One of the most popular ways to find more prospective clients is by using cold email software for lead generation.
Cold email software makes it easy for you to:
Generate leads
Get more sales appointments
Find new clients
Build new relationships
SEO link building
And more!
However, cold email software is just a TOOL. And a TOOL is only good if you use it the right way.
In other words, to get results from cold email lead generation or any other lead generation technique, you need the right lead generation strategy.
So, before reading the rest of this article, watch my FREE Masterclass training which explains the best lead generation strategy to get high-quality sales appointments each month with your ideal clients on autopilot.
How can you find the best cold email software?
To find the best cold email software you need to consider a few factors:
Cost: How much does it cost?
Features: What can you do?
Ease of use: How easy is it to use?
Effectiveness: Does it work well?
The best cold email software will have a balance of all of these factors.
Table of contents
What is the best cold email software?
Here are nine of the best cold email outreach software solutions specifically for lead generation:
1. Saleshandy

What I like about Saleshandy is that it’s an affordable, all-in-one cold email sales automation platform. And I love using all-in-one funnel builders!
With Saleshandy, you can easily create cold email templates, automate your email outreach campaigns, and track all your emails in one place.
Saleshandy Key features:
LinkedIn prospecting: Find and add leads directly from LinkedIn
Email warm-up: Build your email reputation score with gradual email ramp up
High deliverability: Includes features such as “Bounce Guard” and “Email health score” to improve email deliverability
AI Writing assistance: Get help writing cold emails that are likely to convert
Advanced Email sequences: Create automated email follow-up sequences with behavioral rules
Email tracking: Know when prospects open and click on emails
Split testing: see what cold emails convert best
Saleshandy Pros and Cons
Pros:
Easy to use
Lots of features
Low cost
Advanced email personalization
High email deliverability rate
A / B testing
LinkedIn email finder
Free templates & training
Cons:
No free plan (but they do have 14-day free trial)
Saleshandy Pricing

Pricing starts from $29/month per user, which includes everything you need to run cold email campaigns (unlimited emails, unlimited prospects, unlimited sequences, a/b email testing and more).
Click here to get a free Saleshandy trial.
Saleshandy final thoughts
In my opinion, Saleshandy is the leading cold email outreach software for lead generation. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use ALL-IN-ONE tool with lots of features at an affordable price, then Saleshandy would be my number one recommendation.
2. Snov.io

Snov.io is a powerful cold email outreach platform that helps you find and verify email addresses of prospects, create personalized cold emails, and track all your email activity in one place.
Snov.io Key features:
Email Finder: Find the right email address for any prospect with just a few clicks
Email Verifier: Verify the accuracy of email addresses before you send your emails
Cold Email Templates: Create personalized cold email templates for your outreach campaigns
Email Tracking: Know when prospects open and click on your emails
LinkedHelper 2 Direct Integration
One of the unique features that I like from Snov.io is its built-in integration with Linked Helper 2.
You can use Snov.io and Linked Helper 2 to send more than 100 LinkedIn invites each week because LinkedIn allows you to add more than 100 connections each week IF you know their email address (which Snov.io helps you find automatically).
Snov.io Pros and Cons
Pros:
Easy-to-use email finder & verifier tool
A large number of verified email addresses in their database
Affordable plans
Email drip campaigns
14-day free trial (no credit card required)
Cons:
No free plan
Basic features are only available on the highest-priced plan
Snov.io Pricing

Pricing starts from $39/month, which includes 1,000 credits and 5,000 unique recipients. Credits can be used to find or verify email addresses.
Click here to get a free Snov trial.
Snov.io final thoughts
Overall, Snov.io is a great cold email outreach platform with a user-friendly interface. It’s especially helpful if you want to find and verify email addresses of people on LinkedIn.
3. MeetAlfred

Even though MeetAlfred is primarily a LinkedIn lead generation tool, it is still a very good cold email outreach tool as well. I recommend using Meet Alfred when combining both LinkedIn & cold email outreach together and if you want to automate your lead generation as much as possible.
Meet Alfred Key features:
Multi-channel marketing: Automatically connect to potential customers on LinkedIn, email and Twitter using the same tool
LinkedIn Lead CRM: Manage your LinkedIn leads and contacts through Meet Alfred’s built-in CRM features
Messaging Inbox: You can reply to LinkedIn messages directly from within Meet Alfred’s software (this is helpful when using LinkedIn with teams because you don’t have to share your LinkedIn login info with anyone else)
LinkedIn InMail features: Send additional messages to potential customers using LinkedIn InMail
Works on the cloud: Unlike other LinkedIn automation tools, you don’t need to download any software for this to work
One of the unique features Meet Alfred has compared to other cold email tools is its built-in multi-channel marketing campaign features. This means you can contact leads through multiple channels including cold email marketing, Twitter marketing, LinkedIn and even cold calling.
Tip: If you want to stand out with the images in your email outreach, why not try using an AI image generator? AI image generated images can help you quickly create unique photos for your emails in seconds.
Meet Alfred Pros and Cons
Pros:
Integrates well with LinkedIn and other social media platforms
Send personalized emails and LinkedIn messages
Great for teams because everything is on the cloud
Cons:
Email marketing features are not as vast as other cold email tools
Meet Alfred Pricing

Meet Alfred pricing starts from $49/month and includes a 33% discount if you pay yearly.
Meet Alfred final thoughts
From my experience, Meet Alfred is a great tool if you want to combine cold email marketing with LinkedIn lead generation and social media marketing.
I’ve used Meet Alfred for a long time and as long as you have the right lead generation strategy in the first place, you can get great results from this lead generation tool.
Click here to get a free Meet Alfred 14-day trial.
4. Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a cold email outreach tool that helps you verify and send personalized cold emails at scale.
I’ve found that WoodPecker is especially useful for agencies or larger sales teams because of its built-in sales CRM features. I used WoodPecker a lot in the early days of my business and it was especially helpful when building up new strategic partners.
One great that I like about Woodpecker is that it allows you to manage multiple cold email campaigns at once.
Woodpecker Key features:
Sales CRM: Organize and prioritize leads that are generated from cold email
Email Finder: Find the right email address for any prospect with just a few clicks
Email Verifier: Verify the accuracy of email addresses before you send your emails
Cold Email Templates: Create personalized cold email templates for your outreach campaigns
Email Tracking: Know when prospects open and click on your emails
Agency features: Generate leads for your own marketing agency or your clients
Woodpecker Pros and Cons:
Pros:
Lots of features including a sales CRM & email finder tool
Advanced personalization options
Sales CRM features built-in
Agency features built-in
Great for managing multiple cold email campaigns from multiple people
Cons:
A bit pricier compared to other cold email outreach tools
Woodpecker Pricing

Woodpecker pricing starts from $44/month which allows you to contact up to 1,500 prospects each month. But they do also have an “unlimited” option which allows you to email an unlimited number of people each month for an extra $10/month ($54/month in total).
Woodpecker final thoughts
Overall, Woodpecker is a great cold email outreach platform for larger teams or marketing agencies that want to generate a lot of leads at scale.
5. Yesware

Yesware’s email tracking is a great way to keep track of your emails. You can see when your emails are opened, how many times they are opened, and where your recipients are located. This is a great way to stay on top of your email marketing campaign and ensure your messages get through to your recipients.
Yesware Key features:
YesWare is an excellent tool for sales teams who need to track their emails when doing cold email marketing.
Email tracking: YesWare gives you the ability to see when someone opens your email, how many times they open the email, if someone clicks on a link, or even forwards it to someone else.
Link tracking: See when your links are clicked and how many times they have been clicked
Location tracking: See where someone is based when they open your emails
Yesware Pros and Cons:
Pros:
More advanced email tracking features compared to other cold email tools
Simple to use software with an easy-to-use interface
Inexpensive compared to other cold email platforms
Allows you to track when email attachments are opened (not a lot of other sales outreach tools have this feature)
Great for personalized cold email campaigns
Can be used when sending sales proposals to leads
Cheaper than other cold emailing software
Cons:
Not as automated compared to other cold email marketing software
Yesware Pricing

Pricing for YesWare starts at $19/month or less if you pay yearly. However, you’ll need to upgrade to the $45/month package if you want to remove the “YesWare” branding.
Yesware Final Thoughts
YesWare is a great cold email outreach tool if your sales team is looking to send out more personalized emails. The real-time email tracking tools and notifications are also very helpful so you know when is the best time to follow up with leads.
6. Reply.io

Reply.io is a great tool for sales and marketing teams. It allows you to automate your email outreach and is especially helpful for outbound sales, account-based marketing and for link building campaigns.
Reply.io Key features:
One of Reply.io’s key features is the AI email assistant.
The reply.io AI email assistant helps you write cold emails that are likely to receive a response.
They do this by analyzing your cold emails and look at the:
Subject length
Word count
Question count
Reading level
Positivity

It then gives your email a “score” on whether someone is likely to respond to one of your cold emails.
This can help you significantly improve your cold emails (especially if you’re new to cold emailing).
Other key features include:
Whatsapp and SMS integration: Engage with prospects through whatsapp or via text messaging
Multi-channel outreach: Reach out to prospects on multiple marketing channels such as email, phone, text and LinkedIn.
Automatic email warm up: Slowly send out emails at the start to build up your domain name email reputation and trust score with email providers
Reply.io Pros and Cons:
Pros:
Helps you write more effective cold emails through the AI email assistant feature
Allows you to do sales outreach on multiple marketing channels
Lots of helpful statistics to improve your cold outreach campaigns
Easy to use interface
Cons:
Can be pricier compared to other software that handles sales outreach campaigns
Reply.io Pricing

Reply.io pricing starts from $70/month per user for their sales engagement plan. They also have additional packages for business sales teams and agencies.
Reply.io Final Thoughts
Reply.io is best if you’re looking for a tool that will help you and your sales teams write better cold emails using AI.
7. SmartReach.io

SmartReach.io is a cold email tool which is especially good for digital marketing agencies.
SmartReach.io Key features:
Automated email outreach: You can send automatic follow up emails at the push of a button
Improved email deliverability: Before you send any emails, SmartReach can if previous emails were reported as spam
Email validation: SmartReach will check to see if the email address you’re using is real or not
Project Management: Manage campaigns for your business and your teams
SmartReach.io Pros and Cons:
Pros:
Manage clients using this cold email tool from a single login (useful for agencies)
Create personalized email campaigns with dynamic email content based on lots of variables
Manage multiple email campaigns with built in project management CRM features
Integrates with lots of other 3rd party software
Use a primary inbox to manage all your messages in one place
Cons:
Can sometimes have a bit more of a learning curve compared to other solutions
SmartReach.io Pricing

SmartReach.io price starts from $24/month for an individual account that can contact up to 1,000 people per month.
SmartReach.io Final Thoughts
SmartReach has similar features to other cold emailing tools. Their biggest strength and USP is probably their agency account features. The SmartReach agency account is great for agencies that want to use cold email to run lead generation campaigns for clients. which would be great for agencies that are looking to generate leads for their clients.
8. ContactOut

ContactOut is a Google chrome extension that allows you to send personalized email campaigns quickly and easily.
ContactOut key features:
- Helpful templates: Write emails quickly using a sales email template from either ContactOut, AutoKlose or another cold email tool which can be imported in
- Automatic follow up: Send multiple follow up emails to multiple people
- Data enrichment: Upload a list of LinkedIn URL’s and instantly find their job details and contact information (including personal email)
- Search portal: Find new contacts who are NOT on LinkedIn
- LinkedIn integration: As you’re browsing LinkedIn, you can easily find your LinkedIn contacts phone number and email address at the click of a button
ContactOut Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Integrates well with Linkedin
- It’s very helpful when finding potential clients
- Allows you to search for new leads who are both on and off LinkedIn
- Very easy to use
Cons:
- Doesn’t have as many features compared to other emailing tools
ContactOut Pricing

ContactOut has a free plan for up to 40 contacts per month. The paid plan starts from $29/month for up to 100 contacts per month.
ContactOut Final Thoughts
ContactOut is an excellent cold email platform if you’re looking for a simple to use Chrome extension for LinkedIn search. The great thing about this tool is that you don’t need to be connected to people on LinkedIn to find their email and phone number.
9. Lusha

Lusha is a great cold emailing tool if you’re looking to run b2b lead generation cold email campaigns targeting key decision makers.
Lusha key features:
- Employee search: You can find decision makers or business owners using their built-in search tool
- Chrome extension: Quickly and easily find the contact details of people on LinkedIn, Salesforce or any other website
- Data enrichment: Upload a list of your own Salesforce data and Lusha can find additional contact information about those people
Lusha Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Fresh and accurate data on people
- Great for b2b lead generation
- Helpful when finding contact info of decision makers
- Easy to use
Cons:
- Doesn’t have as many features compared to other emailing tools
- Can be more expensive then some other cold emailing tools
Lusha Pricing

Lusha has a free plan for up to 5 credits (or contacts) per month. The paid plan starts from $39/month per user and for 40 credits (or contacts) per month.
Lusha Final Thoughts
Lusha would be my recommendation if you’re using Salesforce because of the helpful integrations it has with that platform.
Honorable mentions
If none of the email tools above look like a good fit for you or your sales team, here are some additional cold email outreach software that you can use for lead generation (honorable mentions):
Autoklose
Outreach.io
GMass
Hunter.io
FAQs
Ashley Davis (or ‘Ash’ for short) is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social. For over 15 years, he has been helping business owners with lead generation. Ash specializes in helping businesses get high-quality leads, appointments and clients each month in an automated, scalable and profitable way. You can watch his free Masterclass training to learn more.