The best cold email software, judged on the prices I could actually read
You have no salesperson. The work comes in through people who already know you, and when they go quiet, so does the month. Someone told you to look at cold email software, you opened five pricing pages, and at least two of them wanted a demo call before showing a number.
Before anything else: Klientee is my company. It appears in the list below, with its prices, next to tools that compete with it. Read the rest knowing that.
I also know who tends to read this. Most owners of small service firms receive cold emails and dislike them. So the honest framing is not that prospecting is a virtue you have been neglecting. It is this: a referral does a large amount of invisible work for you. It explains what you are worth, to someone who resembles the person referring, at the moment that person happens to need it. The one part you never control is the timing. No tool changes your opinion of cold email. What a tool changes is whether the question of who to write to this week still gets asked in a week when your calendar is full.
How I got these numbers
On 29 September 2026 I loaded ten pricing pages with a headless browser, waited for each page to render, scrolled it, and read the visible text. Everything below comes from that reading. Nothing is estimated, and nothing is taken from a review site or a press release.
The method has a limit I have to state plainly. Some pages block automated reading. Others show no figure until you move a slider, flip a billing toggle or request a demo. Where I could not read a price, I say exactly that, with the date. I am not saying those companies keep their prices secret. I am saying my browser saw no number on that page on that day.
Prices move. This is one reading on one date. If you work at one of these companies and I have a figure wrong, write to me and I will correct it.
The prices I could read on 29 September 2026
Smartlead, smartlead.ai. Figures visible: $32 per month, $59 per month, $78. Add-ons are priced separately on the same page: one at $59, one at $39, one at $29.
Saleshandy, saleshandy.com. On annual billing: $34 per month (billed $408 per year), $76 per month (billed $912 per year), $149 per month (billed $1,788 per year). Monthly billing is higher: $41, $99, $189.
Regie.ai, regie.ai. Figures visible: $0, $41, $49, $125, $150. A free tier exists.
Instantly, instantly.ai. Figures visible: $47 per month, $97 per month, $358 per month.
AiSDR, aisdr.com. The page says "start at $250/mo and scale confidently with predictable costs and flexible terms". Figures visible: $250, $900, $2,500. Also on the page: a per-campaign managed service at plus $149 per campaign, a fully managed service at plus $2,500 per month, and the lines "from $349/month", "from $94/month" and "from $59/user/month".
Explee, explee.com. Priced by credit rather than by seat. The page offers $30 to try it, shows amounts between $1 and $15, and repeats unit lines of the form "from $5 per 1k" and "from $10 per 1k".
Klientee, my own product. $149, $349 and $749 per month, per site. No credits, no per-action billing, no multiplication by the number of users. The first proof is free and runs before any account exists: you type your website address and read what the system understood about your business, with every claim backed by an extract from one of your own pages.
The four pages where I saw no figure
On 29 September 2026, with the same method, no public price appeared for Artisan (artisan.co), 11x (11x.ai), lemlist (lemlist.com) or Woodpecker (woodpecker.co).
Two of those pages rendered and offered a demo request instead of a number. The others returned too little text to judge. That is the whole of what I can tell you. Anyone writing that these tools are expensive, or cheap, on the basis of a page that showed no number is inventing the figure, and a comparison article that invents one figure has told you nothing you can trust about the rest.
What the shape of the price tells you before the amount does
The amounts above are less useful than the three shapes hiding behind them.
Per seat. You pay per person using the tool. AiSDR's page shows a "from $59/user/month" line. This shape is built for a sales team. You have one seat, maybe two, so the headline number and your number are close, and it stays cheap as long as nobody else joins.
Per credit or per action. Explee is the clear example: $30 to start, then unit lines from $5 per thousand and from $10 per thousand. This is arguably the fairest shape, because you pay for what you consume. The problem is budgeting. You cannot forecast your consumption before you have run the thing for a quarter, and you are the person who has to put a figure in the spreadsheet now.
Flat per month. Instantly at $47, $97 and $358, Smartlead at $32, $59 and $78, Saleshandy at $34 to $149 on annual billing, Klientee at $149, $349 and $749. You know in October what March costs. For a firm with no salesperson and no finance department, that predictability is often worth more than the lower entry price.
Two details worth reading the small print for. First, add-ons: Smartlead's $59, $39 and $29 add-ons are listed separately from the plan, so the entry figure is the entry figure and not necessarily the invoice. Second, annual commitment: Saleshandy's own page shows $34 per month on annual billing against $41 on monthly, which is the price of being wrong about a tool for eleven more months.
And a third shape that is not software at all. AiSDR's plus $149 per campaign and plus $2,500 per month lines are a managed service: a person does the work. If you have already paid an agency for six months and counted the meetings at the end, you know what that shape costs and whether it suited you. Nothing in this article makes that decision for you.
What no price on this list measures
All of these tools send. None of the pricing pages I read tells you who does the part before sending: deciding which companies are worth writing to this month, and what sentence would be true about each of them. In a firm with no salesperson, that person is you, on a Thursday evening, after the client work.
That is the whole reason I built Klientee the way I did, and it is also the reason I charge a flat monthly price rather than per credit. The unit I am selling is not messages sent. But if what you actually need is a fast, cheap sending engine because you have already solved the who and the what, then $32 or $47 per month buys that, and $149 does not buy it better.
If you are still deciding whether any of this belongs in your business at all, the question underneath is a legal and reputational one rather than a pricing one. I wrote about that separately: what a cold email is, and what separates it from spam.
Where I am the wrong answer
Your order book is full and referrals are arriving. Buy nothing this quarter. The tool will sit there, the subscription will renew, and you will cancel it in February feeling like you wasted money, which you will have.
You want very high volume. The $32 to $97 tools are built for sending at scale. Mine is not, and at $149 it would be poor value if volume is the thing you are buying.
You want a human to own it. Then you are looking at the managed lines, at plus $2,500 per month and upwards, or at an agency. Compare those against a salary, not against a $47 subscription.
You want to test the idea before committing anything. Regie.ai publishes a $0 tier and Explee offers $30 to try it. Klientee's first proof is free and needs no account. Use whichever costs you least to find out you were right to be sceptical.
Four things to check before you pay
- Write your monthly ceiling down before you open any pricing page. Then only look at what fits under it.
- Ask which of the three shapes you are buying: per seat, per credit, or flat. Then ask what the invoice looks like in a month when you send nothing.
- Ask whether the advertised figure includes the add-ons you will need, or whether they are listed separately, as they are on at least one of these pages.
- If the annual price is lower, ask yourself honestly whether you will still want this tool in eleven months. If you are not sure, pay monthly and accept the higher number.
Prices checked 29 September 2026. Corrections welcome.
Axel Joseph Auguste
Common questions
Do these figures include everything, or just the headline plan?
They are the numbers visible on each vendor's pricing page on 29 September 2026, and nothing more. I did not verify what each tier includes, how many sending accounts come with it, or which limits apply, because that would mean describing features I have not tested. Treat the figures as a starting point for your own reading of the page, not as a total cost.
Is it worth paying annually to get the lower monthly rate?
Only if you already know the tool works for you. Saleshandy's page shows $34 per month on annual billing against $41 on monthly, so the saving is real but it is roughly the price of one month. If you are still testing whether cold email belongs in your business at all, paying monthly for the first quarter costs you very little and keeps the exit open.
Can I do this without software at all?
Yes, and for the first twenty contacts you probably should. A normal mailbox, a spreadsheet and an hour a week will tell you whether anyone replies. Software becomes worth paying for at the point where the hour a week stops happening, which in a small service firm is usually the first busy month. That is the failure the subscription is actually insuring against.
Why does one of the tools in your list cost more than the cheap ones?
Because they are not selling the same unit. The $32 to $97 tools price sending capacity, and they do it well at that price. Klientee, at $149 and up, prices the decision about who to write to and what is true about them, which is the part that otherwise lands on your evening. If you have already solved that part, the cheaper shape is the better buy and I would say so to your face.