Instantly vs Salesforge: Best Cold Outreach Tools 2024

Instantly.ai offers a straightforward approach to sequencing for email outreach campaigns. The sequences feature allows users to create linear, step-by-step campaigns without the complexity of conditional branching or forking paths. This simplicity makes it easy to set up and manage basic email sequences for sales engagement.

Key aspects of Instantly.ai's sequences:

• Linear sequencing: Create simple, step-by-step campaigns without branching or conditionals
• Easy campaign setup: Quickly build and manage basic email sequences
• Variant support: Add variants to each step for A/B testing and optimization
• Preview functionality: Review and test sequences before launching campaigns

While Instantly.ai's sequences may lack advanced features like conditional branching, the simplicity can be an advantage for users looking to create straightforward email outreach campaigns without the need for complex workflows.

👍 "combine this with instantly.ai for our results" - r/sales

Salesforge is an AI-powered sales engagement platform designed to enhance email outreach campaigns. Its sequence builder allows users to create and manage personalized email sequences at scale, with advanced features for improved deliverability and engagement.

• AI-driven capabilities: Salesforge leverages AI to provide email warm-up, validation, and personalization in multiple languages, ensuring high deliverability and low bounce rates.
• Centralized mailbox management: Users can manage multiple mailboxes from a single interface, streamlining their outreach efforts and maximizing efficiency.
• Customizable sequences: The sequence builder allows users to define the name, associated product, and language for each campaign, tailoring their outreach to specific audiences.
• Multi-language support: Salesforge enables the creation of personalized emails in multiple languages, expanding the reach of sales campaigns to global markets.
• Intuitive interface: The user-friendly sequence builder simplifies the process of creating and managing complex email campaigns, saving time and effort for sales teams.

Instantly.ai offers a comprehensive email warming service to help improve deliverability and avoid spam filters. The platform provides users with the ability to connect multiple inboxes and gradually warm them up to establish a positive sending reputation.

• Unlimited email warming: Even the most basic package includes unlimited email warming, ensuring that all users can benefit from improved deliverability.
• Integrated warming service: The email warming feature is fully integrated into the product, making it easy for users to set up and manage their inboxes.
• Simulate email engagement: Instantly.ai allows users to simulate email opens and reads with their connected inboxes, helping to establish a positive sending reputation.
• Customizable warmup settings: Users can adjust the warmup settings, such as the daily increase in emails sent and the maximum number of emails per day, to suit their needs.
• Blacklist monitoring: The platform monitors blacklists and alerts users when their email addresses have been blocked, allowing them to take action to resolve any issues.

Reddit users have mixed opinions on Instantly.ai's deliverability and features:

😐 "Instantly's missing a lot of basic things" - r/Emailmarketing

Salesforge offers several features to help improve email deliverability and avoid spam filters when sending cold email campaigns:

• Email Warmup: Gradually increase sending volume from new mailboxes to establish a positive sending reputation.
• Multiple Mailboxes: Distribute email sending across multiple mailboxes to avoid triggering spam filters due to high volume from a single mailbox.
• Sending Limits: Set daily sending limits per mailbox to stay within acceptable volume thresholds.

By using email warmup and multiple mailboxes, you can improve your chances of landing in prospects' inboxes and avoid having your emails marked as spam. Salesforge makes it easy to manage these settings across all your connected mailboxes in one place.

"bought a bunch of domains and mailboxes recently via Salesforge" - r/Entrepreneur

Instantly's campaign function provides a high degree of customization for outreach emails. The intuitive email editor allows you to personalize your messages to each lead, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.

Key personalization features:

• Pre-made and custom templates: Start with a variety of pre-made templates or create your own from scratch.
• Variables: Easily insert personalized variables like {{accountSignature}} into your emails using placeholders surrounded by double curly brackets.
• Rich content: Add links, emoticons, and images to your emails to make them more engaging.
• Preview: See how your email will look to recipients before sending with the handy preview button.
• Advanced options: Fine-tune your campaigns with settings like email tracking and daily send limits.

Salesforge provides a range of options for personalizing emails within sequences, allowing users to tailor their outreach to each individual lead. By leveraging AI and custom variables, emails can be customized at scale while maintaining a personal touch.

• AI-generated content: Salesforge's AI capabilities can generate personalized email content based on the context of the sequence and the lead's information.
• Custom variables: Users can define and use custom variables to automatically insert lead-specific information, such as their name, company, or other relevant details.
• Fallback templates: In cases where AI fails to generate content or a lead is missing a LinkedIn URL, users can create fallback templates to ensure that the email can still be personalized and sent.

Upon reviewing Instantly.ai's features and capabilities, we did not find any AI-powered tools for generating sales sequences or leveraging custom lead signals. Despite the company's domain name suggesting AI capabilities, the platform does not appear to offer any AI-driven features specifically for sales engagement sequences.

Key observations:

• No evidence of AI-powered sequence generation
• Lack of AI-driven lead insights or custom signals
• Domain name does not accurately reflect the platform's current features

As an expert in the field, we recommend that Instantly.ai consider implementing AI technologies to enhance their sales engagement offering, such as:

• AI-assisted email and message composition
• Predictive lead scoring based on custom signals
• Intelligent sequence optimization and A/B testing

By incorporating these AI-driven features, Instantly.ai could differentiate itself in the market and provide users with more advanced tools for effective sales outreach.

Salesforge's AI-powered email generation feature streamlines the process of crafting personalized emails at scale. By leveraging AI, users can create unique, tailored messages for each contact in their sequence, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.

• Customizable tonality: Users can select from a variety of tones, such as playful, formal, or appreciative, to match their brand voice and target audience.
• Fallback template: To use the AI email generation feature, users must set a fallback template that serves as a foundation for the AI-generated content.
• Preview generation: Salesforge generates email previews for the first 5 contacts in a sequence, with the remaining previews generated once the sequence is started.
• Personalization credits: Users start with 10 personalization credits, which are consumed when generating new previews. Regenerating emails, however, is free.

By combining AI-powered email generation with customizable tonality and personalization, Salesforge enables users to create compelling, tailored email sequences at scale, saving time and effort while improving the effectiveness of their outreach campaigns.

Instantly.ai's Lead Finder feature allows users to search for and enrich leads with additional information, providing a more comprehensive view of potential prospects. While it does not offer a native enrichment database, it can enrich uploaded lists of leads with relevant data points.

Key features of Lead Finder:

• Search filters: Narrow down lead searches using various criteria like job title, location, industry, and more
• Enrich uploaded lists: Append additional data to existing lead lists for a more complete profile
• Buyer signals: Incorporate data from other sources to provide insights into lead behavior and intent

Reddit users have recommended Instantly.ai for its lead generation and verification capabilities:

👍 "Try instantly.ai — it's the best for leads and verification" - r/LeadGeneration

Unlike some of its competitors, Salesforge does not offer built-in lead enrichment capabilities. To gather additional data and insights about leads, users need to rely on integrations with third-party tools.

Key points about lead enrichment in Salesforge:

• No native enrichment: Salesforge does not provide a built-in solution for lead enrichment.
• Third-party integrations: Users can connect Salesforge with external tools like Apollo.io, Findymail, and Launch Gravity to scrape contacts and enrich lead data.
• Manual data gathering: Without native enrichment, users may need to spend more time manually researching and updating lead information.

While Instantly.ai offers a range of sales engagement features, it does not appear to have native support for automating social media outreach on platforms like LinkedIn. To achieve social automation, users would need to integrate with a separate tool like Dripify or Hey Alfred.

This lack of built-in social automation functionality may be a drawback for sales teams looking to streamline their outreach efforts across multiple channels within a single platform. However, the ability to integrate with specialized social automation tools still allows users to create comprehensive campaigns, albeit with additional steps and potential costs.

Key takeaways:

• No native social media automation within Instantly.ai
• Integration with third-party tools like Dripify or Hey Alfred required for social outreach
• May add complexity and costs to the user's workflow

Salesforge Sequences offers social automation capabilities, allowing users to engage with prospects on LinkedIn or through their websites. This feature enables sales teams to expand their outreach beyond traditional email campaigns.

Key aspects of Salesforge's social automation:

• LinkedIn profile integration: Engage with prospects directly on LinkedIn, leveraging the platform's professional network.
• Website integration: Interact with potential customers through their company websites, providing a multi-channel approach.
• LinkedIn + website combination: Combine both LinkedIn and website outreach for a comprehensive social selling strategy.

Instantly provides simple, transparent pricing built for businesses of all sizes. The tool offers a 14-day free trial, allowing users to test the product without requiring a sales call. Pricing is based on a per-seat model, with all plans including unlimited email accounts and warmup emails to prevent messages from being sent to spam.

Key aspects of Instantly's pricing:

• Monthly and yearly billing options: Prices vary depending on whether you choose to pay monthly or annually, with yearly plans offering a 20% discount.
• Three pricing tiers: Growth ($30/mo), Hypergrowth ($77.6/mo), and Light Speed ($286.3/mo), each offering progressively more features and higher email sending limits.
• Email sending limits: The Basic (Growth) plan includes 5,000 emails per month, while the top-tier Light Speed plan supports up to 500,000 emails per month.
• Unlimited email accounts and warmup emails: All plans come with unlimited email accounts and warmup emails to ensure optimal deliverability.
• 14-day free trial: Users can test the product for 14 days without providing credit card information or speaking to a sales representative.

Salesforge offers two main pricing plans, Growth and Pro, with the option to pay monthly or annually. The Growth plan is priced at $96 per month when billed monthly, while the Pro plan is $48 per month. Annual billing provides a discount, with the option to get 2 months free.

Key features of the pricing plans:

• Free trial: A 7-day free trial is available for the Growth plan, allowing users to test the platform before committing.
• Contact and email limits: The Growth plan includes 10,000 active contacts and 50,000 emails per month, while the Pro plan offers 1,000 active contacts and 5,000 emails per month.
• Advanced features: The Growth plan includes additional features such as Overdrive (Advanced AI Model), unlimited mailboxes and users, and Primebox, which are not available in the Pro plan.
• Upcoming features: Both plans will soon include A/B Testing, ESP Matching, and Dynamic IPs, with the Growth plan also offering Personal Onboarding and Advanced Settings.