The 5 Best Cold Email Software Platforms for Landing Clients

When it comes to finding clients or making sales online, there’s no channel we prefer more than cold email. It’s fast, it’s versatile, and it’s cheap.

Despite being simpler than many other strategies, cold email can still be a bit complicated when setting up the proper infrastructure. You can’t simply dump 10k contacts into Mailchimp and start blasting—you’d destroy your sender reputation and eventually get kicked off their platform.

Over the years, I’ve sent over 3,000,000 cold emails and added hundreds of millions in pipeline value. With Coldlytics, I’ve helped plenty of agencies and sales teams use our data to power their cold email efforts.

Today, I’m going to share with you my 5 favorite cold email software for keeping deliverability high and bringing in new business.

What Should You Look for in Cold Email Software?

First and foremost, you can’t just find the cheapest or best email marketing platform and upload your cold leads. Most of them are designed for warm email sends, where they expect that your list has opted in to hear from you. They don’t worry about warming up your list.

On the contrary, a good cold email software is designed specifically to help you help you get delivered to inboxes, even to contacts that have never heard from you.

Here’s what you need to consider when considering platforms:

• Email warmup - This is a foundational feature of cold email platforms. They’ll begin sending emails in small batches from your account and slowly ramp it up over a few weeks. A good software will have a network of email addresses you’ll send to, which emulate humans in interacting with your emails.
• Account rotation - Success with cold email requires sending a low volume from many different email accounts. A great platform will automatically rotate between your accounts, meaning you only have to set up one email.
• Ongoing deliverability features - To keep your emails delivering to nboxes, cold email software will have features such as email validation, send limit detection, blacklist detection, custom domain tracking, and more. 
• Built-in automation - Most platforms allow you to set up a sequence of emails and even remove contacts once they’ve responded.
• Personalization features - Since personalized emails are opened 82% more than non-personalized emails, your chosen cold email software should be able to handle this.
• Cost - Of course, costs will vary between platforms. Be sure to check how many email accounts and domains you’re allowed to have, or if you’re charged for each one. That’s one of the biggest pricing variables.
• Reporting - If you can’t get full insight into how your campaign is working, then you’re not using the right software.

Top 5 Cold Email Software

We’ve narrowed the field down to our top 5 favorite platforms.

1. Woodpecker.co

Woodpecker is a robust cold email platform that does a tremendous job of keeping your deliverability high. Their software gets your email to inboxes through features like human-like sending, auto-validation of emails, and predictive deliverability monitoring.

While their pricing is terrific for some users, those who really want to scale will notice that each pricing tier has a set number of email accounts that can be warmed up. You get more free warm-up accounts included in the price as you scale to higher plans. However, there’s a reason they’re trusted by over 13,000 users: they understand deliverability.

Pros

• Adaptive sending adjusts your campaign's sending if you begin to approach limits set by inbox providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. After implementing adaptive sending, their customers hit provider limits 59% less often.
• Unlimited team members can be added to your account for free.
• Automated DNS setup for domains purchased through them means easier setup for you (coming soon).
• A wide array of third-party integrations with popular CRMs (such as HubSpot or Pipedrive) and other tools.

Cons

• Split-testing capped at five variations.
• Basic level of integrated AI for copy.
• Limited free email warmup.

Pricing

Pricing begins at $29/mo allowing you to contact up to 500 prospects and to warm up two email accounts. Each additional account you’d like to warm up costs $5/mo (however, on higher plans you get more free warm up accounts included in the price) . You can scale up to 300,000 email sends per month for $395 per month (higher tiers available in the app). All levels offer a free trial with no credit card required.

2. Instantly.ai

Boasting a 4.9 star-rating on over 3,000 reviews on G2, Instantly.ai is the highest-rated platform by users on this list. Over 20,000 customers rave about their no-frills approach to email marketing, including a simple setup and a user interface that’s second to none.

It’s single-mindedness towards email does mean that it lacks multi-channel outreach. However, if you’re just looking to be up and running with email campaigns that deliver, Instantly.ai is a terrific choice.

Pros

• Unlimited email accounts included, meaning inexpensive scaling.
• Access to leads database (although it lacks advanced filtering).
• User-friendly interface.
• AI for subject lines, email copy, and send times.

Cons

• No multichannel marketing (it’s all email, email, emai!).
• The recently-incorporated CRM is still in its infancy when it comes to features.
• Limited integrations with third party apps—you’ll have to use Zapier or work with a developer.

Pricing

Pricing begins at $30/mo for 1k contacts and 5k monthly email volume. Scaling up to 500k sends with 100k contacts costs around $286. All plans offer a no-credit-card-required free trial.

3. SmartReach

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While having a smaller user base than the others on this list, SmartReach boasts an impressive array of features. Their multi-channel automation capabilities are perfect for professional marketers and salespeople looking to utilize SMS and social media. With their email spinning and ESP match, you’ll get incredible deliverability on your sends.

Pros

• Advanced ongoing spam checks before each email send (SPF, DKIM, Dmarc, blacklists, email coding, etc.).
• ESP matching means that your Gmail accounts send to other Gmail accounts, Yahoo to Yahoo, and so on.
• The spintax feature slightly rewrites each of your emails so they appear less like a marketing campaign to inbox providers.
• Over 5,000 native integrations with other tools.

Cons

• Gets pricey pretty fast, reaching over $200 per month for just 18k contacts.
• More features means more complicated setup and ongoing campaign building.

Pricing

For $29, you’ll get 1,000 contacts and 10 warmup email accounts. Scaling up to 10k contacts or more gets you 50 warmup email accounts and the ESP matching feature (starts at $99/mo).

4. Replyify 

By catering to salespeople or marketers with smaller needs, Replyify has carved out a niche with a dependable, feature-rich platform. Boasting a true $0 plan, Replyify stands out with tremendous automations and instant notifications of prospect activity.

 While you certainly could use Replyify for an agency (they do have an unlimited contacts option), their website only provides pricing for 3k active contacts—making comparing to other solutions more tedious.

Pros

• Campaign automation allows for reaching out through SMS, LinkedIn, or X.
• Unlimited email follow-ups.
• Instant notification of email opens or clicks so you can reach out right away.

Cons 

• Many important features are only included at higher levels, including email warmup and Salesforce Integration.
• Lack of pricing information on website, maxing out at just 3k contacts.
• A/B testing of campaigns not available on lower tiers.

Pricing

Their $0 pricing plan allows for 25 active contacts, allowing you to play with their features with no ticking clock. They have Starter and Enterprise tiers, with published pricing of $79 for 3k contacts. Anything more requires contacting sales.

5. Smartlead.ai

One of the most popular solutions on this list, Smartlead.ai claims over 31,000 users and a 4.7 rating on G2. With a tremendous platform that provides almost everything to run cold emails effectively, there’s no need to wonder why they’re a leader in the space.

Pros

• Extensive API and native integrations.
• AI for email warmup, send times, and strategy.
• Multi-channel campaigns utilizing email, SMS, X, and WhatsApp.
• Centralized master inbox showing communication from all channels.

Cons

• No time zone scheduling.
• Occasional buggy interface or data not updated in real time (according to user reviews).
• High learning curve due to feature-rich platform.

Pricing

$39/mo gets you 2k leads with up to 6k emails per month. At $94/mo, you’ll get 30k leads along with access to the custom CRM, integrations, and unlimited seats. Each plan offers a 14-day free trial.

How to Get Contacts for Cold Email

Choosing the right platform for your needs is a great place to start, but the foundation for cold email success comes from sending your emails to right people. Outdated lists with subpar targeting often lead to frustrating results, no matter how great your cold email software.

At Coldlytics, we’re proud to say that no other lead provider has better targeting or more up-to-date leads. We work directly with you to ensure you’re getting the hyper-targeted leads you need to achieve growth in your business. 

Ready to have a quick conversation? Schedule a time and let’s talk!

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