AI Sales

Instantly.ai Full Review: All You Need To Know [2024]

lemlist team
LAST UPDATED
September 5, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

Contrary to popular belief…

Sending cold emails is still an effective way to grow your business. 

However, you’ll need dedicated cold email software to empower your teams to handle high-volume campaigns.

This review explores Instantly.ai—a modern and feature-rich cold emailing solution.

We’ll analyze Instantly.ai’s cold emailing capabilities and how to use them effectively to grow your business.

Instantly.io overview

Instantly is a fairly new player in the cold email space. It’s a competent cold email sending tool with access to:

  • Lead Finder
  • Lead Management
  • Analytics
  • Unibox features
  • AI-driven analytics
  • A/Z testing (many variables as opposed to A/B testing)
  • Templates to automate email sending.

However, one its best features is email warm-up.

What is email warm-up? 

Email warm-up aims to ensure high deliverability and improves your sender reputation. For modern email outreach, email warm-up is essential because it’s harder than ever to land in your audience’s inbox.

For whom is Instantly.ai?

Instantly is a good option if you’re a digital agency or a small business looking to grow their business through cold emails. It offers good value-for-money plans and lets you try out their product before purchasing.

It’s not for everyone, though, especially for enterprises that send thousands of emails per day. Its lack of integration also makes it unfavorable for businesses that use third-party services.

Features

Instantly is a feature-rich cold emailing tool.

It offers just the right mix of features rather than offering everything to the user and overwhelming them.

Lead finder
Campaigns
Unibox and CRM
Tracking and analytics
Lead management
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited warmups
Inbox rotation
Email verification
Cold email catalyst
Private community access

Let's go through the key features below to better understand what Instantly.ai can do for you:

Lead Finder

Lead Finder is an essential Instantly feature.

It solves a main challenge of cold email, i.e. finding relevant and accurate leads. According to Instantly, they verify leads’ information themselves rather than relying on 3rd party tools.

To make lead finding easier, you can use Lead Finder’s filters. These filters include: 

  • Job Titles
  • Industry
  • Employees
  • Revenue
  • Domains
  • News
  • …and more

Since you can apply multiple filters, narrowing down your search and finding leads worth pursuing becomes easy.

So, to search for CEOs in the United States in the Computer & Electronics, you’ll need to set three filters, as shown in the image below.

You can keep adding more filters to fine-tune your search. Instantly Leads Finder also offers an Enrichment feature that lets you upload a list of people and enrich their contact info.

You can also search leads with keywords such as agency, streamers, etc. And, if you’re not sure about the keyword or the filter to apply, all you need to do is use their clone clients feature that shows similar prospects.

According to Instantly, they have a vast database of 160 million contacts. That’s a significant database.

Lead Finder is the core Instantly feature, however, it is not available in the free version.

Also, there are export limits of 1000/month and 10K/month for the Growth Leads and Hyperleads packages (their leads packages).

Campaigns

Instantly is keen to give you all the necessary features in a single place.

One such feature is Campaigns, where you set up leads, sequences, and schedules to reach your target audience and continue growing your leads.

The Campaign UI is straightforward. 

To get started, create a new campaign and name it accordingly. Once done, you’ll get a clean set of options, including adding leads, adding sequences for emails, or setting a schedule for email sending.

Users can also access Options to tweak the campaign according to their needs.

If you’re an advanced user, you can also check out advanced options to further optimize your campaign, such as: 

  • A/Z testing to auto-optimize
  • Setting a limit to max new leads
  • Setting up CC and BCC to your emails

I found the Instantly Campaign feature self-sufficient for most users. It offers decent automation options (such as scheduling) and options to customize the Campaign, making it flexible for most use cases.

The Campaign and Lead Finder feature work together. 

For instance, you can easily send leads to specific campaigns. Also, the "evergreen campaign" option keeps sending leads to the campaigns based on your Lead Finder parameters.

In short, Instantly's Campaign is a good fit for most users.

Unibox and CRM

Instantly makes it easy with Unibox to reply to all your email accounts and campaigns.

Sending all your cold emails from one account can lead to some deliverability issues, so you’ll need to use the inbox rotation feature and spread the load over multiple accounts.

It is common for cold email experts to use multiple emails to scale their campaigns. However, this leads to a challenge to handle replies from all the email accounts. This is where Unibox comes in, as it provides a centralized place to handle all the replies from multiple email accounts.

In conjunction with Unibox, you also get Instantly’s Warmup feature. As Instantly is a tool where you send mass emails, you’ll need to warm up your email address so that the chances of it landing in spam are reduced -- increasing sending reputation.

Instantly also added the CRM (Customer relationship management) feature.

It enables you to manage workflows for your campaigns. 

Once you get a response, you can create a work card on the CRM showing the value of each deal. It offers motivation to work towards changing the leads to customers. The CRM lets you reply to your leads and move them to the next stage of the workflow.

Tracking and Analytics

Instantly’s analytics feature helps you understand how your campaigns perform over time. It gives you insight into various email and campaign metrics, including emails sent, opens, replies, or link tracking.

All their reports are in UTC, which might be convenient or inconvenient depending on how you like to work.

Despite some customers complaining about the lack of detail in Instantly’s analytics, I found their analytics and tracking sufficient. It gives insight into your overall cold email effort and analytics on the campaign level.

Lead Management

Lead management Instantly gives you the ability to manage your leads. You can create lists solely or based on campaigns.

Its AI prompt feature gives you access to the Template Hub, which contains useful automated actions to ease your lead management effort. For example, you can use the “Company Name Cleanup” template to clean up the company name before sending emails.

Similarly, you can use the “General unique opening sentence” to write unique opening one-liners for cold emails.

All in all, Instantly’s lead management is good but there's room for improvement.

Even with AI prompts and the ability to manage lists, it lacks some key features that would be nice to have -- such as calendar and email queue additions.

What is Instantly missing?

Instantly is a promising and useful cold email solution. However, it could be better. Some of its drawbacks include:

  • Limited lead management features
  • Lack of advanced features
  • Lack of multichannel acquisition features
  • Lack of native integrations to data sources
  • Documentation can be improved to help users
  • No proper mobile support
  • Lack of visual builder

Before jumping to any conclusions, you need to consider the software age and value for money. As a relatively new solution, it offers decent features at good value.

Instantly.ai pricing and value for money

Instantly uses a freemium model for its customers. It divides its plans into two main categories:

  • Sending & Warmup
  • Leads

Sending & Warmup

These plans are great for customers who want cold email solutions for sending and warming features. You get to choose between three plans:

Growth Hypergrowth LightSpeed
Starts at $37 per month Starts at $97 per month Starts at $358 per month
It provides access to unlimited email accounts, unlimited email warmups, 1000 uploaded contacts, and 5000 emails monthly. It offers everything Growth plans offer plus 25000 uploaded contacts, 100K emails monthly, and premium live support. This plan offers everything in HyperGrowth plus 100K uploaded contacts and 500K emails monthly

If you go for the yearly plan, you can save up to 20% per year. Before you choose any of the plans, try the free plan.

Leads

If you want to utilize the lead features Instantly, then choose between:

  • Growth Leads: It starts at $47 per month with 1000 verified leads monthly, advanced filters, enrichment, and keywords.
  • Supersonic Leads: This plan starts at $97 per month with everything included in the Growth Leads plan, plus 4500 verified monthly leads instead of 1000.
  • HyperLeads: It is a more expensive plan, starting at $197 per month with 10K verified leads monthly and everything in the previous plans.
  • Light speed: Everything in Hyperleads and 25,000 verified leads/month.

Again, on yearly plans, there’s a 20% discount:

What customers are saying about Instantly

Instantly has overwhelmingly positive reviews. 

One verified customer praised Instantly for how they managed to simplify email outreach:

While another customer showed their appreciation for Instantly’s support team:

But as with any app or service, it’s not only rainbows and butterflies.

A recent customer expressed their frustration at the amount of bugs they encountered:

Another dissatisfied customer complained about the poor deliverability they got on emails sent out with Instantly:

Instantly.ai Ratings

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

G2 - 4.9/5 (2,691 reviews) 

Trustpilot -  4.5/5 (305 reviews)

Pros and cons

✅Pros

  • Warming and Sending features
  • A/B testing
  • AI-driven analytics
  • AI prompts for easy templating
  • Automated email warmup feature

❌ Cons

  • Limited lead management features
  • Lacks advanced features as it is new to the market
  • No multichannel acquisition features
  • Lack of native integrations to data sources

So, is Instantly worth it?

Yes, it is. However, the removal of its lifetime deal surely will be missed.

To get a better perspective of its value, you need to take a look at competitors' pricing. Its growth and hyper growth plans offer value for money.

Instantly vs lemlist

Instantly.ai is a robust cold email software. 

Despite its age, it offers valuable features for agencies, marketers, and businesses who want a compact tool to search and manage leads, manage campaigns, and transform them into real customers.

Although Instantly has a pretty solid lead database, lemlist offers a database with +450 million leads, so you can carry out your lead sourcing in bulk and an 80% accurate Email Finder and Verifier.

Instantly, with its good warmup features, provides a high email deliverability rate. 

lemlist on the other hand, offers free access to lemwarm, a specified tool to boost your deliverability, warm up your emails, and monitor your outreach activities.

While Instantly AI-driven analytics and template modules also make automation accessible throughout the whole cold emailing process, lemlist offers a full AI campaign generator with which you can highly personalize all of your emails, generate icebreakers and create complete sequences.

Instantly’s pricing model is good. However, it can become confusing as they offer different plans for Warming & Sending and Leads. 

Despite its value for money, enterprises looking for large-scale cold emailing might find Instantly limiting.

lemlist, on the other hand is perfect for scaling your personalized cold email campaigns, plus:

It offers straightforward pricing plans ⬇️

There’s a 20% discount on yearly plans, and a 10% discount on quarterly plans.

Check out this lemlist vs Instantly comparison for more information or simply start your 14-day free trial with lemlist now.

lemlist team
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G2 Rating
Price
Best for
Standout feature
Con
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/mo
$75/mo
$2,999/mo
Large, distributed sales teams
AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs
Lack of tracking system
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Sales operations and finance teams
Powerful configurability
Limited training resources and complex to navigate
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Mid-market and enterprise businesses
Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$15/user/mo
$40/user/mo
Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$30/user/mo
$35/user/mo
Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
Ease of use and adoption
Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs
4.8
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/user/mo
$50/user/mo
Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-check
Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-xmark
7-day trial
$12/month
4.75
star
star
star
star
star-half
Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
square-check
Limited
square-check
Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
square-xmark
Limited
square-check
Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
square-check
iOS only
Limited
square-xmark
1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
square-check
$9.99/month
4.45
star
star
star
star
star-half
160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
Best for
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-check
€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
star
star
star
star
square-check
30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-xmark
square-check
Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-xmark
€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
Better communication within teams and with customers by organizing information about customer interactions and history.
Data Handling
Handles both identified and anonymous data, stitches together various data points.
Deals primarily with identified customer data.
Use Cases
Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM
CRM
Free plan
Best feature
Best for
Con
1. HubSpot CRM
square-check
Sales automation
Sales teams
Up to 1,000 contacts
2. Insightly
square-check
Custom fields
Basic needs
Not enough info about the free plan
3. Agile CRM
square-check
Deal and sales pipeline tracking
Small teams
Up to 10 users
4. Zoho CRM
square-check
Lead and contact management
Businesses of all sizes
Limited to 3 users
5. ClickUp
square-check
Unlimited tasks and unlimited members
Personal use
Up to 100MB storage
6. EngageBay
square-check
Live chat
Small and midsize enterprises
Up to 1,000 branded emails per month
7. Bitrix24
square-check
Unlimited users and 5 scrum teams
Big teams
Up to 5GB of cloud storage
8. FreshSales
square-check
Easy to use and simple setup
Beginners
Up to 3 users
9. Mailchimp
square-check
Very beginner friendly
Marketing teams
Send up to 500 branded emails per month
Type of Affiliate Marketing
Unattached
Related
Involved
Format
Paid advertising
Social media or YouTube channels
Dedicated website or blog
Focus
Quick income
Your niche
Your audience
Engagement with your audience
square-xmark
square-check
square-check
square-check
square-check
Very close connection with your audience
Pro
Little effort
Higher credibility thanks to your niche
Long-lasting and scalable
Con
Paid ads cost a lot
Potential for bias since you don’t use the thing you promote
Require time, effort, and dedication

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