8 Best Apollo Alternatives for Lead Gen Agencies

Apollo is one of the most popular sales intelligence and engagement platforms on the market, with millions of users across 500,000+ organizations.

It’s certainly a solid choice for businesses doing their own outreach.

But, as we’ll explain, it’s not so good for agencies. In fact, from a pricing and functionality perspective, Apollo is one of the least agency-friendly tools we’ve seen.

Don’t worry, though, because there’s no shortage of Apollo alternatives for lead gen agencies. We’ve rounded up the best options for you and compared their:

• Key features

• Agency pricing

• Common challenges

Let’s get into it…

QuickMail: The #1 Apollo Alternative

QuickMail is the clear #1 Apollo alternative for lead gen agencies. Here’s why:

Apollo vs QuickMail: At-a-Glance Comparison Table

* Free AutoWarmer with MailFlow included with all QuickMail plans
+ Apollo unified inbox only for email, not LinkedIn replies

What Makes QuickMail the Best Apollo Alternative?

Deliverability Solutions

With Apollo

In our view, email deliverability is the #1 factor when it comes to choosing a cold outreach tool. The higher your deliverability, the more opens, clicks, replies, and leads you’ll generate — it’s as simple as that.

Apollo falls well short on deliverability because it doesn’t offer any email warmup functionality.

So you’ll either have to warm up new inboxes manually — which just isn’t realistic for agencies — or pay for a third-party platform on top of your Apollo subscription.

We’ve heard from plenty of former Apollo customers who were unhappy (to say the least) with the platform’s deliverability. For example, Avadel founder Dave Valentine said:

"Apollo's deliverability was really poor. Our open rates went to a near-zero, our click-through rates were abysmal, and our meeting book rate was nonexistent."

Learn more: Find out how Avadel added $347,000+ in MRR with QuickMail.

With QuickMail

Unlike Apollo, we eat, sleep, and breathe email deliverability.

Even through recent updates from Microsoft and Google, our users are seeing an average inboxing rate (that is, the percentage of emails that don’t bounce) of 98% across all email service providers and millions of sends.

How do we do it?

Well, for starters, we include free access to MailFlow — one of the best email warmup tools on the market — with all QuickMail plans.

We even built our own inbox rotation tool, Deliverability AI, which monitors deliverability across all your email accounts and automatically swaps out low-performing inboxes for higher-rated ones.

And another key feature, Rewording with AI, reduces your chances of being flagged as spam by ensuring every message you send is unique — with no extra effort for you or your reps.

So you can spend less time worrying about deliverability, and more time on high-value strategic actions.

Learn more: 10 Best Email Deliverability Tools

Advanced Analytics and Client Reporting Dashboards

With Apollo

Lead gen agencies rely on clear, accurate data to make key decisions. Like does this message resonate with our ICP, or should we pivot to a new approach?

With Apollo, accessing the data you need is a real struggle.

The platform’s analytics view is messy, and we’ve seen users complaining that the reporting features are less in-depth than other platforms:

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With QuickMail

On the other hand, QuickMail tracks all the lead gen metrics you rely on to make smart decisions — like opens, clicks, replies, bookings, bounces, and more.

But that’s only scratching the surface of our reporting and analytics functionality.

QuickMail is the only cold outreach platform to offer time-based data, tracked back to the date an email was sent. That way, if you’re hit with a drop in deliverability, you’ll know about it straight away.

We also let you build a customizable agency dashboard featuring up to 20 custom tiles — so you can track the exact metrics you need:

You can even see how your results are affected by sending from different email providers.

Because we believe accessing agency-critical data should never be a heavy lift.

Learn more: How To Choose the Best Sales Analytics Tools for Your Agency 

Client Outreach Organization and Workflows

With Apollo

Again, Apollo demonstrates that it just isn’t built for agencies by ignoring crucial workflow and organization-related features.

For example, it doesn’t offer a unified inbox, so you can’t see all your replies in one place.

The lack of client portals makes it frustratingly difficult to share results with clients.

And while you can build custom dashboards on higher-tier plans, they aren’t organized by client, so it’s hard to tell where to focus your attention.

With QuickMail

QuickMail’s unified inbox is easy to use and offers a bunch of features that help you take advantage of warm opportunities.

For example, you can: 

• Read, label, and triage replies without marking them as “read”

• See how long each response has been waiting for a follow-up

• Assign follow-up emails to the best team member

• Respond from any inbox
  

We also make life easier for agency leaders with our changelog, which includes full details of any changes made to your campaigns, including: 

• Who made an edit

• What they did

• When it happened
  

Agency-Friendly Pricing

With Apollo

Given Apollo’s lack of agency-friendly features, you might assume it’d be one of the cheaper tools on the market.

But you’d be wrong, because it charges per user, making it unaffordable for all but the smallest agencies.

For example, the entry-level Basic plan costs $59 per user, per month — or almost $600 per month for a 10-person team. Yet it only allows you to build two email sequences, and you get just one mailbox per user.

Apollo also doesn’t allow users to share logins. So if one rep is editing a campaign and their colleague logs in, they’ll be abruptly kicked off, deleting all their progress.

With QuickMail

With QuickMail, you get access to all our performance-driving features, whichever agency plan you choose.

Because we don’t believe that essential functionality like email warmup or inbox rotation should be paywalled.

We also allow all users to add unlimited team members and inboxes at no extra cost.

Our prices only increase when you add new clients — so you never have to worry about getting an unexpectedly high invoice for exceeding your send limit or adding too many contacts.

Want to learn more? Speak to us to find out about our agency plans.

7 Other Top Apollo Alternatives

Instantly

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Built-in email validation.

• Add unlimited email accounts on all plans.

• Target prospects via email, cold calling, SMS, and LinkedIn steps.

Agency Pricing

Instantly’s plans start at $37 per month for 1,000 uploaded contacts and 5,000 monthly emails and climb to $358 per month for 100,000 uploaded contacts and 500,000 emails a month. If you need more than that, you’ll have to get a custom quote and commit to a 12-month subscription.

Common Challenges

• No deliverability monitoring or deliverability data.

• No agency dashboard.

• No unified inbox on entry-level plan.

• Warmup email pool is mostly custom SMTP inboxes, not Gmail or Outlook accounts.
  

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Learn more: Instantly vs QuickMail: Features, Pricing, and Performance 

Woodpecker

Key Benefits for Agencies

• 24/7 email deliverability reporting (plus ability to share results via pdf).

• Manage clients through the agency dashboard.

• Build a white-labeled reporting app with your own branding and domain.

Agency Pricing

Woodpecker’s agency plans carry a flat fee of $27 per month for each active client you manage. You’ll also have to pay a set fee based on how many email sends and prospects you need. Prices start at $29 per month for 8,000 monthly emails, 500 contacted prospects, and 2,000 stored prospects, while the top-tier option costs $395 per month for 400,000 monthly emails, 100,000 stored prospects, and 25,000 contacted prospects.

Common Challenges

• No option to triage replies/assign to different team members.

• No send-day attribution or positive reply rate/unsubscribe rate reports.

• Built-in email warmup doesn’t work for Gmail accounts.

• Sentiment analysis only marks replies as “positive”, “negative”, or “neutral”.

Smartlead

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Manage leads, automations, and meeting books with the Smartlead API.

• Use contextual reply sentiment to automatically categorize leads.

• Build a white-labeled portal for clients to view reports, access campaigns, and send email replies.

Agency Pricing

Smartlead says its Custom plan is “perfect” for lead gen agencies. Prices start at $174 per month for “up to” 12 million active lead credits and 60 million monthly email credits. However, it’s not clear how much prices increase when you send more emails or add more contacts. Agencies also have to pay a flat $29 per month for each additional client they manage.

Common Challenges

• No native integrations, only Zapier.

• No way to get a single view of performance across all client accounts.

• No way to create prospects manually, add them in bulk, or verify them within Smartlead.

• Smart users also report a ton of glitches:
  

*Quote from unaffiliated agency owner, March 2024

Learn more: Smartlead vs QuickMail: Features, Pricing, and Performance 

Saleshandy

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Lots of deliverability features (including sender rotation, ramp-up, and sending intervals).

• Includes a dedicated agency portal for client management.

• Add unlimited team members and clients.

• Build a white-labeled app with your domain, logo, and other brand assets.

Agency Pricing

All Saleshandy plans allow you to add unlimited email accounts and clients at no extra cost. Prices start at $36 per month for 6,000 monthly emails, 2,000 total prospects, and 1,100 email verification credits, and climb to $1,499 per month for up to 500,000 prospects, 1.5 million emails, and 55,000 verification credits. If you need more contacts, emails, or verification credits, you can request a custom quote.

Common Challenges

• No assigning replies in the unified inbox or responding from different accounts.

• No Google Drive integration.

• Some Saleshandy users report damage to their domain reputation:
  

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Learn more: Saleshandy vs QuickMail: Features, Pricing, and Performance

Lemlist

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Target prospects via email, LinkedIn, and cold calling.

• Create dynamic campaigns using smart logic.

• Add personalization with text variables and dynamic landing pages.

Agency Pricing

Like Apollo, Lemlist charges per user, so it’s pretty expensive for agencies. Prices start at $39 per user per month for unlimited campaigns and just one sending email per user. And if you need more than 10 seats, you'll have to contact Lemlist for a custom quote.

Common Challenges

• Expensive per-user pricing.

• Prospect replies aren’t categorized by campaign or client.

• Lemlist adds messy html to emails, which can hurt deliverability.

• Some Lemlist users say the platform is pretty buggy:
  

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Mailshake

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Use built-in email validation to clean your email list.

• Build automated, trigger-based follow-up sequences.

• Automate LinkedIn messages, connection requests, and profile views (only available on top-tier plan).

Agency Pricing

Mailshake is another platform with expensive per-user pricing, with plans ranging from $29 – $99 per user, per month. In fact, Mailshake advises agencies to ask their clients to pay for Mailshake, then add the agency as a user:

Even if your customers are happy with this arrangement, it’s just not scalable. 

No agency wants to manage dozens of clients, all via different accounts.

Common Challenges

• Expensive per-user pricing.

• LinkedIn automation and unified inbox only available on higher-tier plans.

• Maximum of five email addresses per seat.

Learn more: Mailshake vs QuickMail: Features, Pricing, and Performance 

Reply.io

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Set roles and permissions to manage who can view and edit reports.

• Segment reports by team member or client.

• All agency plans include unlimited mailboxes, clients, users, contacts, and email warmup.

Agency Pricing

Reply.io’s agency plans start at $210 per month, all of which include unlimited email sequences, inboxes, and email warmup.

Prices increase based on the number of leads you add, rather than how many clients you manage. We think this pricing model is a bad fit for agencies, because there’s always a risk you’ll exceed your allowance by simply adding too many prospects.

The platform also hides lots of key features — like LinkedIn automation and SMS/cold calling steps — behind paywalls. In fact, you have to pay more for them even if you’re already subscribed to Reply.io’s top-tier plan.

Common Challenges

• Limited report customization.

• No centralized client dashboard.

• Steep learning curve and tricky user interface:
  

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Learn more: Reply.io vs QuickMail: Features, Pricing, and Performance

Switch To the Best Apollo Alternative Today

While there’s no shortage of Apollo alternatives for lead gen agencies, we’re confident that QuickMail is the best option.

With QuickMail, you can…

• Add unlimited team members at no extra cost

• Access key agency tools like our unified inbox, client portal, and agency dashboard on all plans

• Hit more inboxes with Deliverability AI, inbox warmup, and Rewording with AI

…and that’s just for starters.

And you only have to pay us more when you add more clients.

For a full overview of how QuickMail can help your agency, speak with us.