10 Woodpecker Alternatives That Are Useful (And Bring Real Results)

Looking for better alternatives to Woodpecker?

WWhile Woodpecker is a good tool for running basic cold outreach campaigns, it has known limitations, such as being overly expensive for what it offers or having insufficient analytics.

In this article, we'll briefly expand upon those limitations and then suggest 6 alternatives that might be a better fit for your use case (and budget).

1. Top 3 Woodpecker Alternative Tools

2. What Does Woodpecker Do?

3. The Best Woodpecker Alternative for Getting Results

4. 9 Other Woodpecker Alternatives

Let's dive in.

Top 3 Woodpecker Alternative Tools — Comparison

The top three Woodpecker alternatives are QuickMail, Mailmeteor, and Outreach. You can learn more about each of these great alternative tools in detail below.

What Does Woodpecker Do?

Woodpecker is a cold email outreach solution designed for sales teams, reps, and agencies. It allows you to send and personalize cold emails, follow up automatically, and track clicks and opens in a report. As any decent tool these days does, Woodpecker can integrate into your workflow through Zapier.

Woodpecker’s Limitations

Woodpecker is a cold email outreach solution designed for sales teams, reps, and agencies. With it, you can send and personalize cold emails, follow-up automatically, and track clicks and opens in a report. And, as any decent tool these days does, Woodpecker can integrate into your workflow through Zapier.

However, there are a few reasons why it may not be the right choice for you.

1. Expensive to start: Woodpecker has a steep pricing curve, which means even if you’re brand new to cold email or running small campaigns, you’ll have to start on the $49 per month per inbox plan. On the other hand, QuickMail's Basic plan allows for sending from up to 5 inboxes.

• "The cost wasn't as good as the other alternatives I found."

• "There are other platforms that do the same thing for a lower price."

2. Prohibitive pricing: You need to pay $49 for each inbox you use in the account. Because you need at least 5 (rotating) inboxes to keep deliverability high, Woodpecker's pricing ($245/month for 5 inboxes) goes directly against your cold email success. Other tools have recognized this and are offering more user-friendly pricing. With QuickMail, for example, you can add 5 inboxes per account and send a generous 30,000 emails monthly for just $49/mo.

• "For a growing start-up like us, it turns out to be a little too expensive. We have about 20 users now, and the cost per user, per month, becomes very heavy on a company like us."

• "The pricing was quite steep if you are a small company - with not that big of an e-mail subscriber list."

3. Email sending limits: Woodpecker's cold email plans have low sending limits. The base plan allows you to send emails to 1,500 new people per month. Compare this to QuickMail, which allows you to send 30,000 emails per month, and you can see why it's limiting.

• "It would be great to have the ability to send to 200+ prospects in a given day without the concern of being labeled as spam, ensuring we could continue to have strong open rates of 35% or higher."

4. UI can be tricky to use: Woodpecker users on Capterra like Woodpecker's product but point out that it can be difficult to set up an account, and the product isn't perfect if you want to build out multi-step email campaigns quickly.

• "The interface at first can be confusing as there is a lot going on."

• "To change the order of a sequence, I have to copy/paste the email between fields. Why can't I just drag and drop - or anything other than copy/paste."

If you’ve experienced these issues and are looking for an alternative to Woodpecker for cold emailing, we’ve got you covered. 

In the next section, we’ll show you some of the best tools on the market with competing features that might be a better option than Woodpecker for your cold outreach needs.

The Best Woodpecker Alternative for Getting Results

1. QuickMail: No. 1 Alternative for Personalized Cold Email Outreach

Send personalized cold emails and multi-channel outreach campaigns that let you start conversations with qualified prospects, with features to help agencies and teams scale their campaigns.

Set Up Your Inbox in Minutes and Send Personalized Outreach Campaigns That Get Replies

QuickMail is designed to help you send outreach campaigns easily. You shouldn't need to spend hours setting up your account or figuring out complex UIs to build an email outreach or LinkedIn campaign.

Once you've added your email inbox to QuickMail, you can start building your cold email outreach campaigns immediately in the easy-to-use campaign editor.

After writing out your first cold email template, you can add another step and have your follow-up emails sent automatically after a number of days if your prospect doesn't reply.

Setup and Create LinkedIn Outreach Flows

LinkedIn can be an excellent platform for networking and reaching out to prospects to generate new sales leads. However, it can be difficult to remember to send follow-up emails when you have so many prospects you are contacting.

With our strong outreach channels, QuickMail can help you simplify your workflow from start to finish. Our users can seamlessly send LinkedIn connection requests and messages to prospects you’ve connected with.

The QuickMail platform can help you introduce specific campaign steps that can be automated along with email, call, and SMS steps. You can:

• Stay within LinkedIn’s limits

• Increase you connections

• Avoid slow and manual outreach

• Connect with prospects in multiple channels

Complete Support for Teams and Agencies

QuickMail has everything you need to run campaigns for an agency client base or a growing company with different departments.

You can add as many inboxes or LinkedIn accounts as you need to your QuickMail account at no extra cost. You're only charged for the inboxes you use for sending, so it means you can have extra people managing campaigns without being charged extra. If you want to add new inboxes, you only need to add a new seat.

You can segment your campaigns by client, thanks to our features for agencies. It’s the best way to stay organized and always know what’s happening in each client account.

All of your metrics are displayed in your client dashboard, making it easy to track performance and report back to clients or other team members.

If you need to run cold email campaigns for multiple clients or bring additional team members into the account without paying for every user, then QuickMail is the right option for you.

Native Integration With Deliverability Tools to Always Land in the Inbox

QuickMail has the best email deliverability tool set and integrations to ensure you always land in the primary inbox.

As you import prospects into QuickMail, you can automatically verify every email or LinkedIn message is accurate using NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, or other email validation tools that QuickMail integrates with. This ensures you always have an accurate prospect list and reduces the chance that emails will bounce.

In addition, QuickMail offers a native integration for its users with MailFlow's free email warmup tool, which anyone can use to warm up their email.

After connecting the inbox you want to warm up, MailFlow will start automatically sending emails to other accounts in the Auto Warmer network.  Over time, the engagement will show email service providers that you're a trustworthy sender who consistently gets opens and replies.

You can track your deliverability stats in the MailFlow Auto Warmer report. When they are mainly green, it's safe to start sending cold email campaigns from your account.

When you send a cold email campaign, you’ll be more likely to land in the primary inbox due to ESPs trusting your account.

More prospects will see your cold emails, and you'll boost your chances of getting a positive reply.

Pricing: QuickMail makes outreach affordable at every scale. Generous paid plans begin at 30,000 sends from just $49/mo.

Key features: 

• Send personalized email and multi-channel campaigns

• Made for teams and agencies who need multiple seats – only pay per sending inbox you use

• Use attributes to personalize every email or LinkedIn message you send and boost reply rates

• Integrations with CRMs and other sales tools to help improve your day-to-day outreach workflow

9 Other Woodpecker Alternatives

For those who want more Woodpecker alternatives other than QuickMail, we’ve done the research and compiled a list below.

1. Mailmeteor

Woodpecker alternative for Gmail that lets you send campaigns directly from your existing inbox.

Mailmeteor is a mail merge tool for Gmail. You install it as an extension, and it adds new features to your Gmail inbox that lets you build campaigns and send them automatically to prospects you’ve uploaded from a Google Sheet.

Since it's an extension, it has limited features and functionalities compared to standalone cold email tools like Woodpecker or QuickMail. Limitations can be technical, for example, only being able to use it with Gmail, or functional, such as being unable to manage campaigns as a team.

The app doesn’t access your email content, so you don’t need to worry about privacy – but make sure to read the terms and conditions before adding it to your inbox.

Overall, it's a good lightweight alternative to more advanced tools like Woodpecker or QuickMail.

Pricing: Send email sequences from $9.99 per user per month

Key features:

• Works on top of your existing Gmail inbox

• Import your prospects from a Google Sheet and use columns as merge tags

• Send email sequences with multiple follow-ups to engage contacts that don’t initially reply

2. Outreach

Sales execution platform for enterprise companies with sales teams needing tools for every stage of their sales pipeline.

Outreach is an all-in-one sales platform that includes cold email functionalities like Woodpecker and QuickMail.

It’s made for large sales teams, however, and comes with features (and a price point) that are better suited for the enterprise. These features include conversation intelligence, forecasting and sales analytics for revenue operations, and large-scale sales team organization features.

It seems difficult to maintain all these features, though, as users on Capterra report frequent technical outages.

If you're a large sales team in an enterprise company, Outreach is definitely worth a try as an all-in-one solution. But if you're looking for a stable tool to automate your outreach, you're better off with a tool like Woodpecker or QuickMail.

Pricing: Available upon request

Key features:

• Lets you send personalized and automated cold outreach

• Sales rep productivity analytics to spot opportunities for performance improvement

• A/B testing suggestions based on machine learning

3. Mailshake

Close competitor to Woodpecker with a similar set of features for cold emailing.

Mailshake and Woodpecker are similar platforms with similar price points. Mailshake’s campaign builder lets you send multi-step email campaigns with automatic follow-ups, A/B testing, and CRM integrations to keep track of your cold email activity.

Mailshake has tools to help you with deliverability, such as an email list cleaner to validate emails and reduce the number of bounces in your campaigns.

If you want to run multi-channel campaigns, you'll need to upgrade to Mailshake's sales engagement plan. The upgraded plan comes with a sales dialer with unlimited North American calls, which is helpful if you want to engage with prospects who aren't replying to your cold emails.

Woodpecker and Mailshake are close competitors, so if you're stuck between the two, you can try a free trial of each to find which one you prefer. Alternatively, you can useQuickMail, which offers all the same features and more. 

Pricing: Starts at $59 per month

Key features:

• AI-based email copywriter to speed up the outreach process

• Send follow-ups to prospects that don’t reply to your initial email

• Close competitor and alternative to Woodpecker, but slightly more expensive

4. Gmass

Extension for Gmail that can be used for cold sales outreach, similar to Woodpecker but more lightweight and doesn’t require switching to a new platform.

Gmass' extension is made for anyone who wants to scale up their email activities but doesn't want to migrate onto a new cold email platform like Woodpecker.

After installing the extension, you can start building email cadences directly from your inbox, including multiple steps and follow-ups sent to prospects who don't reply.

Because of the integration with Gmail, there are interesting features to build lists, such as the option to search your inbox for unopened emails containing certain keywords. You can then add all of those people to a new campaign and quickly send them a follow-up to get their attention.

Once you start receiving replies to your campaigns, Gmass will automatically categorize them in your inbox to help you stay organized.

Pricing: Starts from $25 per month

Key features:

• Send cold emails directly from Gmail rather than needing a standalone tool like Woodpecker

• Automatic reply categorization to keep your inbox organized

• Personalize emails with merge tags based on your contact’s personal details

5. Yesware

Sales engagement tool with a similar set of cold email features to Woodpecker but lives inside your Gmail or Outlook inbox.

Like Gmass, Yesware is a cold email tool that sits inside your Gmail or Outlook inbox. It offers powerful email tracking capabilities so you can track the performance of your day-to-day email activity. For example, if you send a sales proposal to a lead, it'll show you when they open it and how they engage with the email.

In addition, there are outreach features for Outlook and Gmail, such as the ability to schedule multi-step campaigns that other team members can collaborate on.

There's a Zoom integration that makes it easy to schedule meetings with interested sales prospects, and Yesware integrates with Salesforce.

The main downside to Yesware is the price. It's expensive if you want multiple team members to have access to the tool, as the billing is on a per-seat basis rather than a per-inbox basis, like QuickMail.

Pricing: $35 per seat per month for sending email campaigns 

Key features: 

• Works on both Outlook and Gmail

• Offers more direct Salesforce integration options than Woodpecker

• Create cold email campaigns with automatic follow-ups to keep prospects engaged

6. ReplyUp

Send email campaigns using Amazon SES with a high sending limit and good deliverability performance.

ReplyUp is an email-sending platform that runs on Amazon SES rather than relying on Gmail or Outlook email-sending servers.

There are pros and cons to this. For example, Amazon SES lets you send many more emails: up to 500,000 per day, and Woodpecker limits you to 2,000.

However, it's more technical than running a campaign on a dedicated cold email tool like Woodpecker, and you'll need to spend more time configuring it than if you sent emails directly from your own cold email domain. Amazon SES is typically used for e-commerce, which is why the sending limits are so high.

ReplyUp also includes automatic follow-ups based on conditions, like someone not following up, and has automatic list management to keep you organized.

Woodpecker or QuickMail are better options for most companies running cold outreach campaigns, but ReplyUp can help if you have a specific need to send high-volume campaigns.

Pricing: From $49 per month

Key features:

• High email sending limit as emails are sent via Amazon SES rather than Gmail or Outlook servers

• Emails can be personalized using attributes for improved personalization

• Automatic follow-ups based on conditional logic, such as someone not replying

7. Salesloft

Sales platform that’s best for large teams that want to send outreach and warm follow-ups to leads in your pipeline.

Salesloft is a tool for large sales teams. It includes features for outreach, follow-ups, and lead nurturing.

You can add multiple team members to your account, track every action that each sales rep takes, and monitor replies resulting from your outreach.

Whereas Woodpecker's data stops after someone replies to a cold email campaign, Salesloft gives you data on how engaged each prospect is in your sales pipeline until you've closed them as a client.

Users onCapterra say they run into integration issues, and the high cost is a downside to using Salesloft. However, it's still a Woodpecker alternative worth considering if you're part of a large organization and need a platform to manage your entire sales process. 

Pricing: Available upon request

Key features:

• Send cold emails and multi-channel campaigns from the platform

• Pipeline health metrics to track lead engagement after the initial contact

• Sales call recording and AI analysis to make suggestions to your team on areas to improve

 8. BuzzStream

Cold outreach tool for link-building and PR outreach that also includes other useful tools for marketers.

BuzzStream is a platform for marketers to manage their link-building and PR efforts. It includes a range of tools to help you build lead lists and a CRM to manage communication with your contacts. BuzzStream also includes an email outreach platform.

It's a better option than Woodpecker for link builders and PR specialists because you can manage every part of your workflow from a single platform. If you're using a third-party cold email tool, your workflow will require more manual tasks and data transfer.

After creating your lead list in BuzzStream, you'll need to select the prospects to include in a campaign. Then, you can choose a premade template from your past campaigns and hit send. The workflow is straightforward but effective.

If you're not running any PR or link-building campaigns, Buzzstream won't be right for you as it does include features specifically for that, so that QuickMail will be a better Woodpecker alternative.

Pricing: Starts at $24 per month

Key features:

• Range of tools to help your link-building and PR outreach workflow

• Save your best email templates into a database to re-use in the future

• See information on your prospects, like Twitter followers and publisher metrics, that can be used to personalize emails

9. Yet Another Mail Merge

Send personalized emails in bulk to contact in a Google Sheet from your Gmail inbox.

Like some of the other alternatives to Woodpecker in this article, Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) is an extension you add to your Gmail inbox. Once installed, you can build email campaigns that send to a list of recipients you have stored in a Google Sheet.

It's a simple but effective way to start your cold email journey because you only need to use tools you already know: Google Sheets and Gmail. You won't need to go through the learning curve that Woodpecker requires.

However, if you need to send cold email campaigns regularly and want to run them from a cold email platform for improved deliverability and results, Yet Another Mail Merge might be too lightweight.

One key benefit to Yet Another Mail Merge over Woodpecker is that it’s affordable. Even for business plans, you can get started for $50 per year, which is only slightly more than Woodpecker charges per month.

Pricing: Business options from $50 per year

Key features:

• Send emails from Google Sheets and Gmail

• Unsubscribe, bounce, click, and reply tracking that is synced into a Google Sheet

• Send email campaigns with scheduled follow-ups for people who don't reply to your first email

Wrapping Up: What’s the Best Woodpecker Alternative?

Woodpecker is a good tool for cold email outreach, but it’s not right for everyone. There are various powerful Woodpecker alternatives around, and the ones we’ve mentioned here are some worth looking at and testing if they better fit your needs or budget.

If you need an outreach platform that:

• Lets you send personalized cold email campaigns to cold prospect lists

• Gives you the ability to outreach on LinkedIn and make connections

• Includes email tracking and metrics to help you understand your performance

• Is made for teams and agencies who need multiple inboxes and seats

Then, QuickMail is the right choice for you.

You can try QuickMail with a free trial, and our team is always available to answer any questions you have about sending cold emails that start conversations.