Complete Lemlist vs. Instantly Comparison Guide for Cold Email Success
Complete Lemlist vs. Instantly Comparison Guide for Cold Email Success
Complete Lemlist vs. Instantly Comparison Guide for Cold Email Success
Nov 26, 2024
With cold emailing, open and reply rates are everything. While writing engaging copy that piques your recipients’ interest is essential to boosting those rates, ensuring your email infrastructure is sound and capable of boosting your cold email deliverability is equally essential. When that’s in order, you can optimize your cold email outreach campaigns for success. Choosing the right email outreach tool is a great place to start. In this post, we’ll help you by comparing two popular choices—Lemlist vs Instantly. By the end of this comparison, you’ll know which email outreach tool can help you reach your unique goals and improve the performance of your cold email campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Lemlist? (Quick Overview)
Lemlist is a widespread email outreach and automation tool. It helps businesses improve their cold email campaigns through personalization and automation. Over time, it has gained attention for features like:
Lemwarm
Email verification
Let me explain the good and the not-so-good aspects of Lemlist from a practical perspective.
Good Stuff About Lemlist
Things Customers Liked About Lemlist
Lemlist does many things right, especially for users looking to enhance their outreach. Here’s what stands out:
1. Lemwarm (Email Warm-Up Tool)
Gradually build your email account’s sender reputation. Reduces the chances of emails landing in spam.
2. Multi-Channel Outreach (LinkedIn and Email)
It lets you combine email campaigns with LinkedIn connections for better engagement. Adds a personal touch to outreach.
3. B2B Database
Offers a large database to find potential leads directly. Saves time compared to sourcing leads manually.
4. Email Verifier
Validate email addresses to reduce bounces. It helps maintain a clean sender reputation.
5. Premade Templates
Provides ready-to-use templates for cold emails. It speeds up campaign creation, though some templates need customization. These features make Lemlist appealing for businesses new to cold outreach or those looking for simplicity in managing campaigns.
Not So Good Stuff About Lemlist
Let me walk you through some challenges I’ve faced with Lemlist after using it for a while. These are things I wish I had known earlier.
1. Poor Email Deliverability
Lemlist struggles to ensure emails reach inboxes. Here’s what I’ve noticed: Even with proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setups, many emails land in spam folders. Their warm-up tool, Lemwarm, helps slightly but isn’t a permanent fix. Poor deliverability is a dealbreaker for outreach campaigns—fewer leads see your emails, which can hurt not only your campaign performance but also your sender’s reputation.
2. Poor Customer Support
Getting support when you’re stuck shouldn’t be this hard. I’ve experienced delayed responses when I reached out with urgent issues. Sometimes, the reactions felt generic, like templates, rather than tailored help. If you’re managing time-sensitive outreach, waiting for support can be frustrating. When you pay for a tool, you expect better backup when things go wrong.
3. Basic Personalization
Personalization is a big selling point for Lemlist, but here’s the catch: The options are mostly surface-level—like adding names, company logos, or generic snippets. For campaigns needing deeper segmentation or tailored messaging, Lemlist doesn’t deliver. This makes it hard to stand out, especially when competitors offer smarter personalization tools. Your emails can feel less unique, which impacts how your leads engage.
4. Limited Reporting and Analytics
Data drives decisions, and this is where Lemlist feels lacking. Their reporting features are basic, often giving you just the surface numbers. Digging deeper into metrics like engagement trends or campaign-specific insights is hard. Without granular data, optimizing future campaigns becomes a guessing game. When managing multiple campaigns, better analytics are needed to refine your approach.
5. Reply Management Issues
One of the most frustrating parts of Lemlist is handling replies. The platform doesn’t offer advanced features to categorize or prioritize responses. For high-volume campaigns, keeping track of essential replies becomes chaotic. You might miss follow-ups or delay responding to key leads. This creates unnecessary hurdles for a tool that’s supposed to simplify outreach.
Pricing: What Lemlist Will Cost You
Free Plan:
Use the Lemlist Chrome extension to:
Find
Verify
Export
Up to 100 leads’ emails or 25 phone numbers each month for free!
Email Starter:
$32/month
1 Sending email per user
Up to 100 free verified emails per month
Up to 25 free verified phone numbers per month
Unlimited LinkedIn leads export (Chrome extension)
450M+ leads database
Unlimited campaigns & emails
Custom text variables
AI personalization
Automated follow-ups
Centralized conversations inbox
Tracking & custom reports
Email Pro:
$55/month
3 Sending emails per user
Everything in Email Starter
Up to 150 free verified emails per month
Up to 38 free verified phone numbers per month
Inbox rotation
CRM integration (Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive)
AI variables
Custom images
A/B testing
Emails warm-up & deliverability boost (Lemwarm)
Live lead status monitoring
Multichannel Expert:
$79/month
5 Sending emails per user
Everything in Email Pro
Up to 300 free verified emails per month
Up to 75 free verified phone numbers per month
Automated LinkedIn actions (visits, invites, messages)
Conditioned sequence steps
Call steps (VoIP integrations)
Centralized multichannel inbox
Intents & Signals targeting
Custom landing pages
Email templates library API, webhooks, & integrations (Zapier, n8n, Make)
Premium support
Outreach Scale:
$129/month
15 Sending emails per user
Everything in Multichannel Expert
Up to 500 free verified emails per month
Up to 125 free verified phone numbers per month
Personalized (1:1) onboarding
Dedicated account manager (5+ seats)
Related Reading
• Automated Lead Generation
• Email Prospecting
• How to Generate B2B Leads
• How to Warm Up Email Domain
• How Many Emails Can You Send Before Considered Spam
• Best Time to Send Cold Emails
• How to Cold Email
• Best Cold Email Templates B2B
• Email Outreach Best Practices
• Email Outreach Strategy
What is Instantly?
Instantly is an email outreach tool that helps businesses scale cold email outreach. Instantly streamlines the entire process of sending cold emails, so sales teams can spend less time on tedious tasks and more time closing deals, with a suite of features for:
Automation
Personalization
Tracking
Analytics
Key Features of Instantly
Instantly automates the email outreach process by sending cold emails and follow-ups automatically. This feature improves efficiency by ensuring timely communication and consistency. For example, if a prospect replies to an email, Instantly can automatically stop future follow-ups so the conversation can continue without delay. Beyond automation, Instantly supports dynamic email personalization, allowing users to create unique messages for each recipient. The platform also includes an email warm-up feature that gradually increases email sending volume to improve deliverability and avoid spam filters.
Optimizing Email Campaigns with Instantly: A Guide to A/B Testing, Analytics, and Multi-Channel Integration
Instantly also offers an intuitive dashboard for:
Creating
Managing
Tracking multiple email campaigns
Users can even A/B test different versions of their emails to determine which performs better, optimizing campaign effectiveness. Detailed analytics and reporting tools offer insights into email performance, including:
Open rates
Click-through rates
Reply rates
Instantly integrates seamlessly with popular CRM systems and other marketing tools for better data management and workflow automation. The platform also supports multi-channel email and social media outreach, creating a cohesive sales strategy.
What are the Downsides of Using Instantly?
As helpful as Instantly is for cold email outreach, there are a couple of drawbacks to consider before investing in the tool.
Pricing Concerns: Instantly, it is relatively expensive, especially for small businesses and foreign markets. The basic package has limitations that prompt some users to upgrade to higher-cost plans for essential features.
Learning Curve and Setup Complexity: The domain and email setup process can be intense and confusing, particularly for those unfamiliar with technical aspects. While training is provided, it can take time to understand the setup fully.
Limited Customization and Features in Basic Plans: Users have reported limited customization options for email templates and a desire for more features in the lower-tier plans.
API and Integration Limitations: Some users need more developed API features and desire additional integrations with other tools and platforms to enhance functionality.
How Much Does Instantly Cost?
Instantly offers a variety of pricing plans tailored to different business needs and scales of operation.
Monthly Pricing
Growth Plan
Cost: $37/month
Key inclusions:
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email warmup
1,000 uploaded contacts
5,000 emails monthly
Chat support
Ideal for:
Small business or individuals just starting with email outreach
Offering essential features at a lower cost
Hypergrowth Plan
Cost: $97/month
Key inclusions:
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email warmup
25,000 uploaded contacts
100,000 emails monthly
Premium live support
Ideal for:
Growing businesses that need higher email volumes and additional support features.
Light Speed Plan
Cost: $358/month
Key inclusions:
Everything in Hypergrowth Plan
100,000 uploaded contacts
500,000 emails monthly
Ideal for:
Large businesses or high-volume email marketers needing extensive outreach capabilities.
Yearly Pricing (Save 20%)
Growth Plan
Cost: $30/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
Cost-sensitive users who prefer annual billing to save money while still accessing essential features.
Hypergrowth Plan
Cost: $77.6/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
Growing businesses looking to save costs with annual billing while accessing higher volume features.
Light Speed Plan
Cost: $286.3/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
High-volume email marketers who prefer annual billing to save money while maintaining extensive outreach capabilities.
Enterprise Plan
Cost: Custom (contact for pricing)
Key inclusion:
Everything in Hypergrowth Plan
500,000+ emails monthly
100,000+ uploaded contacts
Dedicated account manager
Shared Slack channel
Private deliverability network
Ideal for:
Large enterprises needing customized solutions and dedicated support for extensive email marketing operations.
Key Takeaways About Instantly
Instantly's pricing plans cater to different scales of operations, from small businesses to large enterprises. The yearly plans offer a 20% discount, making them cost-effective for users who prefer annual billing. Each plan includes essential features like unlimited email accounts and warmup, with higher-tier plans offering significantly more email and contact capacities, along with premium support. The Enterprise plan offers tailored solutions and dedicated support, making it suitable for large organizations with specific needs.
Related Reading
• Best Cold Email Software
• How Long Should a Cold Email Be
• B2B Cold Email Response Rates
• How to Improve Email Deliverability
• Unlimited Email Hosting
• Email Testing Tools
• Best Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Scraping Tools
• Best Sales Prospecting Tools
• Email Warm Up Tools
• Email Personalization Tools
• Sales Email Automation Tools
• Mailscale Alternatives
• Mailforge Alternatives
Lemlist vs. Instantly In-depth Comparison
Sequence Creation
When selecting a cold email tool, it’s crucial to consider of the sequence-building functionality of the following:
User interface
Experience
Ease of use
You should always prefer tools that allow you to create, edit, and customize sequences easily without the long learning curve involved.
Let’s compare the sequence builder feature of Lemlist and Instantly in detail:
Lemlist
Lemlist allows you to create complex multi-channel sequences in an easy-to-understand flow chart. You can also build campaigns manually, with the help of AI, or duplicate best-performing campaigns from your library or Lemlist’s template hub. With Lemlist, you can automate your cold email and LinkedIn outreach, whereas, for cold calling, you need to set up an API manually. You must add other outreach channels as reminders if you want to add them.
Lemlist's sequence builder
You can build your campaigns based on systematic steps or run triggered-based campaigns. (Which is impressive!)
G2 Review: “Its use of AI and organization to perfect sales sequences is second to none. The AI is very good at creating effective and bespoke campaigns, and it is easy to get an overview of your team’s performance, what’s working, and how to streamline your sequences to be the best they can be.”
Instantly
Its sequence creator is very easy to use, and you can create your sequences in a linear pattern. The email preview feature lets you see how your emails will land in your prospect’s inbox. Unlike Lemlist, you can’t create multichannel or condition-based sequences.
Instantly's dashboard
Instantly has native integration with Open AI; hence, you can use its AI Generator and Template Hub to create unique email copies.
G2 User review: “It’s really easy to connect email accounts and set them up for use; email sequences are also really easy and fast to set; you just have to complete the text I want to use, and you can add variables with no issues.”
Who Has the Best Sequence Creation Functionality?
It’s difficult to conclude which tool has the best sequence creation functionality, as both stand out.
Comparing Multichannel Outreach Tools: Lemlist vs. Instantly for Budget-Friendly Scalability
If you want to do multichannel outreach, you should undoubtedly use Lemlist. Please note that you must subscribe to its $79/mo plan to create multichannel sequences with Lemlist. In both low-tier pricing plans, you can only build cold email sequences. If you’re looking to scale cold email campaigns, this price tag allows you to connect only 5 sending emails. (Yes, scaling your cold outreach with Lemlist comes with a hefty price tag!)
On the other hand, with Instantly, you can connect unlimited email accounts even in its starter plan (priced at $30/mo) and use its simple & easy-to-use sequence builder to create your campaigns.
Choosing Between Lemlist and Instantly: Budget-Friendly Automation vs. Multichannel Campaigns
Hence, you should choose:
Lemlist, if you want to run multi-channel campaigns (though not scalable) and have a high budget.
Instantly, if you want to run cold email campaigns, connect unlimited email accounts, and use advanced automation features at a much more affordable price.
Client & Team Management
If you run multiple campaigns for your clients and need to involve various team members to cater to different client needs, you'll require collaboration features and role-based access control. These features will help you handle everything smoothly and run scalable campaigns.
Hence, your cold email software needs client and team management features.
Lemlist
There are better solutions than Lemlist for growing and scaling teams because it has a per-person pricing plan. Even with its highest-paid pricing plan, Outreach Scale, charged at $129/mo/user, limits you to 15 sending emails. Investing in Lemlist is not worth it if you run vast email campaigns at scale.
G2 User Review: “I WISH WISH WISH they had unlimited email accounts. That’s the only thing I don’t like about it: it caps you at five email accounts (15 with the pro plan). Which isn’t terrible, but only having 5 is quite rough. I hope one day they come out with more.”
Instantly
Instantly offers agency-friendly features like adding unlimited clients & team members, but it comes with an extra cost. You will get this functionality in its hyper-growth plan, priced at $77.6/mo for one workspace. If you want to create another workspace, subscribe to the hyper-growth plan again!
Managing Workspaces in Instantly: Limitations for Agencies and Cost Considerations
Instantly’s Workspaces are not shared or bundled under a single subscription, so you must pay for each separately if you have multiple workspaces. (Ouch!!) This is not apt for lead generation agencies running cold email campaigns on a larger scale.
G2 User Review: “It costs extra to add another workspace for clients to manage their campaigns.”
Who Has the Best Client & Team Management Functionality?
Both Instantly & Lemlist are not ideal solutions if you are looking for advanced client and team management functionalities at cost-effective prices.
Unified Inbox
A unified inbox lets you track replies from different sequences and email accounts in one central location. This functionality significantly saves time and effort by eliminating the need to review each reply from your prospects manually. It also allows you to quickly identify and prioritize responses from important leads.
Lemlist
Lemlist is already out of the race here because it DOESN’T offer a unified inbox feature!
Instantly
Instantly has an inbox that allows you to track, reply to, and forward all the replies from your leads. But here is the catch with its starter plan: you can ONLY preview replies but cannot send replies directly from Unibox. To have the functionality to reply to your leads’ emails directly within Unibox, you need to upgrade to the Hyper Growth or Light Speed plan.
Instantly's Unibox
G2 User Review: “I don’t like the unibox that much, and also when you delete the leads instantly, they don’t end up in your main unibox anymore, so you have to use a big email account and organize them.”
There are mixed reviews of the Unibox feature on G2. Some users have said that it needs to be fixed and slow down the updating of data, which can easily hamper the overall experience and cause a hassle in organizing the data manually. (imagine all the time that would go into it)
Who Has the Best Unified Inbox?
Well, among Lemlist & Instantly, only Instantly offers unified inbox functionality.
Personalization Features
Personalization is the most effective way to achieve high open rates; therefore, it is important to look for a cold email tool that helps you send personalized emails at scale.
Lemlist
Regarding personalization, Lemlist offers various options, such as:
Adding custom variables like first name, last name, signature
LinkedIn url
Ice breakers, etc.
Liquid syntax
You can also add customized elements to your emails, such as:
Images
Videos
Landing pages
Gifs
Leveraging Lemlist’s AI Icebreakers and Image Personalization for Smarter Cold Emails
Lemlist also allows you to create icebreakers with AI. All you have to do is give your prospect’s LinkedIn URL, and it will scrape all the data from it and give you a personalized icebreaker.
G2 User Review: “Lemlist is a great tool for us to send Cold Emails in bulk with image personalization. I really like the Image Personalization feature, which helps us insert dynamic images inside cold emails.”
Instantly
Personalization features are not limited to custom variables. You can use its native integration with Open AI to create personalized and unique content. You can also add images and emoticons to make your emails more engaging.
G2 User Review: “Another impressive aspect is the personalization tools. Instantly enables users to customize emails with dynamic content, ensuring each message feels unique and relevant to the recipient. This level of personalization increases the likelihood of engagement and positive responses.”
Who Offers the Best Personalization Feature?
Instantly beats Lemlist because of its integration with OpenAI, which can help you create personalized email copies at scale.
A-Z Testing: Lemlist vs Instantly
A-Z or multivariate testing is an advanced testing functionality that allows you to test various variants of your:
Email copies
Subject lines
CTAs
You can use this to identify and double down on the best-performing variation.
Lemlist
Again, Lemlist must be out of the race because it does not offer Multi-variant testing. It only supports A/B testing, in which you can create 2 versions of your sequence and test them.
Instantly
Conversely, Instantly offers A-Z testing functionality, which allows you to test unlimited variations of your email copies, CTAs, and subject lines. It also offers an auto-optimized A/Z testing feature that uses Instantly’s algorithm to analyze multiple variants of an email based on metrics to determine which version performs better, like:
Click
Reply
Open rates
Important Note: A-Z testing functionality is not available in the starter plan. To use this feature, subscribe to the hyper-growth or above-pricing plan.
Who Has the Best A-Z Testing Capabilities?
Well, Instantly is the winner in offering A-Z testing features. You must subscribe to Instantly’s higher pricing plans to use multivariate testing in your sequences.
Email Deliverability
You need cold email software to build a robust sender reputation. Otherwise, all your emails will land in a spam box, and there is no denying that. Hence, while you are in the selection process, ensure you give importance to email deliverability features.
Lemlist
To help you maintain high deliverability rates, Lemlist offers integration with Lemwarm, an email warm-up tool. This amazing tool mirrors human-like outreach efforts with a premium network of 10,000 users to build your domain credibility.
G2 User Review: “Lemlist also includes Lemwarm, which is a great email warm-up tool that works!”
Important Note: Lemwarm is not available in the starter pricing plan. You have to subscribe to Email Pro and the above pricing plans to use it
Instantly
Instantly has an in-built email warm-up functionality and allows unlimited email warm-ups in all its pricing plans; Users are not happy with it.
G2 User Review: “They suggested minimum 2 weeks warmup before sending emails. We wanted to send out big email campaigns, so added 25+ emails(Google workspace), let them warm up for 2 months, came back to see they’ve reset warmup progress a week ago and started from 0 again(not throttled, literally started from 0). Now the emails are at 7 warmup emails per day. They can’t detect bounced email properly and resend a campaign to that bounced address in sequence, making your bounces 200%.”
Apart from providing warm-up services, Instantly also has a “check deliverability score” feature, which is a basic feature that gives you an overview of your technical email set up. This feature is only available in the Hyper-growth pricing plan and above.
Who Has the Best Email Deliverability Features?
None of these tools offer the best email deliverability features. Although Lemlist’s email warm-up functionality is great, the pricing is too high, as Lemwarm is unavailable in the starter plan. Instantly lacks advanced email deliverability features.
Analytical Dashboard
The success of your cold email campaigns lies in monitoring their performance. It is crucial to find cold email tools with advanced analytics capabilities to identify potential leakages and bottlenecks during the entire process and remove them to achieve the best results.
Lemlist
I simply loved Lemlist’s super customizable and advanced dashboard. It provides a detailed overview and key metrics for channels, sequences, and lead actions. These actions can help you analyze your outreach efforts and identify ways to improve for maximum results.
Lemlist’s reporting feature is divided into 3 parts:
Overview
Campaign
Email
Instantly
Unlike Lemlist, Instantly has a very decent and intuitive dashboard with which you can track basic metrics like:
Open rate
Reply rate
Bounce rate, etc.
Its dashboard is divided into two parts:
Campaign
Accounts analytics
Who Has the Best Analytical and Monitoring Capabilities?
Lemlist stands out because of its super customizable and advanced analytical capabilities.
Native Integrations
Every tool cannot have everything, and that is a fact! This is where integrations play a pivotal role. They help you integrate your favorite sales tool with your cold email software to boost productivity.
Lemlist
With Lemlist, you can expect 3 native integrations with popular CRMs. It also provides 8 data enrichment and 33 workflow management tools to enhance your overall sales cycle.
Instantly
On the other hand, it instantly lacks integration capabilities. You can natively integrate with 3 CRMs; you would need an API Key for the rest.
Who Offers the Best Native Integrations?
Though Lemlist and Instantly offer various integrations through APIs and webhooks, they lack native integrations with CRMs, which are essential for streamlining your sales process.
Lead Database:
A B2B Database is not an essential feature you should look for in a cold email tool, but yes, with growing trends in automation, it has become a necessity. You need a B2B database to do prospecting and outreach from one platform and eliminate the hassle of transferring data from one tool to another. Both Lemlist and Instantly have their lead databases. Let’s compare them to see which one stands:
Lemlist
Lemlist has an AI-powered B2B database of 450 million+ contacts and has extensive
The list of filters is divided into 4 sections:
1. General
Current job title
Revenue
Country, etc.
2. Signals & Intent
Company size growth
Current company hiring
Technologies, etc.
3. Company information
Size
Name
Type, etc.
4. Contact information
Full Name
City/State
Interests, etc.
Instantly
Instantly has a database of 160 million and offers a set of filters like:
Job Titles
Location
Industry
Employees
Revenue
Keyword Filter
Lookalike domain, etc.
Who Has the Best Lead Database?
Well, neither will give you a free trial, nor will you get any free credits to test the accuracy of their Lead Finder. Both platforms empower users to seamlessly add their sourced leads into existing outreach campaigns with a button click. All in all, both databases are solid, but the winner here is Lemlist due to a much, much higher volume of leads and search filters available.
Campaign Management
Creating and running outreach campaigns is the main reason businesses look for a sales automation tool, so this is where the devil is truly in the details. For starters, Instantly is solely an email outreach platform (though they promise that cloud calls and SMS are coming soon), whereas Lemlist has always been positioned as a multichannel tool, offering:
Emails
LinkedIn messages
Phone calls
Given the more simple nature of Instantly’s outreach campaigns, this platform is extremely easy to set up and run your email outreach. Simply add multiple steps consisting of initial emails and follow-ups. Instantly provides numerous variables and ready-to-use email templates to make your messages feel much more personal, even when automating thousands of emails simultaneously.
Streamlining Campaign Management with Lemlist: A/B Testing, Unibox, and AI Assistance
Users can also easily run A/B tests before launching their mass campaigns. Their ‘Unibox’ feature integrates multiple email mailboxes under one roof, allowing users to manage their campaigns more easily. With Lemlist, setting up a campaign is slightly more complicated, but it gives more wiggle room for sales and marketing teams to connect with leads effectively. At first, Lemlist users can choose to create their campaigns manually or ask AI to handle that right away:
Advanced Conditional Sequences in Lemlist: Tailoring Outreach Based on Lead Actions
Rather than focusing on linear sequences like Instantly, Lemlist can create complex, conditional (cause-trigger) sequences. In other words, adjusting to the actions taken or not taken by each lead to determine and execute the best next step. For instance, if your lead accepts the automated LinkedIn request within 3 days, they get email ‘A’; if they don’t, they get email ‘B’.
Split Testing
Lemlist offers A/B testing, which means you can test two versions of your cold email. But with Instantly, you can create as many variants as you desire (A/Z testing). Lemlist does allow you to customize emails with funky templates (that work with dynamic data), so A/B testing actually allows you to do more with these custom templates.
Lemlist vs. Instantly.ai: Pricing plans
Regarding powerful business software, pricing is often a sensitive subject. Sales and marketing automation tools are the backbone of most B2B tool stacks, so you definitely want to find a reliable tool that covers your business needs, but it’s just as important to strike a balance with budget in mind. Instantly’s and Lemlist’s pricing strategies are quite different, and which will ultimately be the better ‘bang for your buck’ depends solely on what features you really need and the size of your team.
Pricing Comparison: Freemium Plans, Free Trials, and Cost Efficiency of Instantly vs. Lemlist
Instantly, it doesn’t offer a freemium pricing plan, but Lemlist does. It’s worth mentioning that it’s far too limited for any serious work. Users of both tools can enjoy a 14-day free trial to see them in action before committing to a purchase. Instantly’s pricing plans are per workspace/month rather than per user/month, like most sales platforms, so it’s definitely a much cheaper solution for bigger teams.
Instantly’s Pricing Model: Separating Outreach Features and Lead Database for Flexible Use
Instantly is split into two separate products regarding pricing—‘Sending & Warmup’, which has all the outreach and deliverability features, and ‘Leads’, which is their native contact database.
While this means paying almost double to enjoy the full platform, businesses with an existing lead database can just use the outreach and warmup features.
Comparing Pricing Tiers: Instantly’s Hypergrowth vs. Lemlist’s Multichannel Expert Plans
Lemlist’s pricing plans are slightly more straightforward—2 ‘starter’ plans for individual professionals not planning to run mass outreach campaigns and 3 plans for businesses.
Instantly’s most popular pricing plan — Hypergrowth, and Lemlist’s most popular plan — Multichannel Expert, are priced approximately the same, but keep in mind that, unlike Instantly, lemlist has a per user/per month pricing for all its plans.
Choosing the Right Plan: Instantly vs. Lemlist for Teams and Agencies
Truthfully, for sales and marketing teams looking to elevate their outreach, neither of the two platforms’ lower-tier plans than the ones just mentioned would be sufficient. Also, it’s interesting to see that Lemlist recently added a dedicated ‘Outbound agency’ plan, though there’s not much information on it. On a final note, Instantly’s pricing is much more competitive than Lemlist’s for a team of more than two users, even when considering the need to pay for two separate products. However, as this article concluded, Lemlist does offer more features.
Lemlist vs Instantly: The Verdict
Back to our main question. Instantly vs. Lemlist, who comes out on top? While the two platforms are fairly similar in nature, some distinct differences determine which is the better option for your business.
Lemlist vs. Instantly: Best Choices for Small Teams vs. Large Budget-Conscious Teams
If you’re a small team looking for a more ‘packed’ platform with more advanced campaign management features and a much bigger lead database for prospecting, Lemlist is the superior option, though, it gets much more expensive with every next user. If you’re merely looking for a lightweight platform to automate outreach campaigns and have peace of mind that your emails reach your recipients’ inboxes, or if you’re a much bigger team with a tight budget. Instantly is the winner.
Why Inframail.io Stands Out: Exploring a New AI-Driven Sales Automation Platform
On a final note, if you’re in the market for a reliable, AI-driven sales automation platform and can’t seem to find ‘the one’, we invite you to take Inframail.io for a free spin and see for yourself the fusion of robust features, user-friendly interface, and cutting-edge AI.
Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today
Cold email can be a tricky business. You have to get the technical side right to ensure the messages you send reach your prospects. If you don’t, you risk being marked as a spammer, which can ruin your outreach campaign before it even gets started. That’s where Inframail comes in. At Inframail, we provide the infrastructure you need for cold email success. With our service, you get unlimited inboxes at a flat rate to help you scale your outreach efforts. Inframail has the robust email infrastructure you need to reach your cold email goals, whether you’re:
An agency looking to connect with more prospects
A recruiter trying to engage with candidates
An SDR driving sales
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With cold emailing, open and reply rates are everything. While writing engaging copy that piques your recipients’ interest is essential to boosting those rates, ensuring your email infrastructure is sound and capable of boosting your cold email deliverability is equally essential. When that’s in order, you can optimize your cold email outreach campaigns for success. Choosing the right email outreach tool is a great place to start. In this post, we’ll help you by comparing two popular choices—Lemlist vs Instantly. By the end of this comparison, you’ll know which email outreach tool can help you reach your unique goals and improve the performance of your cold email campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Lemlist? (Quick Overview)
Lemlist is a widespread email outreach and automation tool. It helps businesses improve their cold email campaigns through personalization and automation. Over time, it has gained attention for features like:
Lemwarm
Email verification
Let me explain the good and the not-so-good aspects of Lemlist from a practical perspective.
Good Stuff About Lemlist
Things Customers Liked About Lemlist
Lemlist does many things right, especially for users looking to enhance their outreach. Here’s what stands out:
1. Lemwarm (Email Warm-Up Tool)
Gradually build your email account’s sender reputation. Reduces the chances of emails landing in spam.
2. Multi-Channel Outreach (LinkedIn and Email)
It lets you combine email campaigns with LinkedIn connections for better engagement. Adds a personal touch to outreach.
3. B2B Database
Offers a large database to find potential leads directly. Saves time compared to sourcing leads manually.
4. Email Verifier
Validate email addresses to reduce bounces. It helps maintain a clean sender reputation.
5. Premade Templates
Provides ready-to-use templates for cold emails. It speeds up campaign creation, though some templates need customization. These features make Lemlist appealing for businesses new to cold outreach or those looking for simplicity in managing campaigns.
Not So Good Stuff About Lemlist
Let me walk you through some challenges I’ve faced with Lemlist after using it for a while. These are things I wish I had known earlier.
1. Poor Email Deliverability
Lemlist struggles to ensure emails reach inboxes. Here’s what I’ve noticed: Even with proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setups, many emails land in spam folders. Their warm-up tool, Lemwarm, helps slightly but isn’t a permanent fix. Poor deliverability is a dealbreaker for outreach campaigns—fewer leads see your emails, which can hurt not only your campaign performance but also your sender’s reputation.
2. Poor Customer Support
Getting support when you’re stuck shouldn’t be this hard. I’ve experienced delayed responses when I reached out with urgent issues. Sometimes, the reactions felt generic, like templates, rather than tailored help. If you’re managing time-sensitive outreach, waiting for support can be frustrating. When you pay for a tool, you expect better backup when things go wrong.
3. Basic Personalization
Personalization is a big selling point for Lemlist, but here’s the catch: The options are mostly surface-level—like adding names, company logos, or generic snippets. For campaigns needing deeper segmentation or tailored messaging, Lemlist doesn’t deliver. This makes it hard to stand out, especially when competitors offer smarter personalization tools. Your emails can feel less unique, which impacts how your leads engage.
4. Limited Reporting and Analytics
Data drives decisions, and this is where Lemlist feels lacking. Their reporting features are basic, often giving you just the surface numbers. Digging deeper into metrics like engagement trends or campaign-specific insights is hard. Without granular data, optimizing future campaigns becomes a guessing game. When managing multiple campaigns, better analytics are needed to refine your approach.
5. Reply Management Issues
One of the most frustrating parts of Lemlist is handling replies. The platform doesn’t offer advanced features to categorize or prioritize responses. For high-volume campaigns, keeping track of essential replies becomes chaotic. You might miss follow-ups or delay responding to key leads. This creates unnecessary hurdles for a tool that’s supposed to simplify outreach.
Pricing: What Lemlist Will Cost You
Free Plan:
Use the Lemlist Chrome extension to:
Find
Verify
Export
Up to 100 leads’ emails or 25 phone numbers each month for free!
Email Starter:
$32/month
1 Sending email per user
Up to 100 free verified emails per month
Up to 25 free verified phone numbers per month
Unlimited LinkedIn leads export (Chrome extension)
450M+ leads database
Unlimited campaigns & emails
Custom text variables
AI personalization
Automated follow-ups
Centralized conversations inbox
Tracking & custom reports
Email Pro:
$55/month
3 Sending emails per user
Everything in Email Starter
Up to 150 free verified emails per month
Up to 38 free verified phone numbers per month
Inbox rotation
CRM integration (Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive)
AI variables
Custom images
A/B testing
Emails warm-up & deliverability boost (Lemwarm)
Live lead status monitoring
Multichannel Expert:
$79/month
5 Sending emails per user
Everything in Email Pro
Up to 300 free verified emails per month
Up to 75 free verified phone numbers per month
Automated LinkedIn actions (visits, invites, messages)
Conditioned sequence steps
Call steps (VoIP integrations)
Centralized multichannel inbox
Intents & Signals targeting
Custom landing pages
Email templates library API, webhooks, & integrations (Zapier, n8n, Make)
Premium support
Outreach Scale:
$129/month
15 Sending emails per user
Everything in Multichannel Expert
Up to 500 free verified emails per month
Up to 125 free verified phone numbers per month
Personalized (1:1) onboarding
Dedicated account manager (5+ seats)
Related Reading
• Automated Lead Generation
• Email Prospecting
• How to Generate B2B Leads
• How to Warm Up Email Domain
• How Many Emails Can You Send Before Considered Spam
• Best Time to Send Cold Emails
• How to Cold Email
• Best Cold Email Templates B2B
• Email Outreach Best Practices
• Email Outreach Strategy
What is Instantly?
Instantly is an email outreach tool that helps businesses scale cold email outreach. Instantly streamlines the entire process of sending cold emails, so sales teams can spend less time on tedious tasks and more time closing deals, with a suite of features for:
Automation
Personalization
Tracking
Analytics
Key Features of Instantly
Instantly automates the email outreach process by sending cold emails and follow-ups automatically. This feature improves efficiency by ensuring timely communication and consistency. For example, if a prospect replies to an email, Instantly can automatically stop future follow-ups so the conversation can continue without delay. Beyond automation, Instantly supports dynamic email personalization, allowing users to create unique messages for each recipient. The platform also includes an email warm-up feature that gradually increases email sending volume to improve deliverability and avoid spam filters.
Optimizing Email Campaigns with Instantly: A Guide to A/B Testing, Analytics, and Multi-Channel Integration
Instantly also offers an intuitive dashboard for:
Creating
Managing
Tracking multiple email campaigns
Users can even A/B test different versions of their emails to determine which performs better, optimizing campaign effectiveness. Detailed analytics and reporting tools offer insights into email performance, including:
Open rates
Click-through rates
Reply rates
Instantly integrates seamlessly with popular CRM systems and other marketing tools for better data management and workflow automation. The platform also supports multi-channel email and social media outreach, creating a cohesive sales strategy.
What are the Downsides of Using Instantly?
As helpful as Instantly is for cold email outreach, there are a couple of drawbacks to consider before investing in the tool.
Pricing Concerns: Instantly, it is relatively expensive, especially for small businesses and foreign markets. The basic package has limitations that prompt some users to upgrade to higher-cost plans for essential features.
Learning Curve and Setup Complexity: The domain and email setup process can be intense and confusing, particularly for those unfamiliar with technical aspects. While training is provided, it can take time to understand the setup fully.
Limited Customization and Features in Basic Plans: Users have reported limited customization options for email templates and a desire for more features in the lower-tier plans.
API and Integration Limitations: Some users need more developed API features and desire additional integrations with other tools and platforms to enhance functionality.
How Much Does Instantly Cost?
Instantly offers a variety of pricing plans tailored to different business needs and scales of operation.
Monthly Pricing
Growth Plan
Cost: $37/month
Key inclusions:
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email warmup
1,000 uploaded contacts
5,000 emails monthly
Chat support
Ideal for:
Small business or individuals just starting with email outreach
Offering essential features at a lower cost
Hypergrowth Plan
Cost: $97/month
Key inclusions:
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email warmup
25,000 uploaded contacts
100,000 emails monthly
Premium live support
Ideal for:
Growing businesses that need higher email volumes and additional support features.
Light Speed Plan
Cost: $358/month
Key inclusions:
Everything in Hypergrowth Plan
100,000 uploaded contacts
500,000 emails monthly
Ideal for:
Large businesses or high-volume email marketers needing extensive outreach capabilities.
Yearly Pricing (Save 20%)
Growth Plan
Cost: $30/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
Cost-sensitive users who prefer annual billing to save money while still accessing essential features.
Hypergrowth Plan
Cost: $77.6/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
Growing businesses looking to save costs with annual billing while accessing higher volume features.
Light Speed Plan
Cost: $286.3/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
High-volume email marketers who prefer annual billing to save money while maintaining extensive outreach capabilities.
Enterprise Plan
Cost: Custom (contact for pricing)
Key inclusion:
Everything in Hypergrowth Plan
500,000+ emails monthly
100,000+ uploaded contacts
Dedicated account manager
Shared Slack channel
Private deliverability network
Ideal for:
Large enterprises needing customized solutions and dedicated support for extensive email marketing operations.
Key Takeaways About Instantly
Instantly's pricing plans cater to different scales of operations, from small businesses to large enterprises. The yearly plans offer a 20% discount, making them cost-effective for users who prefer annual billing. Each plan includes essential features like unlimited email accounts and warmup, with higher-tier plans offering significantly more email and contact capacities, along with premium support. The Enterprise plan offers tailored solutions and dedicated support, making it suitable for large organizations with specific needs.
Related Reading
• Best Cold Email Software
• How Long Should a Cold Email Be
• B2B Cold Email Response Rates
• How to Improve Email Deliverability
• Unlimited Email Hosting
• Email Testing Tools
• Best Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Scraping Tools
• Best Sales Prospecting Tools
• Email Warm Up Tools
• Email Personalization Tools
• Sales Email Automation Tools
• Mailscale Alternatives
• Mailforge Alternatives
Lemlist vs. Instantly In-depth Comparison
Sequence Creation
When selecting a cold email tool, it’s crucial to consider of the sequence-building functionality of the following:
User interface
Experience
Ease of use
You should always prefer tools that allow you to create, edit, and customize sequences easily without the long learning curve involved.
Let’s compare the sequence builder feature of Lemlist and Instantly in detail:
Lemlist
Lemlist allows you to create complex multi-channel sequences in an easy-to-understand flow chart. You can also build campaigns manually, with the help of AI, or duplicate best-performing campaigns from your library or Lemlist’s template hub. With Lemlist, you can automate your cold email and LinkedIn outreach, whereas, for cold calling, you need to set up an API manually. You must add other outreach channels as reminders if you want to add them.
Lemlist's sequence builder
You can build your campaigns based on systematic steps or run triggered-based campaigns. (Which is impressive!)
G2 Review: “Its use of AI and organization to perfect sales sequences is second to none. The AI is very good at creating effective and bespoke campaigns, and it is easy to get an overview of your team’s performance, what’s working, and how to streamline your sequences to be the best they can be.”
Instantly
Its sequence creator is very easy to use, and you can create your sequences in a linear pattern. The email preview feature lets you see how your emails will land in your prospect’s inbox. Unlike Lemlist, you can’t create multichannel or condition-based sequences.
Instantly's dashboard
Instantly has native integration with Open AI; hence, you can use its AI Generator and Template Hub to create unique email copies.
G2 User review: “It’s really easy to connect email accounts and set them up for use; email sequences are also really easy and fast to set; you just have to complete the text I want to use, and you can add variables with no issues.”
Who Has the Best Sequence Creation Functionality?
It’s difficult to conclude which tool has the best sequence creation functionality, as both stand out.
Comparing Multichannel Outreach Tools: Lemlist vs. Instantly for Budget-Friendly Scalability
If you want to do multichannel outreach, you should undoubtedly use Lemlist. Please note that you must subscribe to its $79/mo plan to create multichannel sequences with Lemlist. In both low-tier pricing plans, you can only build cold email sequences. If you’re looking to scale cold email campaigns, this price tag allows you to connect only 5 sending emails. (Yes, scaling your cold outreach with Lemlist comes with a hefty price tag!)
On the other hand, with Instantly, you can connect unlimited email accounts even in its starter plan (priced at $30/mo) and use its simple & easy-to-use sequence builder to create your campaigns.
Choosing Between Lemlist and Instantly: Budget-Friendly Automation vs. Multichannel Campaigns
Hence, you should choose:
Lemlist, if you want to run multi-channel campaigns (though not scalable) and have a high budget.
Instantly, if you want to run cold email campaigns, connect unlimited email accounts, and use advanced automation features at a much more affordable price.
Client & Team Management
If you run multiple campaigns for your clients and need to involve various team members to cater to different client needs, you'll require collaboration features and role-based access control. These features will help you handle everything smoothly and run scalable campaigns.
Hence, your cold email software needs client and team management features.
Lemlist
There are better solutions than Lemlist for growing and scaling teams because it has a per-person pricing plan. Even with its highest-paid pricing plan, Outreach Scale, charged at $129/mo/user, limits you to 15 sending emails. Investing in Lemlist is not worth it if you run vast email campaigns at scale.
G2 User Review: “I WISH WISH WISH they had unlimited email accounts. That’s the only thing I don’t like about it: it caps you at five email accounts (15 with the pro plan). Which isn’t terrible, but only having 5 is quite rough. I hope one day they come out with more.”
Instantly
Instantly offers agency-friendly features like adding unlimited clients & team members, but it comes with an extra cost. You will get this functionality in its hyper-growth plan, priced at $77.6/mo for one workspace. If you want to create another workspace, subscribe to the hyper-growth plan again!
Managing Workspaces in Instantly: Limitations for Agencies and Cost Considerations
Instantly’s Workspaces are not shared or bundled under a single subscription, so you must pay for each separately if you have multiple workspaces. (Ouch!!) This is not apt for lead generation agencies running cold email campaigns on a larger scale.
G2 User Review: “It costs extra to add another workspace for clients to manage their campaigns.”
Who Has the Best Client & Team Management Functionality?
Both Instantly & Lemlist are not ideal solutions if you are looking for advanced client and team management functionalities at cost-effective prices.
Unified Inbox
A unified inbox lets you track replies from different sequences and email accounts in one central location. This functionality significantly saves time and effort by eliminating the need to review each reply from your prospects manually. It also allows you to quickly identify and prioritize responses from important leads.
Lemlist
Lemlist is already out of the race here because it DOESN’T offer a unified inbox feature!
Instantly
Instantly has an inbox that allows you to track, reply to, and forward all the replies from your leads. But here is the catch with its starter plan: you can ONLY preview replies but cannot send replies directly from Unibox. To have the functionality to reply to your leads’ emails directly within Unibox, you need to upgrade to the Hyper Growth or Light Speed plan.
Instantly's Unibox
G2 User Review: “I don’t like the unibox that much, and also when you delete the leads instantly, they don’t end up in your main unibox anymore, so you have to use a big email account and organize them.”
There are mixed reviews of the Unibox feature on G2. Some users have said that it needs to be fixed and slow down the updating of data, which can easily hamper the overall experience and cause a hassle in organizing the data manually. (imagine all the time that would go into it)
Who Has the Best Unified Inbox?
Well, among Lemlist & Instantly, only Instantly offers unified inbox functionality.
Personalization Features
Personalization is the most effective way to achieve high open rates; therefore, it is important to look for a cold email tool that helps you send personalized emails at scale.
Lemlist
Regarding personalization, Lemlist offers various options, such as:
Adding custom variables like first name, last name, signature
LinkedIn url
Ice breakers, etc.
Liquid syntax
You can also add customized elements to your emails, such as:
Images
Videos
Landing pages
Gifs
Leveraging Lemlist’s AI Icebreakers and Image Personalization for Smarter Cold Emails
Lemlist also allows you to create icebreakers with AI. All you have to do is give your prospect’s LinkedIn URL, and it will scrape all the data from it and give you a personalized icebreaker.
G2 User Review: “Lemlist is a great tool for us to send Cold Emails in bulk with image personalization. I really like the Image Personalization feature, which helps us insert dynamic images inside cold emails.”
Instantly
Personalization features are not limited to custom variables. You can use its native integration with Open AI to create personalized and unique content. You can also add images and emoticons to make your emails more engaging.
G2 User Review: “Another impressive aspect is the personalization tools. Instantly enables users to customize emails with dynamic content, ensuring each message feels unique and relevant to the recipient. This level of personalization increases the likelihood of engagement and positive responses.”
Who Offers the Best Personalization Feature?
Instantly beats Lemlist because of its integration with OpenAI, which can help you create personalized email copies at scale.
A-Z Testing: Lemlist vs Instantly
A-Z or multivariate testing is an advanced testing functionality that allows you to test various variants of your:
Email copies
Subject lines
CTAs
You can use this to identify and double down on the best-performing variation.
Lemlist
Again, Lemlist must be out of the race because it does not offer Multi-variant testing. It only supports A/B testing, in which you can create 2 versions of your sequence and test them.
Instantly
Conversely, Instantly offers A-Z testing functionality, which allows you to test unlimited variations of your email copies, CTAs, and subject lines. It also offers an auto-optimized A/Z testing feature that uses Instantly’s algorithm to analyze multiple variants of an email based on metrics to determine which version performs better, like:
Click
Reply
Open rates
Important Note: A-Z testing functionality is not available in the starter plan. To use this feature, subscribe to the hyper-growth or above-pricing plan.
Who Has the Best A-Z Testing Capabilities?
Well, Instantly is the winner in offering A-Z testing features. You must subscribe to Instantly’s higher pricing plans to use multivariate testing in your sequences.
Email Deliverability
You need cold email software to build a robust sender reputation. Otherwise, all your emails will land in a spam box, and there is no denying that. Hence, while you are in the selection process, ensure you give importance to email deliverability features.
Lemlist
To help you maintain high deliverability rates, Lemlist offers integration with Lemwarm, an email warm-up tool. This amazing tool mirrors human-like outreach efforts with a premium network of 10,000 users to build your domain credibility.
G2 User Review: “Lemlist also includes Lemwarm, which is a great email warm-up tool that works!”
Important Note: Lemwarm is not available in the starter pricing plan. You have to subscribe to Email Pro and the above pricing plans to use it
Instantly
Instantly has an in-built email warm-up functionality and allows unlimited email warm-ups in all its pricing plans; Users are not happy with it.
G2 User Review: “They suggested minimum 2 weeks warmup before sending emails. We wanted to send out big email campaigns, so added 25+ emails(Google workspace), let them warm up for 2 months, came back to see they’ve reset warmup progress a week ago and started from 0 again(not throttled, literally started from 0). Now the emails are at 7 warmup emails per day. They can’t detect bounced email properly and resend a campaign to that bounced address in sequence, making your bounces 200%.”
Apart from providing warm-up services, Instantly also has a “check deliverability score” feature, which is a basic feature that gives you an overview of your technical email set up. This feature is only available in the Hyper-growth pricing plan and above.
Who Has the Best Email Deliverability Features?
None of these tools offer the best email deliverability features. Although Lemlist’s email warm-up functionality is great, the pricing is too high, as Lemwarm is unavailable in the starter plan. Instantly lacks advanced email deliverability features.
Analytical Dashboard
The success of your cold email campaigns lies in monitoring their performance. It is crucial to find cold email tools with advanced analytics capabilities to identify potential leakages and bottlenecks during the entire process and remove them to achieve the best results.
Lemlist
I simply loved Lemlist’s super customizable and advanced dashboard. It provides a detailed overview and key metrics for channels, sequences, and lead actions. These actions can help you analyze your outreach efforts and identify ways to improve for maximum results.
Lemlist’s reporting feature is divided into 3 parts:
Overview
Campaign
Email
Instantly
Unlike Lemlist, Instantly has a very decent and intuitive dashboard with which you can track basic metrics like:
Open rate
Reply rate
Bounce rate, etc.
Its dashboard is divided into two parts:
Campaign
Accounts analytics
Who Has the Best Analytical and Monitoring Capabilities?
Lemlist stands out because of its super customizable and advanced analytical capabilities.
Native Integrations
Every tool cannot have everything, and that is a fact! This is where integrations play a pivotal role. They help you integrate your favorite sales tool with your cold email software to boost productivity.
Lemlist
With Lemlist, you can expect 3 native integrations with popular CRMs. It also provides 8 data enrichment and 33 workflow management tools to enhance your overall sales cycle.
Instantly
On the other hand, it instantly lacks integration capabilities. You can natively integrate with 3 CRMs; you would need an API Key for the rest.
Who Offers the Best Native Integrations?
Though Lemlist and Instantly offer various integrations through APIs and webhooks, they lack native integrations with CRMs, which are essential for streamlining your sales process.
Lead Database:
A B2B Database is not an essential feature you should look for in a cold email tool, but yes, with growing trends in automation, it has become a necessity. You need a B2B database to do prospecting and outreach from one platform and eliminate the hassle of transferring data from one tool to another. Both Lemlist and Instantly have their lead databases. Let’s compare them to see which one stands:
Lemlist
Lemlist has an AI-powered B2B database of 450 million+ contacts and has extensive
The list of filters is divided into 4 sections:
1. General
Current job title
Revenue
Country, etc.
2. Signals & Intent
Company size growth
Current company hiring
Technologies, etc.
3. Company information
Size
Name
Type, etc.
4. Contact information
Full Name
City/State
Interests, etc.
Instantly
Instantly has a database of 160 million and offers a set of filters like:
Job Titles
Location
Industry
Employees
Revenue
Keyword Filter
Lookalike domain, etc.
Who Has the Best Lead Database?
Well, neither will give you a free trial, nor will you get any free credits to test the accuracy of their Lead Finder. Both platforms empower users to seamlessly add their sourced leads into existing outreach campaigns with a button click. All in all, both databases are solid, but the winner here is Lemlist due to a much, much higher volume of leads and search filters available.
Campaign Management
Creating and running outreach campaigns is the main reason businesses look for a sales automation tool, so this is where the devil is truly in the details. For starters, Instantly is solely an email outreach platform (though they promise that cloud calls and SMS are coming soon), whereas Lemlist has always been positioned as a multichannel tool, offering:
Emails
LinkedIn messages
Phone calls
Given the more simple nature of Instantly’s outreach campaigns, this platform is extremely easy to set up and run your email outreach. Simply add multiple steps consisting of initial emails and follow-ups. Instantly provides numerous variables and ready-to-use email templates to make your messages feel much more personal, even when automating thousands of emails simultaneously.
Streamlining Campaign Management with Lemlist: A/B Testing, Unibox, and AI Assistance
Users can also easily run A/B tests before launching their mass campaigns. Their ‘Unibox’ feature integrates multiple email mailboxes under one roof, allowing users to manage their campaigns more easily. With Lemlist, setting up a campaign is slightly more complicated, but it gives more wiggle room for sales and marketing teams to connect with leads effectively. At first, Lemlist users can choose to create their campaigns manually or ask AI to handle that right away:
Advanced Conditional Sequences in Lemlist: Tailoring Outreach Based on Lead Actions
Rather than focusing on linear sequences like Instantly, Lemlist can create complex, conditional (cause-trigger) sequences. In other words, adjusting to the actions taken or not taken by each lead to determine and execute the best next step. For instance, if your lead accepts the automated LinkedIn request within 3 days, they get email ‘A’; if they don’t, they get email ‘B’.
Split Testing
Lemlist offers A/B testing, which means you can test two versions of your cold email. But with Instantly, you can create as many variants as you desire (A/Z testing). Lemlist does allow you to customize emails with funky templates (that work with dynamic data), so A/B testing actually allows you to do more with these custom templates.
Lemlist vs. Instantly.ai: Pricing plans
Regarding powerful business software, pricing is often a sensitive subject. Sales and marketing automation tools are the backbone of most B2B tool stacks, so you definitely want to find a reliable tool that covers your business needs, but it’s just as important to strike a balance with budget in mind. Instantly’s and Lemlist’s pricing strategies are quite different, and which will ultimately be the better ‘bang for your buck’ depends solely on what features you really need and the size of your team.
Pricing Comparison: Freemium Plans, Free Trials, and Cost Efficiency of Instantly vs. Lemlist
Instantly, it doesn’t offer a freemium pricing plan, but Lemlist does. It’s worth mentioning that it’s far too limited for any serious work. Users of both tools can enjoy a 14-day free trial to see them in action before committing to a purchase. Instantly’s pricing plans are per workspace/month rather than per user/month, like most sales platforms, so it’s definitely a much cheaper solution for bigger teams.
Instantly’s Pricing Model: Separating Outreach Features and Lead Database for Flexible Use
Instantly is split into two separate products regarding pricing—‘Sending & Warmup’, which has all the outreach and deliverability features, and ‘Leads’, which is their native contact database.
While this means paying almost double to enjoy the full platform, businesses with an existing lead database can just use the outreach and warmup features.
Comparing Pricing Tiers: Instantly’s Hypergrowth vs. Lemlist’s Multichannel Expert Plans
Lemlist’s pricing plans are slightly more straightforward—2 ‘starter’ plans for individual professionals not planning to run mass outreach campaigns and 3 plans for businesses.
Instantly’s most popular pricing plan — Hypergrowth, and Lemlist’s most popular plan — Multichannel Expert, are priced approximately the same, but keep in mind that, unlike Instantly, lemlist has a per user/per month pricing for all its plans.
Choosing the Right Plan: Instantly vs. Lemlist for Teams and Agencies
Truthfully, for sales and marketing teams looking to elevate their outreach, neither of the two platforms’ lower-tier plans than the ones just mentioned would be sufficient. Also, it’s interesting to see that Lemlist recently added a dedicated ‘Outbound agency’ plan, though there’s not much information on it. On a final note, Instantly’s pricing is much more competitive than Lemlist’s for a team of more than two users, even when considering the need to pay for two separate products. However, as this article concluded, Lemlist does offer more features.
Lemlist vs Instantly: The Verdict
Back to our main question. Instantly vs. Lemlist, who comes out on top? While the two platforms are fairly similar in nature, some distinct differences determine which is the better option for your business.
Lemlist vs. Instantly: Best Choices for Small Teams vs. Large Budget-Conscious Teams
If you’re a small team looking for a more ‘packed’ platform with more advanced campaign management features and a much bigger lead database for prospecting, Lemlist is the superior option, though, it gets much more expensive with every next user. If you’re merely looking for a lightweight platform to automate outreach campaigns and have peace of mind that your emails reach your recipients’ inboxes, or if you’re a much bigger team with a tight budget. Instantly is the winner.
Why Inframail.io Stands Out: Exploring a New AI-Driven Sales Automation Platform
On a final note, if you’re in the market for a reliable, AI-driven sales automation platform and can’t seem to find ‘the one’, we invite you to take Inframail.io for a free spin and see for yourself the fusion of robust features, user-friendly interface, and cutting-edge AI.
Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today
Cold email can be a tricky business. You have to get the technical side right to ensure the messages you send reach your prospects. If you don’t, you risk being marked as a spammer, which can ruin your outreach campaign before it even gets started. That’s where Inframail comes in. At Inframail, we provide the infrastructure you need for cold email success. With our service, you get unlimited inboxes at a flat rate to help you scale your outreach efforts. Inframail has the robust email infrastructure you need to reach your cold email goals, whether you’re:
An agency looking to connect with more prospects
A recruiter trying to engage with candidates
An SDR driving sales
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With cold emailing, open and reply rates are everything. While writing engaging copy that piques your recipients’ interest is essential to boosting those rates, ensuring your email infrastructure is sound and capable of boosting your cold email deliverability is equally essential. When that’s in order, you can optimize your cold email outreach campaigns for success. Choosing the right email outreach tool is a great place to start. In this post, we’ll help you by comparing two popular choices—Lemlist vs Instantly. By the end of this comparison, you’ll know which email outreach tool can help you reach your unique goals and improve the performance of your cold email campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Lemlist? (Quick Overview)
Lemlist is a widespread email outreach and automation tool. It helps businesses improve their cold email campaigns through personalization and automation. Over time, it has gained attention for features like:
Lemwarm
Email verification
Let me explain the good and the not-so-good aspects of Lemlist from a practical perspective.
Good Stuff About Lemlist
Things Customers Liked About Lemlist
Lemlist does many things right, especially for users looking to enhance their outreach. Here’s what stands out:
1. Lemwarm (Email Warm-Up Tool)
Gradually build your email account’s sender reputation. Reduces the chances of emails landing in spam.
2. Multi-Channel Outreach (LinkedIn and Email)
It lets you combine email campaigns with LinkedIn connections for better engagement. Adds a personal touch to outreach.
3. B2B Database
Offers a large database to find potential leads directly. Saves time compared to sourcing leads manually.
4. Email Verifier
Validate email addresses to reduce bounces. It helps maintain a clean sender reputation.
5. Premade Templates
Provides ready-to-use templates for cold emails. It speeds up campaign creation, though some templates need customization. These features make Lemlist appealing for businesses new to cold outreach or those looking for simplicity in managing campaigns.
Not So Good Stuff About Lemlist
Let me walk you through some challenges I’ve faced with Lemlist after using it for a while. These are things I wish I had known earlier.
1. Poor Email Deliverability
Lemlist struggles to ensure emails reach inboxes. Here’s what I’ve noticed: Even with proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setups, many emails land in spam folders. Their warm-up tool, Lemwarm, helps slightly but isn’t a permanent fix. Poor deliverability is a dealbreaker for outreach campaigns—fewer leads see your emails, which can hurt not only your campaign performance but also your sender’s reputation.
2. Poor Customer Support
Getting support when you’re stuck shouldn’t be this hard. I’ve experienced delayed responses when I reached out with urgent issues. Sometimes, the reactions felt generic, like templates, rather than tailored help. If you’re managing time-sensitive outreach, waiting for support can be frustrating. When you pay for a tool, you expect better backup when things go wrong.
3. Basic Personalization
Personalization is a big selling point for Lemlist, but here’s the catch: The options are mostly surface-level—like adding names, company logos, or generic snippets. For campaigns needing deeper segmentation or tailored messaging, Lemlist doesn’t deliver. This makes it hard to stand out, especially when competitors offer smarter personalization tools. Your emails can feel less unique, which impacts how your leads engage.
4. Limited Reporting and Analytics
Data drives decisions, and this is where Lemlist feels lacking. Their reporting features are basic, often giving you just the surface numbers. Digging deeper into metrics like engagement trends or campaign-specific insights is hard. Without granular data, optimizing future campaigns becomes a guessing game. When managing multiple campaigns, better analytics are needed to refine your approach.
5. Reply Management Issues
One of the most frustrating parts of Lemlist is handling replies. The platform doesn’t offer advanced features to categorize or prioritize responses. For high-volume campaigns, keeping track of essential replies becomes chaotic. You might miss follow-ups or delay responding to key leads. This creates unnecessary hurdles for a tool that’s supposed to simplify outreach.
Pricing: What Lemlist Will Cost You
Free Plan:
Use the Lemlist Chrome extension to:
Find
Verify
Export
Up to 100 leads’ emails or 25 phone numbers each month for free!
Email Starter:
$32/month
1 Sending email per user
Up to 100 free verified emails per month
Up to 25 free verified phone numbers per month
Unlimited LinkedIn leads export (Chrome extension)
450M+ leads database
Unlimited campaigns & emails
Custom text variables
AI personalization
Automated follow-ups
Centralized conversations inbox
Tracking & custom reports
Email Pro:
$55/month
3 Sending emails per user
Everything in Email Starter
Up to 150 free verified emails per month
Up to 38 free verified phone numbers per month
Inbox rotation
CRM integration (Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive)
AI variables
Custom images
A/B testing
Emails warm-up & deliverability boost (Lemwarm)
Live lead status monitoring
Multichannel Expert:
$79/month
5 Sending emails per user
Everything in Email Pro
Up to 300 free verified emails per month
Up to 75 free verified phone numbers per month
Automated LinkedIn actions (visits, invites, messages)
Conditioned sequence steps
Call steps (VoIP integrations)
Centralized multichannel inbox
Intents & Signals targeting
Custom landing pages
Email templates library API, webhooks, & integrations (Zapier, n8n, Make)
Premium support
Outreach Scale:
$129/month
15 Sending emails per user
Everything in Multichannel Expert
Up to 500 free verified emails per month
Up to 125 free verified phone numbers per month
Personalized (1:1) onboarding
Dedicated account manager (5+ seats)
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• Automated Lead Generation
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• How to Generate B2B Leads
• How to Warm Up Email Domain
• How Many Emails Can You Send Before Considered Spam
• Best Time to Send Cold Emails
• How to Cold Email
• Best Cold Email Templates B2B
• Email Outreach Best Practices
• Email Outreach Strategy
What is Instantly?
Instantly is an email outreach tool that helps businesses scale cold email outreach. Instantly streamlines the entire process of sending cold emails, so sales teams can spend less time on tedious tasks and more time closing deals, with a suite of features for:
Automation
Personalization
Tracking
Analytics
Key Features of Instantly
Instantly automates the email outreach process by sending cold emails and follow-ups automatically. This feature improves efficiency by ensuring timely communication and consistency. For example, if a prospect replies to an email, Instantly can automatically stop future follow-ups so the conversation can continue without delay. Beyond automation, Instantly supports dynamic email personalization, allowing users to create unique messages for each recipient. The platform also includes an email warm-up feature that gradually increases email sending volume to improve deliverability and avoid spam filters.
Optimizing Email Campaigns with Instantly: A Guide to A/B Testing, Analytics, and Multi-Channel Integration
Instantly also offers an intuitive dashboard for:
Creating
Managing
Tracking multiple email campaigns
Users can even A/B test different versions of their emails to determine which performs better, optimizing campaign effectiveness. Detailed analytics and reporting tools offer insights into email performance, including:
Open rates
Click-through rates
Reply rates
Instantly integrates seamlessly with popular CRM systems and other marketing tools for better data management and workflow automation. The platform also supports multi-channel email and social media outreach, creating a cohesive sales strategy.
What are the Downsides of Using Instantly?
As helpful as Instantly is for cold email outreach, there are a couple of drawbacks to consider before investing in the tool.
Pricing Concerns: Instantly, it is relatively expensive, especially for small businesses and foreign markets. The basic package has limitations that prompt some users to upgrade to higher-cost plans for essential features.
Learning Curve and Setup Complexity: The domain and email setup process can be intense and confusing, particularly for those unfamiliar with technical aspects. While training is provided, it can take time to understand the setup fully.
Limited Customization and Features in Basic Plans: Users have reported limited customization options for email templates and a desire for more features in the lower-tier plans.
API and Integration Limitations: Some users need more developed API features and desire additional integrations with other tools and platforms to enhance functionality.
How Much Does Instantly Cost?
Instantly offers a variety of pricing plans tailored to different business needs and scales of operation.
Monthly Pricing
Growth Plan
Cost: $37/month
Key inclusions:
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email warmup
1,000 uploaded contacts
5,000 emails monthly
Chat support
Ideal for:
Small business or individuals just starting with email outreach
Offering essential features at a lower cost
Hypergrowth Plan
Cost: $97/month
Key inclusions:
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email warmup
25,000 uploaded contacts
100,000 emails monthly
Premium live support
Ideal for:
Growing businesses that need higher email volumes and additional support features.
Light Speed Plan
Cost: $358/month
Key inclusions:
Everything in Hypergrowth Plan
100,000 uploaded contacts
500,000 emails monthly
Ideal for:
Large businesses or high-volume email marketers needing extensive outreach capabilities.
Yearly Pricing (Save 20%)
Growth Plan
Cost: $30/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
Cost-sensitive users who prefer annual billing to save money while still accessing essential features.
Hypergrowth Plan
Cost: $77.6/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
Growing businesses looking to save costs with annual billing while accessing higher volume features.
Light Speed Plan
Cost: $286.3/month (billed annually)
Ideal for:
High-volume email marketers who prefer annual billing to save money while maintaining extensive outreach capabilities.
Enterprise Plan
Cost: Custom (contact for pricing)
Key inclusion:
Everything in Hypergrowth Plan
500,000+ emails monthly
100,000+ uploaded contacts
Dedicated account manager
Shared Slack channel
Private deliverability network
Ideal for:
Large enterprises needing customized solutions and dedicated support for extensive email marketing operations.
Key Takeaways About Instantly
Instantly's pricing plans cater to different scales of operations, from small businesses to large enterprises. The yearly plans offer a 20% discount, making them cost-effective for users who prefer annual billing. Each plan includes essential features like unlimited email accounts and warmup, with higher-tier plans offering significantly more email and contact capacities, along with premium support. The Enterprise plan offers tailored solutions and dedicated support, making it suitable for large organizations with specific needs.
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• Best Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Scraping Tools
• Best Sales Prospecting Tools
• Email Warm Up Tools
• Email Personalization Tools
• Sales Email Automation Tools
• Mailscale Alternatives
• Mailforge Alternatives
Lemlist vs. Instantly In-depth Comparison
Sequence Creation
When selecting a cold email tool, it’s crucial to consider of the sequence-building functionality of the following:
User interface
Experience
Ease of use
You should always prefer tools that allow you to create, edit, and customize sequences easily without the long learning curve involved.
Let’s compare the sequence builder feature of Lemlist and Instantly in detail:
Lemlist
Lemlist allows you to create complex multi-channel sequences in an easy-to-understand flow chart. You can also build campaigns manually, with the help of AI, or duplicate best-performing campaigns from your library or Lemlist’s template hub. With Lemlist, you can automate your cold email and LinkedIn outreach, whereas, for cold calling, you need to set up an API manually. You must add other outreach channels as reminders if you want to add them.
Lemlist's sequence builder
You can build your campaigns based on systematic steps or run triggered-based campaigns. (Which is impressive!)
G2 Review: “Its use of AI and organization to perfect sales sequences is second to none. The AI is very good at creating effective and bespoke campaigns, and it is easy to get an overview of your team’s performance, what’s working, and how to streamline your sequences to be the best they can be.”
Instantly
Its sequence creator is very easy to use, and you can create your sequences in a linear pattern. The email preview feature lets you see how your emails will land in your prospect’s inbox. Unlike Lemlist, you can’t create multichannel or condition-based sequences.
Instantly's dashboard
Instantly has native integration with Open AI; hence, you can use its AI Generator and Template Hub to create unique email copies.
G2 User review: “It’s really easy to connect email accounts and set them up for use; email sequences are also really easy and fast to set; you just have to complete the text I want to use, and you can add variables with no issues.”
Who Has the Best Sequence Creation Functionality?
It’s difficult to conclude which tool has the best sequence creation functionality, as both stand out.
Comparing Multichannel Outreach Tools: Lemlist vs. Instantly for Budget-Friendly Scalability
If you want to do multichannel outreach, you should undoubtedly use Lemlist. Please note that you must subscribe to its $79/mo plan to create multichannel sequences with Lemlist. In both low-tier pricing plans, you can only build cold email sequences. If you’re looking to scale cold email campaigns, this price tag allows you to connect only 5 sending emails. (Yes, scaling your cold outreach with Lemlist comes with a hefty price tag!)
On the other hand, with Instantly, you can connect unlimited email accounts even in its starter plan (priced at $30/mo) and use its simple & easy-to-use sequence builder to create your campaigns.
Choosing Between Lemlist and Instantly: Budget-Friendly Automation vs. Multichannel Campaigns
Hence, you should choose:
Lemlist, if you want to run multi-channel campaigns (though not scalable) and have a high budget.
Instantly, if you want to run cold email campaigns, connect unlimited email accounts, and use advanced automation features at a much more affordable price.
Client & Team Management
If you run multiple campaigns for your clients and need to involve various team members to cater to different client needs, you'll require collaboration features and role-based access control. These features will help you handle everything smoothly and run scalable campaigns.
Hence, your cold email software needs client and team management features.
Lemlist
There are better solutions than Lemlist for growing and scaling teams because it has a per-person pricing plan. Even with its highest-paid pricing plan, Outreach Scale, charged at $129/mo/user, limits you to 15 sending emails. Investing in Lemlist is not worth it if you run vast email campaigns at scale.
G2 User Review: “I WISH WISH WISH they had unlimited email accounts. That’s the only thing I don’t like about it: it caps you at five email accounts (15 with the pro plan). Which isn’t terrible, but only having 5 is quite rough. I hope one day they come out with more.”
Instantly
Instantly offers agency-friendly features like adding unlimited clients & team members, but it comes with an extra cost. You will get this functionality in its hyper-growth plan, priced at $77.6/mo for one workspace. If you want to create another workspace, subscribe to the hyper-growth plan again!
Managing Workspaces in Instantly: Limitations for Agencies and Cost Considerations
Instantly’s Workspaces are not shared or bundled under a single subscription, so you must pay for each separately if you have multiple workspaces. (Ouch!!) This is not apt for lead generation agencies running cold email campaigns on a larger scale.
G2 User Review: “It costs extra to add another workspace for clients to manage their campaigns.”
Who Has the Best Client & Team Management Functionality?
Both Instantly & Lemlist are not ideal solutions if you are looking for advanced client and team management functionalities at cost-effective prices.
Unified Inbox
A unified inbox lets you track replies from different sequences and email accounts in one central location. This functionality significantly saves time and effort by eliminating the need to review each reply from your prospects manually. It also allows you to quickly identify and prioritize responses from important leads.
Lemlist
Lemlist is already out of the race here because it DOESN’T offer a unified inbox feature!
Instantly
Instantly has an inbox that allows you to track, reply to, and forward all the replies from your leads. But here is the catch with its starter plan: you can ONLY preview replies but cannot send replies directly from Unibox. To have the functionality to reply to your leads’ emails directly within Unibox, you need to upgrade to the Hyper Growth or Light Speed plan.
Instantly's Unibox
G2 User Review: “I don’t like the unibox that much, and also when you delete the leads instantly, they don’t end up in your main unibox anymore, so you have to use a big email account and organize them.”
There are mixed reviews of the Unibox feature on G2. Some users have said that it needs to be fixed and slow down the updating of data, which can easily hamper the overall experience and cause a hassle in organizing the data manually. (imagine all the time that would go into it)
Who Has the Best Unified Inbox?
Well, among Lemlist & Instantly, only Instantly offers unified inbox functionality.
Personalization Features
Personalization is the most effective way to achieve high open rates; therefore, it is important to look for a cold email tool that helps you send personalized emails at scale.
Lemlist
Regarding personalization, Lemlist offers various options, such as:
Adding custom variables like first name, last name, signature
LinkedIn url
Ice breakers, etc.
Liquid syntax
You can also add customized elements to your emails, such as:
Images
Videos
Landing pages
Gifs
Leveraging Lemlist’s AI Icebreakers and Image Personalization for Smarter Cold Emails
Lemlist also allows you to create icebreakers with AI. All you have to do is give your prospect’s LinkedIn URL, and it will scrape all the data from it and give you a personalized icebreaker.
G2 User Review: “Lemlist is a great tool for us to send Cold Emails in bulk with image personalization. I really like the Image Personalization feature, which helps us insert dynamic images inside cold emails.”
Instantly
Personalization features are not limited to custom variables. You can use its native integration with Open AI to create personalized and unique content. You can also add images and emoticons to make your emails more engaging.
G2 User Review: “Another impressive aspect is the personalization tools. Instantly enables users to customize emails with dynamic content, ensuring each message feels unique and relevant to the recipient. This level of personalization increases the likelihood of engagement and positive responses.”
Who Offers the Best Personalization Feature?
Instantly beats Lemlist because of its integration with OpenAI, which can help you create personalized email copies at scale.
A-Z Testing: Lemlist vs Instantly
A-Z or multivariate testing is an advanced testing functionality that allows you to test various variants of your:
Email copies
Subject lines
CTAs
You can use this to identify and double down on the best-performing variation.
Lemlist
Again, Lemlist must be out of the race because it does not offer Multi-variant testing. It only supports A/B testing, in which you can create 2 versions of your sequence and test them.
Instantly
Conversely, Instantly offers A-Z testing functionality, which allows you to test unlimited variations of your email copies, CTAs, and subject lines. It also offers an auto-optimized A/Z testing feature that uses Instantly’s algorithm to analyze multiple variants of an email based on metrics to determine which version performs better, like:
Click
Reply
Open rates
Important Note: A-Z testing functionality is not available in the starter plan. To use this feature, subscribe to the hyper-growth or above-pricing plan.
Who Has the Best A-Z Testing Capabilities?
Well, Instantly is the winner in offering A-Z testing features. You must subscribe to Instantly’s higher pricing plans to use multivariate testing in your sequences.
Email Deliverability
You need cold email software to build a robust sender reputation. Otherwise, all your emails will land in a spam box, and there is no denying that. Hence, while you are in the selection process, ensure you give importance to email deliverability features.
Lemlist
To help you maintain high deliverability rates, Lemlist offers integration with Lemwarm, an email warm-up tool. This amazing tool mirrors human-like outreach efforts with a premium network of 10,000 users to build your domain credibility.
G2 User Review: “Lemlist also includes Lemwarm, which is a great email warm-up tool that works!”
Important Note: Lemwarm is not available in the starter pricing plan. You have to subscribe to Email Pro and the above pricing plans to use it
Instantly
Instantly has an in-built email warm-up functionality and allows unlimited email warm-ups in all its pricing plans; Users are not happy with it.
G2 User Review: “They suggested minimum 2 weeks warmup before sending emails. We wanted to send out big email campaigns, so added 25+ emails(Google workspace), let them warm up for 2 months, came back to see they’ve reset warmup progress a week ago and started from 0 again(not throttled, literally started from 0). Now the emails are at 7 warmup emails per day. They can’t detect bounced email properly and resend a campaign to that bounced address in sequence, making your bounces 200%.”
Apart from providing warm-up services, Instantly also has a “check deliverability score” feature, which is a basic feature that gives you an overview of your technical email set up. This feature is only available in the Hyper-growth pricing plan and above.
Who Has the Best Email Deliverability Features?
None of these tools offer the best email deliverability features. Although Lemlist’s email warm-up functionality is great, the pricing is too high, as Lemwarm is unavailable in the starter plan. Instantly lacks advanced email deliverability features.
Analytical Dashboard
The success of your cold email campaigns lies in monitoring their performance. It is crucial to find cold email tools with advanced analytics capabilities to identify potential leakages and bottlenecks during the entire process and remove them to achieve the best results.
Lemlist
I simply loved Lemlist’s super customizable and advanced dashboard. It provides a detailed overview and key metrics for channels, sequences, and lead actions. These actions can help you analyze your outreach efforts and identify ways to improve for maximum results.
Lemlist’s reporting feature is divided into 3 parts:
Overview
Campaign
Email
Instantly
Unlike Lemlist, Instantly has a very decent and intuitive dashboard with which you can track basic metrics like:
Open rate
Reply rate
Bounce rate, etc.
Its dashboard is divided into two parts:
Campaign
Accounts analytics
Who Has the Best Analytical and Monitoring Capabilities?
Lemlist stands out because of its super customizable and advanced analytical capabilities.
Native Integrations
Every tool cannot have everything, and that is a fact! This is where integrations play a pivotal role. They help you integrate your favorite sales tool with your cold email software to boost productivity.
Lemlist
With Lemlist, you can expect 3 native integrations with popular CRMs. It also provides 8 data enrichment and 33 workflow management tools to enhance your overall sales cycle.
Instantly
On the other hand, it instantly lacks integration capabilities. You can natively integrate with 3 CRMs; you would need an API Key for the rest.
Who Offers the Best Native Integrations?
Though Lemlist and Instantly offer various integrations through APIs and webhooks, they lack native integrations with CRMs, which are essential for streamlining your sales process.
Lead Database:
A B2B Database is not an essential feature you should look for in a cold email tool, but yes, with growing trends in automation, it has become a necessity. You need a B2B database to do prospecting and outreach from one platform and eliminate the hassle of transferring data from one tool to another. Both Lemlist and Instantly have their lead databases. Let’s compare them to see which one stands:
Lemlist
Lemlist has an AI-powered B2B database of 450 million+ contacts and has extensive
The list of filters is divided into 4 sections:
1. General
Current job title
Revenue
Country, etc.
2. Signals & Intent
Company size growth
Current company hiring
Technologies, etc.
3. Company information
Size
Name
Type, etc.
4. Contact information
Full Name
City/State
Interests, etc.
Instantly
Instantly has a database of 160 million and offers a set of filters like:
Job Titles
Location
Industry
Employees
Revenue
Keyword Filter
Lookalike domain, etc.
Who Has the Best Lead Database?
Well, neither will give you a free trial, nor will you get any free credits to test the accuracy of their Lead Finder. Both platforms empower users to seamlessly add their sourced leads into existing outreach campaigns with a button click. All in all, both databases are solid, but the winner here is Lemlist due to a much, much higher volume of leads and search filters available.
Campaign Management
Creating and running outreach campaigns is the main reason businesses look for a sales automation tool, so this is where the devil is truly in the details. For starters, Instantly is solely an email outreach platform (though they promise that cloud calls and SMS are coming soon), whereas Lemlist has always been positioned as a multichannel tool, offering:
Emails
LinkedIn messages
Phone calls
Given the more simple nature of Instantly’s outreach campaigns, this platform is extremely easy to set up and run your email outreach. Simply add multiple steps consisting of initial emails and follow-ups. Instantly provides numerous variables and ready-to-use email templates to make your messages feel much more personal, even when automating thousands of emails simultaneously.
Streamlining Campaign Management with Lemlist: A/B Testing, Unibox, and AI Assistance
Users can also easily run A/B tests before launching their mass campaigns. Their ‘Unibox’ feature integrates multiple email mailboxes under one roof, allowing users to manage their campaigns more easily. With Lemlist, setting up a campaign is slightly more complicated, but it gives more wiggle room for sales and marketing teams to connect with leads effectively. At first, Lemlist users can choose to create their campaigns manually or ask AI to handle that right away:
Advanced Conditional Sequences in Lemlist: Tailoring Outreach Based on Lead Actions
Rather than focusing on linear sequences like Instantly, Lemlist can create complex, conditional (cause-trigger) sequences. In other words, adjusting to the actions taken or not taken by each lead to determine and execute the best next step. For instance, if your lead accepts the automated LinkedIn request within 3 days, they get email ‘A’; if they don’t, they get email ‘B’.
Split Testing
Lemlist offers A/B testing, which means you can test two versions of your cold email. But with Instantly, you can create as many variants as you desire (A/Z testing). Lemlist does allow you to customize emails with funky templates (that work with dynamic data), so A/B testing actually allows you to do more with these custom templates.
Lemlist vs. Instantly.ai: Pricing plans
Regarding powerful business software, pricing is often a sensitive subject. Sales and marketing automation tools are the backbone of most B2B tool stacks, so you definitely want to find a reliable tool that covers your business needs, but it’s just as important to strike a balance with budget in mind. Instantly’s and Lemlist’s pricing strategies are quite different, and which will ultimately be the better ‘bang for your buck’ depends solely on what features you really need and the size of your team.
Pricing Comparison: Freemium Plans, Free Trials, and Cost Efficiency of Instantly vs. Lemlist
Instantly, it doesn’t offer a freemium pricing plan, but Lemlist does. It’s worth mentioning that it’s far too limited for any serious work. Users of both tools can enjoy a 14-day free trial to see them in action before committing to a purchase. Instantly’s pricing plans are per workspace/month rather than per user/month, like most sales platforms, so it’s definitely a much cheaper solution for bigger teams.
Instantly’s Pricing Model: Separating Outreach Features and Lead Database for Flexible Use
Instantly is split into two separate products regarding pricing—‘Sending & Warmup’, which has all the outreach and deliverability features, and ‘Leads’, which is their native contact database.
While this means paying almost double to enjoy the full platform, businesses with an existing lead database can just use the outreach and warmup features.
Comparing Pricing Tiers: Instantly’s Hypergrowth vs. Lemlist’s Multichannel Expert Plans
Lemlist’s pricing plans are slightly more straightforward—2 ‘starter’ plans for individual professionals not planning to run mass outreach campaigns and 3 plans for businesses.
Instantly’s most popular pricing plan — Hypergrowth, and Lemlist’s most popular plan — Multichannel Expert, are priced approximately the same, but keep in mind that, unlike Instantly, lemlist has a per user/per month pricing for all its plans.
Choosing the Right Plan: Instantly vs. Lemlist for Teams and Agencies
Truthfully, for sales and marketing teams looking to elevate their outreach, neither of the two platforms’ lower-tier plans than the ones just mentioned would be sufficient. Also, it’s interesting to see that Lemlist recently added a dedicated ‘Outbound agency’ plan, though there’s not much information on it. On a final note, Instantly’s pricing is much more competitive than Lemlist’s for a team of more than two users, even when considering the need to pay for two separate products. However, as this article concluded, Lemlist does offer more features.
Lemlist vs Instantly: The Verdict
Back to our main question. Instantly vs. Lemlist, who comes out on top? While the two platforms are fairly similar in nature, some distinct differences determine which is the better option for your business.
Lemlist vs. Instantly: Best Choices for Small Teams vs. Large Budget-Conscious Teams
If you’re a small team looking for a more ‘packed’ platform with more advanced campaign management features and a much bigger lead database for prospecting, Lemlist is the superior option, though, it gets much more expensive with every next user. If you’re merely looking for a lightweight platform to automate outreach campaigns and have peace of mind that your emails reach your recipients’ inboxes, or if you’re a much bigger team with a tight budget. Instantly is the winner.
Why Inframail.io Stands Out: Exploring a New AI-Driven Sales Automation Platform
On a final note, if you’re in the market for a reliable, AI-driven sales automation platform and can’t seem to find ‘the one’, we invite you to take Inframail.io for a free spin and see for yourself the fusion of robust features, user-friendly interface, and cutting-edge AI.
Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today
Cold email can be a tricky business. You have to get the technical side right to ensure the messages you send reach your prospects. If you don’t, you risk being marked as a spammer, which can ruin your outreach campaign before it even gets started. That’s where Inframail comes in. At Inframail, we provide the infrastructure you need for cold email success. With our service, you get unlimited inboxes at a flat rate to help you scale your outreach efforts. Inframail has the robust email infrastructure you need to reach your cold email goals, whether you’re:
An agency looking to connect with more prospects
A recruiter trying to engage with candidates
An SDR driving sales
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© Inframail LLC. 2023
228 Park Ave S.
PMB 166934
New York, New York 10003-1502
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