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Smartlead vs. Instantly vs. Salesforge

Email outreach is essential for modern sales strategies, and choosing the right tool can significantly impact your results . In this comparison, we’ll look at Salesforge vs. Instantly vs. Smartlead, three popular platforms used by sales teams to automate cold emailing. We’ll explore their features, pricing, support, integrations, and more, ultimately determining which platform will best support your cold email outreach efforts.
Compare Features
Pricing
Starts at $40/month
Starts at $37/month
Starts at $39/month
Customer Support
24/7 live chat, dedicated Slack channel
Email support, FAQs
AI chatbot, email support, FAQs
Integrations
Various native integrations + Zapier, API & Webhooks
Zapier, Hubspot, Discord
Zapier, HubSpot
A/B Testing
Limited availability
Email Warm Up
AI warm up for unlimited email accounts
Limited warmup options
Unlimited email accounts warmups
Email Verification
Available as an add-on
Automation Features
Fully-personalized email campaigns with AI
Moderate
Extensive (advanced workflows)
Free Trial
7-day free trial
14-day free trial
14-day free trial

Let's Dive Into The Details!

Salesforge: The AI-Powered Solution for Advanced Outreach

Salesforge takes email outreach to the next level with its AI-powered automation. This feature allows users to automate follow-up emails and create personalized emails based on recipient engagement, making each message feel like it was written by a human. Additionally, Salesforge’s advanced email warmup system and email deliverability features ensurehigher deliverability rates, which are crucial for scaling outreach efforts. The warmup gradually increases sending volume, mimicking organic patterns to avoid spam filters.

Another strong feature of Salesforge is its CRM integrations. By connecting with popular CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce, teams can streamline workflows and synchronize their lead generation and email outreach campaigns with the sales pipeline. Google Suite and Zapier integrations also make it easier for teams to work with their existing tools.

Key Strengths of Salesforge:

  • AI-powered automation: Enables smarter follow-up sequences.
  • Advanced warmup system: Boosts email deliverability & sender reputation with AI-powered email warm up included for unlimited mailboxes.
  • Customizable workflows: Tailor outreach strategies to suit your team’s needs with an easy-to-use, user-friendly interface.
  • Powerful integration possibilities: This allows sales teams to optimize their workflows with their preferred tools.

Instantly: Affordable Simplicity for Smaller Teams

Instantly is a simpler, budget-friendly option, starting at $37/month. It focuses on providing the basic features for effective cold email campaigns, including email verification, A/B testing, and automated follow-ups. Instantly doesn’t match some of its competitors' AI capabilities, but its affordability and ease of use make it an attractive option for smaller businesses or those new to email outreach.

While email warmup is included, some of its users have voiced concerns regarding its quality. Namely, the users voiced concern regarding the quality of the mailboxes used in the warmup, which means that the deliverability and sender’s reputation could be negatively affected.

Key Strengths of Instantly:

  • Affordable pricing: Ideal for small teams and startups on a budget.
  • Simplicity: Easy-to-use interface, perfect for those new to cold email outreach.
  • Basic outreach tools: Includes email verification and more, depending on the plan used.

Smartlead: Maximizing Deliverability with Unlimited Warmups

Smartlead excels in email deliverability. Its unlimited email warmup ensures that email campaigns gradually build credibility, helping to prevent emails from being flagged as spam. Additionally, Smartlead’s email verification features ensure that emails are sent to valid addresses, boosting inbox placement and reducing bounce rates.

However, Smartlead's overall user experience and customer support have room for improvement. While it offers live chat and email support, many users report slower response times compared to others.

Key Strengths of Smartlead:

  • Unlimited warmup: Ideal for high-volume email outreach.
  • Strong deliverability: Optimizes the likelihood of emails reaching inboxes.
  • Comprehensive verification: Helps ensure accurate and effective outreach.

Pricing Comparison

When it comes to pricing, Salesforge starts at $40/month. While this might be a higher upfront cost for smaller teams, the advanced features and scalability make it a worthwhile investment for large-scale operations.

Instantly is the most affordable cold email software in this comparison, starting at $37/month. This makes it a great choice for small businesses or startups that need to keep costs low however, some users have reported that basic features are locked when using the cheapest plans. Furthermore, the cheaper plans also get a lower priority regarding customer support and don't perform as well as the expensive ones.

Smartlead, starting at $39/month, is slightly more expensive than Instantly but offers features that focus on deliverability, such as unlimited warmup and email verification. While Smartlead is an excellent tool for businesses focused on email deliverability, it lacks the deep automation features that Salesforge offers.

Customer Support: Who Offers the Best Assistance?

Salesforge provides 24/7 live chat and email support, ensuring that any technical issues or questions are addressed promptly. This level of support is particularly important for businesses that need constant assistance, as it guarantees minimal downtime during outreach campaigns.

Instantly only offers email support and has a knowledge base with frequently asked questions. While the resources are helpful, the lack of live chat means that response times could be slower, which could hinder high-demand teams. Furthermore, if a person does not have a pricier email outreach plan, the responses will be slower.

Smartlead offers both live AI chat and email support, but has received feedback about slower response times, especially during peak hours. The customer service experience can be inconsistent, especially for businesses managing multiple email accounts, which may be frustrating for those that rely heavily on support.

Integration Comparison: How Easy Is It to Sync Tools?

Integration options are key for teams that need to connect their cold email software to other sales and CRM tools. Salesforge offers the most extensive native integration options, including popular CRMs like Salesforce, Hubspot and more, additionally they also offer API & Webhook integrations. These integrations allow teams to manage their email outreach efforts alongside their other tools, creating a seamless workflow.

Instantly integrates with Google Suite and Zapier, but it lacks deep integrations with CRMs, which can limit its functionality for teams relying heavily on CRM systems for managing customer relationships.

Smartlead offers integrations with Outlook and certain CRMs, which also make it a good choice.

If integration capabilities are important to your sales and marketing teams, Salesforge offers the best selection, ensuring that your email outreach tool works well with your existing tool stack.

Salesforge vs. Smartlead vs. Instantly: Which One To Choose?

While all three platforms have their merits, Salesforge provides the most robust solution for growing sales teams. The AI-powered automation and advanced email warmup capabilities make it the best choice for larger teams or those looking to scale their cold outreach with maximum personalization and deliverability. Its comprehensive integration options ensure a seamless experience, and the 24/7 customer support guarantees that help is always available when needed.

Instantly is a decent choice for small teams on a tight budget, offering a simple and affordable solution for basic cold emailing needs. However, its limited automation and basic warmup options make it less suitable for lead generation agencies and businesses with more advanced requirements.

Smartlead is a strong contender for businesses focused on email deliverability, offering features like unlimited warmup and email verification. However, its user experience and support could be improved, and it lacks the sophisticated features like auto rotating email accounts & multi-language email sequences available in Salesforge.

Explore Salesforge With a Full Tutorial:

Blending Humans & AI Agents

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Frequently asked questions

If we don’t answer your question below, please contact us via chat

What is the best feature of Salesforge compared to Smartlead and Instantly?

How does email warmup differ between Salesforge, Instantly, and Smartlead?

Which platform offers the best customer support?

How do the pricing plans compare?

Blending Humans & AI Agents

Scale your outreach without scaling your team by programmatically sending unique messages and maximizing pipeline coverage by hiring AI Agents.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Weekly release update: Apr Week 2
Updates from last week! 👀 Here’s what’s new in Salesforge 📬 & Agent Frank 🤖 1. New Feature Drop: Opt-Out Rate Metric is LIVE! Another slick upgrade just landed—we’ve added a new metric card for Opt-Out Rate in both Sequences and the Agent Frank detailed view in Salesforge! Now you can: See exactly how many prospects are opting out of their outreach Spot sequences that might be too aggressive or missing the mark Tweak messaging and targeting for better engagement (and fewer unsubscribes) This is a big win for deliverability, compliance, and keeping outreach sharp. 2. New Feature Drop: Product Email Notifications Are LIVE! 🚀 We just launched a brand-new layer of real-time visibility — Product Email Notifications are now LIVE in Salesforge! Here’s what you will now get alerted about, straight to their inbox: Mailbox(es) disconnected – so they can reconnect before it hurts deliverability New reply received – excluding OOO and bounces, only the real ones Running out of credits – whether it’s sending, validation, or anything else You can opt-in or opt-out of these notifications anytime from their settings. No more guessing. No more blind spots. Just clean, actionable updates to stay on top of their game. New free tools on salesforge.ai 🔨 The Forge Sales GPT: Use our ChatGPT bot to create cold email sequences based on your ICP and value proposition. We're still working on more features & workflow improvements across all forges in April! 🌱