How to Choose Your Cold Email Software (16 Tools Reviewed)

So, you’re not seeing the ROI you’d like to see from your content, social media, or ad campaigns.

If you’re ready to fire up your first cold email campaign to improve your lead generation it can be tricky to find your footing.

There are so many different cold email tools on the market, and choosing the one for you is no simple task.

If you’re taking your first steps into cold email marketing and are currently choosing your cold email software, you’re in the right place.

We’re going to walk you through the best cold email software, from standalone tools to browser extensions and complete CRMs. The tools are organized by the type of tool, so you can easily jump to the most relevant section for you.

Email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent on it, so the faster you can get started, the faster you’ll start seeing results.

Let’s jump into the article.

So, what type of cold email software should I use?

Choosing the right cold email software for your needs is going to pay off.

There are a few different categories of tools that are popular with sales reps.

Firstly, you have standalone cold email software. These are ideal for most companies starting with cold email.

You’ll be able to upload your contact list, write and schedule email sequences, and track key metrics.

Then, you have browser extensions. These have grown in popularity over the last couple of years. You simply install them on your browser, and in most cases, they will add new functionality to your email client. Typically they will be focused on Gmail.

Finally, we’ll look at CRMs. These are complete systems to manage your sales cycle, send cold emails, and track leads in your pipeline.

They all have different uses cases, and some may be a fit for you and others may not. We’re not affiliated with any companies listed here, and we’ve added in their current rating on Capterra.

We’ll help you identify the best cold email software for you.

Standalone Cold Email Software

These tools will connect with your existing email account. Then, you can manage the whole process of writing and scheduling email sequences directly from them.

When you receive a response from a lead you can reply directly from your own email client, like Gmail or Outlook. They all provide robust analytics so you can measure the success of your cold email campaigns.

1. Mailshake

Price: Starts at $29 per month/user

Capterra rating:  4.5/5

Mailshake is one of the most popular cold email tools on the market. It provides a simple interface to help you easily get started sending your campaigns. It contains all the features you would expect.

You can use mail merge fields to customize your emails at scale, AB test emails, track key metrics, and even create follow up tasks such as reminding your sales team to follow up with a phone call.

2. Lemlist

Price: Starts at $29 per month

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

Lemlist is a powerful cold email client that has an interesting unique selling point.

As you would expect you can personalize the text as much as you want, schedule emails, and track your success. What sets Lemlist apart is that you can easily create custom images to include in your emails. You can include images such as website screenshots, logos, and custom text over your image. It’s a powerful way to stand out in your prospect’s inbox.

3. PersistIQ

Price: Starts at $40 per month

Capterra rating: 4/5

PersistIQ says that it’s designed to save your team 10 hours per week. If that’s true, it’s a massive time-saving and will pay itself back quickly. In their words, they built the product to eliminate unnecessary features and focus on making a cold email tool that is as intuitive as possible.

It has some awesome features including smart variables, which mean that emails with incomplete merge tags get blocked from sending. No more embarrassing moments where you send out an email to a prospect starting with “Hi {{name}}”…

4. Woodpecker.co

Price: Starts at $33 per month/user

Capterra rating: 5/5

Another popular cold email solution, Woodpecker is an ideal tool for small and medium-sized B2B businesses.

Like the tools above, it lets you do everything you would hope it to. You can set up complex sequences, upload contact lists, and use mail merge to personalize your message. They also say that you can have your first email campaign ready in 15 minutes thanks to its streamlined design.

5. Yesware

Price: Starts at $12 per month/user

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

Yesware is a powerful standalone tool, but it also comes with Gmail and Outlook extensions to improve your default inbox.

It provides you with the tools to improve your team’s insights into your lead pipeline. It syncs with Salesforce, and you can see detailed reports on performance.

Yesware can also notify your team whenever emails are opened by leads, enabling your team to follow up at the best time and close more business.

6. Reply.io

Price: Starts at $55 per user

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

Reply is a sales acceleration platform. It’s one of the most comprehensive outbound email tools on the market, allowing you do send emails at scale. Reply contains a powerful set of features such as lead qualification, AB testing, time zone detection, and more.

It also contains a variety of security features to ensure you never send too many emails out in a short space of time that would normally end up with your emails landing in recipient’s spam folders.

7. QuickMail

Price: $49 per month/user

Capterra rating: 5/5

QuickMail enables your team to send cold emails with ease.

It’s highly praised by users as it lets you easily set up complex campaigns, and AB test different subject lines or email copy. It also has built-in lead scoring to help you prioritize your time and improve error-prevention.

8. Contact Monkey

Price: Starts at $10 per month/user

Capterra rating: 4/5

ContactMonkey is one of the more affordable cold email tools in this list but it still comes packed with features. You can use mail merge to send mass emails, as well as being able to schedule emails straight from your Gmail or Outlook account.

One of the most interesting parts of Contact Monkey is that it integrates with Salesforce. It lets you access and manage all your Salesforce data, straight from your inbox. For sales teams looking for an easy CRM integration, Contact Monkey is ideal.

9. Remail

Price: $24 per month

Capterra rating: 4/5

Remail contains a large collection of proven email templates to help your sales reps move faster. It’s designed to help you rapidly set up campaigns and has a simple UI.

As you would expect, you can also see and track all of your key cold email metrics such as delivery rate, open rate, and reply rate.

Remail is still in beta, and some of the reviews we found on Capterra highlight that it’s still too simple for established teams. But, you can expect more features to be released in the future.

10. SmartReach.io

Price: Starts at $19 per month/user

Capterra rating: 5/5

SmartReach is an easy-to-use cold email software that starts at an affordable price, as well as having a host of useful features.

SmartReach differentiates itself from the competition with useful features including spam tests that help you identify and fix any issues with your emails, as well as letting you warm-up campaigns slowly, to ensure high deliverability rates.

There should be no issue with integrations as it works with Gmail, Outlook, Zoho, Microsoft Exchange, Mailgun, and others. You can also track individual team performance and view detailed analytics on every metric you need.

CRM

Want to manage your entire sales funnel, from start to finish, in one place? Then you may want to try a CRM.

1. Close

Price: Starts at $29.75

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

Close is a platform built specifically for sales teams. You can create, schedule, and manage your cold email sequences from an intuitive dashboard. Your team can make notes to help with communication, and it’s simple to see who from your team has already interacted with leads.

Close even has calling and SMS functionality built-in, so you can easily follow up via any channel. It’s ideal for small-to-mid-sized businesses looking to scale their sales efforts, but who don’t need a more bloated CRM like Salesforce.

2. Klenty

Price: Starts at $25 per month/user

Capterra rating: 5/5

Klenty lets you create powerful cold email automation sequences to grow your lead pipeline. You can track the prospects who are currently in sequences, and easily manage the movement of leads between sequences. It contains powerful AB testing functionality that let you iterate and optimize your subject line, your call to action, or any other part of your email.

It also has integrations with popular tools using such as Pipedrive, Salesforce, Slack, Zapier, and more. Furthermore, Klenty comes with its own Chrome plugin to improve your Gmail inbox.

Browser Extensions

This category is growing in popularity. More and more companies are releasing browser extensions that give new life to your existing email client. They’re mainly focused on Gmail.

1. Snov.io

Price: Starts at $26 per month

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

Snov.io lets you verify and discover email addresses be and then schedule drip email campaigns from one easy dashboard. They say that it’s ideal for sales reps, marketers, and, recruiters who rely on being able to quickly discover and send emails to prospects.

2. GMass

Price: Starts at $8.95 per month

Capterra rating: 5/5

GMass allows you to send out customized emails at scale, using mail merge right from your Gmail inbox and Google Sheets. It does require that you use Google Chrome, which may be a drawback for some.

GMass has capabilities that rival many larger tools on this list, as it comes with robust analytics, as well as features that stagger email sendings so that you never break Gmail’s sending limit or trigger spam filters.

3. MixMax

Price: Starts at $9 per month/user

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

MixMax adds powerful features to your Gmail inbox. It contains tools such as meeting scheduling, a host of templates, polls, surveys, as well as detailed analytics.

If you want to power up your Gmail account, MixMax is a stellar option.

4. SalesHandy

Price: Free. Paid plans start at $7 per month/user

Capterra rating: 4.5/5

Similar to MixMax, SalesHandy integrates with your existing inbox and adds robust features to help with your cold email campaigns.

You can track your emails to see when they’re opened, schedule emails and create them using smart templates. SalesHandy also provides you with tools for cold email automation and analytics so you can always stay on top of your lead pipeline.

Recap – Best Cold Email Software in 2019

Choosing a cold email software that does everything you require is important.

But, the most important thing is that you have a compelling message and value proposition for your prospects.

All of these tools will fulfill most of the requirements you have, so I’d recommend trying a few out and deciding based on the ease-of-use, and how comfortable you and your team are with them.

After that, it’s time to start sourcing your lists of prospects. For this step, you can use Leadiro to access verified, up-to-date B2B contact data for companies all over the world.