7 Best Reply.io Alternatives for Lead Gen Agencies

Reply.io is an AI-powered sales outreach and cold email platform trusted by 3,000+ businesses, including Adobe, Gorgias, and Strava.

But one thing missing from its list of big-name clients is any lead generation agencies.

There’s a reason for that: Reply.io just isn’t built with agencies in mind, so it lacks some essential functionality you need to deliver results at scale.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of Reply.io alternatives for lead gen agencies. To save you time, we’ve rounded up the best of the best and compared their:

• Key features

• Agency pricing

• Common challenges

Let’s get into it…

QuickMail: The #1 Reply.io Alternative

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

Reply.io vs QuickMail: At-a-Glance Comparison Table

* Free AutoWarmer with MailFlow included with all QuickMail plans

✝ Free email warmup through MailToaster not included in Reply.io’s Starter plan

What Makes QuickMail the Best Reply.io Alternative?

Deliverability Solutions

With Reply.io

For a well-known and (mostly) well-regarded outreach platform, we’ve seen a surprising number of complaints about email deliverability through Reply.io.

Here’s an example — and it’s far from isolated:

This should be a major red flag for any lead gen agency planning to use Reply.io for cold outreach, because every email that lands in the spam folder is a wasted opportunity.

In the long run, you’ll end up doing more work just to deliver the same results you’d see through a platform with better deliverability (like QuickMail).

With QuickMail

We take deliverability extremely seriously at QuickMail. In fact, we’re kinda obsessed.

That’s why all QuickMail plans include the essential tools you need to maximize email deliverability rates — such as free access to MailFlow for email warmup.

Not only that, but we built our own proprietary inbox rotation tool, Deliverability AI. It works by monitoring deliverability data across every email account you use. If deliverability rates drop on one inbox, we can automatically swap it for a different, higher-performing one.

That way, you enjoy the benefits of high deliverability, without spending a ton of time manually switching out old, non-performant cold email inboxes.

Which gives you more bandwidth to focus on higher-value actions.

Learn more: 10 Best Email Deliverability Tools

Advanced Analytics and Client Reporting Dashboards

With Reply.io

Reply.io offers solid reporting and analytics capabilities — but they could be better.

For starters, reports offer limited customization. That’s fine if you can cope with the default reports, but if you need something more tailored to your needs (or those of your clients), it can be a little restrictive.

The platform also lacks a centralized client dashboard, which is a real headache for agencies, making it impossible to get a quick view of performance across multiple client accounts.

With QuickMail

QuickMail’s reporting and analytics features are truly agency-grade.

We track all the crucial lead gen metrics (think opens, clicks, replies, bookings, bounces, and more).

Not only that, but our reports can be segmented by email service provider — either yours or the lead’s.

Plus QuickMail is the only cold outreach solution to provide time-based data. This key feature tracks results back to the day an email was sent, which makes it quick and easy to identify drop-offs in deliverability.

And we also offer customizable agency dashboards that give you an instant snapshot of performance.

It’s all designed to get you the data you need as efficiently as possible.

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

Client Outreach Organization and Workflows

With Reply.io

Reply.io isn’t the most user-friendly outreach solution.

In fact, we’ve seen a ton of complaints from Reply.io customers who say the UI is a real headache — even once you’ve gone through the (lengthy) onboarding process.

Which makes it all too easy to make basic mistakes like sending emails from the wrong account.

That’s the last thing you want when you’re managing campaigns across dozens of clients.

With QuickMail

Despite offering a ton of advanced features, QuickMail makes it easy to manage client campaigns and keep on top of agency workflows.

For example, our unified inbox lets you read, label, and triage replies without marking them as “read”. You can see how long each response has been waiting for a follow-up — and even assign follow-ups to the best team member. Plus your reps can respond from any inbox.

Easy, huh?

Then there’s our changelog, which keeps track of who’s edited what (and when): 

It’s perfect for agency leaders managing large teams.

Agency-Friendly Pricing

With Reply.io

Unlike a lot of cold outreach tools, Reply.io offers a dedicated agency plan. Prices start at $210 per month and include unlimited:

• Email sequences

• Inboxes

• Email warmup

Which sounds good in theory. But in practice, Reply.io charges you for adding new leads. Prices rise quickly, so there’s always the risk you’ll end up with an unexpectedly large invoice at the end of the month.

Plus, even if you choose the agency plan, Reply.io hides some important features behind additional paywalls. For example, you have to pay more to unlock cold calling, SMS messaging, and LinkedIn automation — all of which are important tools for lead gen agencies.

With QuickMail

At QuickMail, we don’t paywall — all our performance features are available on any agency plan.

Plus all agency users can add unlimited inboxes and seats at no extra cost.

Rather than charging you more when you need to unlock key functionality or hit some arbitrary lead threshold, we have a transparent per-client fee. Which means your price only goes up when you add new clients.

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

6 Other Top Reply.io Alternatives

Instantly

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Add unlimited email accounts on all Instantly plans.

• Build multichannel campaigns incorporating email, cold calling, SMS, and LinkedIn steps.

• Upgrade to an Enterprise plan to get support from a dedicated account manager.

• Validate prospect email addresses within the platform.

Agency Pricing

Instantly offers a choice of three price plans — none of which are designed for agencies.

Prices range from $37 per month for 1,000 uploaded contacts and 5,000 monthly emails, to $358 per month for 100,000 uploaded contacts and 500,000 emails a month.

Need more emails or contacts? You’ll have to reach out for a custom quote (and sign a 12-month contract).

Common Challenges

• Instantly doesn’t offer deliverability monitoring or deliverability data.

• Lack of an agency dashboard makes it hard to get a quick snapshot of performance across multiple accounts.

• The unified inbox is only available on the mid-tier Hypergrowth plan ($97 per month) and above.

• The warmup email pool is mostly custom SMTP inboxes (rather than Gmail or Outlook accounts), and we’ve seen some complaints about its effectiveness:

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

Woodpecker

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Access 24/7 email deliverability reports and share the results with clients via pdf.

• Manage all client accounts via a single dashboard

• Build a white-labeled reporting application, complete with your own domain and branding.

Agency Pricing

Woodpecker does offer a specific agency price plan, cleverly titled “Agency”.

Prices start at just $29 per month — but that only buys you 8,000 monthly emails, 500 contacted prospects, and 2,000 stored prospects.

The highest-tier agency plan includes 400,000 monthly emails, 100,000 stored prospects, and 25,000 contacted prospects for $395 per month.

Oh, and you also have to pay a flat fee of $27 per month for each active client you manage.

Common Challenges

• No way to triage replies or assign them to specific team members.

• Sentiment analysis is too basic, only marking replies as “positive”, “negative”, or “neutral”.

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

• Email warmup doesn’t work on Gmail accounts.

Smartlead

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Use the Smartlead API to manage leads, automations, and meeting bookings.

• Categorize leads automatically based on contextual reply sentiment.

• Build a white-labeled email platform where clients can view reports, access campaigns, and reply from the unified inbox.

Agency Pricing

While Smartlead doesn’t have a specific agency price plan, it says its Custom plan is “perfect” for lead gen agencies.

Prices for the Custom plan start at $174 per month for “up to” 12 million active lead credits and 60 million monthly email credits. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell how high those prices ramp up for larger volumes of emails or leads.

Smartlead also charges a flat $29 per month for each additional client you manage through the platform.

Common Challenges

• Smartlead has precisely zero native integrations, so you’ll have to lean heavily on Zapier — which is glitchy and expensive at scale.

• You have to filter by account to access performance data, rather than seeing a single view across all your accounts.

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

• We’ve seen reports that Smartlead is pretty glitchy:

*Quote from unaffiliated agency owner, March 2024

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

Saleshandy

Key Benefits for Agencies

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

• Create a white-labeled solution featuring your logo, domain, and other brand assets.

• Boost email deliverability with features like sender rotation, ramp-up, and sending intervals.

Agency Pricing

Saleshandy has four different price plans, ranging from $36 – $299+ per month, all including unlimited clients and email accounts.

The entry-level plan offers 6,000 monthly emails, 2,000 total prospects, and 1,100 email verification credits. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, you can get up to 500,000 prospects, 1.5 million emails, and 55,000 verification credits for $1,499 per month.

If that’s not enough, you’ll have to reach out for a custom quote.

Common Challenges

• The unified inbox doesn’t let you assign replies to team members or respond from different inboxes.

• Limited integrations (including no Google Drive integration).

• Some users say Saleshandy has damaged their domain reputation:

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

Lemlist

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Reach out to prospects via email, LinkedIn, or cold calling.

• Personalize campaigns with text variables and dynamic landing pages.

• Use smart logic to create outreach sequences that adapt to the prospect’s previous actions, such as email opens and link clicks.

Agency Pricing

Lemlist is one of the most expensive Reply.io alternatives because it charges per user. 

For example, the entry-level Email Starter plan costs $39 per user per month for unlimited campaigns and just one sending email per user. That’s $390 a month for a 10-person team.

If you need more than 10 seats, you’ll have to get in touch with Lemlist for a custom quote.

Common Challenges

• Per-user pricing is prohibitively expensive for most agencies.

• Lemlist adds messy html to emails sent through the platform, which can harm deliverability.

• Responses from prospects aren’t categorized by campaign or client.

• Some Lemlist users report frequent bugs:

Mailshake

Key Benefits for Agencies

• Remove bad email addresses from your list using inclusive email validation credits.

• Upgrade to the top-tier plan to access the Mailshake Chrome extension, which can automate  LinkedIn messages, profile views, and connection requests.

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

Agency Pricing

Like Lemlist, Mailshake charges per user, so it’s not the cheapest option for agencies (to say the least).

For example, the top-tier Sales Engagement plan costs almost $1,000 per month for a 10-person team.

We were surprised to see that Mailshake actually recommends asking your clients to pay for their own Mailshake accounts so they can add you as a user:

Not only will this be a big turn-off for many clients, but it’s also impossible to manage at scale.

Common Challenges

• Expensive per-user pricing model.

• Mailshake paywalls key features like LinkedIn automation and the unified inbox.

• You can only add up to five email addresses per seat.

Switch To the Best Reply.io Alternative Today

Plenty of cold outreach platforms claim to be a good fit for lead gen agencies. But, as you can see, most miss the mark.

Some lack essential agency features like unified inboxes, agency dashboards, and advanced analytics. Others have expensive, unscalable pricing.

That’s why more and more agencies are switching to QuickMail.

Agencies like LinkedHacker, which used QuickMail to scale to 200+ cold outreach clients across 60 industries.

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