Smartlead.ai Review 2025: Features, Pricing & More Details

I know how it feels to grind the company’s funds on a tool that’s new to you.

Especially when you are trying Smartlead.ai, which costs a lot.

But don’t worry, in this post I’ll show you,

• Smartlead’s best & worst features
• The biggest issues users currently face
• Whether or not I recommend it
• And more…

Also, if Smartlead doesn’t seem like the right fit, I’ll share a budget-friendly alternative that covers all its features – so stick around!

I won’t bore you with any more fluff, so let’s move on to the review part.

What Is Smartlead & How It Can Help You?

Basically, Smartlead positions itself as a cold email software that blends tech with AI to improve the performance of your outreach.

It helps you boost your email deliverability, streamlines automation, and maximizes the impact of your campaigns for lead generation.

It’s primarily used for creating hyper-personalized emails, which ensures that your cold outreach feels natural and engaging.

Smartlead has highly focused on features like dynamic IP rotation (to prevent your emails from being marked as spam) and advanced email warm-ups (to build trust with email providers) so that you get top-tier email deliverability.

That’s just the surface; there are many other features that help you execute and manage your cold emails smoothly, but that will be covered in the section – review of Smartlead’s features.

Summary of Smartlead’s User Reviews

The best way to know what’s good or bad about any tool is through its reviews.

FYI – I got in touch with some of Smartlead’s users (who are now using Saleshandy) and got to know about their experience of the platform.

What users like about Smartlead?

• Always improving the platform with new features and ideas
• Strong email deliverability suite
• An active founder who’s very prompt in addressing users’ issues
• Helpful templates for first-time cold emailers

What users don’t like about Smartlead?

• Poor UI/UX (Outdated UI)
• Frequent bugs and glitches
• Poor email warm-up quality with high bounce rates
• Frequent email disconnection
• Overpriced features

For better clarity, I have also handpicked some useful Smartlead reviews from G2. Take a look!

Smartlead Pros and Cons

Smartlead would claim all the good things while hiding its drawbacks.

And I am here to uncover its bright and dark side so that you can make rational decisions while keeping all the data points in mind.

Let’s start with the pros first.

It’s true that Smartlead is a very good platform when it comes to cold emailing, but there are many other tools that counter all of Smartlead’s shortcomings.

Interested? Check out my list of Smartlead alternatives and why they are better.

Review of Smartlead’s Features

You already know the pros and cons of Smartlead. But there’s more.

To give you a clear and unbiased review, I have tried and tested Smartlead and have listed down the non-negotiable features for cold emailing.

1. Cold Email Automation
2. Email Warm-Ups
3. Master Inbox
4. Client Management (Agency Feature)
5. Analytics and Reporting
6. Integrations
7. Team Member Management

1. Cold Email Automation

Cold emails should not consume your time.

That’s why Smartlead (and other cold email software) has ensured to provide automations that save time.

The best part? – You can create dynamic sequences that can adapt to the recipient’s behavior.

Here’s how.

When you create emails, you also get an option to create sub sequences based on certain conditions.

For example, if you want to send a different type of follow-up for specific phrases or intents, then you can create a condition and set up the subsequence (like in the screenshot below).

For email creation and personalization, you can link your ChatGPT account through API. After that, you can give prompts to customize your emails.

There’s a small limitation here. In Smartlead, there is no way to check whether your emails will land in spam.

Why is this a limitation? Because many times, you might use some spammy words, or the language can be a bit salesy, which can trigger spam filters.

To check this, you might have to use some third-party tools.
(Unlike Saleshandy, where you get an AI writing assistant to guide you)  

One cool feature, Smartlead.ai lets you create multiple variants of your emails so that you can test them.

What’s cool about it? – You can manually distribute the percentage of the emails to A/B test.

This helps you test and optimize the best cold email framework that works for you.

2. Email Warm-Ups

There are no cold emails without warm-ups. If there are, then those emails are already in the spam folder.

Smartlead knows this, and that’s why it provides unlimited email warm-ups from its basic plan itself so that you don’t have to go to a third-party platform for this.

The process to set up email warm-ups with Smartlead is quite effortless. You simply have to enable it once and your email accounts will gradually build a positive reputation.

All you need to do is check in occasionally to ensure everything is running smoothly.

3. Master Inbox

When you send your cold emails from multiple email accounts (with sender rotation), it becomes difficult to manage the replies from each and every account.

To solve this problem, Smartlead has a feature called Master Inbox (just like Saleshandy’s unified inbox), where all your replies are gathered and categorized.

This helps you to keep track of each and every reply easily from one place.

4. Client Management (Relevant for Agencies)

Client management is only relevant for individuals, solopreneurs, or agencies who handle clients.

Note 1: This feature is available only in Smartlead’s pro plan (which costs $94/month).

Note 2: Every client you add costs you $29/month/client.

So yes, Smartlead has a feature of client management, but it costs a lot. A LOT!

Also, it allows you to do whitelabeling for your clients. (Which is kind of obvious when we look at the cost to add clients)

5. Analytics and Reporting

Analytics is something where Smartleads falls a little short to its competitors.

Why? It’s not that insightful.

I agree that it does allow you to filter your performance based on campaigns and clients. It also gives a different analysis report for each campaign.

But it still does not hit the mark.

I mean, just take a look at this analytics dashboard from one of Smartlead’s competitors.

6. Integrations

Here’s a list of integrations Smartlead provides.

1. Hubspot – CRM
2. Clay – Platform to find potential leads and data enrichment
3. Listkit – B2B data provider
4. Gmail, Outlook, and Zoho Mail – Email service providers
5. Zapier – Automation platform
6. Slack – Team communication platform
7. And more…

These integrations make your cold email campaigns smooth by connecting Smartlead to the tools you already use.

Here’s how they help:

• You can easily pull leads from platforms like Listkit or Clay directly into Smartlead (which avoids manual labor).
• Automate workflows with Zapier integration. It lets you connect Smartlead to hundreds of apps so that you can automate repetitive tasks.
• To send quick updates to your communication platforms like Slack
• Smartlead’s HubSpot integration can ensure that every lead interaction is automatically logged in your CRM (this way, your sales reps always have the latest insights).

Note: Smartlead.ai supports you with API and Webhooks. So, even if you don’t have the tools they integrate with, you can still streamline your actions.

7. Team Member Management

In Smartlead’s Pro plan, you can invite your team members and assign them specific roles.

The best part – You can invite your entire team to the platform at no additional charge, be it 5 or 500 folks.

Here is the list of roles you can assign them:

• Admin – Has access to everything except the Billing section in settings
• Full Member – Has access to everything except the Billing and Team Member sections in settings.
• Read-Only User – Has read-only access to all sections; no editing or modification allowed for this role.

This is a very helpful feature for both agencies and non-agencies.

For agencies, you can add different teams to manage clients separately.

Similarly, for non-agencies, you can have various teams, like sales, SEO (backlinks), etc., that can work simultaneously on their respective campaigns.

Smartlead’s Pricing – Something Fishy Here?

At a first glance at Smartlead’s pricing page, everything seems normal.

Because they have a very transparent pricing structure.

But as you scroll down, you will realize that there are a lot of add-ons that you might need (which cost a lot).

If you insist on using Smartlead, here are some of my recommendations for each of the pricing plans:

• Basic Plan – $39/month
• Pro Plan – $94/month

Smartlead’s Basic Plan – $39/month

This plan will give you all the basic features that you need to kickstart your cold email campaign.

But keep in mind that there’s no integration available in the basic plan. You cannot add clients or team members to the project.

Also, there’s no priority customer support in this plan.

Smartlead’s Pro Plan – $94/month

In this plan, you will get active customer support, along with many important features like integrations, unlimited team members, and 1 free client.

That’s a wrap. I hope this blog helped in clearing your doubts about Smartlead.

But if you are still skeptical about using Smartlead, then I suggest you take a look at the next section where I’ve talked about a platform better than Smartlead.

Is There a Tool Better Than Smartlead.ai?

The answer is yes!!

Why?? – Because when I tried Smartlead, I realized that it’s quite overrated.

There are better tools in the market now.

One of the most promising ones is Saleshandy.

Why?? 

Because I have 3 non-negotiable reasons!!

• First – Saleshandy covers nearly all of the features provided by Smartlead
• Second – Comes with a huge lead database of 700M+ verified B2B contacts
• Third – A customer support team that actually answers when needed

But that’s just the start.

Saleshandy actually helps you to land your emails in the recipient’s inbox.

Here’s how –

When you create your email sequences, Saleshandy’s algorithm scores your email content + overall setup and suggests improvements.

Take a look at the screenshot below.

Plus, you get a better UI and pricing that won’t break the bank.

FAQs

1. What is the primary advantage of using Smartlead.ai for cold email campaigns?

Smartlead.ai offers robust email automation features, including email warmup, AI-assisted composition, personalization with variables and Spintax, and A/B testing, enhancing deliverability and efficiency.

2. How does Saleshandy compare to Smartlead.ai in terms of integrations and pricing?

Saleshandy provides more integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive) and flexible pricing, starting at $25/month billed annually, without additional charges for onboarding clients or team members.

3. Can I use Saleshandy or Smartlead.ai to manage multiple email accounts and team members?

Yes, both tools allow managing multiple email accounts and team members, but Saleshandy offers unlimited accounts and team management without extra fees, unlike Smartlead.ai.