Are you on a mission to break the ice with potential customers? You don’t need an ice saw—you need the right cold email software to get your message to the right inbox at the right time.
The problem is most comparison articles just show a few sales outreach tools—often ones that paid to be on the list. That doesn’t give you the objective information you need to make the right decision.
We took the time to dig deep and test 18 different cold email software tools to determine which ones work, which ones are missing key features, and which ones might fit nicely into your allotted budget. The result? A complete guide to finding the right cold email automation tool for you.
Businesses use cold email tools to automate outbound email campaigns. Instead of sending 100 emails manually, the right cold emailing software automates the entire process for you.
These platforms will help you customize emails, add a pinch of personalization, and get the conversations flowing. The more conversations you have with the right audience, the more sales you’ll generate.
But what features you can’t miss out on in your cold email tool? Well, it will strongly depend on your use case. Here’s a list that should give you some food for thought:
As popular as inbound marketing is, outbound sales are still in the game, and outbound sales tools are still in demand.
Cold outreach is still an effective strategy for startups and small businesses looking to expand their reach and generate leads. In this section, you’ll see the most solid list of cold email software.
Best for: Growing teams and small businesses that want to combine CRM and cold emailing under one roof.
While we’re undoubtedly a little biased, our 6,500+ happy customers agree Close is a powerful CRM software worth looking at. Close comes with advanced cold email automation options that save you time and help you reach more prospects. With our Smart Views, you’ll build segmented contact lists that you can later put into Workflows. A Workflow can also include calls, SMS, and tasks to add more touchpoints to your emailing efforts.
With its user-friendly interface and various options to manage and engage leads, you’ll improve your cold outreach campaigns and drive more sales.
Pricing: Close offers small-business-friendly pricing, starting with a Solo plan that costs $9 per month (billed annually).
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Close:
Best for: Big corporations that want to unlock seller productivity and make sales teams efficient
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: There are three tiers: Engage, Call (Voice Package) and Meet. The pricing is hidden.
Outreach is best for enterprise-level companies that need a sales engagement platform. The tool combines CRM, sales forecasting, conversation intelligence, and sales coaching (among other aspects). On top of their CRM, they offer advanced features for emailing: sequencing, email templates, reply rate tracking, and advanced analytics.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Outreach:
Best for: Small businesses that want to improve cold email deliverability and warmup email accounts.
Smartlead.ai is a modern cold email software that uses AI to optimize email deliverability and help warm up email accounts. Thanks to Smartlead, you can improve your sender's reputation and email engagement. As a result, cold outreach campaigns should reach your recipients' main inbox more often (instead of landing in a spam folder).
Integration with Close: No
Pricing: Basic plan starts at $32.5/month (billed annually).
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Smartlead:
Best for: Salespeople and marketers who want to improve their email outreach and cold emailing campaigns.
Mailshake is an easy-to-use tool that offers advanced cold emailing features. Its personalization, A/B testing, and automated follow-ups are designed to help you improve your outreach activities.
The tool can pause a sequence when a prospect replies, unsubscribes, or bounces. With a customizable sending schedule, you can improve response rates, and with native integrations, your leads land in your CRM.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: Plan for sales folks starts at $85/month, billed annually (Sales Engagement Plan)
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Mailshake:
Mixmax is a solid cold emailing software that offers automation and scheduling capabilities. Sales, customer success, and account execs can send personalized emails, track engagement, and automate follow-ups. You can do it all from within your Gmail inbox.
Integration with Close: No
Pricing: The tool has five tiers; besides a Free Plan, the SMB Plan starts at $29 per monthly user (email campaigns). Sales automation is available in a Growth Plan for $49 per monthly user.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Mixmax:
Best for: E-commerce businesses and marketing campaign managers who want to use email marketing automation for cold and warm leads.
Drip is a marketing automation platform that helps grow e-commerce brands, drive repeat purchases, and increase conversion rates. You can create dynamic segments that engage customers with single emails or automated campaigns.
Integration with Close: Yes, native integration
Pricing: Pricing depends on how many contacts are on the list. Their pricing starts at $39 for 2500 contacts.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Drip:
Best for: Sales and marketer teams that want to collaborate on the same platform.
HubSpot is a feature-rich marketing automation platform that offers a variety of tools to help businesses grow and engage with their audience. While HubSpot primarily focuses on inbound marketing, it also provides features that can be used for cold email campaigns.
Integration with Close: Yes, native integration
Pricing: Sales Hub starting at $90 per month (billed annually).
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about HubSpot Sales Hub:
Best for: Salespeople from SMBs that want to personalize and automate cold outreach.
Woodpecker is automated cold email software that simplifies and optimizes outreach campaigns. With its intelligent follow-up system and personalized email automation, Woodpecker helps you reach more prospects and increase response rates.
The tool integrates well with Gmail and Outlook.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: Woodpecker offers pricing plans starting at $20 per month per email slot (without A/B testing, API, and integrations).
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Woodpecker:
Best for: Sales and marketing professionals working for SMBs involved in outbound sales and email outreach.
Reply.io is the AI-first sales engagement platform that helps SDR teams find new prospects, engage them through multiple channels, and create new opportunities at scale while keeping every touchpoint personal.
Integration with Close: Yes, native integration
Pricing: Reply.io offers flexible plans based on outreach needs. The Email Volume plan starts at $49/user/month (billed annually) with 1,000 active contacts, unlimited emails, and warmup. The Multichannel plan starts at $89/user/month and includes outreach via email, LinkedIn, SMS, and calls. For full automation, the Jason AI SDR plan starts at $300/month with AI-powered personalization and 24/7 operations. Add-ons for LinkedIn ($69/account) and Calls & SMS ($29/account) are available.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Reply.io:
Best for: Sales and marketing teams working in small biz looking for personalized cold email outreach and follow-ups.
Instantly is an email outreach platform that helps businesses send personalized and automated cold emails to prospects and leads. They help you find the best leads, create campaigns, and automate workflows using AI.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: The growth plan starts at $37.9 per month (paid annually).
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Instantly:
Best for: Businesses aiming to send behavior-based, targeted cold emails for customer engagement.
Customer.io is a customer engagement platform designed for marketing teams to create data-driven campaigns that reach people across all messaging channels. They have Journeys for messaging automation and Data Pipelines, a customer data platform connecting the entire stack.
Integration with Close: Yes, native integration
Pricing: They have an Essential Plan that starts at $100 a month, billed monthly.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Customer.io:
Best for: Sales teams (SMBs) looking for a platform to run multi-channel outbound campaigns.
Overloop is an email outreach and engagement platform for sales teams. It offers email tracking, templates, and analytics. Users can create ultra-personalized campaigns and mix cold emails, LinkedIn automation, and phone calls. Overloop also supports link-building activities. The product can be handy for agencies running campaigns for their customers.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: Overloop offers three paid plans:
All plans include AI-powered multichannel campaigns (Email + LinkedIn), a 450M+ lead database, verified emails, CRM integrations (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce), deliverability tools, and real-time tracking. Free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee available.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Overloop:
Best for: Sales and marketing professionals in SMB seeking a tool for personalized, creative cold email campaigns.
Lemlist is an advanced AI-powered sales engagement platform. It’s all-in-one, offering prospect lists with details, discovering valid emails, and organizing personalized multichannel campaigns. Emails in Lemlist can have custom intro lines, images, and dynamic landing pages.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: Email Outreach Plan costs $55 a month (billed annually).
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Lemlist:
Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses aiming to simplify cold email outreach and follow-ups. They also have options for agencies.
QuickMail is an email automation platform designed to help businesses send cold emails and follow-ups more efficiently. It’s designed to build a predictable sales pipeline by reaching out to cold prospects by email. It has what most of the best sales tools have: a follow-up option, custom tags, and email deliverability reports.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: Instantly offers three plans:
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about QuickMail:
Best for: Small businesses, nonprofits, and individuals looking for an easy-to-use email marketing and marketing automation platform. They also offer Lead gen & CRM.
Constant Contact is an email marketing and marketing automation platform that simplifies creating, sending, and tracking email campaigns. It offers various tools to help businesses engage with their audience through email. Constant Contact is a better option for smaller campaigns targeted at generic audiences.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: Email and Digital Marketing plans have three options. The cheapest is Lite, which starts at $12 per month for one user, email templates, and basic reporting.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Constant Contact:
Best for: Businesses operating in mid-market, enterprise and their sales teams that seek an advanced sales engagement platform for outreach and lead management
InsideSales offers Playbook, an enterprise-level sales engagement platform rather than a cold emailing tool. With Playbook, salespeople can increase productivity, optimize customer interactions, and connect to the right buyers. They have sales engagement tools, including email outreach, lead scoring, and predictive analytics.
Integration with Close: No
Pricing: Hidden pricing—you have to meet with their team to learn more about pricing.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about InsideSales:
Best for: Sales and marketing professionals looking for advanced email outreach: email tracking, analytics, and templating. It’s for small and mid-sized businesses.
Yesware is an email productivity and analytics tool that integrates with popular email platforms. Suppose your team wants to drive more revenue through email outreach without complex enterprise-level software. In that case, the tool can be helpful. Yesware will help your sales team build a better pipeline and increase conversions.
Integration with Close: No
Pricing: The Free Plan includes basic email open tracking and ten monthly campaign recipients. The cheapest plan (besides a free option) is a Pro Plan, which starts at $15 per user per month and has 20 campaign recipients monthly.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Yesware:
Best for: Gmail users and small businesses looking for a CRM with email tracking and integration.
Streak is more of a CRM tool rather than cold emailing. It integrates directly with Gmail and offers email tracking and pipeline management. Sales teams can manage workflows inside Gmail, including sales, customer support, hiring, and projects.
The tool makes collaboration easier by automatically sharing emails, notes, and call logs.
Integration with Close: Yes, third-party integration
Pricing: They offer a free plan, and the cheapest paid option starts at $49 per user per month.
Best features for cold emailing:
What people are saying about Streak:
So many options, right? Well, wait for some extras from us. Let us explain why we include automation tools, too.
Cold emailing software is just one piece of the puzzle. When pieced together with automation, it gives you a more complete picture (or tech stack, in your case).
Automation and cold emailing tools help you optimize and maximize the impact of your emails. This section will explore a few automation tools that can enhance your cold email strategy.
GMass is a tool for sending email campaigns inside Gmail. It helps warm up your email accounts, preparing them for successful cold outreach campaigns.
GMass helps you avoid triggering spam filters or flagging your emails by gradually increasing the number of emails sent over time. This way, you can establish a positive sender reputation and increase deliverability rates, ensuring your cold emails reach the intended recipients.
Only some cold email tools have an email warmup feature, so GMass might be a great addition to your cold email strategy.
If you want to enrich your lead list, Apollo might be useful. It offers a comprehensive B2B database that helps you identify and target the right contacts. With its vast collection of company profiles and contact information, you can find potential leads based on various criteria such as industry, location, company size, and more.
Its pricing is affordable for small and mid-sized businesses.
Seamless is an AI-powered prospecting tool that can improve your cold email strategy. It analyzes vast amounts of data to help you identify and prioritize the most promising leads, and its data quality is superior to that of its competitors.
Its advanced algorithms can detect patterns and predict which prospects are more likely to engage with your emails. With such insights, you can craft cold emails that resonate even more with your audience.
Their user interface is pretty intuitive. Pricing isn't shown on their website.
Hunter is a great tool for finding the email addresses of potential leads or contacts. By simply entering a company's domain name, Hunter searches the web for email addresses associated with that domain.
This makes it easier for you to reach out to specific individuals within an organization and lets you personalize those cold emails a bit better. It’s simple—by having more accurate contact information at your fingertips, you can improve the effectiveness of your cold email outreach.
The tool’s pricing is suitable for small and mid-sized businesses. It offers good support, and it’s very rare that the tool can’t find the contact.
Dealfront (previously Leadfeeder) is a tool for turning website visitors into potential leads. By integrating with your website analytics, Dealfront identifies the companies that visit your site and provides you with valuable information about their browsing behavior.
It lets you prioritize warm leads and tailor your cold email approach based on their interests and needs. Using the tool can significantly boost the efficiency and effectiveness of your cold email outreach.
They're mostly suitable for smaller businesses and have straightforward pricing plans. Sometimes, the tool can face challenges when integrating with other software.
SavvyCal is a great addition to your cold outreach activities. It allows your prospects to schedule calls directly via those cold emails. It has a user-friendly interface, and recipients can easily choose a suitable time slot, eliminating the need for back-and-forth coordination.
SavvyCal has a powerful integration with Close, which makes the scheduling experience even smoother. Those leads can automatically land in your CRM. The tool is easy to configure, and users usually have no specific complaints.
Choosing the right cold email software for your business impacts your sales process and outreach efforts. By considering key factors such as deliverability rates, personalization features, and automation capabilities, you can ensure that your cold emails reach the right audience at the right time.
If you think Close solves two problems simultaneously, giving you robust CRM capabilities and great cold emailing options, why not try? The first 14 days of this cold emailing powerhouse are on us!