The best Instantly alternatives depend on why you are leaving: the plan tiers, the number of products to line up, or the conversation that starts after the send. Here are six real options, ranked for the founders, sales teams and agencies who buy Instantly, with how each one charges according to its own site and when it is the better choice.
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Instantly is on most cold emailers' shortlists, and its own site makes the reason plain: unlimited email accounts and unlimited warm-up on every Outreach plan, a B2B lead database of more than 450 million contacts, done-for-you mailboxes, inbox placement testing, a CRM and a set of AI agents. At the time of writing, its published Outreach plans start at $47 a month. People who search for Instantly alternatives are rarely unhappy with the idea behind it. They are usually weighing how it is packaged against the job they actually have.
The packaging comes first. Instantly sells Outreach plans tiered by uploaded contacts and emails a month, separate Instantly Credits plans for its lead database, bundles that combine the two, and a done-for-you VIP service. That is a sensible structure for a team with a steady volume and a budget line for data. A founder whose list swings from month to month, or an agency that takes on a client with a large export, reads it differently, and starts looking at tools that price by the account, by active prospect or by seat instead.
The second thing is what happens after a prospect answers. Cold email software has largely solved the sending: connect many mailboxes, warm them, rotate the campaign across them. The work that remains is reading the replies, answering "how much is it?", following the silent ones on a channel they actually read, and putting the meeting in the calendar. Instantly offers an AI Reply Agent and lets a person call and text from its CRM. Some buyers want the whole conversation, across email, text and phone, held by one agent working from their own material.
This page ranks six options for that decision. Bold Agent Kit comes first, then the tools closest to Instantly in shape, then the broader sales platforms. Each entry says in plain terms who it suits, how it charges according to its own site, and when you would pick it over the others. If you would rather see Bold Agent Kit and Instantly side by side, job by job, there is a separate comparison page for that.
None of these is about how well Instantly sends mail, and this page makes no claim about that. They come from how its plans are laid out on its own pricing page and what its site says it is for, set against the job the buyer has.
Instantly's Outreach plans are tiered by uploaded contacts and emails a month, so the plan is tied to the size of the list and the volume of the campaign. That suits a steady, predictable programme. A business whose volume swings, with a seasonal push, a win-back of an old customer file or a client who arrives with a large export, has one more number to watch, and some buyers would rather pay for the account and stop counting.
The lead database runs on Instantly Credits plans, sending runs on Outreach plans, and bundles combine them, with a done-for-you VIP service alongside. Each is a reasonable product. A small team that wants sending, answered replies and a little list building reads more than one table before it knows what it will pay, and some would rather buy fewer, broader products, or none that include data at all because they already own their list.
Instantly's AI Reply Agent answers interested prospects, handles objections and shares a Calendly link, in a human-in-the-loop or an autopilot mode. Buyers who want the answer written from their own documents and prices, a real open slot offered and written into the calendar, and the same agent carrying the thread onto a text and a phone call when the email goes unopened, look for tools built around the conversation rather than the send.
The company running the cold email also has a website chat, a support@ mailbox, a phone that rings and social DMs. Instantly describes its platform in terms of outreach: the database, the sequences, a visitor pixel that pushes identified companies into campaigns, and Unibox for the replies. A team that wants the people it contacts and the people who contact it answered by one agent, from one knowledge base, in one inbox, ends up comparing it with something else.
Three questions settle most shortlists. Answer them before you compare feature lists, because two tools with the same features can suit very different buyers.
Instantly prices by uploaded contacts and emails a month. The alternatives price by contacts and sends, by active prospects, by user, or by the account. Work out which number in your business grows fastest, the list, the team, the clients or the mailboxes, and pick the model that does not charge you for it. Then check what sits outside the plan: data credits, bought mailboxes, channel add-ons and AI usage.
Instantly includes a B2B database. Smartlead, Saleshandy, Apollo, lemlist and Reply.io all offer lead data too, each on its own credits or allowances. Bold Agent Kit has none: lists come from a CSV, a CRM segment or the Chrome side panel. If you buy data inside your sending tool today, keep that on the must-have list. If you already own your list, you may be paying for data you never use.
Most cold email tools now connect many mailboxes and warm them. They differ on what happens next: a unified inbox for a team to work, an AI reply feature, LinkedIn steps, a dialer for reps, or an agent that answers from your material, sends the text, places the call and books the meeting itself. Decide whether you have people to work the replies, and whether your prospects answer on LinkedIn or on the phone.
Bold Agent Kit is first. The rest are ordered by how closely they match what a typical Instantly customer buys it for: first the tools that connect unlimited mailboxes with warm-up on plans that do not charge per address (Smartlead, then Saleshandy), then the platform to pick if the lead database is the reason you are on Instantly (Apollo), then the multichannel platforms built for sales teams that run LinkedIn alongside email (lemlist, then Reply.io). Pricing is described as each tool's own site stated it on the date we checked.
We make Bold Agent Kit, which is why it is first on this list. Every other entry is described from its own website, including when it is the better choice.
Bold Agent Kit is one AI agent that sends cold email from as many mailboxes as you connect, and then carries the conversation. Gmail and Outlook connect with an app password and anything else as an SMTP and IMAP host, and mail goes through your own server, so the sending reputation stays on your domain. Each mailbox that opts in warms up on a ramp from five a day, with spam rescue and replies from the network, and carries a health score out of 100 with the reasons listed. An address whose bounces or spam placement cross a threshold rests itself out of rotation, and every campaign email carries a one-click unsubscribe, honoured on the mail already in the queue.
Where it differs from Instantly is after the send. The reply comes back over IMAP and the agent answers it from the same address, from your Q&A pairs, documents, prices and the pages of your site you allowed, once per thread, ignoring bounces, out-of-office replies and no-reply addresses. When the person says yes, it offers real open slots from your connected calendar and writes the booking in. When an email is not opened, the same campaign sends a text on your own number and then places a call the agent speaks itself. The same agent answers your website chat, social DMs and incoming calls.
Choose it if you already have your list, or build it as you browse with the Chrome side panel, and want the replies, follow-up and booking done without a reply team, on one plan that does not move with your contacts, emails or mailboxes. It is $25 a month or $200 a year for the whole account, with unlimited agents and a 7-day free trial. It has no contact database, no LinkedIn step and no outbound WhatsApp in campaigns, so if those are central to your outbound, one of the tools below will suit you better.
Smartlead is the closest tool to Instantly in shape. It describes itself as cold email outreach software, its pricing page says every plan includes unlimited email accounts at no extra cost, and sending rotates automatically across the mailboxes in a campaign. Its warm-up runs from the moment a mailbox is connected, in a private pool. Around that it has built a set of products: SmartProspect for lead data from more than 300 million verified business profiles, SmartSenders for bought mailboxes, SmartServers for dedicated servers and IPs, SmartDelivery for placement testing and SmartDialer for reps on the phone.
At the time of writing, its published plans start at $39 a month, tiered by contacts stored and email sends a month, with a monthly allowance of verified prospect emails, and several of those products appear on its pricing page as add-ons. Its master inbox tags replies by intent, assigns them to teammates, and can route leads into follow-up sequences or booking calendars and automate first-touch responses. Client workspaces are available from its Pro plan, white-labelling is listed at $29 a month per client workspace, and it publishes an API and webhooks with Zapier, Make and n8n connections.
Choose Smartlead if you like how Instantly works but want a different set of products around the sending, particularly dedicated infrastructure, an API to build on, or white-labelled client workspaces for an agency. Like Instantly, it tiers its plans by volume, so compare the two on the add-ons you would actually buy rather than on the headline plan.
Saleshandy calls itself a complete multichannel outbound platform, and its site puts the pieces an Instantly customer looks for on every plan: unlimited email accounts, warm-up that runs in the background, and a unified inbox with a built-in CRM. It adds a lead finder over a database of more than 852 million contacts, with a monthly allowance of lead finder credits by plan, and AI that writes sequence copy. Its sequences run email, calls, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and custom tasks, with the dialer as a paid add-on, and it sells mailboxes and domains as infrastructure add-ons.
The pricing model is the reason it is on this list. At the time of writing, its published plans start at $34 a month billed annually, or $41 a month paid monthly, and move up by active prospects, the contacts you keep in live sequences at once, and by emails a month. Seats come with the plan rather than on top of it: one user on Starter, ten on Pro and no limit on Scale, and its site says unlimited email accounts and unlimited clients are included at every tier. White-labelling for agencies is listed on its custom Enterprise plan. There is a 7-day free trial with no credit card required.
Choose Saleshandy if you want what Instantly gives you, unlimited mailboxes, warm-up, a lead database and one inbox, but prefer a plan measured by the contacts in live sequences, with seats and clients included, or you want LinkedIn and WhatsApp steps in the same sequence as the email. It is organised around prospecting and sending, which is the same starting point as Instantly.
Apollo describes itself as an AI sales platform, and it starts where Instantly's lead finder does: with data. Its site lists more than 240 million contacts and 30 million companies, and around that database it puts multi-step sequences of emails, calls, LinkedIn tasks and more, a power and parallel dialer with local presence and voicemail drops, meeting scheduling, deliverability tools covering warm-up, SPF, DKIM and DMARC set-up, health score alerts and mailbox rotation, and AI help with research and writing. It positions itself as replacing a data provider, an outreach platform, a dialer, enrichment and a CRM.
Its pricing page publishes a free plan, with basic access to its sales engagement tools and a limited contact database, and paid plans priced per user, with credits used for things such as exporting contacts and placing dialer calls, and add-on credits when you need more. That is a different model from Instantly's: rather than tiers by uploaded contacts and emails, the cost grows with the number of people on the team and the data they use.
Choose Apollo if the database is the main reason you are on Instantly, you have reps who will work a dialer and LinkedIn tasks, and you want prospecting, sequencing and calling in one seat per person. If you already own your list, or you are one person sending from many mailboxes, weigh how much of a per-user, data-first plan you would actually use.
lemlist describes itself as an AI outbound platform, and it reaches further than Instantly on channels. Its site lists a lead database of more than 650 million, AI agents that research and personalise, lemwarm for warm-up, a deliverability hub for mailbox and domain health, and multichannel sequences across email, LinkedIn, calls, WhatsApp and SMS, with every conversation in one unified inbox whatever the sender or channel. It connects natively to HubSpot, Salesforce and Attio.
At the time of writing, its published plans start at $69 a month, or $55 a month billed annually, for the Email plan, which lists unlimited users and email senders. The Multichannel plan, where LinkedIn, calls, SMS and WhatsApp sit, is priced per user with five senders each, and enrichment runs on credits. lemwarm and its deliverability protections are included in all plans. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Choose lemlist if LinkedIn is part of how your prospects answer and you want it in the same sequence as the email, with the data in the same tool. If you only ever send email and do not use the database, its Email plan is the one to set against Instantly's Outreach plans.
Reply.io is an outreach platform with a B2B database of more than a billion contacts, multichannel sequences across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, SMS and calls, and an AI SDR called Jason that finds prospects, writes personalised messages and manages the responses. It lets you buy sending domains and Google or Microsoft mailboxes inside the product, new or pre-warmed, with the DNS records configured for you, or connect the mailboxes you already have. Warm-up is included with every mailbox, and mailboxes are rotated per campaign.
Its pricing page lists plans per user a month, in tiers of active contacts, the unique contacts you can start a sequence with each month. On its Email Volume plans, LinkedIn automation and Calls & SMS are add-ons, and the number of mailboxes follows a fair usage policy; the Multichannel plan includes them per user. Jason is sold as its own plan, which at the time of writing starts at $500 a month, and there is an agency version with multiple workspaces. A 14-day free trial is available.
Choose Reply.io if you run a sales team that works LinkedIn as well as email, wants an AI SDR to source and research prospects as well as write to them, and syncs with a CRM such as Salesforce, Pipedrive or HubSpot. Its model grows with users and active contacts, which suits a team with a seat budget more than a solo sender.
The six picks by who they suit, which channels they cover and how their own sites say they charge. For reference, Instantly publishes Outreach plans tiered by uploaded contacts and emails a month, starting at $47 a month at the time of writing, with its lead data on separate credits plans.
| Tool | Best for | Channels | How it charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bold Agent Kit | the conversation after the send, on one flat plan | Email, text and call steps; website chat, social DMs and inbound calls | $25 a month or $200 a year for the account, 7-day free trial; AI, mail and carrier billed to you at cost |
| Smartlead | a like-for-like platform with a deep sending stack | Email; calls through its SmartDialer add-on | Plans tiered by contacts and email sends; published plans start at $39 a month at the time of writing; add-ons |
| Saleshandy | unlimited mailboxes with seats and clients in the plan | Email, calls, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and custom tasks | By active prospects and emails a month, seats included; published plans start at $34 a month billed annually at the time of writing |
| Apollo | teams whose first need is B2B contact data | Email, calls through its dialer, and LinkedIn tasks | A free plan, and paid plans priced per user, with credits for exports and dialling |
| lemlist | multichannel prospecting with LinkedIn steps | Email, LinkedIn, calls, WhatsApp and SMS | Email plan from $69 a month, or $55 billed annually, at the time of writing; Multichannel per user; credits for data |
| Reply.io | sales teams that want an AI SDR and LinkedIn automation | Email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS and WhatsApp | Per user a month in tiers of active contacts; Jason AI SDR on its own plan, from $500 a month at the time of writing |
Every tool here connects more than one sending mailbox and offers warm-up, so neither decides the choice on its own. Every tool except Bold Agent Kit includes or sells B2B lead data; Bold Agent Kit works from the list you already have. The differences that decide most switches are the pricing model, whether LinkedIn belongs in the sequence, and who handles the conversation once a prospect replies.
We checked each tool’s public website on 11 September 2026 for this page. Plans and features change, so check each vendor’s own site for the current detail. Product names are trademarks of their owners, and Bold Agent Kit is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
If you are leaving Instantly because of what happens after the send, choose Bold Agent Kit. It keeps what you liked, as many mailboxes as you connect, warmed, scored and rotated, and adds the part a sending platform leaves to you: the reply answered from your own material, the meeting booked into a real slot, the text and the call to the people who never opened, and the website chat and DMs answered by the same agent. One plan, $25 a month for the account, suits founders, small teams and agencies that bring their own lists.
If you like how Instantly works and want the same shape with a different package, look at Smartlead first, for its dedicated infrastructure, API and agency workspaces, then Saleshandy, for plans measured by active prospects with seats and clients included. If the lead database is the part you cannot do without, Apollo puts data first, with a free plan to start and per-user plans after it.
If LinkedIn is where your prospects answer, lemlist and Reply.io are built for it: lemlist with LinkedIn, calls, SMS and WhatsApp on its per-user Multichannel plan, and Reply.io with LinkedIn automation and Jason, its AI SDR. It is also reasonable to run two tools side by side, one for data and volume sending and one for the conversation that follows.
Each agent uses a model on your own API key, in the same way it sends from your own mailbox and your own phone number. Sixteen providers are supported: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and Mistral; DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, Qwen and MiniMax; Groq, Together, Fireworks and OpenRouter; and Ollama or any other OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host yourself.
Bring your own credentials and you own the whole stack: your model provider, your mailboxes, your carrier, your CRM. We charge for the software and nothing else — no token markup, no metering, no credit packs — so your provider bills you direct at their rates, usually a few dollars a month per agent.
OpenAI
Anthropic
Gemini
xAI
Mistral
DeepSeek
GLM
Kimi
Qwen
MiniMax
Groq
Together
Fireworks
OpenRouter
Ollama
Any OpenAI APINo seat tiers, no credit packs, no per-agent or per-channel pricing, and nothing held back behind an enterprise call.
| Agents | |
|---|---|
| How many | Unlimited — one per business, brand or job |
| Shared brain | The same identity, instructions and knowledge on every channel |
| Knowledge base | Documents, Q&A pairs, data points and pages of your own site |
| Isolation | One agent's content is never used to reply for another |
| Client seats | Invite a client into one agent, with their own login |
| Channels | |
| As many mailboxes per agent as you connect, rotated by campaigns | |
| Text messages | Nine providers — Twilio, Telnyx, SimpleTexting, Plivo, Vonage, Sinch, Bandwidth, MessageBird, ClickSend |
| Phone calls | Answering and dialling, with recordings and transcripts |
| Transcription | Google, or Deepgram nova-3 on your own key |
| Voices | Google, Amazon Polly and ElevenLabs, or your own ElevenLabs / Fish Audio account |
| Voice cloning | Record a voice in the browser and clone it on your ElevenLabs or Fish Audio key |
| Website chat | A widget on your site with your colour, image and greeting |
| Social DMs | Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, LINE, Viber, Slack, Discord, Bluesky, Reddit, X |
| Inbox | |
| One list | Every channel's conversations together, newest first, tagged by channel |
| Filters | By channel, by mailbox or number, or by agent |
| Takeover | Reply yourself and the agent stands down on that thread |
| Hand back | Return the thread to the agent when you are done |
| Campaigns | |
| Multichannel sequences | Email, text and call steps in one campaign, each with its own timing |
| Send conditions | Send a step only if they opened, did not open, clicked or did not click |
| Schedule | The days, hours and time zone anything may be sent |
| Stop rules | A reply, a booking or an opt-out on any channel ends the sequence |
| Pacing | Per-mailbox and per-number hourly limits, pausable and resumable |
| Review before start | The full plan is shown; a campaign sends nothing until you start it |
| Templates | Email, text and call scripts, saved once and reused |
| Analytics | |
| Funnel | Reached, replied, visited, converted, plus value won and time to convert |
| By channel | Where each person started, and the channel they converted on |
| Pages | Which pages known people read, and how many of them converted |
| Journeys | One row per person: every message, visit, call and booking in order |
| Goals | A page rule or a manual "won", each with a dollar value |
| Triggers | A known person returns to a page — notify you, or send a follow-up |
| Open and click tracking | Recorded per campaign and added to that person's history |
| Integrations | |
| Calendars | Google, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Cal.com, Acuity, Zoho, Square, HubSpot Meetings |
| CRMs and commerce | HubSpot, GoHighLevel, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Jobber, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace |
| Booking | Real open slots offered, and only an offered slot can be booked |
| CRM import | Import a segment of customers into a contact list |
| Deliverability and compliance | |
| Mailbox warm-up | Ramped sending across the network, with spam rescue and replies |
| Health score | SPF, DKIM, DMARC, bounce rate and inbox placement, with reasons |
| Auto-rest | A failing address is removed from rotation automatically |
| Unsubscribes | One click, honoured automatically, including on queued mail |
| Reply limits | One reply per thread, per-sender daily and per-channel hourly caps |
| Filtering | Bounces, out-of-office and no-reply addresses ignored |
| List building | |
| Contact extraction | Emails, phone numbers and social profiles, on any site. Unlimited. |
| Deep scan | Follows the pages of a domain most likely to carry contact details |
| Domain queue | Load a CSV of sites and work through them one at a time |
| Contacts and lists | Unlimited, by email or phone, with CSV import and export |
| AI | |
| Your own key | Sixteen providers, including any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host |
| What we charge for AI | Nothing — no markup, no metering, no credit packs |
| On calls | Uses your provider's fastest model automatically |
| Account | |
| Platforms | Chrome side panel and web dashboard on one login |
| Members' forum | Six boards, visible only once you are signed in |
| Referral program | $50 a year per referral ($5 a month), recurring for the life of the account |
| Support | support@boldagents.co |
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It depends on why you are leaving. If you want the replies answered, the meeting booked and the follow-up carried onto text and phone by an AI agent, on one flat plan for the account, Bold Agent Kit is built for that. If you want a platform shaped like Instantly with a different stack around the sending, Smartlead and Saleshandy are the closest. If lead data is what you rely on most, Apollo starts with its database. If LinkedIn is part of your outbound, lemlist and Reply.io both put it in the sequence. Start with the reason, then shortlist.
Usually for one of four reasons, none of them about how it sends. Its Outreach plans are tiered by uploaded contacts and emails a month, so the plan moves with the list. Lead data runs on separate credits plans, with bundles combining the two, so there is more than one product to line up. The replies still need working, and some buyers want an agent to answer them, book the meeting and follow up by text and phone. And the business behind the campaign also has a website chat, a phone and social DMs that need answering.
Both connect as many mailboxes as you like and warm them up. Instantly adds a B2B lead database, done-for-you mailboxes, placement testing and a set of AI agents, priced across Outreach plans, credits plans and bundles. Bold Agent Kit is one AI agent that answers replies from your own material, books into real calendar slots, runs text and call steps itself and answers inbound chat, DMs and calls, for $25 a month or $200 a year for the account. It has no lead database. The full side-by-side is on our Bold Agent Kit vs Instantly comparison page.
Yes. Mailboxes you set up with your own mail provider belong to you, not to the sending tool, so you can reconnect them to Bold Agent Kit: Gmail and Outlook with an app password, anything else as an SMTP and IMAP host. If Instantly set mailboxes up for you, check with it how those accounts are held before you move them. Switch warm-up on, read each health score and fix any record it names. Bring your contacts in as a CSV; contacts and lists are unlimited. Nothing sends until you press Start, so you can build while Instantly is still running.
Apollo publishes a free plan on its pricing page, with basic access to its sales engagement tools and a limited contact database, and paid plans priced per user beyond it. The other tools on this page offer free trials rather than free plans: at the time of writing, Smartlead, Saleshandy, lemlist and Reply.io each advertise one, and Bold Agent Kit has a 7-day free trial of the whole product. A free plan is a good way to test a workflow; the costs that grow with cold email are usually data, mailboxes, seats and volume, so compare those too.
Most of them. Smartlead has SmartProspect, which its site says searches more than 300 million verified business profiles; Saleshandy lists more than 852 million contacts; Apollo lists more than 240 million contacts and 30 million companies; lemlist lists more than 650 million leads; and Reply.io lists more than a billion B2B contacts. Each runs its data on credits or allowances, so check what your plan includes. Bold Agent Kit is the exception: it has no contact database, and builds lists from a CSV, a segment of a connected CRM or store, or the Chrome side panel.
Several. Smartlead's pricing page says every plan includes unlimited email accounts at no extra cost; Saleshandy says unlimited email accounts are included at every tier; lemlist's Email plan lists unlimited email senders; and Reply.io's Email Volume plans have no limit on mailboxes, under a fair usage policy tied to active contacts and sending. Apollo's deliverability tools include mailbox rotation, and it sells domains and mailboxes too. Bold Agent Kit takes as many mailboxes per agent as you connect, with no per-mailbox fee, rotated inside hourly caps per mailbox and a daily cap per sender.
That depends on what your clients need to see and how you want them priced. Smartlead offers client workspaces from its Pro plan, with white-labelling listed at $29 a month per client workspace. Saleshandy says unlimited clients are included at every tier and lists agency white-labelling on its Enterprise plan. Reply.io has an agency version with multiple workspaces. Bold Agent Kit runs unlimited agents on one account, one per client with nothing shared between them, and gives each client a login onto their own agent; it does not put your logo on the product. The plan stays $25 a month however many clients you add.
The best alternatives to the other tools people shortlist for the same jobs.
Reconnect the mailboxes you send from, load what the agent should know, rebuild the sequence and read the plan before you press Start. It sends, answers, texts, calls and books, for $25 a month for the account.
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