Best Cold Email Software 2026: 5 Big Names Compared
The five entry plans run $36 to $69 a month and buy wildly different amounts of email. One of them sends ten times more than another for $22 more. Every number below came off the vendors' own pricing pages this week.
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Five tools take most of the cold email market, and no two of them price the same way. Apollo charges per seat. Lemlist's entry plan is a flat fee with unlimited senders. Instantly, Smartlead and Saleshandy sell monthly send volume and hand you as many inboxes as you want. Lining the sticker prices up next to each other tells you almost nothing, so the tables below line up what each price actually buys.
Every figure here came off the five vendors' own pricing pages on July 16, 2026, with a real browser for the ones that hide their numbers from crawlers. That matters more than usual in this category. The roundups currently ranking for these terms quote Instantly at $37 (that is the annual rate; the monthly price is $47), Lemlist at $59 (it is $69), and Apollo's database at 210 or 275 million contacts (Apollo's own site says 230 million).
Best overall: Instantly. $47 a month buys unlimited inboxes, unlimited warmup and the least fussy interface here. It also sends the least email of the five at that price, so it fits teams whose volume is still small.
Most email per dollar: Lemlist. The $69 Email plan carries 50,000 sends a month with unlimited users and unlimited senders. Instantly's $47 plan carries 5,000.
Cheapest way in: Saleshandy. $25 a month on annual billing, $36 monthly, with unlimited email accounts and warmup included. Nothing else here starts lower.
Only real free plan: Apollo. $0 for 900 credits a seat a year, and the only per-seat pricing of the five. The database is the product and the sending comes attached.
Best for agencies: Smartlead. Unlimited Prime at $379 a month adds white-label client workspaces and 500,000 sends, and every tier allows unlimited email accounts.
Unlimited Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes on Professional
Unlimited senders on Email, 5 per user on Multichannel
Unlimited
Charged per seat
No
No
Yes, every tier
No on Email, yes on Multichannel
No
Email warmup
Unlimited, every plan
Every plan, in tiered pools; Premium pool is $59/mo on Base and Pro
Deliverability suite from Basic up
lemwarm, every plan
Unlimited warmup accounts, every plan
Free plan
None
None, free trial only
Yes, 900 credits a seat a year
None, 14-day trial
None, 7-day trial
Lead database, vendor's own count
450M+ contacts
Metered: 2,000 verified prospect emails a month on Base
230M+ contacts, 30M+ companies
650M+ contacts
852M+ contacts
Top published tier
Light Speed, $358/mo, 500,000 emails
Unlimited Prime, $379/mo, 500,000 sends
Organization, $119 a seat, 3-seat minimum
Multichannel, $109 a user
Scale Plus, $299/mo, 300,000 emails
What a thousand emails costs on each plan
Plan
Billed monthly
Emails a month
Cost per 1,000 emails
Inboxes
Lemlist Email
$69
50,000
$1.38
Unlimited senders
Saleshandy Outreach Starter
$36
6,000
$6.00
Unlimited
Smartlead Base
$39
6,000
$6.50
Unlimited
Instantly Growth
$47
5,000
$9.40
Unlimited
Saleshandy Outreach Pro
$99
150,000
$0.66
Unlimited
Instantly Hypergrowth
$97
100,000
$0.97
Unlimited
Smartlead Pro
$94
90,000
$1.04
Unlimited
Smartlead Unlimited Smart
$174
150,000
$1.16
Unlimited
Cost per 1,000 is the monthly price divided by the plan's monthly send allowance, so it prices the sending and nothing else. Apollo sits out of this table because it meters credits for data instead of publishing an email allowance. Annual billing cuts these rates by 17 to 31 percent depending on the vendor. One caveat on the matrix above: those lead-database counts are each vendor's own claim, and none of the five publishes a counting method, so read them as marketing rather than measurement.
Instantly: the default pick, and the smallest allowance
Instantly's Growth plan is $47 a month, or $37.60 if you pay for the year, and it comes with unlimited email accounts and unlimited warmup. That combination is why agencies and solo founders keep landing here: you can hang forty domains off one subscription without the bill moving. The interface is the cleanest in the category, and the 450 million contact database sits behind the same login when you want it.
The catch is the allowance. Growth sends 5,000 emails a month, the smallest number of the five, and 1,000 uploaded contacts is a tight ceiling for anyone running more than one campaign. Hypergrowth at $97 fixes both with 100,000 emails and 25,000 contacts, and it is the plan most people end up on. Priced per email, Growth is the most expensive entry plan here at $9.40 a thousand. Hypergrowth is one of the cheapest at 97 cents.
Pros
Unlimited inboxes and unlimited warmup on every plan
Cleanest interface of the five
450M-contact database on the same login
Hypergrowth works out at $0.97 per 1,000 emails
Cons
Growth's 5,000 emails is the smallest entry allowance here
Smartlead: built for people running other people's campaigns
Base is $39 a month for 6,000 sends and 2,000 contacts, with unlimited email accounts the same way Instantly does it. The agency case sits at the top of the range: Unlimited Prime at $379 a month carries 500,000 sends and white-label access for three client workspaces, with extra workspaces at $29 each. Annual billing takes 17 percent off every tier, which puts Base at $32.
Warmup deserves a careful read here, because the pricing page compresses it into one row. Every Smartlead plan warms your inboxes, but the pools are tiered and the tier follows what you pay: Base sits in the Foundation pool, Pro in the Growth pool, and the Premium pool is a $59 a month add-on until you reach Unlimited Smart at $174, where it comes included. Smartlead's help pages describe warmup as infrastructure rather than a feature toggle, which is a fair description of how the money works.
Pros
Unlimited email accounts on every tier
White-label client workspaces on Unlimited Prime
Annual billing takes 17% off
Pro works out at $1.04 per 1,000 emails
Cons
The Premium warmup pool costs $59/mo on Base and Pro
Apollo is the odd one out and the biggest of the five by users, with over 600,000 companies on its own count. It charges per seat, which none of the others do: Basic is $49 a seat a month on annual billing or $65 monthly, Professional is $79 or $99, and Organization is $119 a seat with a three-seat minimum. The free plan is real and standing, with 900 credits a seat a year and two sequences, and it is the only $0 tier on this page.
What you are buying is the data. 230 million contacts, 30 million companies, intent filters, and enrichment that writes back to your CRM, with sequences attached rather than the other way round. Warmup and the deliverability suite arrive at Basic. If finding people is your bottleneck, Apollo collapses two line items into one. If you already have your lists and only need to send, you are paying per seat for a database you are not touching.
Pros
The only real free plan of the five
230M contacts and 30M companies on the same subscription
Unlimited Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes on Professional
Warmup and deliverability suite from Basic up
Cons
Per-seat pricing adds up fast across a team
Credits meter the data, so heavy prospecting costs more
The Email plan is $69 a month, $55 on annual billing, and it carries 50,000 sends with unlimited users and unlimited email senders. Read that against Instantly's $47 for 5,000 and the gap is hard to unsee: ten times the email for $22 more, with the seats thrown in. At $1.38 per thousand it is the cheapest entry plan of the five by a distance, and lemwarm is included on every tier.
Multichannel is where per-user math returns. $109 a user a month, $87 annually, five senders a user, and it buys LinkedIn steps, SMS, WhatsApp and in-app calling. Lemlist made its name on personalized images and video inside cold emails and that still works, though the 650 million contact database and the credit system now carry as much of the pitch. Credits price out at a cent each, so a verified email costs five and a phone number twenty.
Pros
50,000 sends a month on a $69 flat plan
Unlimited users and senders on the Email plan
lemwarm included on every plan
Multichannel adds LinkedIn, SMS, WhatsApp and calling
Cons
Multichannel goes back to per-user pricing at $109
$25 a month on annual billing, $36 if you pay monthly, for 6,000 emails and 2,000 active prospects. Unlimited email accounts, and unlimited warm-up accounts with them; the FAQ says so in as many words. That is the lowest entry price of the five, and the 7-day trial takes no card.
Volume scales cheaply from there. Outreach Pro is $99 monthly for 150,000 sends, which works out at 66 cents a thousand, the lowest rate in the table above. Scale is $199 for 240,000 and Scale Plus is $299 for 300,000 with a success manager attached. Saleshandy says 25,000 businesses use it, and the 852 million contact figure it advertises is the largest claim on this page, which is reason enough to test a sample against your own list before you commit a year.
Pros
Lowest entry price at $25/mo on annual billing
Unlimited inboxes and warmup on every plan
Outreach Pro works out at $0.66 per 1,000 emails
7-day trial with no card
Cons
7 days is the shortest trial here
No free plan
The 852M database claim has no published method behind it
Start with how much you actually send. Under 6,000 emails a month, Saleshandy at $25 annually and Smartlead at $32 are the cheapest doors, and Instantly at $37.60 buys a better interface for the difference. Past 50,000 a month, Lemlist's $69 Email plan is the outlier nobody mentions. Past 100,000, the rates to beat are Saleshandy Outreach Pro at 66 cents a thousand and Instantly Hypergrowth at 97 cents. Agencies keeping client campaigns apart want Smartlead Unlimited Prime and its white-label workspaces.
Buy Apollo for a different reason than the other four. It is the one where the database is the point, and the one with a free tier you can sit on while you make up your mind. Last thing, and it applies whichever you pick: none of these platforms gets you into the inbox on its own. That job belongs to your sending domains and your DNS records, plus a few weeks of warmup before the first campaign goes out. Our guide to cold email deliverability covers the setup all five of them assume you already did.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best cold email software in 2026?
Instantly for most teams, on interface quality and the unlimited inboxes and warmup that come with the $47 Growth plan. Lemlist wins on raw volume, since its $69 Email plan carries 50,000 sends a month against Instantly's 5,000. Saleshandy is the cheapest way in at $25 a month on annual billing.
How much does cold email software cost?
Entry plans run $36 to $69 a month billed monthly, or $25 to $55 on annual billing, as of July 2026. Saleshandy starts lowest at $25 annually and Lemlist's Email plan is the highest sticker at $69 monthly. Volume tiers run $94 to $379. Apollo is priced per seat instead, at $49 to $119 a seat a month on annual billing.
Is there a free cold email tool?
Apollo is the only one of these five with a standing free plan: $0 for 900 credits a seat a year and two sequences. The other four run trials instead. Lemlist gives 14 days of Multichannel, Smartlead a free trial with no card, and Saleshandy 7 days. Instantly has no free tier.
Instantly or Smartlead?
They are close. Both allow unlimited email accounts on every plan. Instantly's Growth is $47 for 5,000 emails against Smartlead's Base at $39 for 6,000, so Smartlead costs less per email at the entry tier. Smartlead sorts warmup into tiered pools and charges $59 a month for the Premium pool on Base and Pro, while Instantly's warmup is unlimited everywhere. Agencies usually take Smartlead for the white-label workspaces on Unlimited Prime. Our Instantly vs Smartlead comparison goes deeper.
Does cold email software include email warmup?
All five include it now. Instantly and Saleshandy give unlimited warmup on every plan, Lemlist includes lemwarm everywhere, and Apollo's deliverability suite arrives at Basic. Smartlead includes warmup on every tier too, but sorts accounts into pools by plan: Base gets the Foundation pool, Pro the Growth pool, and the Premium pool costs $59 a month until Unlimited Smart at $174, where it is included.
Which cold email tool sends the most email for the money?
At entry prices, Lemlist. $69 a month for 50,000 sends works out at $1.38 per 1,000 emails, against $6.00 for Saleshandy Outreach Starter, $6.50 for Smartlead Base and $9.40 for Instantly Growth. Move up one tier and Saleshandy Outreach Pro is the cheapest at 66 cents per 1,000, with Instantly Hypergrowth at 97 cents.
How many email accounts can I connect?
Instantly, Smartlead and Saleshandy allow unlimited email accounts on every plan, which is why agencies favor them. Lemlist's Email plan allows unlimited senders, though Multichannel caps them at five per user. Apollo connects unlimited Gmail and Microsoft mailboxes on its Professional plan at $79 a seat.
Is Apollo good for cold email?
It works, and it is the cheapest way to get a database and a sender on one subscription. The thing to watch is the seat math: five seats on Basic cost $245 a month on annual billing, where Smartlead or Saleshandy would charge one flat fee for the same sending. Buy Apollo when finding contacts is the harder half of the job.
Smartlead
Apollo
Lemlist
Saleshandy
