Compare tools side by side
Up to four at once, on the fields that actually decide the choice — entry price and what basis it’s billed on, mailbox limits, warmup, and whether you can try it before paying.
Pricing and features verified per tool between 2026-08-04 and 2026-08-25, against each vendor’s own pages · how we check
Pick up to 4 tools
2 of 4 selected| InstantlyHigh-volume cold email with unlimited mailboxes and strong deliverability tooling. | SmartleadScalable cold email with unlimited mailboxes, warmup, and an API-first design. | |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $47/mo | $39/mo |
| Billing basis | monthly billing | monthly billing |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Free trial | No | Yes |
| Our rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4.5 / 5 |
| Best for | agencies and teams running high-volume outbound at scale | agencies wanting low-cost scale, API access, and whitelabelling |
| Email accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Warmup included | Yes | Warmup pool (Unlimited plans) |
| Unified inbox | Scale plan+ | Master inbox |
| Lead database | 450M+ (separate Credits plan) | Not recorded |
| API access | Yes | Unlimited Smart plan+ |
| Whitelabel | Not recorded | Higher tiers |
“Not recorded” means we haven’t verified that field for that tool — not that the feature is missing. We only list what we checked against the vendor’s own pages, so an empty cell is a gap in our data rather than a finding about the product.
Instantly
- ✓Unlimited email accounts and warmup on the sending plan
- ✓Strong deliverability features (Unibox, advanced controls) on higher tiers
- ✓450M+ lead database available, sold as a separate Credits plan from $47/mo
- ✕No free tier or free trial
- ✕Lead database is a second subscription, not included with sending
Smartlead
- ✓Lowest entry price of the major platforms ($39/mo)
- ✓Unlimited email accounts on every plan (no per-mailbox fees)
- ✓Strong API and whitelabel options for agencies
- ✕API/webhooks and warmup pool gated to higher tiers
- ✕UI has a steeper learning curve
Head-to-head write-ups
Why the billing basis row matters
Vendors quote headline prices on different bases. Some show the monthly-billing rate, others the discounted annual equivalent, and a table that stacks those side by side without saying which is which makes one product look cheaper than it is. Saleshandy’s $25 is billed annually; Mailshake’s $29 is a true monthly rate that also falls to $25 if you pay yearly — so on equal terms they are level, not 16% apart. That is why the basis gets its own row rather than a footnote, and why some cells read “not verified” instead of a number we would be guessing at.
For the same reason, Woodpecker shows no price at all: it charges per contacted prospect and we could not parse the published rate with confidence, so we record nothing rather than invent a figure.