of these Instantly alternatives. All you have to do is export your data from Instantly into a common file format like CSV and then import it into the new platform

Moreover, it’s always a good idea to contact the support team of the Instantly alternative you want to use and ask for their assistance in this process. 

2. Which alternative would be the most suitable for a startup with limited resources?

As a startup, you would have limited resources. Hence, you should look for those Instantly alternatives that offer a free trial, scalability, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness. For a startup with limited resources, Saleshandy could be a good option as it provides a free trial and pay-as-you-go pricing.

3. What are the advantages of having a unified inbox in lead generation tools?

A unified inbox in a cold email outreach tool allows you to manage all your communications from one place. This, in turn, helps you save time and effort switching between different platforms and ensures that you don’t miss any important messages. Many of the above-mentioned Instantly alternatives have unified inbox functionality.

4. Why are email follow-ups important for successful cold email outreach?

Email follow-ups are crucial to keeping the conversation going and can help turn a cold lead into a warm prospect. However, your initial email might often go unnoticed or get buried under other emails.

By sending a follow-up email, you remind the recipient of your previous communication and increase the likelihood of engaging with them.