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lemlist and Instantly both send cold email sequences with warm-up built in. The difference is philosophy: lemlist is about making each message more personal, Instantly is about sending more messages safely for less money.
| lemlist | Instantly | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Cold email | Cold email |
| Best for | Personalised, multichannel outreach: email, LinkedIn and calls in one sequence | Sending at volume across many inboxes without paying per seat |
| Free plan | Only for finding emails, not sending | No |
| Try it | 14 days, no card needed | Free trial |
| Price | Email Pro $69 a user a month, Multichannel Expert $99 | Growth $47 a month ($37.60 annual) for 5,000 emails, Hypergrowth $97 ($77.60 annual) for 125,000 emails. Unlimited sending accounts |
| See lemlist pricing ↗ | See Instantly pricing ↗ |
Pricing: per user versus flat
lemlist charges per user, starting at $69 a month for email only and $99 with LinkedIn and calling steps. Instantly charges a flat fee from $37.60 a month (on annual billing) and lets you connect unlimited inboxes.
For one person sending a few hundred emails a week, the gap is small. For an agency or a founder running ten inboxes, Instantly is far cheaper.
Personalisation
lemlist wins clearly. Beyond the usual first-name and company fields, it can generate personalised images (for example, a screenshot of the prospect's website with your note on it), custom landing pages and video thumbnails. Instantly sticks to text with variables and spintax.
Does that matter? For high-value accounts, yes: a message that's obviously written for one person gets more replies. For broad outreach to many similar companies, plain text often works just as well.
Multichannel
lemlist's Multichannel Expert plan lets one sequence mix emails with LinkedIn profile visits, invitations and messages, plus phone call tasks. That matches how social selling works best: a view, an email, a comment, a call.
Instantly is email only. You'd handle LinkedIn and calls elsewhere.
Deliverability
Both include warm-up and both let you rotate sending across several inboxes. Instantly's unlimited accounts make rotation cheap, which helps at volume. In practice your list quality and your copy matter more for deliverability than which of the two you pick.
Our verdict
- Choose lemlist if you sell to a smaller number of valuable accounts and want email, LinkedIn and calls in one sequence.
- Choose Instantly if you're a founder, freelancer or agency that needs to send a lot of email across many inboxes on a budget.
Both offer free trials. Run the same 100 contacts through each and compare reply rates, not features. If you're not sure what to write, start with our cold email guide.