Cold email software will let you send personalized emails to cold prospects, automatically follow up if someone doesn’t respond, and help you track your results.
In this guide, we will show you some of the best cold email outreach tools on the market. Despite most tools doing fundamentally similar things, there will be different options best suited for you depending on your company size, requirements from the tool, and budget.
We’ll look at the pros and cons of each option to help you find the best cold email software for you and your team.
Best Cold Email Software - Top Picks
No time to read a full review of all the cold emailing tools? No problem. We've summarized the best options for you.
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Best Cold Email Software | QuickMail - get the most replies |
| Best as a Chrome extension | RightInbox |
| Best for simple follow-ups | FollowUp.cc |
| Best deliverability tool | Mailflow |
Start a free trial with the #1 best cold email software - QuickMail.
These are all powerful tools. However, they won't cover every use case. We dive into these and 20 other tools in this guide, so read on for more detail.
Let’s dive in.
Features to Look For in Cold Email Software
Schedule Campaigns and Automatically Follow Up
This is a cold email tool’s main function. While most cold emailing software has the ability to do this, the degree to which you can customize your campaigns and schedules varies between them.
The best cold emailing tools have functionality including:
Makes it easy to add and remove prospects from campaigns
Lets you schedule follow-up emails to send if someone doesn’t respond
Automates multichannel outreach steps like LinkedIn messages, cold calls, and SMS
Delivers advanced insights to help you get better results over time
Sends emails on a predefined schedule or time-zone based sending
Helps improve your email deliverability to ensure your emails land in the primary inbox
When choosing your cold email outreach tool, make sure that it has at least some of these features.
See the top reasons why people choose QuickMail.
Easy and Powerful Personalization
Cold email marketing won’t work if you don’t show your prospects that you understand their goals and motivations. You’ll need to personalize every email. Most cold email tools, including QuickMail, will let you use attributes to add snippets of personalization to emails.
You’ll be able to insert unique personalization for every lead like their name, company, custom intro lines and more. Take it a step further with custom links and suggested meeting days.
That way you can easily build a basic cold outreach template but insert unique, dynamic personalization so every email you send is custom to the recipient.
Reply Handling and Productivity Tools
All cold email tools allow you to send emails. However, sending your first email is just the first step. Ideally, your platform will include features to help you manage your pipeline of replies and continue the conversation.
For example, QuickMail logs all of your replies and tasks under the Opportunities tab.
Here, your team can easily track responses, and share notes and conversations.
This ensures that everyone on your team knows which prospects have replied and that no lead ever gets accidentally ignored.
Learn more about using QuickMail to handle every opportunity.
Bring Your Whole Team and Collaborate
If you’re part of a fast-growing team, you’ll need collaboration features that enable multiple team members to work on your campaigns.
For example, you can have one team member working on your prospect list import. Another writing your cold email campaign copy. Another setting up your inboxes.
The result will be that everyone has focus, and you can send more high-quality outreach campaigns more quickly.
Look for features like a shared dashboard for your whole team’s campaigns, inbox rotation to change who emails are sent by, and analytics that let you see granular details on individual and overall performance.
If you're an agency, you'll also need features such as an agency dashboard to manage your client accounts, webhooks to automate processes, and an audit log to keep track of who does what.
QuickMail was the first cold email platform to offer inbox rotation. This lets you easily add and remove new inboxes from existing campaigns. It makes it simple to dial up your send volume without compromising your deliverability.
These are quality-of-life features that aren't common, but worth having if you’re planning on using cold email for lead generation.
Free Email Warm-Up & Best Deliverability
Good deliverability is paramount for the success of your cold email outreach, especially when done at scale. Look for email outreach tools that have deliverability features to help you keep your emails out of spam filters and maintain a healthy sender score in the long run.
For example, QuickMail users get free access to MailFlow. The native integration pushes warmer scores in real time for easy oversight.
QuickMail also offers features to boost deliverability: inbox rotation, minimum sending delays, enable/disable tracking, deliverability testing, and more.
QuickMail also offers free blacklist monitoring so you always stay on top of where your emails are landing.
Learn more about how deliverability is built into QuickMail.
Best Cold Email Software for Getting Replies in 2024
1. QuickMail - Designed to get replies
Powerful & reliable cold email software with advanced automation and deliverability features.
Best for: startups, agencies, and sales teams who prioritize deliverability and time savings
QuickMail is an omnichannel outreach tool that helps you design and deliver high-performing campaigns, manage sales conversations, and view advanced campaign analytics. It can be used to automate every kind of outreach and shines as a cold emailing tool, CRM, and LinkedIn outreach tool.
QuickMail will let your team easily upload prospects, create outreach campaigns, follow-up at custom intervals, use personalization attributes, and set tasks. The best part is, you can automate the entire process.
Omni-channel Outreach
With QuickMail, you can revolutionize your outreach and start more conversations by going beyond cold emails.
Create dynamic follow-up sequences across Email, LinkedIn, SMS, and Calls to effectively connect with your audience on the platforms they frequent most.
With QuickMail, you can send personalized messages and engage with a wide audience of over 100K+ people at once.
These omni-channel campaigns can boost your reply rates and help you close more deals.
Social selling becomes a breeze as QuickMail empowers you to spot potential prospects, kick off conversations, and smoothly manage your LinkedIn interactions. Take it up a notch by integrating Aircall, allowing you to make cold calls with personalized scripts and keep detailed notes on contacts within QuickMail.
QuickMail isn't just an email tool - it's your go-to solution for impactful outreach campaigns across multiple channels.
Scale Your Cold Outreach Easily and Quickly
QuickMail invented inbox rotation and we're the only solution to offer the same functionality for LinkedIn sending.
Ready to send more volume? Just add an inbox (or five) to your existing campaign and QuickMail will start sending the same outreach campaign from multiple inboxes.
Using inbox rotation helps spread the send volume across multiple inboxes to keep send volume low.
This protects your outreach by keeping your emails out of spam.
Forget dealing with the duplicated campaigns hell, or needing to log in and out of multiple accounts.
Automate Everything
QuickMail has everything you need to automate your cold email process, freeing you up to focus on other important tasks like having meetings with leads.
Automatically pull new leads from synced Google Sheets
Set send times and triggers to start new leads each day.
Launch sub-campaigns with AI for immediate follow-up
Integrate your workflow with Zapier or webhooks
Personalize your email templates for every recipient on autopilot...
You can set all of this up in 5 minutes.
Your outreach runs itself so you can focus on handling replies and building your business.
Unified Reply Handling Build for Teams
Managing replies from multiple inboxes gets messy at scale.
QuickMail provides a centralized inbox that detects all new messages from your prospects (CC, BCC, new threads, etc.) and allows you to reply easily.
Share reply handling among your team and view the entire conversation thread across different channels.
Answer from any inbox in your account and track deals won.
QuickMail’s AI features handle most of the admin workload for you: categorizing responses, handling unsubscribe requests, launching sub-campaigns, and more.
Free Email Warmup Integration
The first yet often overlooked step of email marketing is ensuring your emails reach people.
If your emails aren’t being delivered, nothing else matters.
QuickMail’s cold email software was built with deliverability in mind. With its native integration with MailFlow, a free email warm-up tool that has built-in deliverability tools, it ensures that your emails land in the primary inbox.
The integration is safe and Google-compliant. That means your campaign emails can still be sent from the Gmail API for best deliverability.
You’ll land in more people’s inboxes, and more people will reply as a result.
On top of that, QuickMail also generates a real-time auto-warmer score for each inbox to keep a tab on deliverability. Free SPF, DKIM, and domain blacklist monitoring ensure your emails aren’t breached and protect your domain and sender reputation.
A/Z Testing and Advanced Analytics
QuickMail is the only tool on the market with send-day attribution and advanced analytics to help you get more replies. This gives you better insight to monitor deliverability and campaign optimizations.
Focus on essential metrics like positive reply rates without getting sucked into vanity metrics or bot-inflated open rates.
QuickMail also provides context behind each data point, allowing you to take the right steps to optimize it. For example, it shows why people unsubscribe to optimize your list, messages, and contacts.
With un-capped A/B testing and the most advanced stats on the market - you can make smart campaign decisions that help you get better results in less time.
Pricing
Whether you scale by inboxes, email sends, or seats - QuickMail is the best deal in outbound.
One perk with QuickMail is that team members are free. Every plan comes with a generous amount of senders, volume limits, and inbox rotation is included with every plan.
Paid plans start as low as $49/month for 30,000 monthly emails.
QuickMail provides a free 14-day trial that allows you to explore every feature of the tool.
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5
What QuickMail users are saying on G2:
“As an agency owner, Quickmail is the only system that makes it possible to send emails on behalf of clients without needing access to their inboxes.”
“By send volume - we book 4X more meetings in QuickMail than our previous platform. The visibility on deliverability scores for each inbox is SO helpful.”
“Quickmail support. They are amazing. No question the best support in anything I have ever used.”
Capterra rating: 4.8 out of 5
What QuickMail users are saying on Capterra:
"What they provide is hands down the best experience I have had as a customer. Being in sales I have high expectations because I deliver a great customer experience."
“I have used most cold email softwares on the market and this is without a doubt the best”
“QuickMail takes into account out of office replies, and even detects responses and modifies the campaign based on whether or not someone has responded. Basically all of your fears about email at scale are solved. I've tried all of the major email tools out there, and none of them had such clever functionality. It eliminates all of your manual work and picks up on replies in smart ways that other tools do not.”
Features:
Omnichannel outreach automation (Email, LinkedIn, SMS, Call, etc.)
Free auto-warmer integration
Centralized inbox to manage all conversations effortlessly
Import prospects automatically
Send emails and follow up on autopilot with AI features
Scale campaigns with a couple of clicks
Integrate with the rest of your tools
View detailed statistics and A/B test your campaigns easily
10 Alternative Cold Email Tools
2. Salesmate
Email prospecting software for teams wanting a platform to manage their sales pipeline and automate their sales process
Salesmate is an email service platform for teams to manage and automate their email prospecting, sales outreach, cold calling, and sales productivity.
It offers more than just sales email software, but for the sake of this post, we’ll just focus on those features. You can use their Sequences feature to build email campaigns that send on a predefined schedule. You can even integrate automated SMS messages into those sequences, useful for ABM campaigns.
You can set up a variety of personalized settings on how to handle things like what to do if you get an out-of-office reply, campaign exit criteria, and assigning tags to prospects.
It’s a powerful email service tool and great for teams who want to collaborate on both sending emails and seeing their CRM activity in one place.
Pricing: Starts from $29 per user per month for email open and links tracking, sync, and email templates. From $49 per user per month for goal management, email reminders, and a shared team inbox. $79 per user per month for increased inbox limits, a built-in power dialer, and increased email sequence limits.
Pros:
Ideal for tracking prospect interactions after the initial cold outreach has happened thanks to CRM features
Powerful integrations with 700+ apps to sync your outreach data with other tools
Good value for money for small teams needing a powerful CRM
Cons:
Users report that reports can be hard to read and decipher
Customers have found syncing and integrating with other apps difficult
Limitations on the number of emails you can send per day
3. Klenty
Sales engagement platform that helps sales teams send personalized cold emails and follow-ups based on the potential customer’s buying behavior.
Klenty helps both outbound and inbound sales teams send personalized cold emails and follow-ups. While it does have multi-channel outreach, it is popular for its cold email features and native integrations with Zoho, Pipedrive, Hubspot, and Salesforce.
It will automatically remind sales representatives of their outreach tasks for the particular day–whether that’s sending a follow-up or connecting with a prospect on LinkedIn. Reps can also preview cold emails before sending them, and deliver them when prospects are most likely to check them.
Klenty also has built-in tools for improving your email deliverability, as well as tools for ensuring that your emails are sent at random intervals.
Additionally, custom domain tracking is available if you want to track email engagement directly from your own links.
Pricing: Startup at $50, Growth at $70, Pro at $100, and Enterprise plans at custom pricing
Pros:
Ability to create multiple sequences based on whether the prospect is cold, warm, or hot.
No limit to the number of steps you can add to your sales sequence.
A/B testing available for cold email sequences and then cloning the most effective ones
Cons:
There’s a limit on the number of emails you can send per day
There’s no mobile app for the tool
4. Outreach
Outbound sales software including email outreach for teams who want insight into company performance, down to an individual level
Outreach helps sales teams connect with your target audience at scale using multi-channel sales sequences.
As the name suggests, it’s full of features specifically for outbound sales teams. You can create multi-step, multi-channel sales campaigns that send reminders to your team to pick up the phone and call, send a follow up email, or connect with a prospect on LinkedIn.
It’s an effective platform for teams to manage their email outreach program, as sales managers can see insights into individual performance.
Pricing: Available upon request, personalized demo also available before you commit to a contract.
Pros:
Create powerful multi-touch sequences timed based on prospect actions
Personalize cold outreach with insights taken from your LinkedIn contacts and your CRM records
Detailed analytics into team performance to spot high and low performers
Cons:
Third-party training is required and it will take time to onboard your team
Users on Capterra say the customer support isn’t always as attentive as they could be
Busy interface that can make it hard to stay focused on what matters: sending personalized emails
5. SalesLoft
Helps B2B sales teams with a large team of sales reps manage their processes
SalesLoft is a platform for sales engagement designed to help you engage with prospects and track your activities to see what’s working.
You’ll have a clear overview of your sales activities and important tasks in one place, so you never leave a prospect waiting for a reply for long.
SalesLoft integrates with Sales Navigator and Salesforce, so you can easily review your CRM records and make sure every email you send is personalized and timely.
As you would hope, you can also create and save templates that you can re-use, and see detailed metrics on things like open rate, reply rates, and click-through rates.
Pricing: Available on request. Made for enterprise-level companies who need custom onboarding and guidance.
Pros:
Good for large sales teams that need a suite of tools to manage their pipeline
Build automated outbound campaigns including cold emails, follow-ups, SMS, and more.
Bring your whole team together in the platform
AI-based deal analytics to highlight prospects that need to be re-engaged
Cons:
Expensive and not suited for small companies
Some limitations around integrations if you’re on a lower-tier plan
Takes time to set up your campaigns correctly
6. Snov.io
Combines a sales CRM and cold outreach automation platform
Snov.io is an email prospecting tool to help you identify good leads, engage with them using email outreach, and manage deals in a sales CRM.
If you want a platform that helps you with everything from prospecting to managing deals in your CRM, it’s a great option. The platform also includes an email finder. It collects data on companies and accounts then stores them in a database in order to help you identify good-fit prospective clients. You can then import your target audience into your campaigns with verified email addresses and automate the process of reaching out and following up.
There’s a Gmail extension to track engagement inside your inbox, and you can also see stats on performance inside Snov.io itself.
Pricing: From $39 per month for 5,000 email sending credits. $99 per month for email AB testing and team permission control. Hands-on campaign strategy development from $999 per month offered as a custom service.
Pros:
Includes a prospecting database to find potential clients
User-friendly interface that makes it easy to schedule your bulk email campaigns
UI that makes it easy to schedule your bulk email campaigns
Email analytics to track your cold outreach campaign performance
Cons:
Users reported problems occurring during drip email campaigns
Limited CRM functionality and not ideal for post-outreach communication
The base plan only lets you send 1,000 emails per month, compared to QuickMail which lets each inbox you add send up to 500 per day
7. Reply.io
Cold email outreach platform for larger sales teams
Reply.io is cold email software for sales that bundles together email finding, LinkedIn outreach, and cold email automation tool. You can find emails and build a prospect list within Reply, then upload prospects to your personalized cold email campaigns.
As you would expect, you can track and monitor the performance of your campaigns, and Reply also includes features to help you write a clear, compelling cold email template.
It’s a bigger platform than most of the other recommendations here because it integrates a prospect database and LinkedIn outreach with an email sending platform.
Pricing: Starts at $60 per month for one mailbox. Plans for multiple mailboxes and multichannels sequences start at $90 per user per month. Email warmup only available from $90 per user.
Pros:
Chrome extension that lets you save prospects as you’re prospecting on LinkedIn
AI-driven email copy suggestions to improve reply rates
Notifications to help you keep track of new replies and actions you need to take
Cons:
Users on Capterra say that it’s complicated to set up and get started with
Expensive, starting at $70/mon/user for a minimum of three users ($210 per month)
Features suited to larger companies
Discover how QuickMail compares against Reply.io and why QuickMail is the best Reply.io alternative
8. Yesware
Simple but effective email tracking for prospecting teams
Yesware is an ‘all-in-one toolkit’ for sales. It lets you send emails, track results, schedule meetings and integrate with both Salesforce and LinkedIn. The tool sits on top of your Gmail and Outlook inboxes, adding functionality to them rather than making you move your activity into a new tool.
You’ll be able to track how prospects interact with your email, seeing if people receive, open, and engage with content like links to proposals or sales decks.
Yesware’s cold email outreach software means you can schedule emails to send at specific times and send follow-up email campaigns on autopilot, which will make your sales prospecting simple and predictable.
Pricing: Starts from $35 per seat per month for sending cold outreach campaigns. Salesforce CRM integration available from $65 per seat per month.
Pros:
Made for cold emailing, so there are lots of tools to help you manage the process
Works with both Gmail and Outlook and sits on top of your existing inbox
Auto-populate campaigns with your Salesforce data thanks to a close integration
Cons:
Pay per seat you use rather than per sending inbox, so it can get expensive quickly
Users on Capterra say the CRM sync can be unreliable at times
Salesforce integrations are not available on lower plans
Discover how QuickMail compares against Yesware and why QuickMail is the best Yesware alternative
9. Mailshake
Simple and easy-to-use cold email marketing software
Mailshake is a popular option for cold email outreach software. The platform lets you create personalized email campaigns, upload your prospect lists, and schedule follow-up emails if someone doesn’t respond.
There’s an integrated phone dialer so you can bring cold calls into your sequences as well, however, this is only available on the higher tier Sales Engagement Plan. Mailshake connects with Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers via SMTP and connects with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot.
Pricing: Starts at $58 per month. Phone dialer, call scripts, and social selling features to create multichannel outreach campaigns are only available on the Sales Engagement plan from $83 per month.
Pros:
Zapier integration to connect it with most other sales tools and CRMs
Upload prospect lists and personalize emails with attributes
AI-email writing tool to help you quickly write your cold email templates
Cons:
Restrictions on the number of daily emails you can send as emails are sent through Gmail and Outlook servers
Some users on Capterra reported problems with emails listed as spam when bulk email sending after recently signing up
Phone dialer for multi-channel sales only available on the higher tier plan
Discover how QuickMail compares against Mailshake and why QuickMail is the best Mailshake alternative.
10. Close
A complete sales CRM with both email drip sequences and cold calling integrations to improve how your team sells
Close is a popular CRM and sales platform that’s packed with features. You can send and manage sales and prospecting emails, create tasks, and even cold call right from your dashboard.
As you would hope, you can create personalized email drip campaigns, re-use email templates, and pause campaigns for any leads that reply.
You can upload your prospect list then schedule your campaigns to be sent at any time you choose. You can also create follow-up and other task reminders, and track metrics such as open rates to see what’s working.
The main downside of Close is that you’ll need to pay for every sales rep on your team who you add to the tool, so it can get expensive if your company is growing quickly.
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month for 5 flows, email and calendar sync, Zapier integration, and the ability to store leads, contacts, and opportunities. Goes up to $699/month and provides a 14-day free trial.
Pros:
mPowerful CRM features to manage your sales pipeline
Share email templates with other team members
Sales leaderboard to track which sales reps are the most productive on your team
Cons:
Not ideal for sending cold emails, it’s best for post-contact follow-ups
Can become expensive when you need to add more than a few team members to the platform
11. Autoklose
Sales engagement platform with a variety of tools, including cold email service software to help with prospecting and follow-ups
Autoklose is a sales automation platform that includes tools for cold emailing. You can create a CSV file of prospects, upload them to the platform, and add them to a campaign you have ready to send. If they don’t reply you can automatically follow-up on a pre-set schedule.
As well as sending cold outreach, you can use the platform to track your sales team performance in leaderboards, organize your full contact list, and verify your email lists before reaching out to prospects.
It’s a powerful platform, packed with features.
Pricing: Starts at $59.99 per month for 500 emails per month. API, Zapier integration, and email warm up features are only available on the Advanced plan from $69.99 per month.
Pros:
Comes with a 2-hour onboarding call to help you quickly set up your account
A/B test subject lines and email copy to compare performance
Sales leaderboards to see which SDRs are hitting quota
Cons:
Because the tool has so many features, it can be difficult to get started and setup the platform correctly without the onboarding call
Users on Capterra report that the email list cleaning tool accuracy is hit or miss
Priced based on the users you add, rather than inboxes used for sending so it’s an expensive option for teams compared to QuickMail
6 Chrome Extensions for Cold Emailing
How do Chrome Extensions Work for Cold Emailing?
Chrome extensions for cold emailing connect to your Gmail inbox and allow you to manage your cold outreach directly from your Gmail dashboard.
They're more suited for email power users rather than cold emailers because they offer a more basic set of features due to being limited by their interface.
However, many lower-volume cold emailers prefer them over standalone cold email outreach tools due to the ease of use of working directly from the Gmail client.
Let's look at some of the most popular Chrome extensions for cold emailing out there.
12. GMass
Send cold email marketing campaigns straight from your Gmail client
If you want to keep things simple and automate your cold email campaigns straight from your Gmail inbox, GMass is for you. It’s installed as a Chrome Extension, and you can then access powerful features right inside your inbox.
It lets you use Google Sheets to create mail merge fields, so you can still send personalized cold email outreach at scale despite the simplicity of the tool.
GMass also lets you schedule your outreach campaigns, follow-up automatically, and will categorize replies to prevent inbox clutter.
Pricing: From $19.95 per month for unlimited campaigns, email personalization, email verification, and more. From $29.95 per month to add automatic email follow ups and create sequences. High-priority support available on the Enterprise plan from $49.95 per month.
Pros:
Doesn’t require onboarding to a new tool as it sits on top of your Gmail inbox
Build email lists from your Gmail contacts
Campaign analytics to track every action that happens in your cold email campaign
Cons:
Users on Capterra say it can be hard to track the campaign stages that each prospect is in
Follow-ups only included on higher-tier plans
Doesn’t work with Outlook or custom email providers
Discover how QuickMail compares against GMass and why QuickMail is the best GMass alternative
13. Streak
Adds useful CRM functionality to your Gmail inbox
Streak, in a similar way to GMass, integrates directly into your Gmail account. However, they add even more functionality on top by transforming your inbox into a flexible CRM.
It saves you having to connect standalone cold email software with a third-party CRM by handling everything in one place.
You can also create snippets, which are templates that you can quickly use to eliminate repetitive work and speed up the time it takes to reply to emails.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $15 per user per month to send 800 emails. $49 per user per month to send 1,500 mail merge emails per month. $129 per user per month for priority support and custom permissions.
Pros:
Transform your standard Gmail inbox into a CRM
Track email opens, clicks, and reply rates to judge performance
Add notes to CRM records in Gmail to give more context for future interactions
Cons:
Mobile app lacks functionality compared to desktop software
Users on Capterra report that it can cause UI issues that affect their day-to-day email workflow
Not made for cold email, best for following up with existing leads
14. SalesHandy
Improve sales productivity with a tool designed to help you send bulk emails for your inbox
SalesHandy is a sales enablement tool to help your sales team be more productive and effective. You can use it to automatically track email engagement, send follow-ups, and create templates.
There’s a built-in send limiter so you don’t send too many emails per day, and it also includes an email verification tool to help ensure you’re only contacting people on their real email.
SalesHandy does everything you’ll need to send and follow-up with prospects, and it’s compatible with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other mail providers.
Pricing: From $36 per month per user for unlimited email sequences, 5 email accounts for email warm-up, email verification, and basic unified inbox. $99 per month for 30,000 recipients, Zoho and Pipedrive integration, and sender rotation pro. Agency plan to help you manage clients and add unlimited team members only available after a demo.
Pros:
Works with both Gmail and Outlook
Mail merge functionality to personalize emails to individual prospects
Detailed metrics and analytics, such as open, click, and reply tracking
Cons:
No email warmup tools included to improve deliverability
Email tracking tools report metrics from your own activity, for example, if you open an email you sent, it’ll report it as being opened by the prospect
Users on Capterra report that the tool doesn’t display if duplicate emails are being sent to the same person, which could lead to issues
15. MixMax
Easily schedule meetings with cold leads over email
If you’re regularly booking meetings with prospects, MixMax is a solid choice for your cold email service, thanks to the built-in scheduling features.
You can add your schedule directly into your emails (although the MixMax logo will show up), which enables your prospects to quickly book meetings to continue the conversation.
You’ll be able to see detailed analytics on how people engage with your emails, and how many people RSVP to your meeting invites.
Your emails can be easily personalized thanks to integrations with most CRMs, and you can update your CRM records directly from Gmail to keep your workflow simple.
Pricing: From $24 per user per month for email campaign features and shared email templates. $49 per user per month for sequence personalization, reporting, and custom email branding. $69 per month (billed annually) for Salesforce integration.
Pros:
Built-in calendar for meeting scheduling to improve cold email to meeting conversion rates
Create templates and automated email sequences right in your Gmail account
Salesforce integration to sync your email contacts with your CRM
Cons:
Doesn’t work with Outlook or other custom inbox providers which can have better deliverability than Gmail
Users on Capterra say that the reporting can sometimes be inaccurate so you don’t know how your email sequence performed
Branding shows on some of the customer-facing features, so your prospects will know you’re reaching out to them as part of a list
16. Vocus.io
Combines a sales email software platform with Gmail integrations
You can use Vocus.io to draft, schedule, and send cold email campaigns. You can add attachments, which is a good way to increase engagement on your follow-ups (for example, by adding a more proposal or portfolio of work). As well as that, you can install their Gmail extension to track opens and links and get reminders to follow-up inside Gmail.
You’ll also be able to create a calendar, similar to MixMax, so it’s easy for prospects to book meetings with you.
After you’ve sent your campaigns, you can see detailed reports that are easily shareable to ensure your whole team stays up to date on what’s working.
Pricing: Starts from $20 per month for multi-step cold email campaigns that include follow-ups. Lightweight email sending features are available from $5 per month.
Pros:
Gmail add-on to help with day-to-day email tracking
Send and schedule drip email campaigns with attributes to personalize
Create a personal calendar page that integrates with your emails and prospects can use to book meetings with you
Cons:
Users on Capterra report that the software sometimes freezes up when performing exports
Lack of accuracy on metrics including bounces being recorded as responses
Only works with Gmail and GSuite, and doesn’t work with Outlook
17. Followup.cc
Lightweight cold email software for Gmail that lets you easily follow-up with prospects that haven’t responded
Followup.cc does what the name suggests: it helps you track conversations and never miss a follow-up opportunity.
You add the extension to your browser and it will add tools to your Gmail account that make it easy to set reminders of when to follow up and even schedule automatic follow-ups to be sent after a specific delay.
The tool also includes open tracking so you know how engaged a prospect is.
The main downside to Followup.cc is that it’s not specifically made for cold email outreach, and does lack more powerful features that most other tools have.
Pricing: Starts from $23 per month for follow-up reminders and limited email tracking. From $36 per month for auto follow ups and email attachment support. From $50 per month for Salesforce integrations and team reports.
Pros:
Lightweight cold email service that doesn’t have a steep learning curve, so a good choice if you have a small business and don’t have time to spend onboarding to a new platform
Choose between follow-up reminders and automated follow-ups with a personalized cold email template
See reports on email activity on higher-tier plans
Cons:
Changes the UI of your inbox so you will need to adapt
Doesn’t offer any email deliverability tools
Only works with Gmail and not compatible with Outlook or other inbox providers
2 Best Free Cold Email Software
18. MailFlow Auto-Warmer
New inboxes need to be 'warmed up' before starting your cold email outreach to avoid deliverability problems. Traditionally, this was done by sending back-and-forth emails to your colleagues for a few weeks.
MailFlow's Auto Warmer automates this process.
Whether you’re using the inbox to send email outreach campaigns, or a weekly email sequence with a marketing email, the Auto Warmer is going to ensure your emails always land in the primary inbox.
When you sign up for the Auto-Warmer, you join a network of real inboxes exchanging emails and replying to each other.
This mimics real email engagement, like the one someone would naturally have with their colleagues. This prevents email service providers like Google or Outlook from suspecting any unusual behavior and increases your deliverability.
The Auto-Warmer opens your emails, replies to them, marks them as "not spam", auto-archives them, and monitors your deliverability at all times.
The best part? It's completely free for QuickMail users and has a native integration to a powerful cold email platform, QuickMail. Try it yourself.
19. RightInbox
See which prospects open and engage with your emails in Gmail
Right Inbox is a productivity tool that can help with your day-to-day sales email workflow.
After installing the free email cold email service extension to your Gmail, it adds features such as follow-ups, email tracking, the ability to save templates, and more to your account.
You can also add notes to email threads which is helpful for when you want to keep track of a conversation’s key points so you can bring them back up again in the future.
If you’re looking for a free option, Right Inbox is a good start.
Pricing: Free plan available to track five emails per month. Upgrade from $7.95 per month for unlimited email tracking. Send email sequences with personalized mail merge fields from $14.95 per month.
Pros:
Adds a host of useful features to your Gmail inbox
Save notes and tags so you never lose important information
Sync conversations with your CRM to ensure no conversation is forgotten
Cons:
Doesn’t work with Microsoft Outlook or other inbox providers
Lacks some email deliverability features
There is a team plan, but for large teams you’d be better with a standalone cold email marketing tool
5 Bonus Tools to Improve Your Cold Email Campaigns
20. Find Emails with Clearbit Connect
It's a tool that finds emails and enriches your prospect profiles
Before you think of sending an email, you’ll need someone’s contact details. Tools like Clearbit Connect help you find the email addresses for people you want to reach out to.
As well as helping with email details, it’ll also help you find their social profiles (so you can connect with them) and other relevant details about their company, industry, job, and tools they use at work.
If you need help finding email addresses, it’s a great tool.
21. Verify Emails with NeverBounce
Verify your emails are valid and reduce your bounce rate with a tool like NeverBounce
High bounce rates are a bad sign. If your cold emails aren’t landing in your prospects’ inboxes, email service providers will see that you’re not using email in a natural way. You’re more likely to end up in the spam folder and you’ll see poor results from any email campaign you send.
To avoid unnecessary bounces, use NeverBounce to verify your email list.
Simply upload your contact list and NeverBounce will tell you if they’re valid or not, in under 10 minutes. Email verification is a simple but essential part of any successful outreach plan.
You can also verify your email list directly in QuickMail’s cold email software, thanks to our integration with email verification software like NeverBounce.
22. Send Personalized Videos with Loom
Record short videos that you can embed into your email marketing outreach
If you want to stand out in your prospects’ inbox, try using Loom to record a short video pitch instead of writing it out.
This is a great tactic to help show that you’ve done your research, have clear value to offer, and prove that you’re not just emailing 500 people with the same boring template, but are willing to put genuine effort into your outreach.
Loom links show up as a video preview in Gmail, so it’s a great way to make your cold email outreach stand out.
23. Automate Busywork with Zapier
Save time every day by automating repetitive tasks and connecting apps
Zapier lets you connect your cold email software to thousands of other tools and automate boring tasks.
You can create automate repetitive tasks, and do things like:
Get a notification in Slack when a prospect replies
Update a CRM record when someone clicks a link
Create a new deal in your CRM when someone replies
You’ll save hours every week, and don’t need to know any coding to use Zapier. It’s a great way to ensure your cold email marketing campaigns run smoothly.
However, it’s also important to remember that if you’re just starting out with cold email, don’t over-optimize things too early. Figure out what works, then start building your automations to suit your proven workflow.
24. Get to Know Your Prospects with Crystal
See detailed personality profiles and tailor your cold outreach approach
Crystal gives you pointers on how to communicate with prospects. It shows you details on what communication style people like, so you can tailor your cold outreach and follow-up meetings to match their expectations and ensure things run smoothly.
Expect to see tips like “Appreciates details”, “Likes to make quick decisions” or “Dislikes claims without data”.
The data comes from personality tests, and there’s a Chrome extension that will overlap communication insights over your prospect’s social media profiles.
Using Crystal is a simple way to improve your cold outreach, create custom email templates for every person, and boost your reply rate.
FAQ: Everything You Need to Know About Cold Email Outreach Tools
1. What is Cold Email Software?
Cold email software enables you to send email outreach campaigns to cold contacts – such as sales prospects – at scale. To help you improve your response rate, all good cold email software, such as QuickMail, has features such as:
Email personalization tools to make sure every email you send stands out
Scheduled automatic follow-ups to improve response rates
Reporting dashboards to measure your cold email performance
Team collaboration features so you can add multiple members of your team or freelancers to help you manage your cold email sequences
We’re slightly biased, but we’re confident that QuickMail is the best cold email software for your company’s outreach needs.
2. Should You Use Gmail or Outlook?
Both inbox service providers are good options. However, our data has shown that Outlook does have slightly better deliverability performance.
The best cold email marketing software will support both Gmail and Outlook. This means you can set it up on any inbox, and if you run into deliverability issues and want to change the inbox provider without switching tools down the line it’ll be simple to do.
Read our two guides on the best way to send outreach emails from each ESP below:
3. Do You Need a Dedicated Cold Email Tool?
Yes. You can’t send cold emails with traditional email marketing tools or most CRMs. Their terms and conditions say that you can only reach out to opted-in contacts. We looked at whether you can use popular email tools for cold emailing in the guides below:
4. What’s the Best Platform to Send Cold Emails From?
In truth, there’s no single best cold email outreach platform. The right one will depend on your needs and team setup.
We’ve found that for agencies and teams needing multiple seats and powerful cold email tools, QuickMail is a great option.
If you’re looking for something more lightweight, you might consider a tool that works as an extension, like Gmass or Streak.
5. What is the Benefit of Using a Cold Email Platform?
Cold email software lets you automate your outreach process.
Without software to help you, it would be time-consuming and require lots of manual steps to send personalized emails at scale.
Cold email software means you can run high-volume campaigns without worrying about deliverability, personalization, or forgetting to follow-up.
The only reason you shouldn’t use cold email software is if you don’t yet know who your ideal customer is or their pain points. In that situation, you should be reaching out to people one-by-one to start genuine exploratory conversations to see how you can help.
6. Is Cold Email Legal?
Yes, cold email is legal in most places.
Make sure to stick to the terms and conditions set out by your cold email outreach tool, and always review the laws in your country or region. For example, if you’re emailing prospective clients in the EU, you’ll need to abide by the GDPR. In the US, you’ll need to abide by the CAN-SPAM Act. If you’re in California, you’ll need to consider the CCPA.
As long as you have a good reason to email your prospects, create custom email templates for each person you reach out to, and don’t spam people, you won’t have much to worry about.
7. Cold Email Software Best Practices
When you’re just getting started with your new cold email marketing software, it’s tempting to open the tool, import your prospects, and start sending a huge volume of emails out in one go.
But, that’s not going to get you results. Here are some cold email tips and best practices we’d recommend you follow:
Verify your emails before sending to reduce your bounce rate
Use a cold email domain that’s separate from your main company inbox (QuickMail supports this)
Spend time personalizing every email you send with a custom opening line to boost reply rates
Integrate social proof into your email templates to increase trust
Use an email warm up tool like the MailFlow to ensure your emails land in the primary inbox
Use cold outreach software that lets you bring your team without adding extortionate fees
Following these best practices means no matter what cold email outreach software you’re using, you’ll see great results.
8. Writing Cold Email Templates in Your Email Software
Once you’ve chosen your cold email outreach software, it’s time to write your email templates. This isn’t easy.
Here are some of our guides to writing cold email templates to help you get started:
When writing your templates, remember to never follow an exact template
Getting Started with a Cold Email Tool
Most of the cold email marketing software on this list, including our own, QuickMail have a free trial. You’ll be able to test them out and see what you like about them.
For example, one email outreach tool will suit your workflow better than others, or one will have a more responsive support team than others.
If you’re ready to start sending cold emails that get replies, you can get set up with your free trial of QuickMail here.
Simply connect it with your email account, upload your list of prospects, and start having more conversations with qualified prospects.
