If you're picking cold email tools for startups on a founder's budget, Smartlead and Woodpecker are the two cheapest real options, both around $32 to $35 a month with unlimited mailboxes and warmup included from day one. Instantly looks similarly priced at $47, but that only covers sending. The lead database and CRM are separate paid tracks. lemlist runs close to that price only if you stay email-only, and Apollo is worth a look if you also need a lead database and don't mind starting on a free plan with a hard credit cap.
The honest answer for a first campaign depends on one thing: do you already have a list, or do you need the tool to also find people to email? That changes which entry price holds up.
Cold email tools for startups: entry price and limits compared
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | Warmup included? | Emails/month at entry | Where it stops scaling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smartlead | $32.50/mo billed annually ($39 monthly) | Yes, unlimited mailboxes | 6,000 | Base plan has no API, webhooks, or CRM; those need Pro at $78.30/mo |
| Woodpecker | $35/mo for 500 contacted prospects | Yes, 2 free warm-ups, scales with tier | 8,000 | LinkedIn is a $29/mo per-account add-on, extra warm-up is $5/mo per account |
| Instantly | $47/mo (Growth, Outreach plan) | Yes, unlimited mailboxes | 5,000 | Lead database and CRM are separate Credits and Bundle plans, not included |
| lemlist | $55/mo flat, unlimited users (Email plan, billed annually) | Yes, plus a deliverability hub | 50,000 | LinkedIn and calling need the per-seat Multichannel plan at $87/seat/mo |
| Apollo | Free (900 credits/year) or $49/seat/mo for Basic | Yes, on paid plans | Sequences unlimited on Basic, but a credit cap limits contact reveals | Credits get burned by revealing emails and phone numbers, not by sending volume |
All prices are from each vendor's pricing page, checked in early July 2026. Confirm your own quote before you commit, since some of these change their billed-monthly rate versus annual rate.
Warmup: included everywhere, priced differently elsewhere
Every tool on this list includes inbox warmup on its cheapest plan, so that part isn't a real differentiator anymore. What differs is what else is bundled next to it.
Smartlead and Instantly both give you unlimited connected mailboxes on the entry plan, so warmup cost doesn't grow if you add more sending inboxes later. Woodpecker gives you unlimited mailboxes too, but ties warmup slots to your contacted-prospects tier: the entry level only comes with 2 free warm-ups, and extra ones cost $5 a month per account. lemlist bundles warmup into a deliverability hub alongside its 650M+ contact database, and the flat $55 Email plan covers unlimited users at that one price, the same way Smartlead and Woodpecker don't charge extra per teammate either.
Apollo is the outlier. It includes warmup only once you're on a paid plan, and its Free plan doesn't mention it. Apollo isn't built as a pure sender first, so warmup rides alongside a much bigger product.
How far the cheapest plan sends
This is where the sticker price stops telling the whole story.
Instantly's $47 Growth plan caps out at 5,000 emails and 1,000 uploaded contacts a month. Hit that and you're on Hypergrowth at $97. Worse for a bootstrapped founder: Instantly sells sending, lead credits, and CRM as three separate purchase tracks (Outreach, Credits, Bundle), so a working stack with both sending and a lead list usually runs closer to $94/month than the $47 headline.
Smartlead's $32.50 Base plan covers 2,000 active contacts and 6,000 emails a month, more send volume than Instantly's entry tier for less money, but the Base plan doesn't include the REST API, webhooks, or Smartlead's CRM deal tracker. Those come with Pro at $78.30/mo.
Woodpecker works differently: you pick a number of contacted prospects on a slider, starting at 500, and every tier includes 16x that number in emails and 4x in stored prospects. The $35 entry tier gets you 8,000 emails and 2,000 stored prospects, more sending volume than Smartlead or Instantly include at their entry price, with unlimited team members and mailboxes included at every level.
lemlist's Email plan sends up to 50,000 emails a month for a flat $55, the highest cap by a wide margin, because lemlist doesn't meter by seat on that plan. The catch is that LinkedIn, calling, and SMS require the Multichannel plan, which switches to per-seat pricing at $87/seat/mo with 5 senders per seat.
When Apollo is the better first move
If you don't have a list yet, none of the pure senders above will find you leads. Apollo has a genuine free plan with full access to its 230M+ contact database, 900 credits a year, and 2 sequences, which is enough to run a real first campaign without paying anything. Paid plans start at $49/seat/month for Basic, billed annually, and add unlimited sequences and warmup.
The tradeoff is the credit system sitting on top of the seat price. Revealing a verified email costs 1 credit and a phone number costs 8, so an active founder can burn through a year's credit allowance fast, and Apollo's pricing then stops scaling on send volume and starts scaling on how many contacts you reveal.
The recommendation, by starting point
If you already have a list and need to send it: Smartlead or Woodpecker, in that order. Smartlead is cheaper per month; Woodpecker sends more emails at entry (8,000 versus 6,000) and doesn't charge per seat if you bring on a second person. Neither locks core sending features behind a paywall the way Instantly splits sending from its lead database.
If you don't have a list yet and need to build one first: start on Apollo's free plan. It won't send high volume, but it gets your first outreach out the door for $0 while you validate messaging, and you can move to a dedicated sender once you have contacts worth mailing at scale.
If your team plans to run LinkedIn and calling alongside email from month one, not later: lemlist's flat $55 Email plan is the cheapest way in, but budget for the jump to per-seat Multichannel pricing once you need those other channels. Our Instantly alternatives and Smartlead alternatives rankings cover the fuller field if none of these fit once you're past a first campaign.
This article was originally published on TopAlternativesTo, a directory comparing software tools and their alternatives.
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