12 Best Instantly.ai Alternatives For Cold Email (2026)

Instantly.ai is a software that allows you to send cold emails.

Their UI/UX isn’t great, making it difficult for beginners to use.

In this article, I share 12 alternative cold email tools:

1. Emailchaser
2. Woodpecker
3. Yesware
4. Hunter
5. Mailshake
6. Outreach.io
7. Salesloft
8. OutReachBin
9. Reply.io
10. Close
11. Klenty
12. HubSpot

1. Emailchaser

Emailchaser and Instantly have similar features.

However, only Emailchaser offers "double-verification"; this means that when you upload leads to a campaign in Emailchaser, they are verified through two different verification services (BounceBan and Enrichley).

If a lead isn't marked as valid/safe by both services, then the lead will not be contacted. This means that your bounce rate will be sub-1%.

If you use Instantly (no double-verification), then your bounce rate will likely be 3% or greater, which can eventually lead to your sender email accounts being blacklisted by ESPs.

Still don't believe me?

Check out the below Reddit post:

2. Woodpecker

Woodpecker allows you to send cold email campaigns.

The issue with Woodpecker is that they lack important features, such as a sales CRM.

Overall, it’s a good product, but it can’t do everything.

3. Yesware

Yesware is a chrome extension, meaning that you use their extension directly inside of your Gmail or Outlook account.

This is ok if you are doing basic cold email campaigns, but if you are looking to launch serious campaigns, it won’t work.

Additionally, Yesware allows you to see when your cold emails are opened. This isn’t a good idea since open tracking can negatively impact your deliverability.

4. Hunter

Hunter is best known for their email finder tool.

However, their email finder isn’t the best; our study shows the top 6 email finder tools (ranked by accuracy).

You can launch cold email campaigns through Hunter, but their highest plan only allows you to connect 10 sender email accounts, which isn’t enough if you are looking to send very high volume.

5. Mailshake

Mailshake is a cold email and cold call tool that focuses on salespeople that are looking to do lower volume.

You can launch cold email campaigns through Mailshake, but they don’t offer inbox rotation, meaning that you can’t send a high volume of emails without going to spam.

6. Outreach.io

Outreach is popular in the enterprise sales crowd.

However, their cold email tech is outdated and not sufficient for people looking to scale and avoid spam.

They are also very expensive compared to other tools.

7. Salesloft

Salesloft is not the best cold email tool.

They don’t offer features like inbox rotation or an OpenAI integration.

Most people that use Salesloft are enterprise sales people dealing with inbound leads. If you are doing cold outbound, then I don’t recommend using Salesloft.

8. OutReachBin

OutReachBin is a tool that allows you to send cold emails.

They also have a warm up feature, which I don’t recommend, since email warm up doesn’t work.

9. Reply.io

Reply.io allows you to send cold emails.

They don’t offer a sales CRM, which is a problem, since it forces you to use a different tool to manage responses.

10. Close

Close is a sales CRM.

You can send cold emails through Close, however, they are focused on low volume outreach. You cannot connect an unlimited number of email accounts to Close.

11. Klenty

Klenty is another sales engagement platform that allows you to send cold emails.

But like many other tools, their technology is outdated, and does not include important features like inbox rotation and unlimited email sending accounts.

12. HubSpot

HubSpot has many features, one being a sales CRM.

However, their sales CRM is built for people that want to manually type each email for each prospect.

This is inefficient and not ideal for most situations.

Final thoughts

Emailchaser is the best alternative to Instantly.

Emailchaser's double-verification is the only way to ensure a sub-1% bounce rate across all of your cold email campaigns.

On a related note, I recommend that you read my article Does Email Warm Up Work & Is It Necessary?