Need help to choose between Instantly and Lemlist for your cold email campaigns?
You’re not alone! These two platforms are top contenders, each boasting powerful features to boost your outreach.
But which one comes out on top in the ultimate showdown?
In this post, we’ll break down Instantly vs Lemlist and examine their key differences.
We’ll compare their pricing, features, & ease of use so you can make the right choice for your needs.
Let’s dive in!
Overview
To give you the most accurate comparison, we’ve spent weeks testing both Instantly and Lemlist.
We dove deep into their features, sent out cold emails, and analyzed the results.
This hands-on experience gives you a real-world look at how these platforms perform.
Ready to give Instantly a try? Experience the speed and simplicity of a modern lead generation tool. Sign up for a free trial today!
Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $37.9/month.
Key Features:
- Warmup & Deliverability
- Automated Sequences
- Advanced Analytics
Lemlist helped one company increase its reply rate by 41% and book 20% more meetings. Ready to see similar results? Start your journey now!
Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $39/month.
Key Features:
- Automated follow-ups
- Personalized images and videos
- Integrations with popular CRMs
What is Instantly?
Instantly helps you send cold emails that actually get opened.
Think of it like a personal assistant for your email outreach. It warms up your inbox, so your emails avoid the spam folder.
Pretty cool, right? It also helps you personalize your emails and track how they perform.
Also, explore our favorite Instantly alternatives…
Our Take
Instantly is a valuable tool for businesses that want to ramp up their outreach efforts. However, it’s important to note that it’s primarily an outreach platform, not a complete CRM solution.
Key Benefits
- Multi-channel outreach: Connect with prospects through email, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.
- Personalized messaging: Tailor your messages to each recipient.
- Automated follow-ups: Stay top-of-mind without lifting a finger.
- Detailed analytics: Track your progress and identify what’s working.
Pricing
- Growth CRM: $37.9/month, unlimited seats.
- Hyper CRM: $77.6/month, unlimited seats.
Pros
Cons
What is Lemlist?
Ever wished you could send emails that felt truly personal, even at scale?
That’s where Lemlist shines. It lets you easily customize your cold emails with things like personalized images and videos.
It’s like sending a postcard, but way cooler and more effective.
Plus, it automates your follow-ups so you can stay top-of-mind without lifting a finger.
Also, explore our favorite Lemlist alternatives…
Our Take
Engage with lemlist! Users report a 26% increase in reply rates and a +270% conversion rate with their advanced personalization. See your sales opportunities multiply!
Key Benefits
- Create personalized emails with custom landing pages and videos.
- Automate your outreach with personalized sequences.
- Track your performance with detailed analytics.
- Integrates with popular CRM and sales automation tools.
- Offers a free trial to test the platform.
Pricing
Lemlist offers four paid plans:
- Email Pro: $55 per month.
- Multichannel Expert: $79 per month.
- Enterprise: Custom Pricing.
Pros
Cons
Feature Comparison
Ready to dive into a detailed comparison of Instantly vs. Lemlist?
We’ll explore 11 key features to help you determine which platform best suits your cold emailing and sales engagement needs.
1. Lead Generation & Database Access
- Instantly: Offers a built-in Instantly lead finder with access to a database of around 160 million verified leads. This is a significant advantage for instantly users who need to source contacts directly within the platform for their outreach campaigns.
- Lemlist: Provides a robust prospecting tool with access to over 450 million contacts and 63 million companies. Lemlist allows users to find and filter potential buyers, enriching profiles with contact details like emails and phone numbers.
2. Email Deliverability & Warm-up
- Instantly: Excels in email deliverability with its most advanced warm up system, unlimited email accounts connection, and inbox rotation. It’s designed to continuously boost sender reputation and ensure emails avoid the spam folder, utilizing automated interactions across all your sending accounts.
- Lemlist: Also offers advanced warm up features (lemwarm) to improve and maintain a high deliverability score. It emphasizes email health checks and provides actionable tips to keep lemlist campaigns out of spam.
3. Email Sending & Management
- Instantly: Allows connecting unlimited email accounts and offers strategic rotation of sending accounts for optimal deliverability. The unified inbox helps instantly users manage replies from all your sending accounts in one place, complemented by smart scheduling.
- Lemlist: Supports connecting multiple email accounts for multi-channel outreach. It centralizes all conversations from leads across various channels in a single thread, simplifying management for lemlist users.
4. Sales Engagement & Automation
- Instantly: Positioned as a powerful sales engagement platform, Instantly turns leads into clients with AI-powered personalized sequences, A/Z testing, and advanced campaign analytics. It’s built for scaling cold emailing effectively.
- Lemlist: Focuses on creating highly personalized multichannel campaigns by incorporating custom intro lines, images, videos, and dynamic landing pages. It aims to add a human touch to automated outreach campaigns and streamline the entire sales process.
5. Multi-Channel Outreach
- Instantly: Primarily focuses on email as its core outreach channel, offering deep features for cold emailing and email deliverability.
- Lemlist: Stands out with its multi channel outreach capabilities, allowing users to build sequences that combine email, LinkedIn (with lemlist linkedin automation), WhatsApp, and calls from one centralized platform.
6. Personalization at Scale
- Instantly: Uses AI prompts and AI Spintax to craft personalization variables and sequences, enabling instantly users to send personalized cold emails at scale without sounding generic.
- Lemlist: Excels in personalized outreach with robust AI that pulls lead details to automatically adapt message text, images, and landing pages with dynamic variables, enabling highly personalized multichannel campaigns.
7. Campaign Analytics & Optimization
- Instantly: Provides deep campaign analytics that go beyond vanity metrics, tracking opportunities, pipeline, conversions, and revenue. It supports A/Z testing within its campaign builder to optimize outreach campaigns.
- Lemlist: Offers detailed analytics for its lemlist campaigns, tracking metrics across all channels like opens, clicks, replies, and even LinkedIn visits and connection requests, allowing lemlist users to optimize their strategy.
8. CRM Integration
- Instantly: Offers various CRM integrations and also provides its own CRM functionality to help instantly users manage their leads directly within the platform.
- Lemlist: Integrates with major CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive, ensuring smooth data flow and helping to empower sales teams by keeping their sales process organized.
9. User Support & Resources
- Instantly: Known for responsive chat and in app support, with resources like a sales vault, SOPs, and email templates to help instantly users get started and optimize their outreach campaigns.
- Lemlist: Has a dedicated support team and offers extensive support resources, including onboarding sessions and campaign reviews. While some older lemlist reviews mention poor customer support, recent improvements suggest better lemlist’s customer support.
10. Pricing & Scalability
- Instantly: Generally considered a cost-effective solution, especially for its unlimited email accounts and unlimited warm-up features, making it ideal for outreach scale.
- Lemlist: Offers tiered pricing based on features and user count. It aims to provide value for lemlist campaigns that require deeper personalization and multi channel functionality.
11. Specific Focus
- Instantly: Its core strength lies in high-volume cold emailing with a focus on deliverability and maximizing replies by enabling users to send at outreach scale.
- Lemlist: Specializes in creating truly highly personalized multichannel campaigns that build a strong human connection, incorporating custom intro lines and visuals for better engagement in the sales process.
What to Look for in a Sales Engagement Tool?
- Scalability and Account Management: Does the platform easily accommodate growth? Look for the ability to manage unlimited accounts and multiple sender profiles within your lemlist account or instantly ai dashboard.
- Deliverability and Warm-up: Prioritize features that ensure your emails reach the inbox. This includes advanced warm-up (a strength of both instantly ai and Lemlist), and features to maintain a healthy sender reputation.
- Multi-channel Capabilities: Consider if you need to go beyond email. Some platforms, like Lemlist, offer integrated multi-channel outreach including LinkedIn and phone, while instantly ai focuses heavily on email.
- Personalization Features: How deeply can you personalize your outreach at scale? Look for dynamic tags, AI-powered content generation, and custom intro lines for higher engagement.
- Analytics and Reporting: Robust analytics are crucial for optimizing campaigns. Ensure the platform provides insights into open rates, reply rates, and even revenue attribution.
- CRM Integrations: Seamless integration with your existing CRM is vital for streamlined lead management and avoiding data silos.
- Customer Support and Resources: Evaluate the quality of support, including onboarding assistance, in-app help, and available learning resources to maximize your team’s effectiveness.
- Pricing and ROI: Compare pricing models and assess the potential return on investment, considering the features offered versus the cost for your specific needs.
Final Verdict
For most users, we recommend Instantly. While slightly more expensive, its powerful features and customization options make it a winner.
You can personalize emails with dynamic images and videos, automate complex sequences, and integrate with your favorite CRMs.
However, if budget is your primary concern and you prioritize deliverability, Instantly is an excellent choice.
Its unlimited warm-up and user-friendly interface make it a great option for beginners. Ultimately, the best choice totally depends on your specific needs and priorities.
We’ve given you the information; now it’s time to make a decision!
Trust us; we’ve been there, and we’re here to help you succeed with your cold email outreach.
More of Instantly
Here’s a comparison of Instantly with its alternatives, highlighting their unique strengths:
- Instantly vs Apollo: Instantly excels in rapid email outreach and integrated warm-up features. Apollo provides a larger lead database and a comprehensive sales intelligence platform.
- Instantly vs Snov IO: Instantly focuses on deliverability and scalable cold email campaigns. Snov IO offers a broader suite including email finding, verification, and a CRM.
- Instantly vs Hunter IO: Instantly offers advanced cold email sequences and campaign management. Hunter IO is primarily used for email finding and verification, with basic sending.
- Instantly vs Reply IO: Instantly is known for unlimited warm-up and robust email-focused automation. Reply IO provides a multi-channel sales engagement platform, including LinkedIn.
- Instantly vs UpLead: Instantly specializes in maximizing email deliverability for outreach. UpLead focuses on providing highly accurate B2B contact data for prospecting.
- Instantly vs Mailshake: Instantly streamlines high-volume cold email campaigns with a built-in lead finder. Mailshake emphasizes personalized outreach with email and social touchpoints.
- Instantly vs Lemlist: Instantly offers unlimited email accounts for scalable warm-up and sending. Lemlist focuses on hyper-personalization, including images and multi-channel sequences.
- Instantly vs Woodpecker: Instantly provides unlimited email warm-up with AI-powered optimization. Woodpecker is known for its strong deliverability features and sophisticated campaign logic.
- Instantly vs Smartlead: Instantly combines lead finding with robust campaign management. Smartlead prioritizes advanced deliverability optimization for large-scale outreach.
- Instantly vs Saleshandy: Instantly offers an all-in-one solution for cold email automation. Saleshandy provides email outreach with deliverability tools and a lead finder.
- Instantly vs Klenty: Instantly focuses on email deliverability and simplified campaign setup. Klenty is a sales engagement platform with deeper CRM integrations and advanced cadences.
- Instantly vs Warmbox: Instantly integrates email warm-up within its outreach suite. Warmbox is a dedicated, specialized tool for enhancing email sender reputation.
- Instantly vs Maildoso: Instantly emphasizes unlimited warm-up and scaling cold email. Maildoso focuses on cost-effective email infrastructure and inbox rotation for deliverability.
- Instantly vs Manyreach: Instantly offers tiered monthly plans for features. Manyreach provides credit-based pricing with comprehensive features available from the start.
- Instantly vs Warmy: Instantly’s platform includes a streamlined warm-up. Warmy is a dedicated deliverability tool with detailed analytics and authentication features.
More of Lemlist
Here’s how Lemlist compares with its alternatives, highlighting distinct features:
- Lemlist vs Snov IO: Lemlist prioritizes deep email personalization, including custom visuals. Snov IO focuses on email finding, verification, and broader sales automation.
- Lemlist vs Instantly: Lemlist offers comprehensive multi-channel outreach with rich AI features. Instantly excels in high-volume email campaigns and unlimited warm-up capabilities.
- Lemlist vs Apollo IO: Lemlist specializes in personalized cold email sequences and automated warm-ups. Apollo IO provides a vast lead database and comprehensive sales intelligence.
- Lemlist vs Hunter IO: Lemlist leads with advanced email personalization and integrated warm-up. Hunter IO primarily specializes in email finding and verification services.
- Lemlist vs Reply IO: Lemlist emphasizes hyper-personalization across multiple channels. Reply IO also offers multichannel, focusing on AI assistance and robust integrations.
- Lemlist vs UpLead: Lemlist excels in email deliverability and sophisticated campaign workflows. UpLead centers on providing high-quality, verified B2B contact data.
- Lemlist vs Mailshake: Lemlist offers creative email sequences with unique visual personalization. Mailshake provides robust email deliverability and efficient campaign management.
- Lemlist vs Woodpecker: Lemlist supports multi-channel outreach and advanced personalization. Woodpecker is email-focused, prioritizing simplicity, deliverability, and conditional logic.
- Lemlist vs Smartlead: Lemlist provides strong personalization and an intuitive platform for outreach. Smartlead is designed for high-volume sending and deliverability optimization.
- Lemlist vs Saleshandy: Lemlist offers advanced personalization, such as custom videos and landing pages. Saleshandy provides streamlined email automation with warm-up features.
- Lemlist vs Klenty: Lemlist focuses on engaging, personalized outreach across channels. Klenty is a sales engagement platform that optimizes workflows via CRM integrations.
- Lemlist vs Warmbox: Lemlist integrates email warm-up within its broader outreach suite. Warmbox is a dedicated tool solely for email warm-up and deliverability enhancement.
- Lemlist vs Maildoso: Lemlist focuses on personalized multi-channel outreach. Maildoso emphasizes automated email account creation and rotation for better deliverability.
- Lemlist vs Manyreach: Lemlist offers a multi-channel approach with AI capabilities. Manyreach focuses on unlimited prospect uploads and cost-effective scalability.
- Lemlist vs Warmy: Lemlist includes its warm-up for campaign integration. Warmy is a specialized tool that provides detailed email warm-up and reputation management.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use Instantly and Lemlist with my existing email provider?
Yes, both platforms integrate with popular email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and others. You can easily connect your existing email account to send campaigns through Instantly or Lemlist.
Is there any limit on how many emails I can send?
Instantly allows unlimited emails on all its paid plans. Lemlist has sending limits based on your chosen plan, with higher-tier plans offering more email credits.
What kind of support do Instantly and Lemlist offer?
Both platforms provide email support and online resources like knowledge bases and tutorials. Lemlist also offers live chat support on higher-tier plans.
Do Instantly and Lemlist offer a free trial?
Yes, both Instantly and Lemlist offer a 14-day free trial. This allows you to test their features and see which platform best suits your needs before committing to a paid plan.
Which platform is better for beginners?
Instantly is generally easier to learn and use, making it a good choice for beginners. Lemlist has a slightly steeper learning curve but offers more advanced features for experienced users.
