I tried major Instantly.ai alternatives, comparing them for features, performance and price compared without bias.
Instantly has established itself as a leading email outreach tool. However, users frequently complain of deliverability issues and cost.
In this post, we will explore Instantly alternatives with special focus on tools with high deliverability, easy of navigation and best value for money.
We are going to analyze and compare two of the top performing email automation software solutions on the market; Instantly and DitLead.
DitLead is a powerful alternative to Instantly and a sales outreach tool designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes and boost their revenue. It does this by automating the creation, scheduling, and delivery of emails.
Ditlead allows you to automate cold email followups, Linkedin DMs cold calls and more.
This software is an all-in-one cold sales engagement solution that can be used for a variety of purposes including email warming, email validation, email campaigns, recruiting, and sales outreach. With advanced CRM features, DitLead allows you to track and manage leads, sales pipelines, and tasks.
DitLead is used by top lead generation agencies for lead generation, and email verification, email warmup, unlimited sender accounts (using sender inbox rotation) to scale outreach without affecting sender reputation and deliverability, create and send personalized emails to their prospects in bulk, track email campaigns, and manage leads effectively, and so on. The software is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy to convert outreach effort into sales.
As an advanced sales engagement platform, DitLead allowing you to setup multi-channel outreach campaign using email, Linkedin and call. Additionally, the software allows sales teams to send automated conditional follow-up emails, making it easier for them to stay in touch with their prospects without having to manually send each email.
Ditlead also comes with an intuitive visual campaign builder to build your cold email outreach, add in Linkedin sales automation, and cold calling. The platform allows you to create, use and re-use a range of pre-built email and Linkedin templates that can be customized to suit a campaign’s unique branding and messaging needs.
DitLead has every feature you can find on Instantly.ai but cheaper.
With DitLead, you can send unlimited emails from unlimited email accounts to unlimited leads without affecting deliverability.
Other reasons to consider DitLead:
If you are looking for an alternative to Instantly.ai with better deliverability, then DitLead is for you. With DitLead, you can completely isolate your emails from our infrastructure making sure that your deliverability isn't affected by activities of other DitLead customers.
Scale with DitLead
Let's say you are sending emails to 100k leads:
With Instantly.ai, you will need the Light Speed plan that cost $358 per month, that's 358 * 12 = $4296. With DitLead, you will only need the Starter plan that cost $38 per month, 38 * 12 = $456.
Over the course a year, you'd save: $3840
This makes DitLead, 92% cheaper!
For agencies, DitLead allows you to have separate project (workspace) for each client at no additional cost with just a single subscription.
Let me share my perspective on the real cost differences:
The Instantly Reality:
DitLead has 4 available plans, including an unlimited free plan. All paid plans comes with unlimited email accounts, unlimited contacts and unlimited email sends;
DitLead is the best Instantly alternative if you’re looking for higher sending limits, improved email deliverability and replies. DitLead might be the perfect fit for you - the best alternative to Instantly.ai - if you are looking to combine Linkedin and Email outreach in your campaigns. It’s a platform designed to make outreach smarter, faster, and more effective.
Lemlist is a popular contender and an excellent Instantly.ai alternative, having been in the market for much longer. Just like DitLead, Lemlist supports multi-channel email and Linkedin outreach automation.
Lemlist recently massively updated their UI and introduced new features, and here's my opinion: While it offers the essential trio of cold email, LinkedIn, and calling capabilities, the platform left me wanting more in terms of user experience, navigation became confusing.
The new changes came with a steeper learning curve. I found myself spending considerable time just figuring out basic email account connections, sequence creation steps and lead discovery tools.
Think of it like being handed an aircraft control panel without proper training - all the functions are there, but getting comfortable with them takes real dedication.
This complexity might not be a dealbreaker for everyone, but it's worth considering if you value getting up and running quickly.
If you are looking to switch from Instantly to lower cost, Lemlist might not be right for you. For one, Instantly is much cheaper. The pricing structure is per user, that is you will need a subscription for each user you add. Plus, you can't add unlimited mailboxes. This places a cap on how much you can scale your outreach campaign.
Lemlist's Reality:
DitLead's Advantage:
Bottom line: Why pay 4x more for limited sending capacity? DitLead removes artificial limits while saving you thousands.
Let me break down the pricing reality of Lemlist:
Their top-tier plan ($129/month) limits you to just 15 sending emails per user
The math gets painful for agencies.
Real Agency Cost Scenario:
Think about it: Almost $50K a year just to manage 10 clients with basic sending limits. That's not just expensive; that's potentially disastrous for agencies looking to grow.
Why pay a premium price for limited capability? Switch to DitLead today to connect unlimited email accounts and manage unlimited clients without affecting deliverability.
No fluff, just the facts: While Lemlist has powerful features, its interface and pricing model may be overcomplicated for a growing team.
Lemlist has 4 available plans, a free trial but no free plan;
Autoklose is an email automation tool, a sales automation platform for automated outreach. Autoklose is a worthy alternative to Instantly and DitLead, considering it offers advanced email outreach features.
Here are a few reasons switching from Instantly to Autoklose might not be a good idea:
The autoklose lowest plan which is priced at $60 per user per month allows you to connect 2 email address per user. If you are looking to scale your campaign with say 50 mailboxes, you will need 25 user licenses at $60 each, $60 * 25 = $1500 per month, $18,000 per year to scale your campaigns.
With DitLead on the order hand, you can add unlimited sending emails with just $81 per month, just $972 per year. That is a $17,028 saving per year.
That's the difference between $18K for limited capacity and less than $1K for unlimited sending. The choice is yours.
Bottom line: Powerful but pricey, with some complexity trade-offs for its robust feature set.
The next Instantly alternative we’re exploring is Woodpecker.
It offers a solid set of features, but there are some limitations and additional costs to consider. Let me walk you through my experience and key takeaways.
Here’s the good, the not-so-good, and everything in between:
If these drawbacks feel limiting, it might be worth exploring other Woodpecker alternatives. like DitLead which allows you to send unlimited emails to unlimited leads. That said, for startups launching their first outreach campaigns, Woodpecker could be a cost-effective entry point with solid features.
Reply.io is a perfect alternative to Instantly. Like DitLead and Lemlist, it is offers multi-channel cold outreach via LinkedIn and email. If you are looking for an Instantly.ai alternative, you wouldn't go wrong with Reply.io. Just like DitLead and Instantly, it offers advanced AI features like AI writing via an advanced AI writer, AI personalization, AI SDR. I have used Reply.io and have zero complains.
Reply.io is an all-in-one tool for Outreach Automation to skyrocket your team's productivity. Among these features are the following:
Reply.io's pricing is a little tricky. As against traditional tiers, it has 3 plan categories based on what your needs are:
When scaling Linkedin outreach to, say, 10 connected Linkedin account, Reply.io charges $64 per user per month, that would be $640 per month, and $7,680 yearly. DitLead, however, offers unlimited connected Linkedin account starting at just $31 per month, no per user pricing. That would be $372 and a yearly saving of $7,308!
I've been using Mailshake as an alternative to Instantly, and the unbiased truth is this: solid for cold email automation with some multi-channel features, but it's got some pretty notable limitations.
Snov.io is one of the best alternative to Instantly. It evolved from email finding to now include email and Linkedin outreach automation.
Snov is the only other option, besides DitLead, on this list with a free plan that doesn't expire.
We compared major instantly.ai alternative, from DitLead, to Snov.io. We compared features like email warmup, deliverability configuration, and limits. As we have noted, Instantly compares pretty close with DitLead in terms of features offered. However, DitLead offers far more value and more generous limits than Instantly.
In addition, email validation which is a vital necessity for any business looking to run cold outreach campaigns is only available on DitLead and not on Instantly. DitLead offers a generous quota of 10 000 credits in its Starter Plan and 100 000 credits in its Team Plan. These credits permit users to generate new leads and also verify email addresses. Checking the validity of your prospects emails allows you to clean up your list and only send campaigns to mailboxes that exist. This not only improves the effectiveness of your campaigns, but also helps protect your mailbox health and reputation.
DitLead is a must-have tool for businesses looking to improve their email outreach campaigns and maximize their ROI.
