Instantly.ai vs Salesloft: Best Cold Outreach Tool 2024

Instantly.ai offers a straightforward approach to email sequencing, focusing on simplicity and ease of use. The platform provides a clean interface for creating linear sequences without complex branching or conditional logic, making it well-suited for users who need to quickly set up and execute basic outreach campaigns.

Key features of Instantly.ai's sequence creation:

• Linear sequence structure: Sequences are designed as a series of steps without forks or branches, simplifying the creation process.
• Easy step management: Adding, editing, and rearranging steps is intuitive and requires minimal effort.
• Variant support: Users can create multiple variants of a sequence step to personalize content for different recipients.

While Instantly.ai may lack some of the advanced features found in other sales engagement platforms, its focus on simplicity can be an advantage for users who prioritize quick setup and execution over complex automation.

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

Salesloft provides a comprehensive set of tools for creating and managing multichannel sequences that include emails, phone calls, and social interactions. The campaign creation interface is designed to be intuitive and efficient, enabling sales teams to build targeted campaigns quickly.

Key features of Salesloft's campaign creation:

• Multichannel support: Create sequences that incorporate emails, calls, and social touches
• Detailed scheduling: Set specific timelines and intervals for each step in the sequence
• Campaign members: Easily view and manage the contacts included in each campaign
• Activity overview: Monitor upcoming and overdue activities, as well as past interactions

Reddit users have shared mixed experiences with Salesloft's sequence creation. While some appreciate its ease of use and efficiency compared to alternatives, others express frustration over centralized control limiting their autonomy.

👍 "Decided to go SalesLoft after all. Thank you!" - r/sales

👎 "Our reply rates on sequences are terrible" - r/sales

Instantly.ai offers several features to address deliverability issues and help users' emails land in prospects' inboxes:

• Unlimited email warming: Even the most basic package includes unlimited email warming to establish a positive sending reputation.
• Integrated warming service: The email warming feature is fully integrated into the product for ease of use.
• Simulate engagement: Instantly.ai lets you simulate email opens and reads with your connected inboxes to further improve deliverability.
• Custom tracking domains: Use custom tracking domains to maintain good sending reputation across your accounts.
• Control sending limits: Set daily sending limits and adjust warming settings like increase per day to avoid hitting spam traps.

However, Reddit users report mixed experiences with Instantly.ai's deliverability and email warming capabilities:

👎 "Been doing the warm up for almost 2 months now and still even basic messages going to spam" - r/Emailmarketing

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

While Salesloft does not offer a dedicated email warming feature, it employs several best practices to maintain high deliverability rates for its users:

• Reputable IP addresses: Salesloft sends emails from IP addresses with solid reputations to avoid spam filters.
• Gradual volume increase: The platform gradually increases the volume of emails sent, preventing sudden spikes that could trigger spam alerts.
• Personalization options: Salesloft provides tools for personalizing emails, striking a balance between volume and customization to maintain inbox placement.

Reddit users have expressed a preference for Salesloft over alternatives like Hubspot, citing its ease of use and deliverability features.

👍 "Salesloft gives you the ability to personalize before hitting send." - r/sales

Instantly offers a range of features to personalize emails for each lead within campaigns. The email editor allows complete customization, with options to build emails from scratch or start with pre-made templates.

• Variables: Personalize emails by inserting variables like {{accountSignature}} using placeholders within double curly brackets. This lets you tailor each email to the specific recipient.
• Links, emoticons, images: Enhance emails with clickable links, expressive emoticons, and embedded images to engage recipients and communicate your message effectively.
• Preview: Instantly generates previews to show how the personalized email will look for each lead before sending, allowing you to perfect the email's appearance and content.
• Tracking and sending limits: Enable email tracking to monitor opens and clicks, and set daily sending limits to pace your outreach and stay within acceptable volume limits.

Salesloft provides several options to customize and personalize emails for each lead within a sequence. By leveraging custom columns and behavioral data, users can create highly targeted and relevant messages that resonate with their prospects.

• Custom columns: Salesloft allows users to add custom columns for each lead, such as their industry, company size, or specific pain points. This information can then be dynamically inserted into emails using personalization tags, ensuring that each message is tailored to the individual recipient.
• Behavioral personalization: The platform also enables behavioral personalization based on a lead's engagement and actions. For example, if a prospect clicks on a specific link or downloads a resource, Salesloft can automatically trigger a personalized follow-up message that addresses their interests or concerns.

These personalization features help users build stronger connections with their leads, increasing the likelihood of a positive response and ultimately driving more conversions. By combining custom data points and behavioral insights, Salesloft empowers sales teams to deliver highly effective and personalized email campaigns at scale.

Based on our research and experience with Instantly.ai, the platform does not currently offer any AI-powered features for creating or optimizing sales sequences. Despite the company's name suggesting AI capabilities, the tool lacks the ability to generate entire sentences or personalize content based on custom lead signals.

Key observations:

• No AI-assisted content creation for sequences
• Lack of AI-driven personalization based on lead data
• Platform name may be misleading regarding AI features

As a sales engagement tool, Instantly.ai would benefit from incorporating AI technologies to help users create more effective sequences and tailor their outreach to individual leads. However, at present, users will need to rely on manual creation and customization of their sales sequences within the platform.

Salesloft leverages AI technology to help sales reps prospect more efficiently and engage with leads more effectively. The platform uses AI to prioritize actions, generate personalized email drafts, and provide relevant insights for each lead.

Key AI features in Salesloft:

• Prioritized actions: AI-powered "Rhythm" guides reps on which actions to take to build pipeline and close deals.
• Personalized email drafts: AI generates email content tailored to each lead, incorporating relevant information like company name and character limit.
• Custom signals: AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to analyze lead data and suggest the most impactful actions for each individual.

While Instantly does not offer a native enrichment database, it provides the ability to enrich lead information for lists that you upload. This lead enrichment can help provide additional context and buyer signals to guide your sales engagement efforts.

Key features of lead enrichment in Instantly:

• Enrich uploaded lead lists: You can upload your own lists of leads and have Instantly enrich the data for those specific individuals.
• Filter leads by various criteria: The Lead Finder tool allows you to search for and filter leads based on job title, location, industry, company size, revenue, and more.
• Access enriched data: After uploading a list, you can view the enriched lead data, including job title, company, and email address.

While the lack of a built-in enrichment database may be a drawback for some users, Instantly's ability to enrich your own lead lists still provides value in gathering additional context on your prospects to inform your outreach.

Salesloft does not offer native lead enrichment capabilities within its Sequences feature. However, it supports integrations with third-party services that can enrich leads with additional data and insights.

While native enrichment is not available, users can still gain valuable information about their leads through these integrations, which can help to personalize outreach and improve the effectiveness of sales engagement efforts.

• Third-party integrations: Salesloft allows for integration with external data providers to enhance lead information
• Personalization: Enriched lead data can be used to tailor communication and improve relevance

Instantly.ai does not appear to have built-in functionality for automating social media engagement, such as LinkedIn outreach. To automate social selling activities, users will likely need to use a separate, specialized tool like Dripify or Hey Alfred in conjunction with Instantly.

While Instantly's Sequences feature is powerful for email campaigns, the lack of native social automation may be a drawback for users looking to streamline their outreach efforts across multiple channels from a single platform.

If social selling automation is a priority, it's worth exploring dedicated tools that can integrate with Instantly to create a more comprehensive sales engagement workflow.

Salesloft does not currently support sending LinkedIn messages as part of email campaign sequences. While Salesloft offers robust email automation capabilities, social media integration for platforms like LinkedIn is not a feature available within the Sequences tool.

If LinkedIn outreach is a critical component of your sales engagement strategy, you may need to explore alternative tools or consider manual processes to incorporate LinkedIn messaging alongside your Salesloft email campaigns.

Instantly provides straightforward pricing options built for businesses of varying needs and sizes. The platform operates on a tiered subscription model, with plans ranging from $30 to $286.30 per month, depending on the volume of emails required.

Key aspects of Instantly's pricing:

• Flexible plans: Three tiers (Growth, Hypergrowth, and Light Speed) to accommodate different business requirements.
• Usage-based pricing: Plans are priced according to the number of emails sent per month, ranging from 5,000 to 500,000.
• Annual discounts: Users can save 20% by opting for annual billing instead of monthly payments.
• Unlimited email accounts: All plans include unlimited email accounts and email warmup to maintain deliverability.
• 14-day free trial: Prospective users can test the product with a 14-day trial before committing to a paid plan.
• No sales interaction required: Users can sign up and start using the platform without having to go through a sales representative.

Salesloft provides three pricing packages designed to meet the needs of different sales teams. However, they do not disclose specific pricing information on their website, instead requiring interested parties to request a demo to learn more.

Key aspects of Salesloft's pricing model:

• No free trial: Salesloft does not offer a free trial period for any of its packages.
• Contact sales for pricing: To get detailed pricing information, you must contact the Salesloft sales team and request a demo.
• Three pricing tiers: Essentials, Advanced, and Premier, each offering progressively more features and capabilities.
• Feature differences: Higher-tier packages include additional features like conversation intelligence, opportunity management, and revenue forecasting.