7 Best Lemlist Alternatives for Lead Gen Agencies

Lemlist claims to be “the only cold outreach tool that helps you reach inboxes and get replies”.

Which just isn’t true. Plenty of other platforms do exactly that. And some do it a whole lot better than Lemlist — especially for agency users.

With that in mind, we rounded up the six best Lemlist alternatives for lead gen agencies, factoring in:

• Key features

• Agency pricing

• Common challenges

Let’s get into it…

QuickMail: The #1 Lemlist Alternative

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

Lemlist vs QuickMail: At-a-Glance Comparison Table

* Charges-per-seat apply

✝ Free AutoWarmer with MailFlow included with all QuickMail plans

^ Free email warmup through Lemwarm Essential with all Lemlist plans

What Makes QuickMail the Best Lemlist Alternative?

Here are the top three reasons why you should choose QuickMail over Lemlist:

Client Organization

With Lemlist

When you’re running lead gen campaigns for multiple clients, you need your outreach platform to keep everything neatly organized.

Unfortunately, Lemlist falls well short here.

Everything is bundled into a single, big account, making it frustratingly difficult to switch from one client to the next. To make matters worse, Lemlist gets super laggy as you start to scale.

With QuickMail

Things are far easier with QuickMail.

Our agency dashboard gives you a top-level performance overview across all your clients, so you can instantly see what’s working (and which clients need a little extra TLC).

Simply click through to manage individual campaigns and access more detailed reports.

Deliverability Solutions

With Lemlist

Email deliverability is the foundation of an effective lead gen strategy. Because the more often you hit the main inbox, the more replies you’ll generate

So it’s worth noting that we’ve seen a few complaints about Lemwarm, the platform’s built-in email warmup tool:

Also, Lemlist’s Starter plan doesn’t even include Lemwarm — so you’ll have to upgrade to $69+ per user per month just to access this vital deliverability feature.

Plus emails sent through Lemlist contain a bunch of messy html, which can catch the attention of spam filters.

With QuickMail

QuickMail is built with deliverability in mind.

That’s why we give all users free access to MailFlow, one of the top email warmup tools on the market.

Plus we offer a bunch of other deliverability-enhancing features, including Deliverability AI, our proprietary tool that takes inbox rotation to the next level. QuickMail monitors the daily performance of each email account at a granular level. If the deliverability drops, it can be automatically replaced in the campaign with a healthier sender. This helps you avoid the spam folder by automatically prioritizing sending emails from your top-performing inboxes.

Learn more: 10 Best Email Deliverability Tools 

Advanced Analytics

With Lemlist

When it comes to reporting and analytics, Lemlist does (some of) the basics — and no more.

Sure, you can see all the obvious email metrics, but you can’t break them down by email provider. Plus there are no agency-level analytics, no client dashboards, and no time-based stats.

With QuickMail

QuickMail offers a comprehensive package of advanced analytics incorporating all the essential lead gen metrics, like:

• Opens

• Clicks

• Replies

• Bookings

• Bounces

Segment any report by your email service provider or your lead’s email provider to get the most accurate picture of campaign performance.

Our time-based stats track all activity back to the day when an email was sent, helping you immediately identify deliverability issues.

Instantly find the numbers you need through our intuitive client portals, or get a top-level view across each client with our dedicated agency dashboard.

You can even create custom dashboards for each client to take tedious reporting tasks off your team’s plate.

Reply Handling

With Lemlist

When you get a reply, you want to react fast. But Lemlist makes this irritatingly awkward.

Replies aren’t categorized by campaign or client, so it’s all too easy to miss opportunities when they come your way.

With QuickMail

Reply handling is a cinch in QuickMail.

You can view the entire conversation across all outreach channels in a single place, giving you full context into what happened earlier in the sequence.

Plus you can assign replies to individual team members and leave notes. That way, you can be sure that opportunities are handled by the right people — and that they have all the information they need to close the deal.

Agency-Friendly Pricing

With Lemlist

With a generous free-for-life plan and paid options starting at $32 per month, Lemlist initially looks like an affordable option.

But its per-user pricing model makes it super expensive for lead gen agencies.

If you’ve got five reps on your team, the entry-level paid plan will set you back $320 per month. Despite the high cost, each rep only gets a single sending email address. And you’ll have to upgrade to an even more expensive plan to access basic features like A/B testing and inbox rotation.

No wonder many users aren’t too happy with Lemlist’s value for money:

With QuickMail

Unlike Lemlist, QuickMail offers dedicated agency plans with transparent, flat per-client fees that scale as your agency grows.

Whichever package you choose, you’ll get all the agency features you need to smash your KPIs — including unlimited seats and inboxes.

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

6 Other Top Lemlist Alternatives

Instantly

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Ensure your domains are set up correctly and clean your prospect lists with one-click bulk domain testing and built-in email validation.

• Scale campaigns without sacrificing deliverability by adding unlimited email accounts on every plan.

• Get support and optimization tips from a dedicated account manager (only on the Enterprise-level Custom plan).

Agency Pricing

Instantly forces agency users to choose from four standard non-agency plans. Each is either too restrictive or too expensive to make Instantly a viable Lemlist alternative for lead gen agencies.

For example, the mid-tier Hypergrowth plan ($97 per month) only includes up to 25,000 uploaded contacts and 100,000 monthly emails — nowhere near enough for most agency users.

If you upgrade to the top-tier Light Speed plan for $358 per month, you still only get 100,000 contacts and 500,000 emails. If you need more, you’ll have to request a custom quote and commit to an annual contract.

Common Challenges

• Instantly offers no deliverability monitoring or deliverability rate data.

• Unified inbox only available at Hypergrowth level and above.

• With each client requiring their own workspace, there’s no way to monitor performance across multiple accounts simultaneously.

• Instantly’s warmup pool mostly uses custom SMTP inboxes rather than Gmail or Outlook accounts. Some users aren’t happy with the results:

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

Woodpecker

Key Benefits for Agencies

• React quickly to any downturns in email deliverability with always-on monitoring. You can even share the results with clients by downloading to pdf.

• The agency dashboard gives you a single convenient space for accessing reports and managing client accounts.

• Allow clients to access dedicated reports via a white-labeled client portal featuring your own branding and domain name.

Agency Pricing

You won’t find any dedicated agency plans from Woodpecker, but its prices start at $49 per month, plus $27 per additional client per month.

For that price, you get 1,000 contacted prospects, 4,000 stored prospects, and 16,000 monthly emails — not enough for any agency we’ve ever seen.

Even the top-tier plan only includes 25,000 contacted prospects, 100,000 stored prospects, and 400,000 monthly emails for $395 per month (plus $27 per client).

Common Challenges

• Email warmup doesn’t work for Gmail accounts.

• Replies can’t be triaged or assigned to individual team members.

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

• Woodpecker’s analytics tool lacks key features like positive reply rate reports, unsubscribe rates, and send-day attribution.

Smartlead

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Drive efficiencies with automated lead uploading, meeting bookings, and more.

• Invite all your reps to Smartlead and track their performance through the agency dashboard.

• Build automated follow-up sequences and set follow-up reminders.

Agency Pricing

Smartlead doesn’t do agency-specific pricing.

As such, most agencies will have to choose the top-tier Custom Plan, which costs $174+ per month, plus a further $29 per month for each additional client.

Common Challenges

• Smartlead is a relatively young platform, and it’s still ironing out a few creases:

*Quote from unaffiliated agency owner, March 2024

• With zero native integrations, you’ll have to connect your other tools through Zapier, which is expensive and error-prone at scale.

• The auto-warmer uses mostly custom SMTP inboxes, rather than Gmail or Outlook.

• To access performance data, you have to filter by account — rather than using a single view detailing all your accounts.

• Prospects can’t be created manually, added to campaigns in bulk, or verified in Smartlead.

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

Reply.io

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Reply.io’s agency plans offer unlimited mailboxes, clients, users, contacts, and email warmup (although the pricing isn’t transparent).

• Reports can be segmented by client or team member, giving you a clearer view of performance.

• Use roles and permissions to control who can view/edit specific reports and campaigns.

Agency Pricing

Reply.io is one of the few Lemlist alternatives that does offer agency pricing.

Agency plans start at $210 per month, including unlimited sequences, inboxes, and email warmup. However, the price increases (fast) when you add more prospects.

There’s also an additional fee for useful features like cold calling, SMS messaging, and LinkedIn automation — even if you’re already paying for the top-tier package.

Common Challenges

• The lack of a centralized client dashboard makes it hard to monitor performance across accounts.

• Reply.io doesn’t offer much scope for customizing reports, which is tough if your clients need something other than the built-in reporting options.

• The UI can be tough to master, making it too easy to accidentally send emails from the wrong inbox (and other basic mistakes).

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

Saleshandy

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Manage all your clients accounts through the dedicated agency portal, featuring your own logo and brand assets.

• Add unlimited team members and clients to your agency portal, and control who can edit what with view-only reports.

• Leverage advanced deliverability features like sender rotation, ramp-up, and sending intervals to hit more main inboxes.

Agency Pricing

You won’t be shocked to learn that Saleshandy doesn’t do agency pricing.

Instead, you’ll have to choose from one of four email outreach plans. Most agencies will need at least the Outreach Scale plan, which costs $199 per month and includes up to 60,000 total prospects, 200,000 monthly emails, and 12,000 verification credits.

Alternatively, the top-tier Outreach Scale Plus plan offers up to 500,000 prospects, 1.5 million emails, and 55,000 verification credits for $1,499 per month.

If you still need more, you’ll have to contact Saleshandy for a custom quote.

Common Challenges

• Some users have complained about damage to their domain reputation after switching to Saleshandy.

• Unified inbox lacks basic functionality, like the ability to assign replies to individual team members or respond from a different inbox.

• Saleshandy lacks some key integrations. For instance, you can’t import prospects from Google Drive.

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

Mailshake

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Automate LinkedIn messages, profile views, and connection requests using Mailshake’s Chrome extension (only available on the top-tier Sales Engagement plan, priced at $99 per user per month).

• Use inclusive email validation credits to remove bad email addresses from your list based on bounce risk.

• Send trigger-based follow-up emails to make your campaigns feel more personal.

Agency Pricing

Guess what? Mailshake doesn’t do agency pricing.

All Mailshake plans are priced per user. So an agency with 10 reps will pay $290 per month for Mailshake’s Starter plan — and they’d only get one email address and 1,500 monthly email sends each.

Not great, huh?

Common Challenges

• Mailshake’s per-user pricing makes it an expensive choice for growing agencies.

• Starter plan is extremely limited, including a single email address and 1,500 monthly email sends.

• Key features like unified inbox and LinkedIn automation are only available on the most expensive plan.

Switch To the Best Lemlist Alternative Today

Most outreach platforms just aren’t designed for lead gen agencies.

They’re either cripplingly expensive for large teams, impose restrictive activity limits, or lack essential agency features like a unified inbox, agency dashboards, and client portals.

QuickMail is the obvious exception.

We let you add unlimited team members on every plan. Our per-client pricing model scales naturally as your agency grows. And our suite of deliverability tools helps you hit more main inboxes and generate more replies.

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