6 Best Instantly Alternatives for Lead Gen Agencies

Instantly is one of the most popular prospecting and outreach platforms, with a user base of 20,000+ customers.

But while it’s a good fit for many businesses running their own cold outreach campaigns, Instantly falls short on several of the core features lead generation agencies require to deliver results at scale for their clients.

If you’re shopping around for Instantly alternatives for lead gen agencies, you’re in the right place, because we’ve rounded up all the best options.

Let’s get into it…

QuickMail: The #1 Instantly Alternative

We believe QuickMail is the best Instantly alternative for lead gen agencies.

You expected us to say that, right?

But we’ve got the evidence to back it up: 

Instantly vs QuickMail: At-a-Glance Comparison Table

* Since the warmup pool is almost entirely custom SMTP inboxes, you're not actually warming with Google or Outlook

✝ Free AutoWarmer with MailFlow included with all QuickMail plans

What Makes QuickMail the Best Instantly Alternative?

Here are all the reasons you should consider choosing QuickMail over Instantly:

Client Management

With Instantly

Managing multiple clients through Instantly is a mess. 

With each client account requiring a separate workspace, it’s impossible to get a quick performance snapshot, forcing you to dive into each individual account to see what’s working (and what isn’t).

That’s fine if you’re only managing a handful of clients. But large and/or growing agencies will get sick of it real fast.

With QuickMail

QuickMail offers a free agency dashboard with all agency plans, so it’s easy to identify when a client needs some extra TLC or a campaign requires more prospects.

Not only that, but every QuickMail account includes unlimited seats — which means no more sharing login details across your team.

Plus we give you a searchable audit log so you can track all actions taken across every account.

Agency-Grade Reporting

With Instantly

Instantly doesn’t offer agency-level reporting or analytics.

Instead, you’re limited to basic account/campaign-level metrics on:

• Emails sent

• Opens

• Replies

• Opportunities

There are some other jarring exclusions, too. There’s no click-tracking, and while Instantly reports on bounced emails and unsubscribes, it only displays them by number (not as a percentage of emails sent).

With QuickMail

QuickMail’s reporting provides all the data lead gen agencies need to smash their clients’ targets.

In our agency dashboard, you can view key metrics like opens, clicks, replies, bookings, and bounces.

Because we provide send-day attribution, you can immediately identify any drops in deliverability and take corrective action. BAnd, by tracking deals won/lost by campaign, we help you optimize for impact — not meaningless vanity metrics. 

And we’ve even added the ability to automatically disable open tracking by email service provider after Gmail started flagging emails with images (including the tiny pixels used for open tracking in cold outreach).

Learn more: Confirmed - Gmail Update Impacts Open Tracking For Cold Email

Effective Email Warmup

With Instantly

Sure, Instantly technically offers email warmup.

But there’s a problem: its warmup pool is mostly made up of custom SMTP inboxes, so you're not actually warming with Google or Outlook.

This affects the results you can achieve. Unsurprisingly, plenty of Instantly customers are unhappy about this:

With QuickMail

At QuickMail, we leave email warmup to MailFlow, one of the top auto-warmers on the market.

We include free MailFlow access as standard in all our plans, helping you strengthen your sender reputation when adding new inboxes.

Learn more: How To Warm Up Your Cold Email Inbox

Deliverability Monitoring

With Instantly

Email deliverability (and the ability to keep on top of it) is arguably the single most important factor in choosing an agency-grade outreach solution.

Because the more times you hit the main inbox, the more leads you’ll generate.

Instantly falls well short here, offering no visibility into your deliverability rate and no monitoring.

With QuickMail

QuickMail, on the other hand, is built with deliverability in mind.

Right out of the box, you get access to a bunch of deliverability features. Like Deliverability AI, our proprietary tool that automatically sends emails from your top-performing accounts.

And then there’s inbox rotation, blacklist monitoring, MX bounce protection, the ability to set variable time delays between emails or limit the maximum number of emails sent per day… the list goes on.

Agency-Friendly Pricing

With Instantly

Instantly gets super expensive as you add more leads. Not great for growing agencies.

Frustratingly, it also hides some basic features — like the unified inbox — behind paywalls. These are things that agencies can’t live without, so you shouldn’t have to pay more for them.

Even agencies that broadly like Instantly say pricing is one of its biggest drawbacks:

With QuickMail

Our standard price plans are built for organizations doing their own outreach. That’s why we created dedicated agency plans with transparent, flat per-client fees.

Because we believe scaling your outreach to hit your client KPIs should always be affordable.

All of our agency plans include unlimited inboxes, unlimited seats, and all the agency features you need to generate more replies and leads.

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

5 Other Top Instantly Alternatives

Smartlead

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Use the API to build and run fully automated cold email campaigns, from drip-feeding leads to managing meeting bookings.

• Never miss an opportunity with follow-up reminders, and create automated sequences based on how a prospect interacts with previous emails.

• Add all your reps to Smartlead and track individual performance via the dashboard.

Agency Pricing

While Smartlead doesn’t have dedicated agency price plans, it describes the top-tier Custom Plan as “perfect for lead gen agencies”.

Pricing starts at $174 per month. But there are some further add-ons:

• Each client costs an extra $29 per month

• You start with 30,000 leads and have to pay extra per additional 30,000 leads added

So while Smartlead seems affordable at first, the costs ramp up fast as you add clients and/or lists.

Common Challenges

• As a comparatively “young” platform, Smartlead can be a little buggy.

*Quote from unaffiliated agency owner, March 2024

• Like Instantly, we’ve heard the built-in auto-warmer largely uses custom SMTP inboxes, rather than sending via Gmail or Outlook. So it’s less effective at increasing deliverability to Gmail and Outlook users.

• Smartlead isn’t Google-accredited, which is a major deliverability red flag.

• Reporting is frustrating for agencies, forcing users to filter by client when you want to narrow your view.

• Prospects can’t be created manually — only uploaded via CSV. And they can’t be bulk-added to new campaigns or verified within Smartlead.

• The platform doesn’t have any native integrations, forcing you to rely on Zapier (which can be expensive and glitchy).

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

Lemlist

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Use text variables, images, and dynamic landing pages to build personalized user journeys at scale.

• Create automated sequences that use smart logic to guide prospects based on how they react to previous sequence steps.

• Reach prospects beyond the inbox by adding LinkedIn and cold calling steps to outreach sequences.

Agency Pricing

Lemlist doesn’t share pricing information for businesses with 10+ users, which rules out most lead gen agencies.

However, as a reference, its top-tier non-agency plan starts at $159 per user per month.

Common Challenges

• By charging per seat, Lemlist quickly becomes super-expensive for growing agencies.

• We’ve seen reports of regular bugs and glitches from some Lemlist users:

• Lemlist doesn’t categorize email replies by campaign or client, making it hard for agency users to follow up on opportunities.

• Emails sent via Lemlist contain lots of messy html, which can affect deliverability.

Woodpecker

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Manage all client accounts and access reports and views in a single click through the agency dashboard.

• Build a white-labeled client portal featuring your domain and branding so clients can access reports.

• Keep on top of email deliverability with 24/7 monitoring and download the results as a pdf to share with clients.

Agency Pricing

Woodpecker’s agency plans start at $29 per month, plus a flat per-client fee of $27 per month.

Pretty cheap, huh?

But the costs add up fast. As standard, you only get: 

• 500 contacted prospects

• 2,000 stored prospects

• 8,000 monthly emails

For a more agency-worthy allowance (say, 25,000 contacted prospects and up to 400,000 emails), you’ll pay $395 per month — plus $27 per month for each client.

Common Challenges

• Woodpecker doesn’t let you triage replies or assign them to a team member, so opportunities can easily slip through the net.

• Email warmup doesn’t work for Gmail accounts.

• Lacks key reporting features like send-day attribution, positive reply rate reports, or unsubscribe insights.

• Limited sentiment analysis, with replies only marked as “positive”, “neutral”, or “negative”.

Reply.io

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Reply.io’s agency plan includes unlimited mailboxes, clients, users, contact storage, and email warmup (although its pricing isn’t exactly transparent, as we explain in the next section).

• Control access for clients and team members by setting roles and permissions.

• Segment data in reports by client or team member.

Agency Pricing

The platform’s agency plan starts from $166 per month (billed annually). 

However, Reply.io says the number of active contacts is “adjustable”, so in reality we’d expect all but the smallest agencies to be paying way more.

Common Challenges

• With no centralized client dashboard, it’s hard to check performance across multiple accounts.

• Reports offer limited customization, meaning clients may struggle to access key data.

• Lots of users complain about the complex interface — even those who’ve completed the lengthy onboarding process. This causes common issues like accidentally sending from the wrong inbox.

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

Saleshandy

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Manage multiple client accounts through the dedicated agency portal (and add your own logo and brand assets for an unspecified extra cost).

• Add unlimited team members and clients to your agency portal.

• Give clients view-only access to reports.

Agency Pricing

You won’t find any agency-specific plans at Saleshandy.

The closest thing we could find to a starter plan for agencies is Outreach Scale Plus ($299+ per month), which includes 100,000 total prospects and 300,000 monthly emails.

Still, 100,000 prospects isn’t enough for a lot of agencies. And costs add up fast — fancy paying $1,499 per month for 500,000 prospects?

If you need more than that, you’ll have to reach out for a custom quote. Just don’t expect it to be cheap.

Common Challenges

• We’ve seen reports from Saleshandy users about deliverability issues and reputation damage

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

Switch To the Best Instantly Alternative Today

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

• Real-time insights on email deliverability

• Smart automations that allow reps to focus on high-value tasks

• Simple, affordable pricing that scales with your agency

Which, as far as we’re concerned, is all lead gen agencies.

But don’t take our word for it. See what agency founder Will Wang said about QuickMail:

“I've tested out every single email outreach platform...I've never found anything that replicates the results we get from QuickMail."

Best of all, if you’re stuck in a contract with Instantly, we can provide assistance for your QuickMail migration.

To find out more about how QuickMail can help your agency, speak with us.