Automating LinkedIn messages can transform your outreach strategy. Imagine saving hours each week while booking more meetings. 

Moreover, using software that automates LinkedIn messages is like having one powerful way to accelerate your outreach and reach more customers faster. That's why, in this guide, you'll discover:

• Why LinkedIn automation matters;
• How to understand and choose the right tools for automation;
• How to generate a target list of your audience so your LinkedIn message automation has better results and leaves you with more time for other tasks;
• A step-by-step guide on how to set up messaging automation effectively;
• Best practices and tips for maximizing your success with automated messages.

Understanding the importance of LinkedIn automation

As a network, LinkedIn is a powerful platform for sales reps, marketers, founders, and other professionals. However, manually sending LinkedIn messages to reach people from your lead list can be time-consuming. 

Automating LinkedIn messages with tools like our Skylead, a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, can be a game-changer. It's proven to save up to 11+ hours of work per week by putting outreach tasks on autopilot, relieving you from the burden of manual outreach. This way, you can focus more on relationship-building and closing deals, making your work more efficient and effective.

Secondly, automation helps you stay consistent with your messaging, which is something our user, Dennis Goyal, experienced firsthand. He notes:

"The outreach became very consistent with Skylead because it was completely automated. I used to do it manually, but it was very inconsistent. Like, I was able to do it 3 days in and then got bored."

Consistency is vital to building relationships and trust. By automating, you ensure that every connection gets a timely and personalized message.

Finally, automation tools provide you with the power to track responses and engagement. This data is not just information; it's a strategic tool for refining your approach and improving your results over time. In other words, it gives you a sense of control and direction in your outreach efforts. 

So, you see? By adopting automation, you're not just saving time; you're enhancing your overall outreach strategy. This makes it easier to scale your efforts and achieve your business goals.

1# step: Choose the right tool to automate LinkedIn messages

Selecting the right LinkedIn automation tool is crucial for your success. There are various tools available, each with unique features. However, there are some dangers as well.

Pick the best LinkedIn automation tool type

Firstly, consider using a cloud-based solution, the kind that is our Skylead. They run entirely on the web, and you don’t have to keep your computer on as opposed to desktop apps or Chrome browser extensions. Moreover, if you use a Chrome extension, you risk getting your LinkedIn account restricted. 

It’s because these types of tools inject code into LinkedIn, so this network can detect it and restrict you. However, this is not the case with cloud-based solutions; you simply get your dedicated IP address to shield your online activity.

Another significant advantage of cloud-based solutions like Skylead, as opposed to browser extensions and desktop apps, is the convenience they offer. With Skylead, you can have an integrated inbox and easily manage multiple LinkedIn accounts, a feature not commonly found in other types of tools. This makes it an ideal solution for professionals who are managing multiple accounts. 

Considering price VS feature ratio

Secondly, consider the features vs price ratio. For example, if you plan to automate LinkedIn messages, then look for LinkedIn automation tools that can automate both paid and free InMails, such as Skylead. This feature is rare on the market but it’s pretty useful to get to as many people on LinkedIn as possible. 

Also, many tools don’t have email automation, so you can’t maximize getting in touch with your leads using both channels. The money you pay might be similar, but this crucial feature might be missing. 

For example, if you opt for our tool, you can add an unlimited number of email accounts at no extra cost. Skylead will auto-rotate them to send thousands of emails per month, bypassing the email and even LinkedIn limits.

The third feature to look out for is a Smart sequence. Smart sequences are algorithms that automate LinkedIn messages and emails and combine them with if/else conditions. This way, you can create a coherent outreach flow that the tool will follow and execute depending on your leads’ behavior.

The one feature you might not know you needed is Email finder & verifier, which lets you use your automated email outreach to the fullest potential. Some tools might have it but limit their usage or don’t have it at all. For example, in Skylead, you can include it into your Smart sequence, and it will double-verify as many emails as you’d like without breaking the outreach flow.  

The last feature you should consider is native image & GIF personalization. Add it to your automated LinkedIn emails to increase the response rate up to 63%. 

These are just our feature recommendations because we know and tested their benefits. However, at the end of the day, you are the one who knows what your precise outreach needs and goals are. Just make sure you compare every tool's price vs. features ratio, and make this one of your deciding factors.

2# step: Find leads and prepare your lead source

Prospecting suitable leads is integral for your LinkedIn outreach and automation success. You can reach out all you like, but if your leads aren’t appropriate for your business, you won’t have much success. 

By taking the time for prospecting, you set the stage for a successful automated outreach campaign. This ensures that your messages reach the right people, increasing your chances of positive responses.

To find suitable leads, you must first define your niche, ideal customer profile, and buyer persona. ICP represents the list of characteristics of the company ideal for your business, such as industry, headcount, location, etc. Meanwhile, the Buyer persona contains all the attributes of the decision-maker or product user within that company.

Both of these documents need to contain actionable pieces of information that you can use to find your leads on LinkedIn. In other words, apart from other info, go to LinkedIn, check out the filters, and add that information to documents. If you’re unsure how to do it, check out our step-by-step guides on creating an Ideal customer profile and Buyer persona, and feel free to use templates.

Once it is all written down, search LinkedIn for the target occupation.

Then hit People, and use additional filters, such as industry and location, to narrow your search. Once done, hit Show results and save that search URL. We’re going to need it for the next step.

However, using Sales Navigator filters, you can choose Account filters to find your ICP and search for your buyer persona within that company page. You can also use Lead filters to find the Buyer persona directly. We’ll choose the second option.

Once you use the desired filters, copy that search URL for the next step.

3# step: Create your LinkedIn automation campaign

To automate LinkedIn messages, register for the automation tool of your choice and add your LinkedIn account. We’ll use Skylead as an example. 

Once in a dashboard, navigate to the Create new campaign button.  

Next, choose your lead source, aka where Skylead will pull prospects from, and import them. This is where you can paste your search URL from the previous step. 

Just so you know, in Skylead, you can pull your leads from 10 different sources:

• LinkedIn search result
• Sales Navigator search result
• Recruiter search result
• Recruiter Talent Pool
• Recruiter Pipeline URL
• LinkedIn posts
• LinkedIn event attendees 
• Sales Navigator Lead list
• CSV file
• Or via API

Don’t forget to name your campaign, and once done, hit Next. 

In the following step, you can set up your additional campaign settings. Here is where you select the emails you'll use in your outreach so Skylead can auto-rotate them. You can also choose to track the number of clicks or opened emails.

In LinkedIn settings, you can choose to collect contact information and other options that suit your needs. When you’re finished, it’s time to move on to creating a Smart sequence. 

Smart sequence creation for LinkedIn message automation

To create a smart sequence, drag and drop the actions and conditions from the side menu and group them in a coherent flow.

Let's start by adding a connection request. Personalization is key when you automate LinkedIn messages. Use variables such as first name, occupation, and current company to make each message feel unique, or add your own custom variables. 

Make your messages even more personal to your target audience. Mention common connections or specific reasons for reaching out.

Now, we want to check if the prospects have accepted our connection requests. To do this, we'll place the If connected condition. 

If prospects accept our connection requests but do not reply, you can add your follow-up messages. Automated follow-ups ensure you stay on your leads' radar without manual effort. Space the time between them to avoid overwhelming your contacts. Typically, a sequence of three to four messages works well.

However, if the lead doesn’t reply, you can find their email and reach them via different channels. To achieve this, drop Find & verify and the If email verified step. 

If Skylead finds an email, you can send one and a follow-up. However, if everything else fails, you can automate LinkedIn InMail as a last resort. 

There is one other way to personalize messaging campaigns, and it’s image and GIF personalization. To do this, click the LinkedIn message, InMail, or email and hit Add image. Once you upload your media, customize it using variables and your and your leads' profile pictures, and save it.

Once done creating a sequence, start your campaign, and you're done.  

We have a lot of proven Smart sequence templates, such as founder approaching founder, that has a 29% reply rate. So feel free to explore and use them for your messaging campaigns.

4# step: Monitor and optimize your messaging campaigns

To automate LinkedIn messages most successfully, you have only one thing left to do - check for analytics. 

When evaluating the effectiveness of your LinkedIn message automation, it's essential to focus on and point out specific key metrics. That said, these metrics will provide you with valuable insights into the performance of your automation:

1. Open rate to check how effective is your email subject line and if you should tweak it;
2. Response rates to see how each automated message performed: If a particular message has a low response rate, consider tweaking its content or timing;
3. Conversion rate to validate the performance of the entire smart sequence;
4. Acceptance rate to see how effective your connection requests are.

You can check your analytics in Skylead by visiting the Reports page.

Here, you have 3 different ways to check for your analytics:

• The graph shows the overall performance of the campaigns and the ratio between metrics.
• Tabular shows daily metrics and spot patterns and trends, such as what days have the best outreach results, so you can fine-tune your outreach days.
• Step-by-step analysis examines each step so everyone can see what messages worked or didn’t and adjust accordingly. 

In Skylead, you can test up to 5 variants of the same message. So, if you’ve A/B tested your content, you’ll see your results in step-by-step analytics.

One of the best tips we can give to the sales team or everyone is to experiment with different strategies, lead sources, sequence steps, and timing. This way you can see what works best and what your focus should be.

3 best & proven automated LinkedIn message templates

LinkedIn connection requests example

Message template:

Hi {{firstName}}, 

I hope we can connect and see if there is a potential for a mutual collaboration 🙂

If not, I’d be happy to add you to my network.

Results:

49% acceptance rate

39% response rate

InMail template & example

Message template:

Subject line

{{whatyourProductDoes}} actually helps {{benefit}}, {{firstName}}!  🙂

InMail text

Hi {{firstName}}, 

It would be silly of me to think you’re not using a {{yourProductOrServiceType}}, but it’s a no-brainer to present something new on the market that actually helps with {{whatYourProductOrServiceImproves}} specifically. 

{{introAboutYourProductOrService&WhatSetsItApart}}

{{descriptionWhoIsYourProductOrServiceFor&Benefits}}

Let me know if this sounds interesting to you.

Anyways, our Marketing team wrote a great blog on the topic of {{yourProductOrServiceType}}. I hope it helps: LINK

Best, 

Results:

20% response rate

Real-life example:

Subject line
 
SEO Tools actually help boost your rankings, Alex!   🙂

InMail text

Hi Alex, 
It would be silly of me to think you’re not using an SEO tool, but it’s a no-brainer to present something new on the market that actually helps with improving search engine rankings specifically.

SEO Genius is an advanced SEO tool designed to provide unbiased reviews and comprehensive insights. What sets it apart is its ability to integrate AI-driven analysis for more accurate keyword research and competitive analysis.

Our tool is perfect for marketers, content creators, and businesses looking to enhance their online presence. It offers benefits like increased website traffic, higher search rankings, and actionable insights to optimize your content strategy.

Let me know if this sounds interesting to you.

Anyways, our Marketing team wrote a great blog on the topic of SEO tools. 
I hope it helps: LINK


Best, 

LinkedIn message template & example

Message template:

Hi {{firstName}}, 

Thanks for connecting! 😊 I hope we will have a chance to chat, since I’d like to discuss {{yourProduct’sAreaOfExpertise}} if that’s okay with you.

Results:

11% response rate

Real-life example:

Hi Emanuel, 

Thanks for connecting! 😊 and I hope we will have a chance to chat, since I’d like to discuss multi-channel outreach and outbound sales, if that’s okay with you.

Best tips & practices to automate LinkedIn messages

Respond promptly

While automation handles the bulk of the work, personal engagement remains crucial for success. That said, it’s important you engage with prospects who respond promptly. In other words, automation can handle the initial outreach, but taking over the conversation and nurturing it is essential for building relationships. 

That said, sales people can engage with leads by visiting our Smart inbox, which gathers all LinkedIn and email messages in one place. This way, you don’t have to navigate between different platforms. 

In it, you can label your leads, check their details, and respond to them quickly by using Saved replies.

A/B test your LinkedIn messages

To best optimize and improve automated LinkedIn messages, you should A/B test each message. 

To do so, click the LinkedIn message of choice while creating a smart sequence and adding variations.

You can test out your LinkedIn messages, personalized images, calls to action, and InMail and email subject lines.

Remember, the key to success is not just in the initial testing but in the ongoing review and adjustment of your strategy. This active engagement ensures continuous improvement and better results over time.

Integrate your LinkedIn automation tool with CRM

Selecting the right CRM tool is crucial for effective LinkedIn automation. Popular options like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Octopus CRM offer seamless integration with almost any system. 

These tools help you manage your contacts more, track interactions, and even send leads’ data to Skylead. Just make sure to integrate your CRM with Skylead.  

When selecting a CRM for LinkedIn automation, it's essential to choose one that aligns with your business needs and offers robust integration features. This ensures that you're not just investing in a system but in a solution that will help your business thrive.

Realizing the power of automated LinkedIn messages 

Automating your LinkedIn messages carries many benefits and can transform your outreach efforts. That said: 

• By choosing the right tool like Skylead, 
• Prospecting high-quality leads, 
• Creating an effective campaign, 
• And continuously monitoring and optimizing your strategy, 

you can save time and connect more effectively with your target audience. 

Automation allows you to maintain consistency in your messaging and ensures you reach a larger target audience. 

Moreover, you can build stronger relationships and generate more opportunities with the right approach. 

So, are you ready to automate your LinkedIn messages? If so, register for our 7-day free trial, and our customer support will be there, guiding you each step of the way. 😊

FAQ: Common questions about LinkedIn automation

Can LinkedIn messages be automated?

Yes, LinkedIn messages can be automated using various LinkedIn automation tools, such as Skylead. These tools allow you to send personalized messages to multiple contacts without manual effort. They help put your outreach on autopilot and ensure consistency in your messaging.

Can I schedule messages on LinkedIn?

Absolutely! You can schedule messages on LinkedIn using automation tools. This feature lets you plan your outreach in advance and send messages at optimal times. Scheduling ensures that your messages reach your contacts when they are most likely to engage.

Can LinkedIn posts be automated?

Yes, LinkedIn posts can also be automated via LinkedIn bots. Some automation tools are specialized for scheduling and publishing posts on your behalf. This keeps your profile active and engaging without constant manual updates. 

How to set auto message in LinkedIn?

Setting up auto messages on LinkedIn is straightforward. You can use third-party tools like Skylead to create your outreach campaign. Simply add LinkedIn messages in a coherent flow and connect them with conditions. Then, start your campaign to automate the entire outreach flow.

Does LinkedIn allow automation?

No. LinkedIn doesn’t like its users to use automation. That is why they imposed limitations, such as the number of connection requests you can send per week. However, as long as you use reputable tools and not in an excessive way, you’ll avoid account restrictions and be free to automate your outreach.

If much of your job revolves around lead generation, chances are you’ve heard of Smartlead — a tool that automates and streamlines email outreach.

Released in 2021, the software has risen above the noise, and nowadays, many salespeople, marketers, and agencies use it.

But is it the best outreach automation tool on the market?

Lucky for you, this article is your one-stop shop for all things Smartlead. We’ll break down its features and pricing and see what real users have to say about it. But most importantly, we'll introduce you to 11 alternatives so you can compare and choose the perfect tool for you!

Let’s get into it!

Smartlead or alternatives?

Smartlead is a cold email outreach software that promises to, and we quote:

❝Convert cold emails to consistent revenue❞

This means it’s aimed at anyone who uses cold outreach to generate leads and scale their business on autopilot, but primarily:

• Lead generation agencies
• Marketing agencies
• Sales professionals 

Smartlead is a cloud-based software. 

The software allows its users to create email campaigns with automatic follow-ups by importing CSV files with leads’ information. Alternatively, since the tool natively integrates with HubSpot, they can import leads directly from it. The integration works both ways, meaning that campaign data can be pushed into HubSpot as well. 

Moreover, Smartlead can integrate with any other tool or CRM via Webhooks or API.

The tool is unique for its unlimited email warmup feature and dedicated IP servers that boost deliverability. It also supports inbox rotation and has a Master Inbox that keeps all emails in one place.

In terms of message personalization, users can enrich their emails with:

• Variables;
• Spintax - different variations of words/phrases/sentences (e.g. Hey there | Hello | Hi);
• Liquid syntax - a template language that adjusts content dynamically based on the available information (e.g. {{#if first_name}} Hey {{first_name}}, {{else}} Hey Mr {{last_name}} ).

The platform also supports split testing with up to 26 different email variants.

Now that we've got the essentials down, let's look at Smartlead's features more closely.

Key Smartlead features

Inbox rotation

Smartlead doesn’t limit the number of email addresses you can connect to it and use in your campaigns. This is particularly beneficial for agencies or businesses running outreach campaigns for multiple clients. Once added, the tool automatically rotates these email addresses to maximize the number of emails sent.

Unlimited email warmup

New email addresses need to be warmed up before using them for outreach. Smartlead’s unlimited email warmup feature is powered by AI and takes care of this by:

• Sending warm-up emails to a pool of other Smartlead users;
• Sending different numbers of emails every day;
• Opening emails and saving them from spam;
• Replying to these.

The result? Positive sender reputation and fewer emails flagged as spam.

Subsequences

Smarlead elevates email outreach through Subsequences — additional email sequences that you can create based on recipient behavior.

Subsequences can be set up to complement any campaign. They are condition-based and activate only once the chosen condition is fulfilled.

Leads can be added to a subsequence depending on the following conditions:

• If they are categorized a certain way,
• If their reply contains specific words/phrases,
• In case they haven’t replied,
• If they bounced,
• If they are connected to you on LinkedIn.

This adds another layer of personalization to communication and helps improve engagement and conversions.

Unibox

Juggling multiple inboxes for different campaigns can get overwhelming. The premise behind Smartlead’s Unibox is to eliminate this chaos by providing a single location to manage all email conversations. This streamlines the workflow and allows for easier responding and lead categorization.

Smartlead disadvantages

Smartlead may seem like a great tool. Nonetheless, it does have its limitations.

For instance, while Smartlead claims to support multichannel outreach, it’s superficial at best because you can only add manual tasks to the campaign flow. The tool will remind you to complete these when the time comes. But, since manual work is involved, wouldn’t you say this beats the purpose of using an automation tool?

For a brief moment, Smartlead users could add certain automatic LinkedIn steps to their campaigns. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible for reasons their customer support team referred to as ‘’private.’’. 

That said, if you were hoping to use it for LinkedIn lead generation, feel free to explore some of the alternatives we'll discuss later.

Additionally, while the tool lets you personalize messages, it lacks the feature for image & GIF personalization. To this date, you can only insert visuals into the email copy.

Another major con is the software’s inability to discover and verify your leads’ email addresses. So, to get the email addresses of people you want to reach out to, you need to use another tool. This implies an additional cost.

Moreover, to create a Subsequence, you first need to create a simple sequence with no conditions. Subsequences are created separately based on the condition you choose. So yes, you’re breaking the campaign creation flow to do it. This is not only inconvenient but also time-consuming — especially when running multiple campaigns simultaneously.

Lastly, since Smartlead can only pull leads from a CSV file or HubSpot, it’s rather limited compared to tools that can scrape leads from multiple sources (e.g., LinkedIn search, LinkedIn posts, Sales Navigator lead lists, etc.).

Smartlead pricing

Smartlead offers 3 different month-to-month payment plans. Yearly subscriptions are also available and come with a 17% discount compared to their monthly counterparts.

That said, here is the breakdown of Smartlead pricing plans.

Pro and custom plans support adding unlimited users, although each is charged an additional $29 a month.

What others say about Smartlead

Smartlead has plenty of mixed reviews.

For instance, Antonio said:

‘’We've had 5 sets of emails having a sudden drop in deliverability from 40-90% to 10-20% in a matter of days (on successful campaigns), and according to their Slack community, a lot of people experienced identical issues.’’

He went on to mention that Smartlead’s customer support is slow. In fact, it often takes them between 24 and 48 hours to respond!

Another reviewer, Nick G., praised the interface but stated:

‘’I signed up because they had a LinkedIn feature, but they removed it.’’

11 best Smartlead alternatives

Smartlead has some useful features. However, its drawbacks and steep pricing make it an incomplete solution. 

Considering the stated, you are better off choosing another tool, and here are our top picks!

1. Skylead

Hi, that’s us! 🙂

Skylead is a LinkedIn automation and cold email software that helps salespeople, marketers, founders, and recruiters use outreach at scale. 

It’s an All-In-One solution that has all the tools you need under one roof — and price.

Unlike Smartlead, it supports real multichannel outreach (LinkedIn outreach and email outreach), allowing you to reach more leads on more channels.

Moreover, it’s cloud-based and comes with a 3-layered protection. This means that the tool:

• Assigns a dedicated IP address to users that shields their activity;
• Mimics human behavior to prevent experiencing restrictions on LinkedIn.
• Randomizes delays between different actions.

Similar to Smartlead, Skylead supports A/B testing. This feature allows you to experiment with different messaging, subject lines, and connection requests.

It also has a Smart inbox that keeps your messages from all platforms in one place. Additionally, you can label your conversations and thus track how many people have converted each month.

Finally, you can integrate the tool with any software or CRM using Webhooks or API. And, yes, that includes HubSpot.

If you find all this fascinating, wait till you see what else Skylead’s got! 😀 

So, let’s break it all down!

LinkedIn automation

As one of the best LinkedIn automation tools ever, Skylead takes over your manual outreach on the platform and lets you get in touch with more leads faster.

With it, you can view your leads’ profiles, follow them, invite them to connect, and send them a message or an inMail, both free and paid. On autopilot, nonetheless, to save yourself +11 hours a week!

Skylead helps you cut back on manual outreach activities, but it also saves you time when importing leads. 

Namely, it connects to all LinkedIn Premium subscription plans and can pull lead information from:

• LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter search results
• Sales Navigator lead lists
• Recruiter Talent Pool and Pipeline URLs
• LinkedIn posts
• LinkedIn events
• Your CSV file  

Unlimited email outreach

As a true multichannel outreach tool, Skylead supports not only LinkedIn outreach but also email outreach!

It lets you connect and use an unlimited number of email addresses at no extra cost. And yes, the tool also auto-rotates between them to help you send tens of thousands of emails a month. 

But do you know what makes our unlimited email outreach feature better? The fact that you can combine it with LinkedIn outreach in one seamless sequence. This multichannel approach helps you maximize touchpoints with your leads and reach those you thought were unreachable before.

Moreover, our native and custom variables let you personalize your communication even further. With them, you can craft reply-inducing emails and follow-ups. 

Email discovery & verification

Skylead can discover your leads’ email addresses and turn seemingly lost opportunities into potential conversions.

The software won’t only find your leads’ emails, though. It will double-verify them to decrease the chance of your emails bouncing and improve your sender's reputation. What’s more, you can include it as a step, and Skylead will do it without breaking the outreach flow.

Some other tools have this capability as well. However, many of them use a Chrome extension for this purpose, which isn’t safe.

Moreover, Skylead’s success rate in finding and verifying emails is one of the highest on the market, if not the highest!

Finally, this feature comes at no extra cost, and there’s no cap on how many emails the tool can find and verify. This is something no other tool can say!

Smart sequences

Think of our Smart sequences as an improved version of Smartlead’s Subsequences. 

But why improved? 

Because, with them, you don’t have to break your outreach campaign creation flow to cover different outreach scenarios. In other words, you can do it as you work on building your campaign.

Smart sequences let you combine different if/else conditions with LinkedIn and email actions and find the best route to your leads based on their behavior. 

They are reactive and operate in real-time, meaning that, for example:

1. If a prospect accepts a connection request, a message can be sent.
2. Meanwhile, if they don’t, Skylead can find and verify their email address and reach them out via email.
3. If they open that email but don’t reply, an automatic follow up email can be sent.
4. If no response comes after the follow up email, the tool can contact the lead via LinkedIn inMail.
5. An inMail can also be sent if the tool doesn’t manage to verify the leads’ email or the lead doesn’t open the initial email.

Feel free to experiment with different conditions and actions, though, as the scenarios you can create are limitless!

As you can see, Smart sequences ensure that your outreach is highly personalized and responsive to your prospects' actions. In turn, they make your campaigns more effective and increase the chances of conversion.

Image & GIF personalization

Want to make a lasting impression on your leads? Our image and GIF personalization feature is the answer. 

Thanks to it, you can create dynamic images and GIFs that personalize themselves for each recipient. You can include their name, their and/or your LinkedIn profile photo, company logo, and even write a custom message. 

It might seem like a small touch, but hey, it can increase your response rate by up to 63%!

Advanced analytics

Feel like analyzing your campaigns to determine what works and what doesn’t?

Skylead lets you do that in 3 different view modes available on the Reports page:

• Graph - Lets you compare the ratio between different metrics (e.g. open rate, click rate, reply rate).
• Table -  Makes it easy to spot day-to-day variations in metrics and identify trends.
• Step-by-step - Breaks down each step of your sequence, showing you exactly how recipients are engaging at every stage. This is especially useful for A/B testing.

Smartlead vs. Skylead feature comparison

Pricing

Skylead comes with a singular price of $100 per seat. Unlike Smartlead, which has tiered pricing with limited features at lower levels, it offers everything you need in one plan. This makes it more cost-effective.

2. Instantly

Instantly.ai is a cloud-based email outreach tool.

Like Skylead and Smartlead, it lets you connect an unlimited number of email accounts, and it rotates through them while sending emails to avoid triggering spam filters. This is complemented by its unlimited email warm-up feature, which improves senders’ reputation.

For those seeking personalization, Instantly offers message personalization with variables. Furthermore, the integrated Unibox consolidates your conversations into a single inbox, making them easier to manage and respond to.

However, Instantly is not a multichannel outreach tool, so it might not be the greatest if you are looking for a Smartlead alternative that has it all.

Also, while it offers basic reporting, the insights are somewhat limited, which might not suffice for users requiring in-depth analytics. 

Finally, email verification is available but comes at an extra cost on top of already steep pricing.

Smartlead vs. Instantly feature comparison

Pricing

Instantly offers 2 pricing plans with sub-plans that vary in features available.

3. Apollo

Apollo is a powerful multichannel sales engagement platform that lets users create sequences that combine email, LinkedIn outreach, and cold calls.

With it, you can set up campaigns that include automatic or manual emails. 

As for engaging your leads via LinkedIn, the software can automatically:

• Send connection requests
• Messages
• Interact with your leads’ posts.

However, bear in mind that Apollo's multichannel sequences are simple. They don’t support branching paths or complex conditions, making them unsuitable for those who prefer their outreach to be more automatic and advanced.

In terms of integrations, the tool natively integrates with platforms like Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Slack. Moreover, it has A/B testing capabilities that help optimize your outreach. 

You can also leverage its AI to craft personalized messages. Nonetheless, this feature isn’t that advanced. In fact, it’s equivalent to using Chat GPT for sales copywriting, which you can do while using Skylead as well.

Apollo has a database of over 275M contacts that you can pull directly into your campaigns. Additionally, it can also scrape new leads from LinkedIn.

However, a major con is that it does so through a Chrome extension. Chrome extensions inject code into LinkedIn that the platform can easily detect and penalize you for. Therefore, we don’t recommend you use any tool that relies on one.

Smartlead vs. Apollo feature comparison

Pricing

• Free
• Basic: $59/mo per seat
• Professional: $99/mo per seat
• Organization: $119/mo per seat (billed annually)

4. Lemlist

Lemlist is a cloud-based email outreach tool that also includes a Chrome extension for prospecting and outreach on LinkedIn. 

Although primarily focused on email outreach, Lemlist supports multichannel campaigns like Skylead. As such, it allows you to add connection invites, profile visits, and messages to your sequences. Additionally, it integrates with AirCall for cold calling.

One of Lemlist's standout features is its advanced personalization options. To make your outreach more effective, you can use its custom intro lines, images, and landing pages.

Lemlist also offers Lemwarm, a warm-up and deliverability booster designed to keep your emails out of spam.

While the tool can find and verify emails, the highest plan limits the number of finder and verifier credits to 1,000. You can purchase additional credits, but keep in mind that $1 will only get you 5 verified emails.

Once again, since a Chrome extension is involved in LinkedIn outreach, we say you think twice before using it.

Smartlead vs. Lemlist feature comparison

Pricing

5. Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a cloud-based cold emailing software that can be expanded into a full multichannel campaign platform with add-ons. These add-ons support LinkedIn actions and calls through integrations with Dux-Soup and AirCall.

One of Woodpecker’s key features is the ability to connect unlimited email accounts with auto-rotation to maintain high email deliverability. It also offers email verification to ensure your leads’ emails are valid. Nevertheless, this feature isn’t as advanced as Skylead’s.

Woodpecker lets you A/B test up to five different email variants. Additionally, it comes with an AI assistant that can generate copy for your outreach, making the process more efficient.

While Woodpecker supports multichannel outreach, the integration with Dux-Soup adds extra cost to the software. Moreover, they limit the number of prospects you can contact by price. This means that if you need to contact many leads, the cost of your subscription can quickly skyrocket.

Smartlead vs. Woodpecker feature comparison

Pricing

Woodpecker offers 2 plans: Cold email and Agency. Both plans are priced identically, starting at $29 for contacting up to 500 leads. The difference between them is their intended use. The Cold Email plan is designed for individual users, while the Agency Plan allows multiple users to be added, with each additional user costing $27. 

Custom plans are available as well but require booking a call with the sales team.

Moreover, the added Dux-Soup subscription raises the cost. Depending on the plan, you’re looking at paying anywhere between the additional $14,99 and $99,00 a month.

6. Reply.io

Reply.io is a multichannel outreach tool that handles tasks across multiple channels, both automated and semi-automated. It also has a Chrome extension for finding and verifying emails.

In terms of automated actions, it can send emails and like recent LinkedIn posts. 

Meanwhile, actions such as profile views, connection requests, LinkedIn messages, and InMails can be both automated and semi-automated, depending on your setup.

However, keep in mind that Reply.io lets you create simple drip campaigns only with no conditions. This is a downside compared to Skylead’s Smart sequences.

The tool directly integrates with Pipedrive and HubSpot, but it also supports integrations via Zapier. 

For those who’d like to save additional time, the software has a collection of email and sequence templates. You can adjust them as you like and even split-test pre-made message copies against your own.

As for disadvantages, Reply.io’s smart inbox isn’t that advanced, unlike Skylead’s all-in-one inbox. To be precise, you can only use it to manage emails. To view and reply to LinkedIn messages and inMails, you’ll have to visit the platform directly.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, using Reply.io’s Chrome extension to find and verify your leads’ emails is risky. So, why use it when safer alternatives like Skylead exist?

Smartlead vs. Reply.io feature comparison

Pricing

• Free
• Starter: $59/mo per seat / 1 mailbox
• Professional: $99/mo per seat/ 5 mailboxes
• Ultimate: $139/mo per seat/ 15 mailboxes
• Custom Agency Plan: Starts at $166/mo per seat

7. Mailshake

Mailshake is a cloud-based software that you can use to send personalized emails and follow-ups at scale. It also features a Chrome extension that lets users tap into multichannel outreach by automating LinkedIn actions such as:

• Connection requests, 
• Profile views, 
• And messages.

As part of its multichannel outreach capabilities, Mailshake includes a Dialer for cold-calling prospects in the US and Canada. The Dialer lets you make calls and record phone conversations to analyze and improve campaign performance. 

Mailshake offers unlimited email warmups and A/B testing and integrates with Salesforce, Pipedrive, and HubSpot. It also supports over 1,000 integrations via Zapier webhooks.

The software is far from perfect, however. 

For instance, it doesn’t support inbox rotation. 

Simultaneously, LinkedIn automation and cold calling are only available with the highest-tier subscription. 

Finally, since a Chrome extension is involved in the process, if you use it, you risk getting your LinkedIn account restricted.

Smartlead vs. Mailshake feature comparison

Pricing

• Starter: $29/mo per seat
• Email Outreach: $59/mo per seat
• Sales Engagement: $99/mo per seat

8. Saleshandy

Saleshandy is another cloud-based tool designed to streamline cold email outreach. 

Its key features include email sequences, email scheduling, and email tracking. The software also supports split testing, allowing users to test up to 26 different subject lines, messages, and CTAs.

You can connect unlimited email accounts to Saleshandy. Unfortunately, while the software has inbox rotation, it lets you use a maximum of 50 emails in one campaign with the highest subscription. In contrast, Smartlead and Skylead have unlimited inbox rotation.

When it comes to prospecting, the tool has a pool of over 700M verified leads that you can search through and include in your outreach. It also features a Chrome extension that finds prospects’ emails on LinkedIn and even phone numbers at a higher cost. However, as we said many times before, using an extension can compromise the safety of your LinkedIn account.

Finally, while Saleshandy excels at email outreach, it doesn’t support reaching out to prospects via LinkedIn or other non-email channels. Therefore, you are better off choosing a more complete Smartlead alternative.

Smartlead vs. Saleshandy feature comparison

Pricing

Saleshandy comes with 4 different pricing plans and multiple sub-plans.

9. Snov.io

Snov.io is a cloud-based solution that lets you automate sending cold emails. Nevertheless, it also offers 2 Chrome extensions:

• One for finding prospects on LinkedIn;
• Another for finding their email addresses on the Internet.

One of its highlight features is the advanced email warmup tool. The tool initiates realistic email conversations, marks emails as important, reads them, and even moves them from spam to inbox to improve the sender’s reputation.

Similarly to other software on the list, you can connect unlimited email accounts to Snov.io. The software also supports inbox rotation, like Skylead, which improves deliverability. And thanks to its built-in CRM, there’s no need to pay for additional software.

Its advantages aside, Snov.io isn’t perfect primarily because:

1. It can only be used to reach prospects via email.
2. Its Chrome extension for prospecting may compromise the safety of your LinkedIn account.

Smartlead vs. Snov.io feature comparison

Pricing

• Trial: $0
• Starter: $39/mo per seat
• Pro: $99 / $189 / $369 / $738/mo per seat
• Managed Service: Starting at $3,999/mo per seat

10. Klenty

Klenty is a tool built to automate cold email campaigns, track emails, and warm up email addresses.

Nonetheless, it also supports multichannel outreach, allowing you to send SMS and WhatsApp messages, make calls, and/or perform basic LinkedIn actions like:

• Visiting profiles,
• Sending connection requests, 
• Messages,
• And inMails.

Klenty adjusts its approach to outreach smartly — through Playbooks. Playbooks are similar to Skylead’s Smart sequences in that they cover different outreach scenarios to meet prospects where they are in their journey.

Additionally, Klenty can find and verify prospects’ emails based on their name and company domain.

Despite its many features, Klenty lacks one of Skylead’s most prominent ones: image and GIF personalization. 

It may stand out among some other tools due to its comprehensive capabilities. However, the fact that it uses a Chrome extension for LinkedIn outreach sets it back immensely.

Smartlead vs. Klenty feature comparison

Pricing

Klenty offers quarterly and annual plans that are 20% cheaper.

• Startup: $60/mo per seat / billed quarterly
• Growth: $85/mo per seat / billed quarterly
• Pro: $125/mo per seat / billed quarterly
• Enterprise: Contact sales

11. Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a cloud-based platform that can seamlessly integrate with your workflow due to its native integrations with many tools and Google Sheets. 

It supports email outreach and offers readily available variables. These help you craft highly personalized emails that increase the likelihood of getting replies.

Hunter.io also has excellent email enrichment capability. In fact, it’s almost as successful in finding and verifying emails as Skylead. 

Unfortunately, the downside is that its email discovery and verification are not integrated into the outreach flow. This means you need to discover and verify emails first before creating a campaign. 

Additionally, Hunter.io is limited to email outreach only and does not support LinkedIn outreach.

Smartlead vs. Hunter.io feature comparison

Pricing

• Free: €0
• Starter: €49/mo for 3 email accounts
• Growth: €149/mo for 10 email accounts
• Business: €499/mo for 20 email accounts
• Enterprise: Contact sales

You can connect additional email accounts to the software. However, each will cost you an additional €10 per month. 

Furthermore, each plan comes with a set amount of email verification credits. Again, you can purchase more, but this will also cost extra.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

1. What is Smartlead AI?

Smartlead AI is a cold email outreach software designed to automate and streamline the process of sending personalized emails. It helps users manage email campaigns, warm up new email addresses, and track campaign performance.

2. What is Smartlead AI used for?

Smartlead is used for automating email outreach to generate leads and scale business operations. It allows users to create personalized email campaigns with automatic follow-ups and integrates with CRM systems like HubSpot. It is primarily used by lead generation agencies, marketing agencies, sales professionals, and recruiters.

3. How to cancel a Smartlead subscription?

To cancel your Smartlead subscription, firstly, log into your account. Then, navigate to the "Plans & Billing" section under "Settings," and click on “Subscription.” This is where you should see an option to cancel it. Click the button and follow the on-screen prompts to confirm the cancellation. For assistance or complete account deletion, you can also contact their customer support team.

Smartlead vs. alternatives: Which tool wins the race?

While Smartlead offers a range of features suitable for various outreach needs, its lack of multichannel outreach support and pricing makes it less than ideal. Thus, tools like Skylead, Lemlist, and Apollo, with their multichannel outreach features and more affordable pricing plans, make for compelling alternatives.

However, bear in mind that the software that works for one might not work for another. So, when deciding on the right tool to use for your outreach, choose the one based on your:

• Goals
• Budget
• Features you need

Of course, if you were to ask us which tool is the best, we’d say Skylead. And yes, we know we seem biased, considering it's ours. 

But why not give us a chance to prove to you that it really is the best Smartlead alternative? 

Take advantage of our 7-day free trial period, and we promise to sweep you off your feet so much that you never again consider using another software!

Are you trying to reach out to LinkedIn support but don’t know what’s the best way?

It is not unusual for regular LinkedIn users to contact LinkedIn support for their issues or problems. Users often contact LinkedIn support when they encounter account-related issues like being locked out, experiencing suspicious activity, or facing restrictions. Some other issues include,

• Technical problems such as difficulty uploading profile pictures, errors while sending messages, or lagging chat. 
• Difficulties when trying to create a new LinkedIn account.
• Problems related to LinkedIn Premium subscriptions, billing errors, or payment issues.
• Harassment, spam messages, or inappropriate content on the platform. In that case, users might need assistance in reporting and blocking users or content.
• Reporting or removing inappropriate content, fake profiles, or inaccurate information from the platform.

However, contacting LinkedIn support can be challenging due to limited channels for direct communication and long response times. And, because of these reasons, people get frustrated.

And this is where we come in!

In this blog, we will cover everything you need to know about dealing with LinkedIn support, including:

• When to get in touch with LinkedIn support?
• What are the different channels available to contact LinkedIn support and resolve issues faster?
• Do's and don'ts of contacting LinkedIn support
• And more!

Let’s dive in!

When to contact LinkedIn support?

People contact LinkedIn support for many reasons. But, here are six situations where you should definitely reach out to LinkedIn support ASAP 👇

1. Contact LinkedIn support if you or your client’s account were hacked on LinkedIn

Hacking can lead to unauthorized access to your account, compromising sensitive information and potentially damaging your professional reputation. Hence, contacting LinkedIn support helps reduce the impact of the hack and initiate recovery efforts.

Reasons Why Your LinkedIn Account Got Hacked?

• Logging in on a public computer and forgetting to sign out can lead to unauthorized access.
• An outdated email or phone number makes your account easier to hack.
• Hackers can obtain your credentials through phishing or data breaches, compromising your security.

How to Protect Your LinkedIn Account from Attacks?

If you wish to protect your account as much as possible, enable two-step verification (2FA) on your LinkedIn account as soon as possible. However, if you are unable to access your account, you won't be able to set up 2FA. 

Two-step verification is an added layer of security for LinkedIn. This feature requires an additional code to be sent to your mobile device or email after you enter your password. 

Here’s how you can enable 2FA on your LinkedIn account,

Open "Settings and Privacy" from your LinkedIn homepage. 

Navigate to "Sign in & security" on the left panel and click "Two-step verification."

Next, click “Set Up” to start the process. 

LinkedIn will then validate your identification by sending a 6-digit code to import.

Once you do it, choose your preferred verification method and click “Continue” to set it up and finish the process.

Additionally, it's a good practice to change your password regularly to enhance the security of your account.

2. Contact LinkedIn support if your LinkedIn account got restricted

Restricted accounts can become a huge problem if not addressed quickly. 

To resolve the issue, first assess the reason behind the restriction by reviewing LinkedIn's community guidelines and terms of service. Next, reach out to LinkedIn support for assistance in reinstating your account access. 

We recommend being honest about the situation when contacting support. Inquire about the specific violation and seek guidance on how to rectify it. 

Reasons why your LinkedIn account got restricted?

LinkedIn accounts can be restricted for various reasons, including these top ten causes below.

Check out our detailed solutions on how to regain access to your restricted LinkedIn account.

3. Contact LinkedIn support if you notice any feature or subscription issue

There are several reasons why a LinkedIn user might face a feature or a subscription issue. Some of them are as follows:

1. LinkedIn, like any other online platform, may experience technical glitches that can affect the performance of certain features or services. Additionally, LinkedIn frequently updates its interface and adds new features, which can sometimes cause confusion or disrupt the user experience. In both cases, you can contact LinkedIn support to let them know, so they can work on resolving these issues.
2. Users may encounter issues with their paid subscriptions. These issues might include,
   1. incorrect billing amounts, 
   2. failed payments, 
   3. unexpected changes to their subscription plans,
   4. upgrading or downgrading their subscription plans, 
   5. changing payment methods, 
   6. or canceling their subscription. 
3. Users may have trouble accessing or updating their account settings, such as changing their email address, password, or notification preferences.

4. Contact LinkedIn support if you have issues creating an account

Creating a LinkedIn account should be a straightforward process. But, sometimes, users may encounter difficulties due to various reasons. Some of those reasons might be due to,

Phone Number Limitations:

One everyday issue users face is when their phone number exceeds LinkedIn's character limit during the account creation process. LinkedIn has a specific character limit for phone numbers: 25 characters. If the user's phone number exceeds this limit, they may encounter an error.

Validation Problems:

LinkedIn has strict validation processes to ensure the authenticity of each user account. Information that each user provides during the account creation process should meet LinkedIn's account verification criteria. If the given info doesn't meet that standard, a user may face difficulties creating an account.

However, anyone who is facing an issue while creating a LinkedIn account should contact LinkedIn support.

5. Contact LinkedIn support if your content got removed unfairly or if you need to report violating content

LinkedIn has community guidelines and terms of service that users must adhere to. Content is typically removed if it violates these guidelines. 

LinkedIn strictly prohibits various types of content that violate its community policies. Common types of content that may get removed include,

1. Harassing content: Including bullying, personal attacks, intimidation, shaming, abusive language, or trolling.
2. False or misleading content: Including false information about health, elections, or personal benefits received in exchange for endorsements.
3. Scams and fraud: Facilitating scams, pyramid schemes, phishing, or other fraudulent activities.
4. Spam: Unsolicited, irrelevant, or repetitive messages, promotional content, or activities aimed at artificially increasing engagement.

For a complete list of content types that violate LinkedIn guidelines, check out LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies.

However, there are instances where a user’s content might be removed unfairly or mistakenly. Or (in some cases) a user may want to report a piece of content that violates LinkedIn's rules.

What to do if my content on LinkedIn got removed unfairly?

If your content was removed from LinkedIn unfairly, you can request a second review by,

1. Review the LinkedIn Community Policies and Analyze Your Content
2. Request a second review by replying directly to the email notification you received.
3. Acknowledge that you have read the relevant policies and have reviewed your content.
4. Confirm the request for LinkedIn’s Trust & Safety team to take a second look.
5. LinkedIn will complete the review within 48 hours of receiving the reviewing request.
6. Check the outcome:
   1. You will receive an in-app notification with one of the following resolutions:
      1. If your content doesn’t go against LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies, it will be made available again.
      2. If LinkedIn finds that your post does go against their policies, only you will be able to access it.

What to do if I want to report inappropriate content on LinkedIn?

If you want to report content on LinkedIn that you think goes against LinkedIn Guidelines, here’s what you can do.

Go to this page here: Recognize and report spam, inappropriate, and abusive content

Here you’ll find a detailed and actionable guideline on how to report, 

• Conversations
• Posts or comments
• Profile videos
• Someone you don’t know
• And more.

Remember, when you report content, the person who posted it won't be notified about who reported them. If the content violates LinkedIn's terms of service, they may take additional measures, such as warning or suspending the author. 

You can manage the updates you receive about your reported content from your Settings.

6. Contact LinkedIn support if you encounter live event issues

LinkedIn users may encounter live event issues due to various reasons. Some of them are as follows, 

1. Internet connectivity issues causing lagging, buffering, freezing, or disconnection.
2. Audio and video quality problems such as poor sound, unclear visuals, background noise, echo, feedback, or distortion.
3. Platform compatibility issues leading to technical glitches, errors, or incompatibility with different devices, browsers, or operating systems.
4. Audience engagement challenges such as low attendance, high drop-off, lack of feedback, or passive participation.
5. Technical support issues such as long wait times, poor communication, inadequate solutions, or unresolved problems.

The best way to contact LinkedIn Support if you are facing live event issues is by visiting the LinkedIn Help Center and accessing the support options available there. 

You can find troubleshooting guides, FAQs, and contact options to get assistance with your live event issues.

10 ways to contact LinkedIn support and solve issues fast

You can contact the LinkedIn support team through various channels in multiple ways. They typically respond quickly or within a fair amount of time. Let’s discuss!

1. Tagging LinkedIn support on X

People can tag LinkedIn support directly on the platform X (previously known as Twitter). This method allows users to highlight their issues publicly, increasing visibility and the likelihood of a response. This approach can be particularly useful for addressing general inquiries or reporting feature issues, account restrictions or hacks.

By tagging LinkedIn Support in this manner, users can engage directly with the company's support team. In many cases, issues are resolved swiftly, with responses often being immediate or within 1 to 2 hours.

However, it's important to note that sensitive or account-specific issues may require a different approach. 

For such queries, users should refrain from sharing sensitive information, such as email addresses, in the initial thread. Instead, LinkedIn Support typically sends a direct message (DM) to the user, providing details for the next steps. Users can then share sensitive information securely through the DM.

2. Generate a Linkedin support ticket

Generating a LinkedIn support ticket is a proactive step towards resolving issues. You can provide details about account access problems, suspicious activity, or content removal in the support ticket. 

Be specific and concise in describing the issue to expedite the resolution process. Moreover, include any relevant screenshots or error messages to provide clarity to the support team. 

After submitting the ticket, you'll receive an automated acknowledgment email with a reference number for tracking purposes. LinkedIn's support team typically responds within 24 to 48 hours. However, response times may vary depending on the volume of inquiries. 
LinkedIn Premium members also have the option to access live chat support for more immediate assistance. Keep track of your support ticket status by visiting the "Your Cases" page in the Help Center. 

3. Contact LinkedIn support via Report/Report Abuse/Block

LinkedIn takes reports seriously and will investigate the issue thoroughly. This method is effective for reporting various violations, such as spam, inappropriate content, or suspicious activity. 

By promptly reporting issues, you contribute to maintaining a safe and professional environment on the platform. You can provide details about the issue encountered. Be specific and provide any relevant information or screenshots. It will support your report.

However, remember to use this feature responsibly and only report content or profiles that genuinely violate LinkedIn's policies. 

4. Contact LinkedIn support via email

You won't find a direct email address to reach LinkedIn Support agents. However, if you've already opened a support case or ticket, LinkedIn's support team will send you the email. In other words, they will open up a communication channel which you can use to respond.

The LinkedIn's support team may request further information or clarification via email, so be sure to check your inbox regularly. 

While their email support may not offer the immediacy of live chat or phone support, it provides a documented record of communication. Users can track the progress of their support ticket requests easily. 

5. Contact Linkedin support via form using a direct link

You can easily contact LinkedIn with a direct link to “Contact LinkedIn Support”. Simply fill out the form regarding your query and submit. 

Make sure to choose the appropriate type of issue and provide a thorough description of the problem. Including real-time screenshots as attachments can help minimize the need for multiple follow-ups with support agents.

6. Chat with the LinkedIn customer service team

Premium members can access live chat support directly through the LinkedIn website or app. However, it's essential to note that live chat support is only available in English, regardless of the user's language settings on LinkedIn.

7. Tagging LinkedIn on LinkedIn

This method allows users to engage directly with LinkedIn representatives on the platform. When tagging on LinkedIn, users should provide a clear and concise description of their inquiry to ensure a prompt response. 

It's advisable to use this approach for non-urgent matters or general questions, as response times may vary. Tagging LinkedIn on LinkedIn provides a convenient way to seek help while staying within the platform's ecosystem. 

Users can leverage this method to address account-related issues, report bugs or glitches, etc.

8. Make your active colleague make a noise

To effectively reach out to LinkedIn support, leverage the power of your active colleagues. Encourage them to make noise on your behalf by tagging LinkedIn Help on LinkedIn or tweeting @LinkedInHelp on X. 

Another way to use this contact method is via vouching for your colleague. For instance, let’s say your colleague’s LinkedIn account was restricted. In that case, you and other colleagues can tag LinkedIn support on X to vouch for your colleague. This way, you can reinstate your fellow’s LinkedIn account in no time.

Thus, by amplifying your request through their networks, you increase the visibility and urgency of your issue. It gets a quicker response from LinkedIn support.  

9. Through LinkedIn events

Users can access LinkedIn Events help page for custom resources and assistance in managing and solving live event issues. This avenue provides a direct channel to help with issues, solutions, questions, and reporting technical problems in LinkedIn Live events.

Thus, it ensures that users have access to dedicated support resources and assistance for their event-related queries or concerns. Users can find help for technical glitches, event setup, and live broadcast troubleshooting on the LinkedIn Events help page.

10. Directly mail LinkedIn customer support

If everything else fails, you can attempt to reach out to LinkedIn Customer Support headquarters directly via old-school physical letters. After sending your letter, consider following up after a few days. Ascertain if your message has been received and inquire about any updates regarding your issue.

While sending physical letters may be a long shot, you can still try this method as a last resort. We strongly encourage utilizing other methods (mentioned above) first, as those are often more efficient and timely. 

Do’s and don’ts of using LinkedIn support

Like any other platform, there are some do’s and don’ts to follow when contacting LinkedIn Support. Let’s explore them one by one.

Dos

1. Resolve your problem with FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section can be a main source for many people to resolve their issues. Users can often find solutions in the FAQ section without needing to wait for customer support assistance. 

LinkedIn's FAQ section covers a wide range of topics, including account security, privacy settings, and platform functionalities. Users can navigate through these FAQs to find answers to queries related to account access, profile management, and networking etiquette.

 Additionally, LinkedIn regularly updates its FAQ section to address emerging issues and provide users with relevant information. 

2. Understand your problem's nature

Understanding your problem is important to pinpoint the specific issue you're encountering with your account. 

Identify the issue clearly. It helps. Whether it's a login problem, suspicious activity or restrictions, clear identification streamlines support. Take note of any error messages or unusual behaviors on the platform to provide LinkedIn support with accurate information. 

Furthermore, consider any recent changes or actions you've taken on your account that might have caused the problem. This proactive approach will help LinkedIn support better diagnose and resolve your problem efficiently.

3. Find answers from LinkedIn social media pages

Many people get their answers from LinkedIn's social media pages. Engaging with LinkedIn's X (Twitter) help page, @LinkedInHelp can provide quick assistance for account-related issues. 

Similarly, it can be done for the Facebook page.

LinkedIn's support team is active on X and other social media platforms. They typically respond quickly to user queries, offering further instructions or assistance as needed. 

Additionally, LinkedIn forums on platforms like Quora and Reddit can be valuable resources for discussing and resolving issues.

4. Hire a professional LinkedIn account management agency to resolve your issues

Consider hiring a professional agency to manage and resolve your LinkedIn issues effectively and efficiently. These agencies specialize in navigating the complexities of LinkedIn, offering specific solutions to address your specific needs. 

Hence, by enlisting the expertise of a professional agency, you can save time and resources while addressing your concerns. 

Furthermore, they can provide valuable insights and guidance on best practices to prevent future issues and optimize your LinkedIn presence. With their knowledge and experience, professional agencies can help small businesses and individuals navigate the challenges of LinkedIn support.

Don'ts

There are some don’ts also attached with contacting LinkedIn Support. Here are some of them below.

1. Don’t expect rapid response

LinkedIn's customer support system often faces high demand, leading to delays in response times. Despite users' urgency, in some cases, LinkedIn's support team may take longer than anticipated to address inquiries and issues. 

Hence, this delay can be frustrating for users seeking immediate resolution to account-related problems or concerns. 

Therefore, users need to remain patient and persistent when awaiting a response from LinkedIn support. 

While the wait time may be inconvenient, you should avoid repeatedly contacting support or escalating their inquiries. It could result in further delay of the resolution process. Instead, users can explore alternative options for assistance, such as utilizing self-service resources or seeking guidance from online communities. 

2. Don’t call on customer support numbers

While it may seem like a direct route to assistance, LinkedIn does not provide a customer support phone number. Attempting to find and call such numbers may lead users to fraudulent or scam lines. Consequently, risking their personal information and security. 

Instead, users should utilize official channels provided by LinkedIn, such as the help center, online forums, or social media pages.

By avoiding unauthorized phone numbers and relying on verified support channels, users can ensure safety.

3. Don’t give up easily

When facing challenges with LinkedIn support, don't lose hope easily. Persistence is key to resolving issues and getting the assistance you need. 

When LinkedIn support is hard to reach through traditional channels, consider social media or LinkedIn help forums for assistance.

However, keep track of your communication attempts and follow up if you don't receive a timely response. Additionally, explore self-help resources on LinkedIn's help center to troubleshoot the issue independently. 

Things to know before contacting LinkedIn support

There are three main things to remember before you contact the LinkedIn support team. 

1. Only technical help is provided

LinkedIn support primarily offers technical assistance. This means they can help with issues like, 

1. Account access.
2. Security concerns.
3. Technical glitches within the platform. 

However, they may not be able to address broader inquiries regarding networking strategies, profile optimization, or content creation. 

Therefore, users should approach LinkedIn support with specific technical issues rather than general inquiries or feedback. LinkedIn support helps with account lockouts and suspicious activity. 

They ensure swift resolution for a smoother experience. 

For non-technical issues like optimizing your LinkedIn presence, users might look to forums, networking groups, or LinkedIn's content for guidance.

2. Don’t do LinkedIn violations

“Prevention is better than cure.” 

It's better to understand what actions constitute LinkedIn violations to avoid running into trouble.

1. First and foremost, refrain from spamming LinkedIn users. It not only violates the platform's policies but also tarnishes your professional reputation.
2. Additionally, avoid making the same mistakes repeatedly. LinkedIn may impose restrictions or even permanent bans on accounts that fail to comply with its guidelines.
3. Be cautious when using low-quality (chrome-based or desktop apps) LinkedIn automation tools, as low-quality ones can trigger restrictions on your account. 

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Does LinkedIn have a call center?

No, LinkedIn does not have a traditional call center for customer support. Instead, users can seek assistance through online channels like LinkedIn Help Center, self-service online help, and social media platforms. 

Does LinkedIn support have a number?

No, there isn’t any phone number associated with LinkedIn support. While LinkedIn offers options like live chat for premium members, phone support is not available. Thus, users often rely on submitting support tickets or reaching out through social media for assistance with their account-related issues.

How to report a fake employee of my company?

To report a fake employee of your company on LinkedIn, ask the individual to update their profile and remove the association. 

If they refuse or if the problem persists, you can use LinkedIn's "Report inaccurate information" form. This form allows you to report false claims of employment, education, accomplishments, or awards associated with your company. 

By submitting this form, you help maintain the integrity of your company's representation on LinkedIn and protect it from misinformation. Remember to provide accurate and detailed information to expedite the resolution process.

To put it briefly

Dealing with LinkedIn support issues can be challenging. However, with proper knowledge, users can solve their problems faster and make the most of the platform. 

To increase the chances of solving issues faster, outreach LinkedIn support by,

1. Tagging LinkedIn support on X,
2. Creating a LinkedIn support ticket,
3. Chatting with LinkedIn Customer Services Team (for premium members only),
4. Tagging LinkedIn on LinkedIn,
5. And then try out other methods.

These methods will guarantee you faster responses from LinkedIn support. However, if there's a secondary issue, you can also contact LinkedIn communities like X, Reddit, or Facebook pages.

In short, users can overcome challenges by taking an active approach to problem-solving and learning from others on LinkedIn.

Gone are the days of going through business cards, calling prospects left and right only to close a deal. Over the years, numerous sales outreach tools have emerged, all aimed at streamlining prospecting and lead generation.

Yet, because there are so many of them, today's sales reps are often at a crossroads, wondering which tool they would benefit the most from.

To help you choose, we've tested the top cold outreach solutions on the market and are sharing our two cents. 

So, if you are looking for the perfect outreach software for sales, brace yourself—the ultimate breakdown of tools is coming!

Sales outreach tools overview

What are sales outreach tools?

Sales outreach tools are software or platforms designed to facilitate and streamline the sales outreach process. These tools automate repetitive tasks, such as sending connection requests on LinkedIn and follow-up emails, leaving you with more time to focus on researching and nurturing your leads to conversion.

To clarify, with sales outreach tools, sales teams can:

• Get to more prospects faster,
• Maximize touchpoints through multichannel outreach,
• Personalize communication,
• Segment prospects according to their stage in the sales funnel,
• and close more deals.

Types and subtypes of sales outreach tools

Generally speaking, sales outreach software can be:

• Cloud-based, existing entirely on the Web and running without reliance on Internet connectivity or power. Such software allows you to manage multiple LinkedIn accounts and/or email accounts and conversations, as it typically comes with an integrated inbox. This is also the safest type of outreach tool for sales. Namely, cloud-based tools assign their users a dedicated IP address to shield their online activity. Additionally, they frequently mimic human behavior and randomize the delay between different outreach activities. As a result, they are hard to detect and thus work to keep your LinkedIn or, say, email account restriction-free.

• Chrome extensions. They lack a dedicated IP address and require your browser to be on to function. Moreover, these extensions, if used for LinkedIn prospecting or outreach, automatically inject code into the platform. In doing so, they make it apparent that you're using automation, which could lead to getting your LinkedIn account restricted.

• Desktop apps require downloading and can only operate while your computer is on. They don't offer dedicated IP addresses, support multiple accounts, or run in the background. However, they are generally safer than extensions because they don't inject code into LinkedIn.

Depending on the type of outreach they are used for, we also have:

Benefits of using outreach tools for sales

Why are sales teams increasingly turning to outreach tools? Because of the evident benefits of doing so. For example,  McKinnsey’s research confirms that about a third of all sales tasks can and should be automated.

And we agree, but here are other benefits we’ve discovered using sales outreach tools. 

Firstly, there's the increased productivity. With an outreach aid that automates manual tasks, sales reps can shift focus to high-value activities like nurturing leads. 

Secondly, sales outreach software can often integrate with various platforms. As a result, you get a centralized hub for all sales activities. This reduces the time spent switching between tools and streamlines the entire sales process—from prospecting to conversion.

Lastly, we cannot discuss the benefits of using a sales outreach solution without mentioning scalability. With features like A/B testing, sales teams can optimize their outreach strategies based on data-driven insights. This leads to improved results, as teams can quickly identify what works best and scale with their winning approach accordingly. As a result, you get an influx of leads and customers, all without a drop in performance. 

26 Best sales outreach tools

You're sold on using sales outreach tools but aren't sure which one(s) to choose. We've spent extensive time testing top-tier software, so you don't have to! Now, let's review our top picks to bring you closer to the answer!

#1 Skylead - Best overall sales outreach tool for smart, hyper-personalized multichannel outreach

That’s us! Hi! 🙂

Skylead is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software, the first on the market to introduce smart sequences. It's the outreach software for sales teams looking to book 3x more meetings and save +11 hours weekly on manual work.

Pros

Skylead is an all-in-one sales outreach tool, meaning it has everything a salesperson might need — in one place! That said, it comes with solutions for:

• LinkedIn automation
• Unlimited email automation
• Email discovery & verification
• Image & GIF personalization

Its highlight feature is smart sequences, a revolutionary algorithm that allows you to take full advantage of multichannel outreach. With smart sequences, you can combine LinkedIn and email outreach actions and if/else conditions. The sequence unfolds based on the prospect's behavior, adapting as it goes to find the fastest path to them. 

Speaking of email outreach, Skylead lets you connect unlimited email accounts at no extra cost. Moreover, the software supports inbox rotation, which means that you can send tens of thousands of emails per month with it.

Skylead also consolidates all your communications into one smart inbox, allowing you to manage LinkedIn messages, inMails, and emails seamlessly. Furthermore, it lets you organize chats with labels to keep track of conversions and measure ROI.

The software also stands out due to its native image & GIF personalization feature and variables for personalizing messages. We've run the numbers, and as it turns out, these two combined have increased our response rate by 63%!

Skylead can pull prospects from LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter accounts, making LinkedIn lead generation a breeze.

In addition, this outreach solution lets sales reps in on in-depth analytics and allows for A/B testing different email subject lines and messages. Thanks to these, you'll surely find something that strikes a chord with your target audience! 

Finally, if you want to push lead or campaign data to your CRM, you can! Skylead integrates with any software via webhooks or API.

How safe is Skylead?

Very! In fact, one of the greatest things about Skylead, in our opinion, is its 3-layer protection. The software protects its users from experiencing LinkedIn account restrictions by:

• Being human-like,
• Randomizing delays between actions,
• Assigning a dedicated IP address.

Skylead also comes with a handy email discovery & verification feature that ensures deliverability, thus reducing bounce rates. Using it, you don't have to worry about the safety of your domain! Skylead will provide you only with a list of double-verified email addresses that actually exist. Not to mention, it boasts one of the highest, if not the highest, email finder probability rates compared to other sales outreach tools on the market.

Cons

It's not that it's ours, but we truly haven't found any "real" cons to using Skylead. Why, yes, Skylead doesn’t have a video customization feature. Nonetheless, our users can use Sendspark's AI-powered Dynamic Video Functionality to personalize videos on top of images. Moreover, all Skylead users can get 50% off their first month with Sendspark. Just create your account on their platform and use the promo code ''SKYLEAD50'' to claim the offer.

Also, at the moment, there isn't an option to build a campaign from LinkedIn group members. Nevertheless, you can always use a workaround to target these individuals, and it involves LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters. Just select the desired group from the filters, copy the search result URL, and paste it into Skylead. Et voilà!

What others said about Skylead

Allen F. shares our enthusiasm for the platform and mentions how Skylead revolutionizes your campaigns! He is particularly fond of the library of campaign templates that are easy to tweak. He even says you can have your first campaign running in about 15 minutes! 

Alex S. has also had nothing but good things to say about Skylead. He even went so far as to say that this product has literally changed the way he works! He praises the interface and notes how building detailed LinkedIn sequences with the tool is incredibly easy.

Pricing

Skylead offers an all-in-one solution priced at $100 per seat a month. However, if you’re interested in white-labeling the software, contact the sales team for pricing details.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.8 (17)
• Product Hunt: 4.9 (57)

#2 Expandi - Best for automated LinkedIn profile engagement

Expandi is another cloud-based sales outreach platform designed for LinkedIn and email automation.

Pros

We discovered that, much like Skylead, Expandi comes equipped with smart sequences. These allow for multichannel outreach and support additional LinkedIn actions that engage users’ profiles, such as auto-post likes and auto-endorsements.

Expandi automates sending personalized LinkedIn messages, emails, and free inMails. Compared to Skylead, the tool allows for the creation of campaigns from LinkedIn group members. There are also a variety of templates to choose from, many of which can be extremely useful. 

Cons

While playing around with Expandi, we noticed that it lacks a native image and GIF personalization feature. Although we were able to personalize images thanks to their integration with Hyperise, we had to pay extra for it. 

The software also doesn't support sending paid inMails, making it somewhat limited, in our opinion.

Finally, the tool cannot discover and verify email addresses unless publicly available on someone's LinkedIn profile. This makes it an incomplete tool for seamless email outreach.

What others said about Expandi

Overall, the reviews are somewhat similar to our conclusions. For example, Adi R. notes that Expandi is easy to use, intuitive, and good for automating tasks. However, he isn't overly happy about having to perform certain tasks manually since the tool doesn't handle them.

Pricing

• Business: $99/mo per seat + $69/mo per seat for image & GIF personalization (via Hyperise)
• Agency: Custom

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (31)

#3 Zopto - Best for automating likes & greetings on LinkedIn

Zopto falls into the category of cloud-based multichannel sales outreach tools.

Pros

Zopto has a smart sequences feature, which is fairly new to the market. We tested it out and noticed that we can form outreach flows from different LinkedIn and email actions and conditions.

Speaking of LinkedIn actions, in addition to automating standard ones (e.g., View profile, Follow, Invite to connect, etc.), the tool can also automate likes, endorsements, and even greetings (birthdays, anniversaries, job changes). 

Cons

Despite its email enrichment capabilities, Zopto is limited to discovering 5,000 contacts a month, as compared to Skylead, which has an unlimited email discovery feature. Additionally, the latter has a higher success rate in finding verified emails.

Furthermore, while we were successful in adding LinkedIn inMails to our campaigns, we were saddened to find that Zopto only supports sending free inMails.

One of Zopto's main selling points is Zhoo, its AI assistant. Yes, it sounds innovative, but it's essentially just a ChatGPT 4 integration used for generating emails and messages. We found it more cost-effective to use a different sales outreach tool and simply pay for a ChatGPT Plus subscription. 

But do you truly need one? It depends. Our sales team has compared GPT-generated sales copy against our own and saw better results with the latter. However, we're not opposed to using ChatGPT for sales—it can be quite helpful, especially when the inspiration is lacking.

As Zopto’s final con, when we wanted to analyze our campaign results, we found no option to export a report.

What others said about Zopto

Eldar L. mentions that Zopto makes creating and running several campaigns at a time easy. Nevertheless, he finds it inconvenient that the tool lacks detailed analytics. And he’s right. We noticed statistics are only presented as pie charts, which, frankly, don't offer much clarity on the campaign's performance.

Pricing

• Basic: $197/mo per seat
• Pro: $297/mo per seat
• Agency & Enterprise Basic: Starting at $156/mo per seat (minimum 2 users)
• Agency & Enterprise Pro: Starting at $237/mo per seat (minimum 2 users)

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (65)

#4 Lemlist - Best for ensuring email deliverability

Lemlist is a cloud-based email outreach tool. However, when we tested it, we noticed that it has a Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting and outreach.

Pros

Lemlist is primarily an email outreach tool that sales teams can use to set up unlimited email campaigns. It also supports multichannel campaign creation, making it possible to incorporate LinkedIn actions and calls (through AirCall integration) into your outreach flow.

This tool allows for advanced personalization thanks to custom intro lines, images, and engaging landing pages. 

Lemlist also has Lemwarm, a warm-up and deliverability booster designed to prevent your emails from ending up in spam.

Cons

We don't like how Lemlist uses a Chrome extension to scrape information from LinkedIn. Chrome extensions inject code into LinkedIn that this platform can easily detect and penalize you for. Therefore, it compromises the safety of your LinkedIn account.

Also, Lemlist can indeed find and verify leads’ email addresses. However, it’s worth noting that the highest plan includes only 1,000 credits. If your requirements exceed this limit, you’ll need to pay extra to have the tool find and verify additional emails.

The last thing we didn’t like is that we needed to pay per email account, compared to Skylead, which supports adding unlimited email accounts at no extra charge. With it, you just need to pay per LinkedIn account.

What others said about Lemlist

Darpan C. thinks Lemlist is a complete email outreach tool. He loves the interface, variables, and A/B testing capabilities. Nonetheless, he believes analytics could be more extensive.

Pricing

• Email Starter: $39/mo per 1 email account
• Email Pro: $69/mo per 3 email accounts
• Multichannel Expert: $99/mo per 5 email accounts
• Outreach Scale: $159/mo per 15 email accounts

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (375)

#5 Reply - Best sales software for semi-automated multichannel outreach

Reply is a multichannel, cloud-based outreach software. Nonetheless, it also has a Chrome extension for finding and verifying emails and outreach automation.

Pros

We’ve discovered that Reply can handle tasks across multiple channels, both automated and semi-automated.

When it comes to automated actions, it can:

• Send emails
• Like recent posts (LinkedIn)

Meanwhile, actions like:

• Profile views,
• Connection requests,
• LinkedIn messages,
• And inMails.

…can be both automated and semi-automated, depending on how you set them up.

Setting a campaign with Reply is straightforward: you decide on the steps, then add your prospects. However, keep in mind that these are simple campaigns without any conditions, unlike the smart sequences you’d find with Skylead.

It's also worth mentioning that Reply supports A/B testing for email copy and offers pre-made email and sequence templates, like Skylead. Alternatively, you can create simple sequences from scratch or have Reply’s Jason AI generate them for you. Reply also lets you track your campaign performance step-by-step.

The tool supports integrations via Zapier but natively integrates with Pipedrive and HubSpot.

Cons

Reply’s smart inbox allows users to manage their emails efficiently. However, it doesn't support the management of messages received from other platforms like Skylead does.

At the beginning, we mentioned that Reply has a Chrome extension for finding and verifying email addresses. While this may seem like a pro, it's not particularly useful, especially when enriching emails via LinkedIn. As already said, Chrome extensions inject code into LinkedIn, which the platform can detect, making them unsafe to use.

What others said about Reply

Terry L. loves Reply's multi-step campaign builder that can automate the email-sending process and semi-automate LinkedIn actions. Although the platform was buggy initially, he admits the team quickly resolved issues.

However, Terry wasn’t the only one to report issues with the platform. Multiple users had the same complaints. Some have even said that the support team isn’t equipped to handle them.

Pricing

• Free
• Starter: $59/mo per user / 1 mailbox
• Professional: $99/mo per user / 5 mailboxes
• Ultimate: $139/mo per user / 15 mailboxes
• Reply Unlimited: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (96)

#6 Snov.io - Best for email enrichment

Snov.io is a cloud-based email outreach tool. However, it comes with two Chrome extensions: a LinkedIn prospect finder and an online email finder.

Pros

While testing Snov.io, we've concluded that its email finder and verifier produces fairly accurate data. 

The tool also has an email warm-up feature, like Lemlist, which automatically initiates realistic email conversations on your behalf. Furthermore, it marks emails as important, reads them, and moves them from spam to inbox to enhance your sender’s reputation.

We also liked that drip campaigns are easy to set up, and you can play around with different variables and email templates while doing so. Like Skylead, the software lets you connect as many email accounts as you want and supports mailbox rotation.

Snov.io also has a built-in CRM, which saves you money by eliminating the need to pay for additional software.

Cons

Since the tool uses a Chrome extension to find prospects on LinkedIn, it isn't the safest to use.

Furthermore, we couldn't get the most out of our outreach with it simply because we were limited to emails only.

Alas, if you're looking to discover a large number of emails or contact many leads, this tool might not be the best fit. Their top-tier subscription offers 100,000 email finder credits and lets you reach out to 100,000 recipients. However, we found it overly expensive —  especially when compared to Skylead, which allows for unlimited email discovery and sending at a cost 5x lower.

What others said about Snov.io

Yevhen B. praises Snov.io’s drip campaigns and the ability to track open, click, and reply rates. Nonetheless, he says that the interface can overwhelm new users and that the email enrichment process can be slow.

Pricing

• Trial: $0
• Starter: $30/mo per seat
• Pro: $75 / $142 / $277 / $554/mo per seat
• Managed Service: Starting at $3,999/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (207)

#7 Closely - Best sales outreach tool for campaign tracking

Closely is another cloud-based multichannel sales outreach tool with a Chrome extension for finding emails on LinkedIn and data scraping.

Pros

We liked its intuitive dashboard. From there, it’s easy to navigate to the multichannel campaign builder, where you can combine different LinkedIn actions and emails into a single campaign.

Closely makes campaign tracking effortless thanks to its streamlined stats page. It also makes it possible to export stats to a CSV file. In the meantime, if you wish to send the data to another software, you can do it via webhooks.

Cons

As opposed to Skylead, the lead source for email outreach campaigns can only be a CSV file with leads’ information. Speaking of CSV files, while the tool enables you to export statistics in this format, it does not support PDF exports like Skylead does.

Yes, the software can automate profile views, post likes, endorsements, connection requests, and messages on LinkedIn. Still, the crucial outreach component is missing: inMails.

We also noticed you can have no more than 2 multichannel campaigns running simultaneously. Plus, these campaigns, despite involving LinkedIn and email actions, don’t include smart sequences. 

Lastly, since a Chrome extension is involved, the safety of your LinkedIn account can be compromised when using the tool.

What others said about Closely

Muhammad Abdullah A. believes Closely is easy to set up, like us. The only problem is he can’t use it to contact his 1st LinkedIn connections.

Pricing

• Personal: $99/mo per seat / 1 LinkedIn & 1 email account
• Growth: $219/mo per seat / 3 LinkedIn & 3 email accounts
• Pro: $339/mo per seat / 5 LinkedIn & 5 email accounts
• Custom: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (148)

#8 Waalaxy - Best tool for beginners to multichannel outreach

Waalaxy is a cloud-based software aimed at automating sales teams’ LinkedIn and email outreach.

Pros

Waalaxy is great for beginners to outreach who don’t have much technical knowledge. With it, you can create a multichannel campaign from a:

• LinkedIn search URL
• Sales Navigator search URL
• Recruiter search URL
• LinkedIn post URL
• Sales Navigator lead list
• CSV file

The tool also supports A/B testing and message personalization, courtesy of variables. Plus, it has customizable pre-filled message templates and an AI writing assistant.

Additionally, we found pushing leads from Waalaxy to a CRM using Zapier webhooks straightforward.

Cons

Unlike Skylead, which offers customizable sequence templates and the opportunity to create a sequence from scratch, Waalaxy limits users to a few pre-built options. 

Waalaxy charges extra for the inbox, too, which makes it less cost-effective. 

It also lacks a native email enrichment feature.

Finally, the free version of the tool uses a Chrome extension. Naturally, we don’t recommend using it if you want to keep your LinkedIn account restriction-free.

What others said about Waalaxy

Shekh Riazul I. swears Waalaxy's UI is extremely easy to use and navigate. Nonetheless, the software sometimes has a hard time detecting the account. He also frequently has to wait for the Dashboard to load.

Pricing

• Free
• Advanced: €112/mo per seat
• Business: €160/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (207)

#9 Instantly - Best for straightforward email outreach

Instantly.ai is a cloud-based software for email outreach at scale.

Pros

Instantly allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and supports inbox rotation, like Skylead, which helps safeguard and protect your domain.

Moreover, Instantly features an unlimited email warm-up function to guarantee email deliverability. The tool also enables you to personalize your emails with variables and schedule them as needed.

We couldn’t help but notice how straightforward Instantly is. And if you aren’t interested in leveraging LinkedIn outreach, this might just be one of the best tools.

Cons

Instantly isn't designed for multichannel outreach.

Why, yes, the tool can verify email addresses. However, verification credits aren’t part of the subscription plan. As such, they incur an additional cost.

What others said about Instantly

James O. states that Instantly helped him increase his outreach at a low price compared to other sales tools. However, he thinks the software is a bit limited in terms of salesflow customization, and we agree.

Pricing

Sending & Warmup Plans

• Growth: $37/mo per seat
• Hypergrowth: $97/mo per seat
• Light Speed: $358/mo

Leads Plans

• Growth Leads: $47/mo per seat
• Supersonic Leads: $97/mo per seat
• Hyperleads: $197/mo per seat
• Light Speed: $492/mo per seat

Rating

• G2: 4.9 (2,066)

#10 HubSpot Sales Hub - Best for building personalized email sequences

HubSpot Sales Hub is HubSpot’s powerful, cloud-based outreach solution for sales teams.

Pros

The tool is great for building personalized email sequences. With it, you can automate emails and follow-ups. However, you can also set reminders to send emails or inMails manually, make calls, or send invites to connect on LinkedIn.

In addition, the software lets you run multiple A/B tests on your email sequences.

Cons

Building multichannel campaigns with HubSpot Sales Hub isn’t possible at this time.

At the same time, this isn’t a complete sales outreach software. You could use it if you’re a complete novice to outreach. But why not subscribe to Skylead and integrate it with HubSpot instead?

What others said about HubSpot Sales Hub

Fernando P. finds HubSpot's interface and customer support great. He loves having all leads and customer journeys under one system. Still, he notes the tool could be improved with AI so as to provide more valuable insights.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Starter: $20/mo per seat
• Professional: $100/mo per seat
• Enterprise: $150/mo per seat

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (452)

#11 Dripify - Best sales outreach tool for its ability to integrate with various software

Dripify is a cloud-based tool for LinkedIn outreach designed to help sales teams close more deals.

Pros

Dripify is a great tool for anyone interested in social selling on LinkedIn. 

The software can connect to LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite accounts. It can extract leads from LinkedIn Search or CSV files.

Its notable feature is drip campaigns, which rely on a sequence of different actions, conditions, and delays. It’s also praised for its ability to integrate with numerous software thanks to webhooks.

Cons

To us, multichannel outreach is the best type of outreach. However, seeing as Dripify supports only LinkedIn automation, it’s clear that, in contrast to Skylead, it isn’t a complete sales outreach tool. 

In addition to lacking email automation capabilities, Dripify doesn’t come with an email finder and verifier. Furthermore, you can’t bring your A-game to personalization with it since no image personalization feature is there.

At the same time, Dripify doesn’t support campaign creation from LinkedIn posts or Sales Navigator lead lists. And while you can automate it to send free inMails, the same doesn’t apply to paid ones.

Finally, Dripify’s team doesn’t provide one-on-one onboarding, so you’re left to figure out the tool’s functionalities on your own.

What others said about Dripify

Don F. believes Dripify is a solid communication platform for keeping in touch with LinkedIn connections. In his opinion, the tool's only con is its inability to launch multichannel campaigns.

Pricing

• Basic: $59/mo per user
• Pro: $79/mo per user
• Advanced: $99/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (230)

#12 SalesLoft - Best sales outreach solution for building and managing pipelines

SalesLoft isn’t your typical sales outreach tool. It’s a cloud-based sales engagement platform.

Pros

The platform combines multiple tools that help salespeople increase and manage pipelines. As such, it goes beyond outreach. Nevertheless, SalesLoft's cadences (campaigns, if you will) that combine email, phone, and Sales Navigator steps make it one of the best sales outreach tools. 

We have found the tool’s email tracking, analytics, and A/B testing a boon! We were also happy to find out that the software comes with nifty email templates that can be customized for added personalization. There’s also an option to save new ones!

Cons

The tool only integrates with Sales Navigator, so we couldn’t create multichannel sequences. Also, this tool doesn’t support LinkedIn Premium and Recruiter accounts.

Furthermore, unlike Skylead, Salesloft lacks smart sequences. Consequently, its users are unable to maximize touchpoints with leads, resulting in less personalized outreach flows and lost opportunities for lead generation.

What others said about SalesLoft

James W. is absolutely sold on the customer support that the SalesLoft team provides. However, he admits the platform can become slow.  

Many people have also mentioned that the SalesLoft dialer isn’t up to par. Additionally, they've pointed out that the tool is quite expensive.

Pricing

• Essentials: Available upon contact
• Advanced: Available upon contact
• Premier: Available upon contact

SalesLoft doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing because it’s tailored to each company based on its size and requirements. We’ll respect their decision and won’t say how much we’ve paid during our short time with them. However, the word on the street is that people are paying anywhere from $75 for the essentials version up to $125 for the premium plan.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (213)

#13 Yesware - Best sales software for Gmail & Outlook outreach

Yesware is a sales outreach platform that integrates directly with Gmail & Outlook through a Chrome extension.

Pros

Yesware, like Skylead, allows for:

• Multichannel campaign creation (you can connect your Sales Navigator account to the tool),
• Automated follow-ups in case of no reply,
• Email & attachment tracking (open rate),
• Advanced email performance analysis.

Additionally, it supports:

• Scheduling meetings and calls,
• Setting follow-up reminders.

The platform also has email templates available to personalize as you see fit. We also like how it lets you save your own templates.

Cons

Based on our personal experience with the tool, we can tell you that Yesware doesn't track email deliverability rates.

In addition, its primary focus is email outreach, while LinkedIn outreach takes a backseat. This is clear because the tool only works with Sales Navigator accounts. LinkedIn Basic, Premium, and Recruiter users can’t do much with it—other than automate their cold emailing.

Also, when setting up a multichannel campaign with Yesware, you are limited to two Sales Navigator actions: sending a connection request and an InMail. The tool doesn’t perform these actions automatically, either! Instead, it simply alerts you when it's time to complete them manually.

What others said about Yesware

Kim R. believes Yeware is decent, easy-to-use software. She is happy with the customer support provided and likes its real-time reporting and analytics features. Yet, she thinks it’s expensive and not so easy to integrate with other programs. Also, she found some features too complex. 

Pricing

• Free
• Pro: $19/mo per seat
• Premium: $45/mo per seat
• Enterprise: $85/mo per seat
• Custom Plan: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.3 (175)

#14 Hunter - Best sales outreach tool for finding and verifying professional emails

Hunter is a well-known cloud-based prospecting, data enrichment, and email lead generation software.

Pros

Hunter is the outreach tool for you if you're a sales professional looking to find verified prospect data — in seconds! In doing so, it boosts email deliverability and protects the sender’s reputation.

With Hunter, we found out that setting up an email outreach campaign is straightforward. Meanwhile, readily available variables help you craft emails that feel highly personal and induce replies.

Finally, Hunter seamlessly fits into your workflow through native integrations with different tools and Google Sheets. Alternatively, you can send over data to a software of choice using Zapier webhooks or API.

Cons

Hunter is strictly an email outreach tool, which means it lacks features for social selling.

Although the tool can find and verify your leads' emails, these features are not integrated into the outreach flow as they are in Skylead. In other words, the tool needs to discover and verify emails first. Only once it returns results can you start an email outreach campaign.

Lastly, the tool can’t extract emails from social media profiles.

What others said about Hunter

Pedro A. believes that Hunter is one of the best sales outreach tools for email scraping. He's noticed a high accuracy in finding and verifying European email addresses. He thinks it'd be great if Hunter made it possible to enrich a person based on their LinkedIn URL, though.

Pricing

• Free: €0
• Starter: €34/mo / 3 email accounts
• Growth: €104/mo / 10 email accounts
• Business: €349/mo / 20 email accounts
• Enterprise: Contact sales

Each plan comes with a limited number of email verification credits. You can purchase additional credits, but keep in mind that the cost will depend on your subscription plan.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (614)

#15 Mailshake - Best outreach tool for setting up simple drip campaigns

Mailshake is a cloud-based sales engagement platform with a Chrome extension for LinkedIn automation and an AI email writer.

Pros

Mailshake has an intuitive sequence builder that you can use to automate sending cold emails and follow-ups. Unlike other tools, where sequences stop when the prospect responds, Mailshake has the option to continue its campaign even if the lead responds. In other words, other tools like Skylead have an option to manually get leads back to a campaign once they respond. However, if you wish that the sequence just continues despite your leads’ response, you’ll like this option.

You can also use Mailshake to automate profile views on LinkedIn, along with invites to connect and messages.

Clearly, Mailshake supports multichannel outreach, and it even makes it possible to add calls into the mix, courtesy of the built-in dialer. Although, this is a manual task.

Cons

LinkedIn automation, which isn’t even complete, and cold calling are exclusive to the highest-tier subscription.

Additionally, Mailshake automates LinkedIn actions through a Chrome extension, compared to Skylead, which is a cloud-based automation tool. That said, it may not be the safest option for your LinkedIn outreach.

What others said about Mailshake

Engin A. is impressed by how easy this sales outreach platform is to use. He is also satisfied with the onboarding process. However, he says that Mailshake can prove expensive for medium to large teams.

Meanwhile, more than one person has noted you have to be very careful about daily sending limits for email accounts connected to Mailshake, as Gmail tends to flag emails sent in bulk as spam. That’s why Skylead has inbox rotation—a feature that has caused many Mailshake users to turn to Skylead!

Pricing

• Starter: $29/mo per user
• Email Outreach: $59/mo per user
• Sales Engagement: $99/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (108)

#16 SalesBlink - Best sales tool for AI-powered email outreach

SalesBlink is a cloud-based sales outreach tool for cold emailing.

Pros

SalesBlink lets you take advantage of its AI, BlinkGPT, to create smart email sequences with follow-ups adjusted to the outcome. What’s more, thanks to the software’s email warm-up feature, your emails are sure to land in your leads’ inboxes, not spam.

SalesBlink allows you to connect multiple sender accounts and automatically rotates them while sending emails to ensure you stay within limits.

Finally, the tool makes managing conversations effortless, keeping them all in a unified inbox.

Cons

We found it inconvenient that the tool limits the number of emails you can send depending on your subscription plan. With the highest subscription, you can send up to 100,000 emails. However, if you don’t want to pay the highest subscription for this, sales outreach tools like Skylead and Instantly, which allow you to send unlimited emails, may be better suited.

Moreover, while you can add multichannel tasks to your sequences, you have to complete them manually. Therefore, no real multichannel outreach is supported. Email sequences are smart, unfolding based on your prospect’s behavior. Nevertheless, Skylead is superior in this regard as well, as it comes with smart sequences and support for multiple channels.

What others said about SalesBlink

SalesBlink is Alfred R.'s go-to tool for email outreach, and he proudly talks about it! The absolute best for him is its AI assistant, which saves him immense time. The only downside he could think of is that you can't add a lot of information when describing a business to the AI, which tells us that the AI feature is not that complete.

Pricing

• Scale: $29/mo per account
• Growth: $99/mo per account
• Business: $199/mo per account

Rating

• Capterra: 4.7 (131)

#17 Saleshandy - Best outreach tool for A-Z testing

Saleshandy is a cloud-based software for email automation and prospecting.

Pros

The software has an up-to-date pool of over 700 million verified leads that you can search through and include in your outreach. It also has a Chrome extension that finds prospects’ emails on LinkedIn (phone numbers also, but at a higher cost).

Its highlight features, such as simple (not smart) email sequences, email scheduling, and email tracking, streamline your cold email outreach, enhance deliverability, and help you generate more leads.

What really caught our attention, though, were the A/Z tests. The software allows users to test up to 26 different subject lines, email bodies, and CTAs.

Cons

Saleshandy doesn't support reaching out to prospects via LinkedIn and channels that aren’t email. While you can identify leads’ emails on this social networking site, be cautious; using its Chrome extension might compromise the safety of your LinkedIn account.

There’s an add-on for email verification, too. However, it costs extra.

What others said about Saleshandy

To Shamim Ahmed A., Saleshandy is one of the best and most affordable sales software for email outreach. He praises its many features, such as unlimited email warm-up, email automation, and analytics. Still, he hopes the warm-up feature will be further improved in the future.

Pricing 

• Cold Emailing Plans: From $36/month for the Outreach Starter to $299/month for the Outreach Scale Plus per account.
• B2B Lead Finder Plans (emails only): From $47/month for the Lead Starter to $299/month for the Lead Scale Plus per account.
• B2B Lead Finder Plans (emails + phone numbers): From $79/month for the Lead Starter to $599/month for the Lead Scale Plus per account.
• Agency Plans: From $99/month for the Agency Starter to $899/month for the Agency Scale Plus per account.

Saleshandy’s email verification add-on will cost you an extra $60 for 30,000 recipients.

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (125)

#18 Woodpecker - Best sales outreach tool for coming up with email copy quickly

Woodpecker is a cold email software with add-ons that turn it into an all-in-one sales outreach platform.

Pros

Woodpecker is natively an email outreach tool. Nonetheless, it supports creating multichannel campaigns with LinkedIn actions and calls through built-in integrations with Dux-Soup and AirCall.

The platform allows you to connect unlimited email accounts and auto-rotates them to keep email deliverability high.

Woodpecker can also verify your leads’ emails and lets you A/B test up to five different email variants. It even comes with an AI assistant that generates copy for your campaigns. However, as we said previously, we tested out AI-generated copies, and the results weren’t much better than our own. In some cases, the results were even worse.

Cons

Woodpecker relies on 3rd party tools for its multichannel outreach, which incurs additional costs.

Additionally, its email verification probability isn’t as high as Skylead’s or Hunter.io’s.

What others said about Woodpecker

Woodpecker is a standout software in Michael L.'s eyes due to its ease of use and great support. While not as advanced as some other sales outreach tools, he states it fares well in the cold emailing department.

Pricing

• Prospects: From $15/mo per account
• Cold Email: From $29/mo per account
• Agency: From $56/mo per agency

Rating

• Capterra: 4.5 (32)

#19 Wiza - Best for extracting lead information from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator & Recruiter

Wiza is a Chrome extension that is used to scrape prospect information from LinkedIn.

Pros

Wiza is compatible with LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter accounts. It’s notable for its instant email verification capabilities. At the same time, it allows you to export lead lists from LinkedIn to CSV or sync them to your CRM.

On top of extracting verified work and personal emails from LinkedIn, Wiza can also extract work and cell phone numbers that are publicly available on LinkedIn.

FIY, the software will use up your verification credits only if it manages to find valid prospect information.

Cons

We can’t say that Wiza is a real sales outreach tool, even though some categorize it as such. Instead, it’s a prospecting tool that can only inform your outreach strategy.

Also, since this is another Chrome extension on the list that injects code into LinkedIn, it could lead to your banning on the platform.

What others said about Wiza

As per Prerana B., Wiza is convenient, fast, and accurate. She also likes how the tool can scrape leads' information from LinkedIn. On the flip side, she finds it a bit expensive. However, while Prerana praises Wiza for its email discovery and verification capabilities, we’ve found Skylead to have a much higher email enrichment success rate.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Email: $99/mo per user
• Email + Phone: $199/mo per user

Rating

• Capterra: 4.6 (20)

#20 GrowMeOrganic - Best sales outreach tool for automating hyper-personalized follow-ups

GrowMeOrganic is a cloud-based outreach solution for cold emailing. It also features a Chrome extension that can extract verified emails and phone numbers from LinkedIn.

Pros

GrowMeOrganic is great for automating cold emails and follow-ups based on your prospects’ behavior. We liked that the tool has a native image personalization feature and can track open, click, reply, and conversion rates.

GrowMeOrganic is compatible with email accounts from all providers.

Cons

Another Chrome extension, another major downside. To preserve your LinkedIn account, you are better off choosing another tool, at least for prospecting and email enrichment.

GrowMeOrganic also lacks support for LinkedIn outreach. As such, it misses out on the opportunities the greatest platform for social selling holds.

Furthermore, we noticed it’s impossible to download a PDF report. Only CSV and XLS exports are available.

What others said about GrowMeOrganic

Raghavendra D. has been using GrowMeOrganic for a while and says it's an excellent tool for sales automation. She finds its LinkedIn and Google My Business email scraper incredibly useful! Nonetheless, she doesn't like that this is a Chrome extension, nor do we. She’d like it better if there were an option to search for leads directly through the platform.

Pricing

• Starter: $49/mo / 1 user
• Growth: $99/mo / 5 users
• Pro: $199/mo / unlimited users

Rating

• Capterra: 4.2 (10)

#21 Lusha - Best for prospecting around the Web

Like Wiza, Lusha is primarily a cloud-based prospecting tool, although salespeople can also use it for email outreach.

Pros

The greatest thing about Lusha is its Chrome extension, which can extract prospects from anywhere. It also has a built-in B2B prospecting tool with filters that can get you up to 1,000 leads in one go.

Furthermore, you don’t have to resort to another software for your outreach; you can automate Lusha to send emails! Rather than relying on your time zone when doing so, the tool, like Skylead, lets you set different time zones for different email sequences. In other words, it reaches out to your leads when the time is right...for them!

Cons

Lusha uses a Chrome extension to extract prospects from different sites. If you are prospecting on LinkedIn, it could threaten your account’s existence.

Moreover, this tool is only compatible with Gmail and Outlook accounts. If your email account is with a different provider, you won’t be able to use it for your outreach. Also, you can only connect one email account to Lusha, and it must be the one you used to register on the platform.

Lastly, its built-in database of B2B leads includes 45 million contacts in North America and 21 million in Europe. If your target audience is based on other continents, this may result in missed outreach opportunities.

What others said about Lusha

Ben B. reports that Lusha speeds up his prospecting and lead generation and offers great value for money. The only problem is that the quality of data found could sometimes be better.

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Pro: $49/mo per seat
• Premium: $79/mo per seat
• Scale: Contact sales

Rating

• Capterra: 4.1 (360)

#22 MeetAlfred - Best sales automation tool for X outreach

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based sales outreach platform designed for LinkedIn, email, and X outreach.

Pros

MeetAlfred is different from other multichannel sales outreach tools in that it also integrates with X (formerly Twitter). As such, you can use it to automate different activities on three fronts: LinkedIn, email & X.

The tool’s campaign builder allows for adding infinite steps — from profile views and invites to connect to follow-up messages, inMails, emails, and X DMs. At the same time, it lets you set up delays between steps and personalize your messages with customizable templates and variables.

We also found it convenient how you can connect the tool to your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Although MeetAlfred can't be used to message prospects on these platforms, you can use it to create and schedule posts.

Cons

Unlike Skylead, MeetAlfred doesn’t have smart sequences. It also doesn’t support campaign creation from Recruiter search, nor does it support sending paid inMails.

Consequently, the software’s integrated inbox only shows your LinkedIn/Sales Navigator messages. If your campaign includes emails and DMs, you must manually check for new ones.

What others said about MeetAlfred

Martin P. considers MeetAlfred a perfect sales tool for someone with experience using this type of outreach software. He is fond of its simple interface and lots of customizable templates. Nevertheless, he believes it might be difficult for beginners to use.

Pricing

• Individual: $59/mo per user
• Business: $99/mo per user
• Agency: Contact sales (includes 10 users)

Rating

• Capterra: 2.8 (13)

#23 LeadConnect - Best outreach solution for following up on LinkedIn

LeadConnect is a Chrome extension used for prospecting and outreach on LinkedIn.

Pros

LeadConnect connects to LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator accounts and pulls leads’ information from a LinkedIn search or a CSV file. 

This tool lets you send personalized connection requests along with up to 6 automated follow-up messages.

Additionally, thanks to its native integration with HubSpot, pushing leads and conversations to the latter is as simple as a single click.

The tool also works with Findthatlead, Hunter.io, and Anymailfinder to discover your prospects’ email addresses. This is especially handy, as it gives you another channel to contact users who haven’t responded: email.

Cons

You can only use LeadConnect to contact users via LinkedIn. The tool doesn’t support sending inMails and emails, either. 

The platform works only with LinkedIn Basic and Sales Navigator accounts. It cannot be used by anyone subscribed to LinkedIn Premium or a Recruiter plan.

With LeadConnect, you can only automate connection requests and LinkedIn messages. This makes it fairly primitive compared to Skylead and its multichannel smart sequences.

Plus, given that LeadConnect is a Chrome extension, it could lead to account restrictions.

What others said about LeadConnect

In Sheryl S.'s opinion, LeadConnect is a great sales outreach platform for growing her LinkedIn network. She also mentions that it's quite easy to use. The only issue is that when there are a lot of prospects to discover, she sometimes has to refresh the URL.

Pricing

• Free Forever: $0
• Professional: $ 25.95/mo per account
• Grow: $ 45.95/mo per account
• Ultimate: $ 85.95/mo per account

Rating

• Capterra: 4.4 (98)

#24 Evaboot - Best tool for scraping leads from Sales Navigator

Like Wiza or Lusha, Evaboot is a Chrome extension for Sales Navigator prospecting.

Pros

Evaboot allows users to build lead lists from Sales Navigator in seconds and export them to CSV. 

In addition to scraping leads, the tool can also find and verify professional emails. 

Cons

Evaboot is only compatible with Sales Navigator, rendering it useless for LinkedIn Basic, Premium, or Recruiter subscribers.

Furthermore, this is a Chrome extension that, as you already know, can harm your Sales Navigator account.

We’ve tested the tool and can also tell you that their email discovery feature frequently provides inaccurate information or no information at all.

Lastly, this isn’t an email automation tool or any other type of outreach software. Yes, you can use the information gathered to contact leads. However, you’d need to subscribe to another sales outreach tool to do so.

What others said about Evaboot

Ky K. says Evaboot is easy to use and effective at what it does. The slight downside is that it doesn't allow him to select the number of leads to export.

Pricing

Rating

• Capterra: 4.9 (13)

#25 Dux-Soup - Best LinkedIn automation tool for sending free and paid inMails

Initially a Chrome extension for LinkedIn automation, Dux-Soup now also offers a cloud-based sales outreach solution.

Pros

Dux-Soup can automate the following LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter actions:

• Endorsements
• Follows
• Profile visits
• Personalized connection requests
• Personalized messages to 1st connections
• inMails (free & paid)

With it, you can mix and match different actions to create unique drip campaigns that stop once your prospects’ respond. 

We like that you can also customize time delays between individual steps and monitor campaign statistics once the campaign is live.

The software natively connects to Pipedrive, Hubspot, and SharpSpring. Nonetheless, you can also connect it to another CRM using Zapier webhooks.

Cons

Dux-Soup has a cloud-based solution for LinkedIn outreach, but it’s only available under their most expensive subscription plan. Those on lower plans have to rely on their Chrome extension for automation, which could compromise their LinkedIn accounts. Not to mention, the tool can only run while the browser is open.

Moreover, the software can’t be used for email outreach or any other type of outreach.

What others said about Dux-Soup

Leilani S. finds that Dux-Soup simplifies prospecting on LinkedIn. Her favorite feature is the X-ray tool, which enables her to discover LinkedIn profiles via Google. However, she notes that the software occasionally disrupts her workflow by randomly refreshing her page.

Pricing

Individual & Team Plans

• Pro Dux: $14.99/mo per seat
• Turbo Dux: $55/mo per seat
• Cloud Dux: $99/mo per seat

Agency Plans

• Pro Dux: from $337.50/mo for 30+ seats
• Turbo Dux: from $412.50/mo for 10+ seats
• Cloud Dux: from $371/mo for 5+ client seats

Rating

• Capterra: 4.0 (14)

#26 Salesloop - Best for expanding your LinkedIn network on autopilot

Pros

Salesloop is designed to work with all types of LinkedIn accounts: Basic, Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter.

The software allowed us to build campaigns using LinkedIn search and by uploading lead lists in CSV format. Should you decide on the latter, you can enrich your messages with custom variables for an added dash of personalization (on top of pre-set ones).

To make campaign tracking easier, Salesloop lets you download CSV reports.

Cons

Currently, the software supports LinkedIn automation only, although email and X (Twitter) integration are supposedly in the works. It also misses out on smart sequences and, instead, relies on simple campaigns for its automation.

Additionally, Saleloop doesn’t integrate with any CRM natively. We were also disappointed to find out you can’t connect it to other tools via webhooks or API.

Lastly, unlike Skylead, which is one of the best sales outreach tools to support image & GIF personalization, Salesloop doesn’t currently offer this feature.

What others said about Salesloop

Krishan Kant S. is grateful for Salesloop because it improves his productivity and increases business performance. On top of that, it brings about financial benefits. He doesn't think the tool has any flaws.

Pricing

• Solo: $49/mo per 1 user
• Team: $199/mo per 6 users ($39 per user with a minimum of 3; tailored plans for more than 6 users)
• Managed Service: $2,000/mo

Rating

• G2: 3.5 (3)

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Are sales outreach tools the same as CRM?

No. Sales outreach tools are designed to automate the initial contact with potential customers through various channels (e.g., email, LinkedIn, phone). On the other hand, CRM software is all about tracking interactions, managing sales pipelines, and storing information about leads and customers.

Can you use sales outreach tools without a CRM?

You can definitely use sales outreach tools without a CRM, especially if your business is small or just starting to build its sales process. Nonetheless, pairing these tools with a CRM is a smart move as your business grows and interactions with customers increase. This combo ensures a smooth workflow.

How do sales outreach tools ensure data privacy and security?

Sales outreach tools use various methods to safeguard sensitive information. This includes data encryption and compliance with GDPR. Many tools also manage consent and preferences to comply with privacy laws. Furthermore, trustworthy vendors have clear privacy policies and security protocols displayed on their websites.

Select the perfect tool and seal your sales deals easier than ever!

Here's the thing: the sales game has seriously leveled up from the old-school days. Today, we've got a whole arsenal of sales outreach tools at our disposal. Sure, choosing the right one from the bunch can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. But that's what you've got us for! If you feel indecisive after all this talk about the top software on the market, choose Skylead. 

Start your 7-day free trial now and close more deals than ever—way faster!

LinkedIn automation tools are the future of sales, and let me tell you why.

LinkedIn is a professional social media platform with over 875 million users. It is used for Business-To-Business lead generation because the conversion rate is 3x better than any other social media platform. Moreover, the audience on LinkedIn has 2x buying power.

So, no wonder many sales teams use LinkedIn prospecting as their basis for targeting. After all, without LinkedIn, many sales executives would have a hard time generating B2B leads. Even marketers around the world use LinkedIn campaigns for B2B lead generation. Not to mention recruiters who started to use LinkedIn to find top talents for their companies.

So, as the usage of LinkedIn lead generation progressed, people started to search for a solution to ease their LinkedIn marketing and sales efforts. In particular, they wanted to find something that would perform their operative tasks, such as the process of LinkedIn outreach. That’s when LinkedIn automation tools were born.

Since then, LinkedIn automation tools are changing the LinkedIn outreach and prospecting game as we know it. Moreover, they started to define the future of sales, marketing, and recruiting with every new feature developed.

So, do you wish to find and use the LinkedIn automation tool for yourself? Yes? Well, let me help you out with that. 

In this article, we cover the most popular and best LinkedIn automation tools, their pros and cons, and their features. Furthermore, we will emphasize the safest LinkedIn automation tool and what to consider when deciding which one to use. 

Grab your popcorn and enjoy.

What Is LinkedIn Automation?

LinkedIn Automation is a technology that tools use to perform different LinkedIn activities you would usually do manually. In other words, this technology automates the tasks meaning it performs them on your behalf. These activities include LinkedIn profile views, sending connection requests, follow-up messages, or LinkedIn InMails.

LinkedIn automation serves for LinkedIn lead generation purposes. For example, you can build your LinkedIn network, make new connections, and outreach them on autopilot, or automate sharing gated posts.

In outreach terms, LinkedIn automation essentially recognizes your lead source, for example, a LinkedIn search URL. It analyzes the LinkedIn pages, performs actions according to your settings and interacts with the selected LinkedIn users. Moreover, some LinkedIn automation tools can take your list of LinkedIn accounts and search for publicly available information. 

Best LinkedIn automation tools can even send personalized messages, and images according to individual leads information available on LinkedIn. Also, they even use messaging sequences to send follow up LinkedIn messages if the lead doesn’t respond.

Lastly, some tools can send bulk messages to all leads at once. However, this is something you need to be wary of when it comes to safety. Don’t worry, though. We will talk about how the best LinkedIn automation tools do it below. 

Why Use A LinkedIn Automation Tool?

LinkedIn automation tools streamline the most time-consuming LinkedIn activities, such as sending thousands of connection requests and messages. This way, you can invest time in more important tasks. In addition, these tools test and analyze your performance and show you what you need to improve. 

In other words, LinkedIn automation tools are software that helps you automate your LinkedIn activities. There are many more benefits other than what we mentioned above. So let's go over the  6 most important ones. 

LinkedIn Automation Tools Save Your Time

By streamlining the most time-consuming LinkedIn activities, these tools really do save your resources. That said, they can save you 5+ hours of work per week, depending on which one you choose.

They Give You A Detailed Reporting

You can perform manual outreach by yourself. However, keep in mind that you would need to dig into reporting yourself, as well. In other words, this can take you hours to gather and analyze the metrics. LinkedIn automation tools will do all this on your behalf.

You Have The Option To A/B Test - Everything

Depending on which LinkedIn automation tool you choose, you will have the option to A/B test your outreach efforts, such as: 

• Follow-up messages; 
• Message sequences; 
• InMails; 
• Subject lines; 
• Connection requests. 

Then, you can see which works best and apply those to future outreach efforts.

These Tools Help You Personalize Your Outreach

LinkedIn automation tools can also help you send personalized messages at scale. In other words, these tools use custom variables so you can get in touch with more leads naturally. 

In addition, by using personalized images and GIFs, you can increase the response rate by 63%.

Run Multiple Campaigns At The Same Time

If you have different ICPs or Buyer Personas, you can run multiple outreach campaigns at the same time. This way, you can be more productive, as you don’t have to wait to finish with one target audience to outreach another.

Focus On Building The Relationship

By streamlining the most operative tasks, your focus can be directed elsewhere. In other words, you now have time to focus on more crucial tasks such as:

• Social selling;
• Building the relationships;
• Talk with your target audience for a longer time and nurture them;
• And close more deals. 

Types Of LinkedIn Automation Tools

Every LinkedIn automation software has its functionality base to set different LinkedIn activities on autopilot. In other words, these tools can be:

• Cloud-based (e.g. Skylead);
• Chrome Extensions (e.g. Dux Soup);
• Desktop apps (e.g. Linked Helper)
• Web browsers.

A cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool means it is managed and processed thanks to a dedicated IP address. This IP address, also known as the proxy hosted on the internet, shields your activity. Moreover, all your data is not stored on local servers or your personal computer but on the internet. 

The software can run even when your PC is off. In addition, you can choose your IP address from your or another country. What’s more, only cloud-based software can have multiple accounts and integrated inboxes. 

Lastly, cloud-based LinkedIn automation platforms mimic human behavior. In other words, it clicks and views pages on this professional network platform as humans would. Thus, it makes the tool undetectable. So you can outreach new leads and send new connection requests carefree.

Extensions, desktop apps, and web browsers don’t have a dedicated IP address, nor do they have the option to mimic human-like behavior, which causes sending of bulk messages. Moreover, they do not have the possibility of managing multiple LinkedIn accounts. Lastly, you must have your PC turned on to keep your campaigns running. 

Sometimes you cannot find information on how a LinkedIn automation platform functions. In that case, you can ask their customer support team to answer this question.

Should I Use A LinkedIn Automation Chrome Extension? 

No. Even though LinkedIn automation tools based on chrome extensions are cheaper, you shouldn’t jump right into using them. These Chrome extensions are not safe since they inject the code into the LinkedIn platform. This way, LinkedIn can easily detect automation and get your LinkedIn account restricted permanently.

Web browsers and desktop apps are a bit safer than extensions because they don’t inject the code into the LinkedIn platform. However, they do not offer additional features that cloud-based tools do.

Why You Should Use A Cloud Based LinkedIn Automation Tool

If you wish to avoid LinkedIn restrictions and make the best of automation software, choose a cloud-based solution. They don’t inject any code into LinkedIn, like extensions, nor do they require you to keep the PC turned on. They also mimic human behavior, so LinkedIn can't detect them.

Besides functioning like humans and being the safest LinkedIn automation tool, cloud-based solutions offer integrated inboxes and multiple-account management systems.

What To Consider When Choosing A LinkedIn Automation Tools

When choosing among LinkedIn automation tools, you need to be aware of all the best features for your LinkedIn outreach. So here is what you need to consider to choose the best LinkedIn automation tool for yourself.

Cloud-Based Solution

As mentioned, other types of LinkedIn automation tools either inject the code into LinkedIn, or they do not offer other perks, such as an integrated inbox. So: 

• To get the best out of these tools,
• Avoid getting detected or bulk messaging, 
• And to get your money’s worth, 

You should consider using only a cloud-based solution.

Create Drip Campaigns

Why use LinkedIn automation just for scraping publicly available information when you can do much more with it? That’s right - some LinkedIn automation tools only have the data scraping option and do not have the possibility to set up your outreach campaigns. 

So, when choosing such a tool, first answer the question of what you want to do with it. If you wish to use it more than just as a data scraper, consider the tools that have drip campaigns feature. Or, even better, choose the tools that offer Smart Sequences - an algorithm that follows your leads’ behavior and acts accordingly.

Use Of Hyper-Personalized Messages

If you were thinking that using LinkedIn automation will remove any chance to send personalized messages, think again. Most of the best LinkedIn automation tools are going to great lengths to make this possible for their users - and they did.

For example, if you wish to personalize the text of your follow-up messages or InMails, you can use native variables such as:

• First name;
• Last name;
• Occupation;
• Company;
• Etc.

Moreover, with some tools you can even create your custom variables.

Automatic Stop When Prospect Replies

You don’t have to be afraid of tools not stopping to send messages once your lead responds. The best LinkedIn automation tools will stop sending follow-up messages or emails as soon as the lead responds. This way, you can take over the conversation or send them back to another campaign. So, keep this in mind when researching the right tool for you.

Image & GIF Personalization

You can hyper-personalize your Images and GIFs with some tools, as well. After all, such personalization is proven to increase the response rate by 63%. So it is indeed worth considering. 

Once we go through our list of the best LinkedIn Automation tools, you will see which ones have native variables and Images & GIF hyper-personalization. So, stay tuned.

Reporting & Insights

LinkedIn automation tools analyze your target audience behavior and provide you with detailed reporting instantly. They can show you the metrics like response rate, the number of profile views, or connection requests accepted. You can even calculate the conversion rate if you label your leads, but we will speak of this later.

The idea is to make data-driven decisions faster and easier with any tool. You just need to choose the one with the best analytics for your needs.

Inbox To Communicate With Prospects

If you’re already using multiple tools, you probably know how difficult it is to navigate between the platforms to communicate with clients. Therefore, one feature you really need to consider is an integrated inbox. 

For example, our tool Skylead has a Smart Inbox feature that gathers all communication platforms, leads and messages in one place. So you don’t need to navigate between different software anymore.

Integration With Other Tools

If the CRM is part of your workflow, then you don’t have to sacrifice CRM integration when choosing the LinkedIn automation tool. Simply find the LinkedIn automation software that offers such a feature.

CRM integration is useful as it allows data transfer between your CRM and LinkedIn automation tool. Thus you don’t have to download CSV files from one software and upload them back to another. 

Some software algorithms offer CRM integration through Zapier webhooks or API. Or both. Whatever option you choose, a Zapier webhook or API, remember that integration is a necessity for productivity, not a luxury. So make sure to consider tools that can provide you with such integration.

Multichannel Outreach

LinkedIn automation tools are perfect for lead generation. Some would argue that LinkedIn outreach is enough. However, let’s be honest. Sales teams do their best work when they multichannel their outreach. Moreover, LinkedIn’s connection request limitation made multichannel outreach a must on accident, as people needed to find an alternative way to reach more leads per week. 

So, to maximize getting in touch with your leads, search for a tool that is not only LinkedIn automation but Email outreach software too. 

Send Thousands Of Email Per Month

Speaking of multichannel outreach, if you want to reach more leads and bypass the email limit, exploring a tool that offers that capability is essential. For example, Skylead allows you to add unlimited email addresses to one campaign and send thousands of emails monthly without damaging your domain. In other words, it enables you to contact your leads more effectively and achieve your goals.

Best LinkedIn Automation Tools [+Free Options]

Now you know everything you need to choose such a SaaS product for yourself. So let’s jump to the list of the best and most popular LinkedIn automation tools.

Skylead

Yes, that’s us. Hi! 🙂 

Skylead is a LinkedIn automation tool & Cold Email software and the first all-in-one solution on the market. It offers founders, sales teams, recruiters, marketers, and alike to streamline and multichannel their outreach efforts. 

With this tool, you save 11+ hours of work per week. This way, you have a lot of time to focus on building relationships and closing the deals.

Skylead is a cloud-based solution, and you know what that means - you get extra features and don’t have to keep your PC turned on to work. In addition, you can integrate Skylead with your favorite CRM via webhooks using Zapier, or you can transfer the leads between the two via API.

Furthermore, it is completely safe to use since it mimics human-like behavior. In addition, it executes each action a different number of times every day to keep your account safe and healthy.

Lastly, Skylead’s reporting system and A/B testing will help you analyze your campaign metrics. Thus, you can see what works best for your target audience clearly and make data-driven decisions. 

That said, let’s get into the main features.

Smart Sequences 

Skylead is the first-ever tool to start using Smart Sequences - a groundbreaking algorithm that executes steps in the order you set, depending on your leads’ behavior. To clarify, Smart Sequence is a combination of different activities you can perform on LinkedIn or using Email. 

What makes the Smart Sequences Smart is the If/then condition. To explain it, let’s create a smart drip campaign together. Say we want to invite a person to connect. Now, they can behave differently depending on whether they accept the invite or not. That is where the If/then condition comes in handy. 

If the person accepts the connection request, you can instruct Skylead to send a regular message, per the example above. If they don’t accept, you can send an InMail or even Email to multichannel your outreach.

In regular sequences, if the prospect doesn’t accept your connection request, the rest of the sequence stops. With Smart Sequences, the flow continues thanks to the conditions. 

Even if Skylead doesn’t manage to reach out directly, you still have View and Follow steps to send them a subtle reminder. 

Another benefit of Smart Sequences is you don’t spend countless hours reaching out to each lead manually. Skylead does it all for you, making your outreach 5x more effective than any other LinkedIn lead generation tool. 

Lastly, you can have as many touchpoints in the Smart Sequence as you’d like, and Skylead will do it all for you in real time. Or, if you don’t wish to create a Smart Sequence by yourself, you can use some of Skylead’s pre-tested templates.

Email Outreach

Apart from LinkedIn, this all-in-one tool offers email outreach. Email helps you get to the leads that are not that active on LinkedIn. Moreover, this channel has astonishing ROI, according to studies. 

Furthermore, having an Email and LinkedIn outreach combo - a multichannel outreach in your sales strategy is a must in 2024. It will give your prospects a well-rounded lead generation experience, but more importantly, it will show them that you care and wish to help them remove any pain points they experience. 

What will surprise you is that Skylead is the only tool from this list that allows you to connect unlimited email accounts. In other words, you can send thousands of emails daily without damaging your domain and at no additional cost.

In addition, whether the leads respond to your outreach from LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Recruiter, or Emails, you won’t have to jump from platform to platform to respond to them since Skylead has an Integrated Smart Inbox. 

You know where your prospects answered from, and what their status is at any moment thanks to the Smart Inbox well-defined icons, labels, and overall user-friendly interface. 

Email Discovery & Verification

When we said all-in-one solution, we really meant it. In addition to LinkedIn and Email outreach, Skylead also offers Email Discovery & Verification steps, so you can find your leads’ email addresses and reach them out over email.

Skylead is the only LinkedIn automation and Cold Email software with both limitless Email Discovery & Verification features. Other tools can only discover but not verify business emails. Or they can collect publicly available emails, but only if you have that lead in your LinkedIn network.

Image & GIF Hyper-Personalization

Once you finally get through to that lead, you want to make an impact, don’t you? That’s when Skylead’s Image and GIF Hyper-Personalization come into play! You can offer products and services less conventionally, wish your clients happy holidays, or schedule a casual meeting. 

Skylead will personalize for you by pulling the person’s profile picture, company logo, and other information from the profile. So you don’t need to waste time creating countless versions of the same image.

Skylead is the only tool to have native, in-built Image and GIF personalization. In other words, you don’t need to pay extra for it, unlike other tools from the list.

Pricing

All the previously mentioned features are native, meaning Skylead doesn’t outsource any of them. Plus, they all come with your monthly subscription of only $100 per account with no limitations in number of uses.

Skylead works with LinkedIn Premium, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, or Recruiter accounts. Moreover, it supports CSV-imported campaigns.

Lastly, Skylead offers video and article tutorials, sales hacks, plus live customer support chat, should you need any help. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

One tool that is familiar to all sales teams around the world is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This LinkedIn's subscription plan is widely used for prospecting, sales funnel, or social selling as it has its own inbox.

Even though it is for sales, you can view it as a recruiting or marketing lead generation tool since both teams can use it to generate leads, gather information, and perform outreach. 

Pros

Unlike LinkedIn Premium, LinkedIn Sales Navigator has advanced filters. You can choose among 44 Lead and Account filters, depending on whether you wish to find your ICP or Buyer Persona. 

Moreover, with LinkedIn Sales Navigator you: 

• Get 50 paid InMails;
• Can create different lead lists;
• Set alerts for the leads;
• Set your Sales Navigator account leads preferences;
• Use an in-built Buyer Persona advance filtering.

Cons

Even though Sales Navigator is perfect for prospecting, it is not ideal for outreach on autopilot. However, other LinkedIn automation tools, such as Skylead, can integrate with it, thus, you can get the best from both worlds. Simply grab the search URL or your saved lead list URL, and paste it into Skylead. And just like that, you have imported your lead for the outreach.

Pricing Plans For LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has 3 pricing plans: 

Sales Navigator Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus plans. The price for these plans vary depending on the VAT and the country. However, the prices + VAT are respectively around $93, $167 and $173 per month. Lastly, you can get up to 25% discount for your Sales Navigator account if paid annually. 

Phantombuster

PhantomBuster is an extension-based solution for data extraction. It acts as a sales and marketing tool that automates the scraping of publicly-available data from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and other platforms. 

Pros 

PhantomBuster is not a LinkedIn automation tool with the full package. However, it does come in handy and saves you a lot of time when you wish to scrape particular leads from LinkedIn or anywhere else.

It is a nice addition to outreach tools, as it saves your automated scraped data in CSV file and JSON formats. Therefore, you can download them and upload them elsewhere to create outreach campaigns. 

Moreover, it offers email enrichment features. In other words, with PhantomBuster, you can find email addresses. However, you cannot verify them and may risk a bounce rate for your outreach and get your domain damaged. 

Cons

Although PhantomBuster offers automation for some LinkedIn actions (sending LinkedIn connection requests or messages), it doesn’t have Smart Sequences. In other words, you cannot create your advanced workflows. Lastly, it doesn’t offer email outreach automation, and it is an extension, so it is not the safest tool to use. 

Pricing Plan 

PhantomBuster offers 3 different pricing options. They depend on the time the software runs during a 1-month period, and the number of automated actions:

• Starter plan - $59
• Pro plan - $139
• Team plan - $399

TexAu

TexAu is a data scraping tool with chrome extension and the desktop app. This is a direct alternative to PhantomBuster and can automate activities like sending LinkedIn connection requests messages, and engaging posts on autopilot.

Pros

TexAu can scrape data from almost anywhere, including Facebook and LinkedIn groups, Google and LinkedIn search results, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube, Quora, and Twitter.

Moreover, this software offers email enrichment. In other words, it can analyze LinkedIn accounts and find and verify business emails. 

Cons

People on review websites reported having difficulty setting up proxies. What’s more, there are frequent bugs and a lack of tutorials for beginners. Lastly, TexAu doesn’t have Smart Sequences and the integrated inbox like other tools from the list.

Pricing Plan 

Like PhantomBuster, TexAu gives 3 pricing plans depending on the time software executes the activities, email enrichment during the day, storage, and more. Here are their pricing plans:

• Cloud Starter - $29 a month
• Cloud Growth - $79 a month
• Cloud Agency - $199 a month

If you decide to subscribe annually to this service, you’ll get 2 months free. 

Dux-Soup

Next in line, we have Dux-Soup with basic automation of LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Recruiter, and CSV-type outreach. Dux Soup is useful for beginners or a one-person team because of its simplicity and free account option. 

Pros

With Dux Soup, you can create Recruiter-based campaigns and reach out to all candidates from LinkedIn that seem a good fit for your business. 

Cons

Dux Soup doesn’t have some other more advanced features such as Image & GIF hyper-personalization, post engagement campaigns (only for posts published by the account’s user), and free InMails. It also lacks Smart Sequences, and Email Automation. Lastly, it is a chrome extension, which means it is not the safest tool to use.

Pricing Plans

Dux Soup has 3 pricing plans available.

Individual pricing plan:

• Starter Dux - Free
• Pro Dux - $14.99
• Turbo Dux - $55

Team pricing plan:

• Pro Edition: $135
• Turbo Edition: $495

Agency plan:

• Pro: $337.50
• Turbo: $412.50

In addition to a monthly cost, Dux Soup also charges support help with Zapier webhooks and tailored technical process setup.

Linked Helper 2

Unlike Dux Soup, Linked Helper is a LinkedIn automation tool based on a desktop app. Unfortunately, this still means that it has no dedicated IP address and the possibility of running multiple accounts. In addition, your PC needs to be on  to be able to work in the background.

Pros 

As Dux Soup, Linked Helper 2 offers the creation of a LinkedIn Recruiter-based campaign to help all recruiters out there manage potential candidates.

All processed contacts are stored in Linked Helper’s internal CRM. You can view the history of contacts through all your campaigns, search by tags and add notes. Linked Helper’s internal CRM comes in handy even when you wish to interact with contacts manually.

Cons

Linked Helper doesn’t have some other more advanced features that many other LinkedIn automation tools already have. These features include Image and GIF hyper-personalization, post engagement campaigns options, Smart Sequences and A/B testing. Additionally, it does not have Email Automation. 

Pricing

For as low as $15 per month (or $8.25 a month if you choose an annual subscription), you will get some basic Lead Generation options such as LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and outreach based on CSV file outreach. However, they limit these pricing plans by messages and connection requests you can send per day. 

Linked Helper also offers a $45 pricing plan with an unlimited number of connection requests.

Zopto

This LinkedIn automation software is a cloud-based solution for social selling. Zopto is compatible with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Premium, and Recruiter accounts. In addition, it also supports Twitter engagement automation.

Pros

Firstly, Zopto offers an email enrichment feature. In other words, it can find business emails, like Skylead, PhantomBuster and TexAu, and verify them. Secondly, it has a posts scheduling feature and can gather data such as the list of LinkedIn group members. Lastly, Zopto offers A/B testing and integrated inbox features.

Cons

The downsides of Zopto are that it doesn’t have Email Automation. In addition, it offers a simple drip campaign. In other words, Zopto doesn’t offer the quality and long-term, automated outreach solutions you get with Smart Sequences like Skylead. It has only a 4-step message workflow without any conditions.

Pricing

Zopto costs $215 per month. This is a higher price in comparison to other solutions in the market, having in mind advanced features VS price ratio.

MeetAlfred

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based software with automated social media features. It focuses on social selling via your LinkedIn profile. In addition, it can schedule posts on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Pros

All processed contacts are stored in MeetAlfred’s internal CRM. This means you can easily access and manage all your 1st-degree connections information and filter the contacts by company, industry, type of LinkedIn account, Twitter, and much more. 

MeetAlfred also offers integrated inbox and Email Outreach features. However, it can only send emails to 1-degree connections, unlike Skylead that can find and send emails to anyone.

Cons

MeetAlfred doesn’t have Smart Sequences, email discovery, and verification that are advanced features. Secondly, it doesn't have native GIFs and Image personalization features. There is, however, an integration with Hyperise as Expandi, which will make your monthly subscription fee $108 in total if you choose the middle package.

Pricing

MeetAlfred offers 3 pricing plans: $49 for single users and limited features, $89 for Sales Navigator users, and $699 for large sales teams.

Dripify

This cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool works with Premium, Sales Navigator, Recruiter Lite, and Free LinkedIn accounts. 

Pros

Dripify allows the creation of sales funnels on LinkedIn by automating some actions as a part of their sequence with conditions. These actions include viewing profiles, sending regular messages and connection requests, and skill endorsement. 

In addition, you can integrate other software, such as HubSpot, through Zapier. Lastly, it supports A/B testing and has a Recent activity feature on its reports page.

Cons

Dripify indeed offers Smart sequences. However, be aware that you need to pay more expensive pricing plans to have it. In addition, you don’t have the option to automate the InMail step, and there are only 3 sequence templates available.

Secondly, Dripify has no email automation feature. Thus, you can’t multichannel your outreach and get leads that do not spend that much time on LinkedIn.

Thirdly, you cannot send more than 75 connection requests a day. In addition, there is activity control. However, you need to be an advanced user to get it. 

Dripify also doesn’t offer Image & GIF hyper-personalization, nor can you create custom variables with CSV campaigns.

Lastly, Dripify doesn’t have an email discovery and verification feature. So, if the email is part of your outreach, this tool is not for you.

Pricing

Dripify has 3 different pricing plans:

• Basic - $59
• Pro - $79
• Advanced - $99

Expandi

Expandi is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool with both LinkedIn and Email Outreach options. 

Pros

Expandi published its Smart Sequence feature a year after Skylead did, making it the second tool on the market to do so. They offer additional actions such as skill endorsement and following companies. 

Like Skylead, Zopto, and Linked Helper, Expandi has the option of creating LinkedIn Recruiter-based campaigns. 

Lastly, Expandi can integrate with any other tool via Zapier webhooks. 

Cons

Expandi offers the option of an Image & GIF hyper-personalization feature. However, they outsource this feature to Hyperise. That’s why it adds $69 per month to a regular Expandi subscription of $99 per month. It comes down to a total of $148 per month. Please note that the mentioned Hyperise package is limited to 5 templates and 5000 impressions (counted each time an image is viewed).

Apart from this additional cost, another downside is that Expandi doesn’t have Email Discovery & Verification. These features are essential for a domain safety and verified multi-touch approach. However, Expandi can scrape publicly available email addresses from the leads’ LinkedIn profiles once connected to them. Although, these emails are almost always personal ones.

Lastly, many users on review websites report that this tool has become too buggy to use lately. 

Pricing

Expandi has one pricing plan of $99 per month.

WeConnect

WeConnect is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool like Skylead, Dripify, Zopto, and Expandi. 

Pro

WeConnect has A/B testing, a convenient feature for those who are still researching their perfect outreach strategy or wish to test different outreach messaging. In addition, you can send messages to LinkedIn group members on autopilot. 

Whether your prospects come from LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator, you’ll be able to see them, as WeConnect has an integrated inbox. Moreover, it has auto endorse and post-engagement features, as well as API and Zapier integration. 

Cons

Sadly, WeConnect doesn’t offer advanced features like Post Engagement Campaigns, Image personalization, or Smart Sequences. Also, it doesn’t have Email Automation or Email Discovery and Verification features. However, you can find all these features and more in Skylead.

Pricing 

If you need some basic Campaign Creation options, such as from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, or CSV, without the features and conveniences other tools have, then WeConnect can be the right option for you for $49 per month.

Octopus CRM

This is another LinkedIn automation tool that is extension-based. As it is designed for LinkedIn automation only, Octopus CRM users can solely perform LinkedIn outreach once they connect their LinkedIn profile.

Pros

One of the main features is that Octopus CRM allows you to send bulk messages to first-degree contacts. 

In addition, its reporting page has very detailed analytics for the features it offers. The report page includes various activities, such as the number of connection requests sent or the current Social Selling Index. 

Lastly, Octopus CRM supports Zapier and HubSpot integration.

Cons

Firstly, as it is a browser extension, this LinkedIn automation bot is not the safest to use. Secondly, it doesn’t have Smart Sequences, nor does it have an InMail message step.

Lastly, Octopus CRM supports all LinkedIn subscriptions. However, you need to pay the highest subscription plan if you use a Recruiter account. 

Pricing

Depending on the features available, Octopus CRM offers 3 pricing options:

• Starter - $9.99
• Pro - $14.99
• Advanced - $21.99
• Unlimited - $39.99

Salesflow

SalesFlow is a cloud-based solution with an integrated inbox with its own CRM and Zapier integration. It is adequate for anyone who wants to leave the campaign running to professionals with the modest features available. 

Pros

Unlike Zopto, which offers a 4-step message sequence, in SalesFlow, you can send as many LinkedIn messages and follow-ups as you wish. Moreover, you can either create campaigns from Sales Navigator or LinkedIn search results and send their template messages. 

Cons

Unfortunately, SalesFlow doesn’t offer email automation, discovery, verification, and Smart Sequences features. Hence, there is no possibility of complete multi-channel outreach. Furthermore, it doesn’t have any Image personalization features, so you cannot go all personalized on your prospects. 

Lastly, it doesn’t support Recruiter campaigns, nor it sends an increased number of connection requests.

Pricing

SalesFlow has 3 plans depending on the features available: 

• For Business - €89
• For Team - €71 / €57 / Custom, depending on the number of users
• Done for you -  €429

LinkedFusion

Another LinkedIn automation tool worth mentioning is LinkedFusion. It is a cloud-based solution with an integrated inbox that perfectly works with any LinkedIn profile. 

Pros

With LinkedInFusion, you can personalize messages with a few variables like name, company, and location. It also supports campaign creation from the CSV file.

You can also connect it with any other app through Zapier. What’s more, it has Google Sheets and Hubspot native integration, plus it offers native integration with most CRM software. 

Lastly, LinkedFusion offers many LinkedIn tutorials that explain advanced growth hacks. 

Cons

LinkedFusion doesn’t have Smart Sequences, and some users reported the existing sequences are confusing. Furthermore, even though it offers image personalization, it does so through Hyperise, so you need to pay extra per month. 

Lastly, its pricing plan limits how many connection requests you can send per day.  

Pricing

LinkedInFusion has 3 pricing plans in store. They depend on other features and the number of connection requests, and messages you can send per day:

• Professional - $65
• Grow - $95.95
• Ultimate - $135.95

Lead Connect

Lead Connect is an extension-based tool that supports LinkedIn basic or Sales Navigator campaigns. It also allows CSV type of campaign. 

Pros

Lead Connect has a pretty simple drip campaign with only a few steps available. On the other hand, it offers various templates. However, the number of templates depends on the pricing plan. 

Speaking of integration, you can link Lead Connect with HubSpot. In addition, you can even get the email discovery feature thanks to the integration with other tools such as Hunter.io. Although, you need to pay more for it. 

Cons

Lead Connect doesn’t offer Smart Sequence like Skylead or Expandi. In addition, it doesn’t support Recruiter integration and needs Zapier to integrate with other CRM software. Lastly, it doesn’t support image personalization or images of any kind, for that matter. 

Pricing Plans

LeadConnect offers 4 subscription plans based on the number of templates, connection requests, and messages you can send per day:

• Free
• Professional - $22.95
• Grow - $40.95
• Ultimate - $77.95 

Waalaxy

LinkedIn automation tool, Waalaxy, is extension-based software. This means it’s not the safest to use since it injects code into the LinkedIn platform and acts like a bot.  

Pros

Waalaxy supports Recruiter, Sales Navigator, and LinkedIn accounts. It can create a campaign from a LinkedIn group member search or from the Who viewed your LinkedIn profile feature. It also has auto engagement and endorsement features. 

Furthermore, it uses voice cloning technology to personalize your voice message using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Voicemail. 

Cons

As it is extension-based, Waalaxy is not the safest tool to use, and you need to keep your tab open to work. Moreover, many users on review websites have reported having their LinkedIn account banned once they started using this tool.

In addition, it doesn’t have image & GIF personalization, and it only has 3 text variables: company, first and last name. So personalization is at its minimum. 

Waalaxy doesn’t support A/B testing, so you cannot optimize your campaigns like in Skylead. Also, they do not offer Smart Sequences, and you can’t build your campaigns, as you are limited to their templates. Lastly, they restrict the number of connection requests you can use per month. 

Pricing

Waalaxy has 4 different pricing plans depending on basic features availability:

• Business - €99
• Advanced - €69
• Pro - €35
• Free

Salesloop

As a fairly new cloud-based solution on the market, Salesloop works with almost any type of LinkedIn account.  

Pros

Salesloop offers a simple 2-step drip campaign with no conditions. It works both with LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator. In addition, you can create a campaign with a CSV file with a few text personalization variables.

If you are not automation savvy, they also offer a done-for-you deal, but you need to pay a steep price for it.

Cons 

Salesloop doesn’t have Smart Sequences. Furthermore, the drip campaign doesn’t support many LinkedIn activities. In other words, it supports invite-to-connect and follow-up message steps only. Lastly, it has no email automation, and doesn’t integrate with any CRM.

Pricing

Salesloop has three pricing plans with monthly subscription:

• Solo - $49
• Team - $199
• Managed Services - $999

IFTTT

This tool is not for lead generation. However, it is extension-based, and you can automate your LinkedIn activities, such as publishing content, sharing a link, or an update. 

It is created mainly for the automatization of activities on countless platforms, including WordPress, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Evernote, and others.

It doesn’t automate LinkedIn messaging. 

Pricing

The pricing of IFTTT is fairly simple:

• Forever Free (includes LinkedIn automation)
• Pro - $2.6 
• +Pro - $5.04

Frequently Asked Questions About LinkedIn Automation

We’ve noticed some questions regarding LinkedIn automation tools burning online with no answers. At least not the precise ones. So, let’s change that.

Is LinkedIn A Lead Generation Tool?

LinkedIn is a social media platform used by professionals. Marketers, salespeople, and recruiters also use it to find and generate new leads via LinkedIn campaigns. It is not a lead generation tool per se but rather a place where you can generate leads using different LinkedIn automation and generation tools.

Can You Automate Lead Generation?

Yes. For example, you can find the leads’ data through LinkedIn prospecting. Then, use automation tools to scrape the contacts and create a sequence to reach out to them on autopilot. In other words, with LinkedIn automation tools, you can automate parts of LinkedIn lead generation activities.

How Do You Automate In LinkedIn?

By using LinkedIn automation tools, you can automate LinkedIn lead generation tasks. The activities you can automate range from data scraping to sending connection requests, follow-up messages, InMails, follows, and profile views. Simply log into your LinkedIn automation tool, and set the activities you wish for the algorithm to perform. 

What Is An Automation Tool In LinkedIn?

The automation tool for LinkedIn is software used to perform different activities on LinkedIn that you usually do manually. In other words, these tools automate the list of LinkedIn activities such as profile views, following other LinkedIn users, sending connection requests, regular LinkedIn messages, or InMails.

Is Linkedin Automation Illegal? 

No. LinkedIn automation isn’t illegal. However, since LinkedIn doesn’t like its users to use automation, it carefully analyzes accounts’ activities. If it registers unusual activity, LinkedIn can get your LinkedIn account restricted. So be careful about what LinkedIn automation tool you choose and what is considered a cause for restriction.   

Does LinkedIn Allow Automation Tools?

No. LinkedIn doesn’t like its users to use automation. That is why they imposed limitations, such as the number of connection requests per week. They even analyze users’ behavior and can get your LinkedIn profile restricted. Better choose a tool like Skylead that operates safely.

Is There A LinkedIn Bot?

LinkedIn automation tools (also known as LinkedIn bots) are software that uses bots to automate your activities on LinkedIn. Sales teams and recruiters around the world use LinkedIn automation tools to automate tasks such as sending connection requests, messages, and InMails to get in touch with the leads.

Ready To Automate Your LinkedIn Outreach?

Now that you are familiar with the most popular LinkedIn automation tools, which one would you choose?

…Skylead! 

Jokes aside, our advice is to go with the tool that gives you the most options you need for your business. Trust us, the more you start feeling comfortable with your automation tool of this professional network platform, the more creative you will want to become with lead generation to stand out from your competitors.

If you are unsure what features to make a priority in LinkedIn automation tools, here’s our top 7 list. 

Now, go and automate your LinkedIn outreach and reach those ambitious goals!

Let’s chat! Drop by and say hi to our customer support team and let them help you sign up for Skylead’s 7-day free trial. We can’t wait to meet you.

For those who have just started researching LinkedIn automation tools, SaaS startup Expandi appeared in the market in 2019. They initially created software that focused solely on LinkedIn automation. 

After years of development, many small business sales teams and recruiters started using it for Email outreach and LinkedIn lead generation. 

However, as the market has changed and other tools progressed, one question poses itself. Is Expandi the best Email and LinkedIn outreach tool? Or is there a better alternative on the market? 

Let’s check that together. We will go over what Expandi offers, its disadvantages, the comparison with other solutions, and the pricing itself. 

Expandi or alternatives?

Expandi is a LinkedIn automation and Email outreach tool. In other words, it performs the outreach activities on both platforms on autopilot, so you don’t have to.  

It is a cloud-based solution with a dedicated IP address that shields your activity. In addition, your data is stored on the internet, not servers, like in some LinkedIn automation tools.

Unlike Chrome extensions (e.g., Dux-Soup), or desktop apps (e.g., LinkedHelper), a cloud-based solution like Expandi doesn’t require you to keep your PC turned on. Moreover, it doesn’t inject code into LinkedIn and mimics human behavior. These two parameters make this software a safer solution than extension-based tools. This way, you can send connection requests and perform LinkedIn outreach carefree.

Many small businesses, and startups teams use Expandi for LinkedIn prospecting and lead generation. These professionals include salespeople, recruiters, and even outbound marketing managers.

You can use Expandi with any LinkedIn account. To clarify, you can create campaigns based on Sales Navigator, Recruiter, or Premium and basic LinkedIn search URL. Moreover, you can create an outreach campaign with a CSV file.

Lastly, Expandi can integrate with any other tool via Zapier webhooks or API. 

Now that we’ve covered the basics let’s get into the specific features.

Expandi features

Smart Sequences

To clarify, Smart Sequence is an algorithm that streamlines LinkedIn activities you create in a workflow. In other words, it performs each action you set for each lead from the target audience source on autopilot. 

Expandi introduced a Smart Sequence feature almost a year after Skylead did (another LinkedIn automation & Cold Email software). 

With Expandi, you can automate various activities: 

• Viewing another LinkedIn profile, 
• Sending LinkedIn connection requests, 
• Follow-up messages once connected, 
• Or LinkedIn InMails. 

Expandi also provides non-essential steps for lead generation, such as LinkedIn Post liking, Skill Endorsement, and Following Company.  

Email outreach

Expandi added Email outreach to their features list so you can use multichannel as part of the Smart Sequence workflow. In other words, this feature allows you to expand your LinkedIn lead generation to another channel. By using email as your secondary channel, you can connect with less active leads on LinkedIn. 

What’s more, Expandi offers attractive metrics analysis and A/B testing, so you can test what messaging works best for you and optimize your campaign. Or you can choose to use one of their message templates. 

Disadvantages

Expandi lacks some outreach features. Firstly, even though it offers Image & GIF hyper-personalization, Expandi outsources this feature to Hyperise. So, what does this mean for you? First, you pay an additional monthly price if you wish to use this feature. In addition, Hyperise itself limits this feature depending on the number of templates and impressions(counted each time someone sees the image). Thus, for example, the lowest Hyperise package of $69 limits the use of 5 templates and 5000 impressions.

Secondly, Expandi doesn’t have Email Discovery & Verification features, meaning it cannot find leads’ business email addresses and verify them. Even though Expandi can scrape publicly-available personal email addresses from LinkedIn profiles, it can do so only after the prospects accept your connection request.

Therefore, if the lead isn’t responsive on LinkedIn or doesn’t accept, you cannot reach them via Email as Expandi cannot find their address. Therefore, you miss the shot to multichannel your outreach and get in touch with that lead. Moreover, you risk a high bounce rate and having your domain damaged. So, if you wish to find business emails, you cannot do it in Expandi. In other words, you would need to find an Email Discovery tool and increase your monthly subscription.  

Lastly, if you use Expandi yourself or read reviews, you will notice that most users reported that this tool had become buggy lately. Too buggy to use. Moreover, their customer support team is not the most responsive, nor are the issues solved promptly.

Pricing

Expandi offers one pricing plan of $99 for one seat a month and a whitelabel solution. However, if you decide to use Hyperise Image & GIF personalization feature, you end up with a monthly receipt of $168 per 1 seat. And if you wish to include Email Discovery & Verification, count an additional $50+ per month, at least. Therefore the total monthly pricing for 1 Expandi account with all the features is $218 minimum. 

However, some Expandi alternatives possess the same, better, or similar features at different prices. So, let’s check them out.

5 best Explandi alternatives

Whether you’ve found out about Expandi recently or are not satisfied with this tool and looking for a change, here is the list of Expandi alternatives. 

1. Skylead

The first and best Expandi alternative is Skylead. Yes, that is us 🙂 Hello.

Skylead is an All-In-One solution that helps founders, sales teams, recruiters, marketers, and others streamline their outreach efforts.

Skylead is the best LinkedIn automation tool & Cold Email software with all outreach native features. In other words, it is a perfectly-rounded Lead generation tool.  

As opposed to Chrome extensions like Dux-Soup, or desktop apps like LinkedHelper, Skylead is a cloud-based solution. In other words, each user gets a dedicated IP address that shields their activity. In addition, it mimics human behavior and performs a different number of actions in real-time each day. These features make Skylead the safest software out there.

Being a cloud-based software comes with additional perks. For example, Skylead offers an integrated inbox that gathers all messages in one place and an option to operate with multiple LinkedIn accounts.

Like Expandi, you can use it with any LinkedIn account type, including all Sales Navigator and Recruiter subscription plans.

Thanks to these integrations, you can use Skylead to create outreach campaigns and target audiences from 8 different sources:

• LinkedIn search results; 
• Sales Navigator search results;
• Recruiter search results;
• Event attendees (available with all LinkedIn account types);
• Recruiter Talent Pool or Pipeline URL;
• CSV file with native or custom variables to increase response rate (available with all LinkedIn account types);
• People who reacted to the specific LinkedIn post (available with all LinkedIn account types);
• Sales Navigator Lead Lists;

Moreover, Skylead supports integration with your CRM or any other tool via Zapier webhooks or API.

Lastly, with Skylead, you can scrape publicly available data only, such as email and phone numbers. Or you can choose to create an outreach campaign.

Now that we've covered the basics let's jump to more features Skylead offers.

Skylead features

Smart Sequences

Skylead is the first tool that launched Smart Sequences on the market and thus has changed how the entire market performed its outreach. As previously mentioned, this groundbreaking algorithm executes steps in the order you set, according to your leads’ behavior. 

The If/Else conditions make the Smart Sequences special. In other words, Skylead can recognize what path your leads choose to follow in your workflow and perform future actions in real time.

You can create a sequence from any outreach action you imagine. These actions include sending free and paid InMails, and connection requests. You can create custom conditions as well. 

Fear not, though. If you do not wish to create the sequence from scratch, you can always use one of Skylead’s pretested sequence templates along with its message templates. 

With Smart Sequences, you don’t spend countless hours reaching out to every single lead manually. Skylead does it all for you.

Email outreach 

Having a multichannel outreach will give your LinkedIn prospects a well-rounded lead-generation experience. But, more importantly, it will show that you wish to help them resolve any problems they might have. 

That is why Skylead has an integrated Email Outreach feature that you can combine with LinkedIn outreach in one sequence. In addition, Skylead’s email outreach offers various personalization variables so you can write your most converting messages and follow-up emails. 

In addition, as opposed to Expandi or any other tool from this list, Skylead allows you to connect unlimited email accounts. In other words, you can send thousands of emails daily without damaging your domain and at no additional cost.

Lastly, unlike Expandi, with Skylead, you can use Email outreach at its full potential. Here’s how. 

Email discovery & verification

Skylead recognized how mandatory Email Discovery & Verification steps are in multichannel outreach. Thus they created both features for the users. Using these features, you can find business emails, thus lowering the bounce rate, saving your domain authority, and maximizing getting in touch with leads. 

Moreover, you can find and verify your prospects’ emails without linking your LinkedIn profile with Skylead.

Email Discovery & Verification features are native, meaning you don’t pay an extra monthly price for it. Lastly, Skylead is the only solution on the market that allows users to use both of these features without limitations. In other words, Skylead offers unlimited Email Discovery & Verification credits, meaning it doesn’t charge an additional monthly sum. 

Native image & GIF hyper personalization

To maximize your response rate, Skylead introduced a native Image & GIF Hyper-Personalization feature. This way, you can send LinkedIn InMails, messages, emails, or follow-ups in a more personalized and unique way and catch your prospects’ attention.

Skylead personalizes your chosen images and GIF on autopilot by pulling the person’s profile picture, company logo, and other information from the profile. So you don’t need to personalize countless versions of the same image. Instead, Skylead does it all for you.

Report and analytics

Skylead offers 3 levels of detailed, real-time insight:

• Graph Metrics - perfect for visual representations of the ratio between the actions;
• Table view - best for spotting trends that happen during specific days;
• Sequence Steps - if you wish to examine steps in detail, this interactive report is for you.

Therefore, you can analyze the metrics of every aspect of your outreach campaigns. Moreover, with Skylead, you can A/B test your messaging, subject, line, or connection requests, see what works best and optimize your efforts. 

Pricing

Skylead is an All-In-One tool you need for your multichannel outreach, and it costs $100 per 1 account/month. Unlike other LinkedIn automation and lead generation tools such as Expandi or Zopto, Skylead doesn’t limit the features by the number of uses. Moreover, Skylead has a very dedicated customer support team that is ready to help you any time. 

Lastly, like Expandi, Skylead provides a Whitelabel solution to its partners.

Expandi vs. Skylead

To simplify the analysis, we’ve created a comparison table between Expandi and Skylead. In addition, we included the most important to less essential features of both software, so you can make your decision easier.

2. Zopto

LinkedIn automation tool, Zopto, is another cloud-based solution and Expandi.io alternative. It is compatible with Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Premium, and Recruiter accounts. 

What distinguishes Zopto and Expandi is that Zopto offers an Email Enrichment feature. In other words, Zopto can find and verify business emails like Skylead. However, the downside is that Zopto limits how many leads you can enrich with the email, depending on the pricing plan. 

As opposed to other mutual features, like A/B testing, Zopto offers a LinkedIn Post scheduling feature. It means you can create and schedule posts on LinkedIn using this software. Moreover, Zopto expanded incomplete automation to another social media channel - Twitter. In other words, it can automate only post likes on Twitter. 

Lastly, being a cloud-based solution, Zopto has combined Inbox, as well as CRM, and Hubspot integration through Zapier webhooks and API.

Another major disadvantage is that Zopto doesn’t have Smart Sequence functionality. Instead, it offers a simple 4-step drip campaign without any conditions. 

Pricing

Zopto’s pricing includes 3 plans. Each plan comes with an assigned account manager.

• Personal - $215 per month (1 account included)
• Grow - $344 per month (2 accounts included)
• Agency - $860 per month (5+ accounts included)

This price for all packages is higher considering other tools, features they offer, and the pricing itself.

Expandi vs. Zopto

Having in mind all other features mentioned above, here is a total comparison between Skylead, Expandi and Zopto.

3. MeetAlfred

This is another SaaS startup that developed an outreach solution for small businesses, salespeople, and agencies. MeetAlfred primarily automates social media activities, including scheduling Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts.  

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based solution with an internal CRM. It means that, like Expandi.io and Skylead, you can easily access and manage your leads. In addition, this tool also offers integrated inbox and Email Outreach features. However, you can only send emails to 1-degree LinkedIn connections, like Expandi.io, making it an incomplete multichannel outreach tool.

Lastly, MeetAlfred supports Zapier integration or integration with any other tool via webhooks.

One of the most significant disadvantages is that MeetAlfred doesn’t offer Smart Sequences. Instead, it only provides a simple drip outreach campaign. However, it does offer more steps in a sequence than Zopto.

Secondly, MeetAlfred doesn’t have email discovery and verification features. Moreover, it doesn’t have a native Image & GIF hyper-personalization. But, they have a Hyperise integration as Expand.io that increases your monthly subscription cost.

Pricing

MeetAlfred has 3 pricing plans: 

• $49 for single users and limited features (limited by 3 active campaigns), 
• $89 for Sales Navigator users,
• $699 for large sales teams.

To this day, MeetAlfer doesn’t offer a Whitelabel solution.

Expandi vs. MeetAlfred 

MeetAlfred tries hard to follow the amount of features Expandi, Skylead and Zopto introduced. However, they balance these lacks in pricing.

4. LinkedFusion

Another great LinkedIn automation tool like Expandi is LinkedFusion. It is a cloud-based solution that offers an integrated inbox. Furthermore, you can outreach your target audience using any LinkedIn account or CSV file. 

You can link LinkedFusion with any other app through Zapier webhooks. Moreover, this tool has Hubspot and Google Sheets native integration, unlike Expandi. 

Moreover, they offer message templates they claim to be tested and conversion-driven.

Should you need any help, LinkedFusion also has a technical customer support team at your disposal 24/7.

The major disadvantage of LinkedFusion is that it doesn’t have Smart Sequences functionality, so you cannot fully control your outreach. 

Lastly, this tool offers image personalization. However, you can do it only through Hyperise integration. 

Pricing

LinkedInFusion has 3 subscription plans. They all depend on the number of connection requests, messages you can send per day, and other features:

• Professional: $65
• Grow: $95.95
• Ultimate: $135.95

Expandi vs. LinkedFusion

One of the best things about Expandi and Skylead is the Smart Sequence function. However, if this is not something you’re interested in, look at other features found in LinkedFusion.

5. LinkedHelper 2

Linked Helper 2 is another LinkedIn automation tool. However, unlike Expandi, it is a desktop app, meaning it doesn't have a dedicated IP address and the functionality to run multiple accounts. Moreover, your PC needs to be kept on for LinkedHelper to run. 

On a brighter note, LinkedHelper offers Recruiter-based campaigns, unlike LinkedFusion and MeetAlfred. Moreover, you have your internal CRM to monitor the contacts' history.

Sadly, LinkedHelper doesn't have Image & GIF personalization in any form, so you cannot hyper-personalize your outreach. Moreover, it doesn't support post-engagement campaign type, Smart Sequences or A/B testing functionality.

Pricing

What lacks in functionality, LinkedHelper V2 makes up for in pricing. However, they limit pricing plans based on the number of messages and connection requests you can send per day:

• Standard: $15
• Pro: $45 (unlimited number of features)

Expandi vs. LinkedHelper V2

Apart from the difference in basic functionality type (cloud-based and desktop app), here is the list of other differences between Expandi and LinkedHelper. 

6. Phantombuster

Last but not least, we have Phantombuster - an extension-based tool like Dux-Soup. Although it isn’t an automation tool like Expandi, it contributes to lead generation since its algorithm focuses on data extraction. In other words, Phantombuster automates data scraping from any social media platform, including LinkedIn. 

This tool is an excellent addition to your outreach, saving time scraping the data for your CSV-based campaigns. Moreover, Phantombuster has an email discovery feature but cannot verify them. 

Phantombuster offers some automated actions on LinkedIn. For example, it can only send connection requests and messages on autopilot. However, it doesn’t have Smart Sequence functionality nor is it safe to use as it injects the code in the LinkedIn platform. Therefore, it works best as a social media scraper tool that you can combine with other LinkedIn automation tools like Expandi or Skylead. 

Lastly, Phantombuster offers Hubspot & Pipedrive CRM enrichment via integration through API key.

Pricing

PhantomBuster has 3 pricing plans depending on the number of automated actions and the time it runs during 1 month:

• Starter: $59 per month
• Pro: $139 per month
• Team: $399 per month

Expandi vs. Phantombuster

Feature-wise, Phantombuster may be different from other LinkedIn automation tools. However, you may reconsider it if you plan to create a campaign based on a CSV file using other tools.

How to cancel Expandi?

If you are unsatisfied with Expandi and want to try out other tools from our list, here is how to cancel your Expandi account.

First, log into your account and click the Profile Settings button in the side menu. Then, navigate to the Subscription Plan section.

Next, click the Remove button. 

Expandi will ask you to state the reason why you wish to cancel. You cannot proceed unless you do. 

Once you cancel your account, you won’t be able to access your dashboard anymore, and you will be done. 

Frequently asked questions

How do these alternative tools compare in terms of overall cost-efficiency, particularly for small businesses or individual entrepreneurs?

The overall cost-efficiency of alternative tools varies, with some offering more advanced features at a higher price point. For small businesses or solo entrepreneurs, choosing a tool that balances functionality with affordability is key to maximizing ROI.

What specific advantages do these alternatives offer over Expandi in terms of features like A/B testing, integration capabilities, and customer support responsiveness?

Compared to Expandi, these alternatives, such as Skylead may offer unique features such as more robust A/B testing capabilities, seamless integrations with other tools, and superior customer support, providing a tailored approach to LinkedIn automation and cold emailing strategies.

How user-friendly are these alternatives for someone with minimal experience in LinkedIn automation or cold emailing strategies?

The user-friendliness of these alternatives ranges widely, with some prioritizing a straightforward interface and guided setup processes to accommodate users new to LinkedIn automation, while others may offer advanced customization options suited for experienced marketers.

Ready to try other tools from the list?

Now that you know other Expandi alternatives and their main features, choose the best LinkedIn automation tool for you to test. The good practice is to analyze what you personally need for your outreach and the budget you have.

To recap, let's go over all Expandi alternatives' features compared to one another. 

Would you like to give Skylead a try? 🙂

Then sign up for a 7-day Free Trial. Or if you have any questions, drop by and say hi via chat on our website. We will be happy to meet you!

Wondering how to automate LinkedIn? Here’s why you should use a LinkedIn bot for lead generation and business scaling.

Have you heard the news? LinkedIn is the place to be. It’s a business-oriented social platform with over 930 million worldwide users. Many companies and industries rely on its high conversion rate, which is 3 times higher than on any other social media platform. It is considered the safe haven for B2B lead generation.

For example, salespeople worldwide use LinkedIn prospecting as the main targeting tool for outbound marketing. On the other hand, marketers also largely benefit from LinkedIn by running marketing campaigns and collecting potential leads. Recruiters can utilize the platform’s promising possibilities to find top talent for their companies.

Moreover, we’ve come to find that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for generating leads than any other social media platform out there. So, the question is, how do we use its full potential? After testing and trying out different tools and approaches, we’ve got the answer - LinkedIn bots.

Ever since 2019, we have been operating in the SaaS industry and developing a bot for LinkedIn that will change the outreach game for you. Today, we’ve served 15,000 users from 93 countries, and our goal is to give you the ultimate automation experience.

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot, which is why we want to help you understand LinkedIn bots - our field of expertise. In this article, you will learn how they work and how you can benefit from them. Finally, we’ll review different LinkedIn bots for you and help you pick one to fit your business needs.

Cheat sheet

What is a LinkedIn bot?

LinkedIn bots, also known as LinkedIn automation tools, are designed to simplify the outreach process by largely decreasing the number of manual tasks. This means time-consuming actions like sending messages, invites to connect, follow-ups, scraping profiles, and posting updates are fully automated.

But how does it work? Here’s an example. 👇

The bot analyzes your lead source, which could be one of the following:

• LinkedIn search URL 
• Sales navigator search URL
• Recruiter search URL
• Imported list of leads from a CSV file
• People who’ve liked a post on LinkedIn
• Imported Sales navigator leads list
• Recruiter talent pool
• Recruiter pipeline

It then performs all the previously mentioned actions according to your settings and interacts with the selected prospects on autopilot. Did we mention that this happens while you’re focusing on something else? The magic of LinkedIn bots is this - once you tune it according to your needs, it works on its own for you.

What types of LinkedIn bots exist?

Diving right into the technical side of our software-picking process, we need to look at different types of bots for LinkedIn before we make a choice.

Built-in LinkedIn AI bot

Automation and AI seem to go hand in hand these days, which means LinkedIn bots are likely to follow this trend. In fact, this time, LinkedIn is the one to introduce its own version of a LinkedIn AI bot. To clarify, it’s a built-in feature that acts like an AI writer. The feature supports generative AI content, which can be used for LinkedIn ad copy suggestions.

Back in June, LinkedIn started testing AI-generated copy within the share box for writing posts. That way, all users get to test the power of AI bots within their own profile. The idea is to help the post creation process, saving loads of time on forming the right copy.

Browser-based LinkedIn bots

Browser-based LinkedIn bots or extension-based automation tools require an extension download to work. Many bots come in the form of Chrome extensions. In fact, some cloud-based tools also support certain features in the form of add-ons or extensions, which can be added or removed later on.

Now, to use a browser-based bot, open LinkedIn in the browser of your choice and activate the extension. However, the tricky thing about these bots is that they insert a code into LinkedIn. This makes them less safe to use, which can ultimately send you to LinkedIn jail - getting your LinkedIn account restricted or permanently banned if LinkedIn’s algorithms spot suspicious behavior.

More downsides besides safety:

• You can’t turn off your PC. Otherwise, if you do, the bot will stop working.
• Each time you log in, the bot uses a different IP address.
• These bots don’t support some complex features, such as connecting multiple accounts and an integrated inbox. 

Desktop-based bots

Desktop-based bots are those that require a PC download to work. They act like desktop apps, and they need to work in the background at all times for the automation to happen. Apart from that, all data is stored on your computer or a local server.

Downsides:

• Detectable by LinkedIn - safety concern.
• PC has to be turned on at all times.

Cloud-based Linkedin bots

Cloud-based LinkedIn bots work thanks to a dedicated IP address. They serve as a proxy and shield against all automated activity. This means your data is not stored on a local server or your personal computer but rather on the internet/cloud. And the best thing of all? The software runs even when your PC is shut down.

Furthermore, cloud-based LinkedIn bots are the only ones that let you connect multiple LinkedIn accounts and have an integrated inbox. To clarify, this means you can find messages, be it LinkedIn regular messages, InMails, emails, Sales Navigator messages, or Recruiter messages, in one unique place.

Thanks to all the perks that go with this type of solution, Skylead developed a cloud-based LinkedIn bot. We decided this is best because we wanted you to be safe while using automation and to have as many convenient features as possible.

LinkedIn automation: How do LinkedIn bots work?

LinkedIn bots are usually programmed tools that allow you to automate LinkedIn activities in different ways. To use a LinkedIn bot, you need to connect your LinkedIn account with the tool. This usually means giving the bot access to your account.

LinkedIn connection bots are used for sales automation to increase productivity in the sales process. They can be used to automate certain parts of the sales process or most of them. You can use LinkedIn automation for:

1. Prospecting
2. Lead generation
3. Drip campaigns
4. Follow-ups
5. Data collection and more.

Speaking of data collection, CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management) are one of these useful automation tools. CRMs are used to support sales management while delivering actionable insights. They can integrate with other tools and allow for team communication and collaboration.

Now, imagine all these possibilities on LinkedIn. This is where LinkedIn bots come in, as powerful automation tools. These bots give you a bigger and more effective outreach, and this is where they can help. 👇

Helps you write new posts on LinkedIn

Some bots, such as the LinkedIn built-in AI bot, help you write new posts on LinkedIn. If you simply don’t have a lot of time to formulate an already attention-grabbing thought, you can use an AI bot to generate meaningful copy.

Fun fact: AI has the potential to automate 40% of the average workday. We’ll keep that in mind as we watch artificial intelligence develop in the near future.

Send LinkedIn connection requests

LinkedIn connection bots can help with one of the most basic LinkedIn tasks, such as sending connection requests. You can target a certain group of people when entering a lead source, and the bot will do the rest.

Accept LinkedIn connection requests

After sending connection requests, automation bots can even accept the ones you get for you. It’s networking on autopilot!

Send drip messages & run sequences of actions 

You’ve found your target audience, but now it’s time to reach them with your pitch. LinkedIn bots can automate the entire process by sending a series of messages in a drip campaign. You craft the campaign and messages, and the bot delivers. Some tools even offer a multichannel smart sequence feature, that lets you combine outreach methods. This means you can send outreach messages according to your prospects’ actions, covering all scenarios with if/else conditions.

Personalize LinkedIn messages

A good LinkedIn connection bot can offer you the option to personalize your content. Most tools are working hard to give as many personalization options as possible to balance out the automation. Message hyper-personalization is possible by adding native variables to your message requests, InMails, or follow-up messages such as:

• Name
• Last name
• Current company
• Years in current company
• Total career positions count
• Total years in career
• College name
• Occupation

Custom variable: lets you create your own placeholder.

Posting updates on LinkedIn

Some LinkedIn tools can even post for you. Although there’s nothing new about software that lets you schedule all posting activities, it could be a great additional feature of a more complex LinkedIn bot.

Visiting user profiles

LinkedIn connection bots are designed to mimic human behavior on the internet. At least the best bots were designed with this in mind. Apart from sending messages, your bot of choice can visit user profiles for you. This way, it can catch your prospect’s attention, making sure your interest in communication is being seen loud and clear.

Follow users

Automation is truly marvelous, and it can take a simple task as following a user on LinkedIn off your to-do list. Why focus on repetitive tasks when you can focus on really building those lead relationships?

Send InMail message

LinkedIn connection bots are made to make your life easier. These powerful tools can even send InMail messages to user accounts from your leads list. Now, an important thing to note here is that most tools, if they have this option, tend to send only free InMail messages to open accounts. However, there are some tools out there that support sending both free and paid InMail messages. This means your outreach is bigger, and your chances of conversion are higher.

Find user email

Some LinkedIn bots have the option to scrape the data from a selected source and find your prospects' emails. If the bot of your choice has LinkedIn and email automation in one, this can be a useful feature. You’ll be able to get a whole other outreach channel in case your prospects aren’t as active on LinkedIn.

Export LinkedIn data

A useful bot for LinkedIn has the option to export data via a CSV file or PDF. This data can include lead lists and analytics for better result tracking and ultimate outreach optimization.

Analyze user profiles

LinkedIn bots can do a lot, but did you know that they can analyze user profiles before you even interact with them? Some tools, such as Crystal Knows, are designed to give you a heads-up about your prospect, analyzing their available data and creating a report. This way, you can adapt your approach before scheduling a meeting.

Boost engagement on LinkedIn posts

We can use LinkedIn outreach to boost our social media presence and actually draw people’s attention to a certain post. LinkedIn bots can help boost engagement on specific posts by running campaigns that promote your post to a certain target group.

What are the benefits of Linkedin bots?

Save time by automating recurring tasks

We’ve done the research; we’ve done the math! The main benefit of automated outreach is the time-saving aspect. The right automation tool helps you save up to 11+ hours per week on manual work. That’s one and a half free days per week and a staggering 6 days per month. That’s more than one whole workweek!

Scalable

Your business goals are high, and the workload is heavy, so what do you do? You use tools that can help scale your business. With automation bots, you get to expand your outreach in the most efficient way and interact with more prospects in a shorter period of time. Startups can grow rapidly with the help of SaaS tools.

More accuracy

You can use LinkedIn bots to help you with prospecting and narrowing down your target group. There are multiple ways of finding high-quality leads with pinpoint accuracy. It can be by:

• LinkedIn search filters
• Sales Navigator search filters
• Recruiter search filters
• Recruiter talent pool
• Looking for prospects in LinkedIn groups
• Event attendees
• Engagement on your or someone else’s post

Provide additional data

In our analysis of different LinkedIn bots, we found that some bots can help you find more information about your prospects. We’re talking about data scraping and enrichment features. Some bots can be used to scan all publicly available data and help you expand your outreach to different channels.

Team access

When we tested LinkedIn bots for the first time, we discovered that it’s very useful if they have team management. To clarify, this means that all involved sectors from your company can access the bot and create, adjust, look at, and draw data from the tool. Moreover, you can set permissions for each team member and optimize your workflow even further.

33 best LinkedIn bots to automate LinkedIn tasks in 2023

We've spent months analyzing the effectiveness of LinkedIn bots, and our findings show that these are the LinkedIn connection bots worth looking at.

1. Skylead

Best for multichannel, hyper-personalized LinkedIn, and cold email outreach.

Skylead is a cloud-based bot made for LinkedIn automation and cold email software that thinks and works for you! It’s made for sales teams, founders, marketers, recruiters, individuals, and agencies looking to scale their business.

Pros

Skylead is an all-in-one bot that contains multiple complex outreach features. One of our main features is smart sequences. Skylead is the first software to introduce smart sequences to automation tools. You can use them to combine LinkedIn and email outreach according to your prospects’ behavior by using if/else conditions and multiple actions.

With Skylead, safety is the number one priority when it comes to automating LinkedIn. That’s why we’ve developed 3-layer protection that will shield your account from LinkedIn’s algorithms fishing for suspicious activity. Making our bot human-like is one of the main things that makes Skylead software the safest out there. This is how we keep you safe:

• A dedicated IP address (proxy)
• Adjustable limits & delays
• Human-like behavior

Combine cold email outreach with LinkedIn automation to get even higher conversion results via smart sequences.

One major pro of Skylead is the fact that it has a native image & GIF personalization feature and a personalized messages option. Our research suggests that when using personalization, you get a 63% higher response rate.

You can also integrate Skylead with your chosen CRM via a Zapier webhook or an API and transfer data between tools. Lastly, Skylead offers thorough insights and analytics and the A/B testing option. This means you’ll see detailed reports about your results, plus you’ll get to test out what approach works best with your prospects.

Note: Skylead connects to LinkedIn Premium, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Recruiter accounts.

Cons

You can make campaigns in Skylead from multiple sources: a CSV file, a LinkedIn search URL from all supported account types, and even from LinkedIn posts, but you cannot make campaigns from a group search. Nonetheless, if you want to create a group-based campaign, you can do so by using LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters. Select group filter, scrap the data, and import prospects via a CSV file.

Another thing to note is that Skylead does not have a Twitter integration, which is used as a means of expanding your social selling strategy. However, bots that support Twitter can only automate post likes and retweets, which won’t help much with overall outreach efforts.

Conclusion

We believe that Skylead is a comprehensive tool that supports multiple advanced features that you would have to pay extra for with other bots. Keep in mind that when picking a bot, you need to have a combination of quality features, safety, a friendly interface, and a reasonable price per month. Skylead checks all the boxes, plus impeccable customer support. All of these factors contribute to our tool's effectiveness, cutting manual tasks and saving up to 11 hours of manual work per week.

2. CrystalKnows

Best for giving detailed personality data reports on leads.

CrystalKnows is an extensions-based bot designed to focus on prospecting and give DISC personality profiles of potential prospects.

Pros

CrystalKnows bot analyzes potential customers and gives out detailed personality reports. All sales teams have to do is adapt their approach to the DISC personality profile of the lead and use it to their advantage.

Another notable feature is the suggestive content writing option. This feature writes suggestive copy for emails according to each lead's personality analysis. You can also find the advanced segmenting option a useful tool for prospecting and lead generation.

Cons

Despite the advanced prospecting features, CrystalKnows is not a classic multichannel outreach tool. This means it does not support complex features such as smart sequences, and it cannot make campaigns from search URLs or CSV files. Additionally, drip campaigns are out of the question, which suggests that a huge part of outreach is missing.

Conclusion

From what we could learn about CrystalKnows, the tool can be very useful for detailed prospecting, as it focuses on knowing your target group and adapting the approach. However, if you’re looking for supercharged multichannel outreach (which is what you should be doing), then we advise you to pick another tool and use this bot as an additional helpful feature.

3. Octopus CRM

Best for LinkedIn outreach and detailed analytics.

Octopus CRM is an extension-based bot that focuses on automating LinkedIn.

Pros

One of the main notable features of Octopus CRM is the ability to send bulk messages to 1st-degree contacts. We’ve mentioned detailed analytics, which gives you insights like the number of connection requests sent or the current Social Selling Index. If you’re interested in social selling, you should consider a tool that focuses on boosting the LinkedIn SSI score.

Cons

With Octopus CRM, you won’t be able to use multichannel outreach because the tool only supports LinkedIn automation. This means there’s no email automation, which is a large outreach channel and should be used paired with LinkedIn for better results.

Additionally, because it is an extension, this could potentially mean it’s less safe to use and might be detectable by LinkedIn.

Note: Octopus CRM does not support sending LinkedIn InMail messages.

Conclusion

We believe that Octopus CRM is missing a lot of key features that can affect the safety and effectiveness of your outreach. The fact that it does not have email automation could be a potential deal breaker. A good LinkedIn bot should have as much as native features as possible, so be sure to look for an all-in-one bot. 

4.  Salesloop

Best for someone who’s looking for a done-for-you deal.

Salesloop is a fairly new cloud-based bot that focuses on automating LinkedIn.

Pros

Salesloop has a simple 2-step drip campaign for LinkedIn. It works with LinkedIn Premium and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Unlike Skylead, it does not support Recruiter profiles. As for campaigns, Salesloop lets you create them via a CSV file with a couple of text personalization variables.

If you’re new to automation, they also offer a done-for-you deal, which can simplify your outreach effort. However, you’d have to pay a large sum for the service.

Cons

Salesloop does not have Smart sequences because it does not support email automation to begin with. In fact, it does not support many prominent LinkedIn actions as well. Salesloop can only send invites to connect and drip messages.

Additionally, Salesloop does not integrate with any CRM, which can slow down workflows for those who utilize a number of different tools.

Conclusion

After analyzing the Salesloop bot, we found that if you want a comprehensive tool, this is not a perfect choice for you. Missing email automation and limited LinkedIn actions can potentially slow down your outreach efforts, which is the opposite of what a LinkedIn bot should be doing.

5. Phantombuster

Best for data extraction and data scraping.

Phantombuster is an extension-based sales and marketing bot that automates the scraping of publicly available data from LinkedIn and other platforms.

LinkedIn Follower Bot

With LinkedIn bots, you can automate everything, even who you want to follow and unfollow on LinkedIn. Phantombuster has a browser-based feature that focuses on that. It’s called the LinkedIn follower bot, and it’s here to get your prospects to notice you and warm them up for further outreach.

Pros

Phantombuster is not a full-package LinkedIn automation bot. However, it can come in handy if you want to scrape certain leads from LinkedIn or anywhere else. Moreover, the tool offers an email enrichment feature, which means it can find email addresses for you. However, it does not support email verification, which can affect your email account’s safety and increase bounce rates.

Cons

Even though this bot automates certain LinkedIn actions, it also does not have Smart sequences. Apart from that, email outreach is not possible since there’s no email automation, so you can’t create complex sequences. 

Lastly, Phantombuster is an extension that can affect the overall safety of your account and potentially lead to restrictions.

Conclusion

After reviewing Phantombuster, we came to the conclusion that it can be useful as an additional outreach tool. It saves your automated scraped data in the form of CSV files or JSON formats. This means you can upload and download lead lists to some other tool and create outreach campaigns.

6. IFTTT

Best for the automatization of numerous activities on different platforms.

IFTTT is an extension-based bot that automates activities on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and others.

Pros

The IFTTT bot can automate certain activities, such as sharing links, publishing content, and updates across named platforms.

Cons

IFTTT does not automate any form of LinkedIn messages.

Conclusion

After looking at this simple bot, we can tell you from our humble opinion that it is not for those who want to use LinkedIn and email outreach for results. However, it can come in handy as a content management tool that saves time by automating posting and similar social media activities.

7. GetProspect

Best for getting quality prospects.

GetProspect is an extension-based bot that acts as an email finder & verifier and extracts useful prospect data.

Pros

GetProspects bot, as the name suggests, wants to assist you in finding high-quality leads. This includes a list of leads with information such as name, profession, LinkedIn URL, and finally, email. It has a large B2B database, a lead enrichment feature, a native CRM, and the Google Sheets add-on.

Additionally, Get Prospects categorizes leads and can arrange them according to previously set criteria. You can later export these files and use them in other tools.

Cons

Although the tool focuses on email features, it does not support LinkedIn automation. This means there’s no way of sending any kind of messages on LinkedIn, creating drip campaigns, and utilizing multichannel Smart sequences.

Conclusion

In our honest opinion, this tool can be useful if your primary goal is reaching out by email. But, if you wish to expand to LinkedIn, you would have to get another tool for automating LinkedIn since there’s nothing you can do with the provided LinkedIn profile URLs unless you want to reach out to those prospects manually. We all know by now that this defeats the purpose of automation bots. So, if you want more from a tool, then keep looking.

8. Lead connect

Best for simple drip campaigns on LinkedIn.

Lead Connect is an extension-based bot that connects to LinkedIn basic or Sales Navigator profile types.

Pros

Lead Connect offers a simple drip campaign with a few available steps. On the other hand, the bot offers various templates, but the number of available templates depends on the pricing plan you choose.

One notable feature of Lead Connect is the ability to integrate with any workflow and tool via an API key. You can even gain access to the email discovery feature, but you’d have to pay extra to use it.

Cons

Lead Connect doesn’t support Smart sequences as Skylead does. Additionally, it doesn’t support a Recruiter account type, which narrows down your outreach and campaign creation choices.

Lastly, this bot does not support image & GIF personalization of any kind, which can affect your response rate significantly.

Conclusion

We believe that the tool is missing some key outreach features. If you’re looking to supercharge your outreach efforts, we consider this bot to be incomplete, so you should keep looking for more features in one tool.

9. Linkedprospect

Best for automated prospecting.

Linkedprospect is a cloud-based bot that focuses on LinkedIn automation.

Pros

Linkedprospect helps you with finding prospects and sending automated message sequences to those prospects on LinkedIn. The tool can also send bulk messages and offers a Boolean search tool and a Headline generator tool.

Cons

The tool does not support email automation, which, as we’ve learned so far, only slows down outreach and overall results.

Conclusion

If you want to get your money’s worth, you should opt to look for tools that have it all.

10. UseViral

Best for LinkedIn promotion.

UseViral is a social media marketing service that allows you to boost your networking platform profiles to gain more virtual trust and authority.

Pros

If you’re looking to build your network and become a thought leader, you can use this bot to add more followers, further boosting your profile. You can connect UseViral with multiple platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, of course, and more. It automates sending connection requests.

Cons

It is not recommended to use such bots as they can be unsafe and appear scammy. Despite the large number of followers you gain, there’s no engagement, as all of these followers are usually fake. Thus, it is easily detectable and can damage your reputation.

Conclusion

We advise you not to use profile-boosting bots, as they can tamper with the safety and trustworthiness of your account. Try social networking without scams.

11. SidesMedia

Best for adding exposure to your social platforms.

SidesMedia is a social boosting tool that offers multiple platform options.

Pros

If you’re looking for extra exposure on your social platform, LinkedIn included, then you can use SidesMedia. They claim to offer real engagement on multiple platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

Cons

Again, using social media boosting platforms can be tricky despite the outrageous claims that they can offer real engagement. You should be cautious when it comes to buying followers, likes, and connections.

Conclusion

Just like UseViral, we share the same opinion. To emphasize, we strongly disagree with using social media boosting platforms. You should opt for an organic and real approach in order to gain a huge, thought-leader following. Focus on building strong relationships rather than taking shortcuts. On the other hand, you can use LinkedIn bots to assist in your quest.

12. Crowdfireapp

Best for social media management.

Crowdfire is an app that’s used for growing the online presence of individuals and businesses.

Pros

The Crowdfire app offers a series of features that help users manage and optimize their social media accounts, LinkedIn included. You can schedule and publish content and track the numbers for each post. Additionally, you can find and manage followers who are not engaging with you and focus on building those relationships.

Cons

Apart from scheduling content posting, you won’t be able to reach out to your target audience or send bulk messages via LinkedIn and email. To put it differently - no automation means no successful outreach.

Conclusion

In our honest opinion, you can use this tool to establish your thought leader persona on LinkedIn, but apart from that, you won’t be able to use this tool for multichannel outreach.

13. Planable

Best for content scheduling and detailed planning.

Planable is a social media collaboration tool that helps manage the entire content creation process.

Pros

With Planable, you can obviously plan, create, collaborate, approve, and schedule content. The tool is designed to support the entire content management process with ease and simplicity. Using such a tool can help with saving lots of time and focusing on other tasks instead.

Cons

Although it can be useful for content management, it is not a tool for outreach.

Conclusion

After reviewing the app’s abilities, we believe that it can be useful for those who want to establish a strong social media presence and optimize their marketing strategy seamlessly. This includes LinkedIn, of course. You can gain a strong following if you manage your content and post it continuously. You can use LinkedIn connection bots simultaneously to aid in growing your network.

14. Evaboot

Best for data scraping on Sales Navigator.

Evaboot is an extension-based bot that offers a powerful Sales Navigator data scraping tool.

Pros

This bot can extract, clean, and enrich Sales navigator search results, which you can later export and use with other LinkedIn bots to create outreach campaigns.

Cons

Evaboot is simply not made for outreach but rather focuses on the initial steps - lead generation. The fact that it can only extract data from Sales Navigator search results is also a downside.

Additionally, there’s a safety concern due to its extension nature, so LinkedIn might discover your activity and restrict your profile.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a tool that generates leads exclusively, then Evaboot is for you. However, if you’re interested in multichannel outreach, keep looking.

15. Aeroleads

Best for finding quality leads and for prospecting efforts.

Aeroleads is a cloud-based tool that focuses on prospecting and lead generation.

Pros

Aeroleads bot has an email discovery feature that not only retrieves business emails but also LinkedIn connections. Therefore, they provide additional data points that can be used in crafting your outreach strategy. Finally, you can export the collected data and use it as you please.

Additionally, they have a large email database with personal and business emails and phone numbers. Lastly, the tool not only discovers but also verifies emails.

Cons

If you’re looking for a LinkedIn bot that covers most of the outreach process, Aeroleads is simply an incomplete tool. With no LinkedIn and email automation, you won’t be able to send drip message campaigns or create Smart sequences.

Conclusion

Again, if you’re looking for a tool that covers most of the outreach process, including email discovery & verification, then you should be looking at a different feature set in a LinkedIn connection bot.

16. Lempod

Best for increasing user engagement on LinkedIn.

Lempod is a part of the Lemlist family and a Chrome extension that focuses on LinkedIn post engagement.

Pros

Firstly, Lempod is easy to use and a great tool if you want to increase LinkedIn post views with automatic likes and comments. The Lempod bot has a User Satisfaction Index and a Popularity Index, which can help with tracing engagement and user involvement in your LinkedIn content. 

Secondly, their LinkedIn Engagement Pods marketplace connects other LinkedIn content makers with you, which allows for mutual engagement. Lempod can also automatically leverage colleagues' networks, further boosting your LinkedIn reach.

Cons

The tool is made for engagement and not multichannel outreach. Plus, as an engagement tool, it lacks certain characteristics, such as the ability to personalize your audience and automate scheduling posts.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you’re looking to boost your network and meet with other content creators, you can use Lempod for those purposes. However, if you want to use LinkedIn and email automation for outreach, then you should consider another bot.

17. Linkboost 

Best for qualified LinkedIn engagement.

LinkBoost is an engagement and profile-boosting platform made for users who want to find their engagement niche.

Pros

If you’re a thought leader who wants to expand your network even more, or you’re just beginning your journey, LinkBoost can contribute to your engagement efforts. You can even join relevant engagement pods and link up with people interested in the same content as you.

Cons

Unlike Lempod, LinkBoost doesn’t have certain parameters (e.g., a User Satisfaction Index and a Popularity Index) that can help with tracking overall engagement success. Ultimately, the tool is not made for multichannel outreach.

Conclusion

Lastly, if you’re looking for supercharged outreach and scaling your business, this is not a tool for you. It’s made for individuals who want to reach out to a similar audience and expand their network. A pro tip is to use LinkedIn bots for making solid connections on LinkedIn as well as promoting your content.

18. Social Pilot

Best for social media planning and management.

Social Pilot is a social media management and analytics app that connects with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

Pros

You can easily plan and schedule content-posting activities with Social Pilot. What makes it stand out from similar apps is the fact that it has a great analytics section, where you can track your success and optimize your content plan accordingly. There’s also a Smart AI Assistant that can help with time management even more.

Cons

Social Pilot is not a LinkedIn and email outreach tool.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to organize your content posting activities on LinkedIn and not think about whether your content is posted or not, you can use Social Pilot to boost your LinkedIn presence. Hence, you can use this tool to establish a solid LinkedIn presence, and Skylead can help with LinkedIn automation and cold email outreach.

19. WeConnect

Best for automating some LinkedIn actions.

WeConnect is a cloud-based tool that automates some LinkedIn actions.

Pros

You have the ability to send messages to LinkedIn group members. Apart from that, you can also A/B test your content, which is a perfect feature for those who are still trying to find their perfect approach. This bot also supports the auto-endorse and post-engagement features, along with Zapier and API integrations.

Cons

WeConnect does not have the Post engagement campaign option or Image & GIF personalization. Smart sequences are also out of the question because there’s no Email automation. Also, there’s no Email discovery and verification feature. However, you can find all of these features and more at Skylead.

Conclusion

Finally, if you’re looking to put all manual tasks on autopilot, you should be looking for a solution that can actually perform most of the tasks without having to pay extra for certain services you can get with just one tool.

20. Buzzli

Best for creating LinkedIn content.

Buzzli is an AI-powered platform that automates the content creation process on LinkedIn.

Pros

You can use Buzzli to expand your reach and engagement while creating top-notch, SEO-friendly content with artificial intelligence. Use the Topic generator to find what you want to talk about and generate away! You can also use the Improve LinkedIn post option for a bigger engagement boost.

Cons

Buzzli is not a LinkedIn and email outreach tool.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you're looking to boost engagement, you can use Buzzli and its AI-powered features to help create true thought leader content.

21. Podawaa

Best for increasing your LinkedIn’s reach.

Podawaa is an extension-based bot that helps you expand your engagement on LinkedIn by automating comments and likes.

Pros

Similar to Lempod, Podawaa helps you connect with other users on LinkedIn so you can interact with each other, creating more engagement. Hence, you get to personalize your audience and receive relevant and real comments and likes on your LinkedIn content.

Cons

This is not a LinkedIn and email outreach tool.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a platform that helps you engage with real people on LinkedIn, Podawaa can give your profile the right push toward growth. Also, it could be useful for LinkedIn marketing. However, if you’re looking to automate LinkedIn and email outreach, you should be looking at other bots for LinkedIn.

22. Zopto

Best for social selling, multi-channel outreach, and free tutorials.

Zopto is a cloud-based automation software made for social selling.

Pros

Unlike other tools, it offers a Twitter integration for automated platform engagement. With this integration, you are increasing your chances of getting noticed by automating certain Twitter actions, further expanding your outreach efforts. 

Apart from automating LinkedIn, the tool offers email enrichment, which means it can fetch and verify business emails like Skylead. You can also A/B test your messages and enjoy an integrated inbox feature.

Lastly, the platform can schedule posts and gather data from LinkedIn group members to create a campaign lead source for a more specific outreach.

Cons

Zopto does not have a native image & GIF personalization feature, which adds up to the already costly monthly subscription. Apart from that, their inbox is limited to LinkedIn messages only, which makes it harder to navigate multichannel sequence campaigns. Lastly, Zopto does not support team management.

Conclusion

We believe that a good tool should have a large number of native features to avoid paying more for extensions. Another reason is that these extensions are less safe to use because they are easily detectable by LinkedIn’s surveillance. Opt for safety first and a comprehensive tool that covers all the features you need.

23. Luna AI

Best for creating, editing, and sharing outreach content.

Luna AI is a LinkedIn growth tool that uses artificial intelligence to create and fetch content and data.

Pros

You can use this tool to generate content for LinkedIn posts and emails using AI. Luna AI also acts as a prospecting tool, and it helps with finding the right leads.

Cons

Luna AI can’t create campaigns and perform a large portion of actions that other LinkedIn bots can. Moreover, it has no Smart sequences and no email automation.

Conclusion

While the tool can help with prospecting, generating leads, and content creation via AI, it is still missing crucial parts of LinkedIn and email automation. Opt for a bot that can do it all!

24. Taplio

Best for personal branding.

Taplio is an extension-based bot designed to help with LinkedIn growth. It was purchased by Lemlist and is now part of the Lemlist family.

Pros

The tool was created to help users with content creation and distribution. Therefore, you can use it to grow your personal brand with AI-powered suggestive features. The tool generates content for you, and it helps you get inspired with an AI-picked inspirations library.

Cons

This tool is not for outreach as it does not support LinkedIn automation, such as sending messages and crafting campaigns or email outreach.

Conclusion

Taplio looks like a good feature to use if your main focus is growing your brand on LinkedIn. It can be useful to thought leaders ready to create impactful content. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for all-around outreach, this extension is not your cup of tea.

25. Waalaxy

Best for its voice cloning technology which allows sending voice messages and air calls.

Waalaxy is an extension-based software solution for prospecting and generating leads on LinkedIn. It might not be the safest option since a code is inserted, which allows the software to act like a bot.

Pros

Waalaxy supports all LinkedIn profile types: LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter. It can even create campaigns from a LinkedIn group member search, which might come in handy if this is your LinkedIn lead generation strategy.

As a multichannel outreach tool, Waalaxy supports an integrated inbox (although they charge extra to use it), which allows easy lead navigation. Lastly, it uses voice cloning technology to allow users to send personalized voice messages on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Voicemail.

Cons

As we’ve mentioned earlier, if you want to use the integrated inbox feature, Waalaxy is charging extra, apart from the usual monthly subscription. This means that there are hidden costs for a feature that is native to the majority of tools.

Besides, with no smart sequences, it might be hard to combine multiple outreach sources. When using LinkedIn, Waalaxy does not give you the option to send free or paid InMails, as Skylead does. This can significantly lower your outreach numbers.

Lastly, your personalization options are minimal. Since the tool does not have a native image & GIF personalization, this just means more extensions and more additional costs.

Conclusion

Safety should be your primary concern when it comes to bots for LinkedIn, so try avoiding extensions. Given these points, we believe that a tool should have all native features, and with Waalaxy, you’d have additional costs.

26. Reply.io

Best for all-around social automation.

Reply.io is an extension-based tool that focuses on email outreach - finding prospects and their data.

Pros

Reply offers social automation, which includes email, LinkedIn, voice calls, and WhatsApp. When using LinkedIn with Reply, you can send connection requests and regular and InMail messages. You can also automate certain actions like view profile and follow.

Apart from image & GIF personalization, Reply lets you use video personalization for a better response rate and generally more successful outreach. They also offer multi-channel sequences, where you can create drip campaigns and watch as your prospects convert one by one.

Cons

However, with Reply, not everything is as promised. There are multiple features you can use only if you pay extra. For example, if you want email automation or email verification & discovery, you can get them as third-party services from different software providers. This can significantly add to your monthly costs and complicate the outreach process.

Conclusion

Finally, if you're looking for something more intuitive and user-friendly, opt for a more comprehensive, all-in-one kind of solution.

27. Dux-Soup

Best for beginners who want to incorporate LinkedIn bots into their cold outreach.

Dux-Soup is an extension-based tool that supports basic LinkedIn automated actions via LinkedIn Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter.

Pros

Unlike some other tools, you can use Dux-Soup to create a Recruiter campaign as well, which is an option not all bots have. The interface is user-friendly and simple, and you can send free and paid InMails in your campaigns.

Cons

Despite the pros, Dux-Soup is missing crucial outreach features like Image & GIF personalization and Smart sequences. Apart from that, you can’t create post engagement campaigns only from your own posts.

Lastly, the fact that it’s a Chrome extension can damage your account’s health and safety, which makes the bot detectable, and LinkedIn could restrict you.

Conclusion

Based on our knowledge, the best LinkedIn automation tools are safe and comprehensive, so if you’re looking for safety-first solutions, you should go cloud-based instead.

28. Expandi

Best for LinkedIn and email automation.

Expandi is a cloud-based solution with both LinkedIn and email automation.

Pros

They are the second bot on the market to introduce the smart sequence feature after Skylead. Plus, they offer additional automated actions such as auto skill endorsement and automated post likes.

One more thing to note is that, like Skylead, and Zopto, Expandi has the option to create LinkedIn Recruiter campaigns. You can also integrate the tool with other tools using only Zapier webhooks. Lastly, if you wish to learn more, you can always access their free tutorials.

Cons

Although the notable features might sound pretty good, the bot could be considered incomplete without the Email Discovery and Verification feature. To clarify, multichannel outreach should contain a find & verify feature. If it doesn’t, you’ll miss an opportunity to contact a lead via email if he’s not responding on LinkedIn. However, this bot has the option to scrape publicly available data and fetch personal emails, but only if you’ve connected with the lead.

After a lot of tests, we’ve discovered that not having a native Image & GIF Personalization feature could be a potential downside. Here’s how. In this case, these features are outsourced to Hyperise, which means apart from the regular subscription, you’d have to pay a hidden fee.

Note: Hyperise does not offer unlimited feature access.

Conclusion

After testing different bots for LinkedIn, we’ve found that although Expandi has a lot of built-in features, it is missing some key elements that support a strong and successful outreach. Why settle when you can have more in just one tool?

29. Dripify

Best for its many integration possibilities.

Dripify is a cloud-based automation solution that supports LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Recruiter Lite, Premium, and free LinkedIn accounts.

Pros

The Dripify bot allows users to automate a majority of LinkedIn actions as a part of their sequence with conditions. These actions include viewing profiles, endorsing skills, as well as sending connection requests and regular messages.

Dripify, just like many other tools, integrates with over 10,000+ software thanks to webhooks so that you can expand and optimize your outreach according to your work habits.

Cons

Firstly, despite the fact that Dripify has the smart sequence feature, to use it, you would need to pay extra and acquire a more expensive pricing plan. Even if you get one, you won’t be able to send free or paid InMails. Additionally, you can’t create campaigns with a Sales Navigator leads list or from a LinkedIn post, like with Skylead, which can narrow down your targeting options.

Lastly, with Dripify, there is no email automation or email discovery & verification, for that matter. If you’re on the lookout for an all-in-one tool, Dripify should not be your first choice.

Conclusion

All in all, hidden costs are never a good thing, and that’s precisely why you should opt for automation tools that cover a wide range of services under one monthly subscription.

30. Linked Helper 2

Best for automating LinkedIn.

LinkedHelper 2 is a desktop app that focuses on generating leads and automating LinkedIn.

Pros

Linked Helper 2 offers the ability to create Recruiter search campaigns to help recruiters get to top talent. One of the pros is that Linked Helper 2 has an internal CRM, so you won’t need to integrate it with any other CRM. Finally, you can use filters to view your contact information history, search by tags, and add notes.

Cons

Safety should always come first when it comes to LinkedIn bots. This is a desktop app, which means it does not have a dedicated IP address. Additionally, the automation won’t work when your PC is off. There are no Smart sequences, an A/B testing option, or email automation, which can significantly downsize your outreach chances of success. Hence, you’d have to pay extra for Image & GIF personalization, as Linked Helper 2 outsources those services to Hyperise.

Conclusion

As we’ve said, we advise you to look at bots that don’t demand so many add-ons and third-party extensions. This means more funds and a scattered outreach. For that reason, look for a streamlined tool that has it all.

31. TexAu

Best for data scraping and some automated LinkedIn activities.

TexAu is an extension-based tool and a desktop app that is mainly used as a data scraper.

Pros

This bot can scrape data from almost any source. That includes Google, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn search results, LinkedIn profiles, YouTube, Twitter, and Quora.

Lastly, the software offers an email enrichment feature that analyzes LinkedIn profiles and finds and verifies business emails.

Cons

Many TexAu users have reported frequent bugs and a lack of learning materials for beginners. Another downside is that it seems to be difficult to set up a proxy. Lastly, TexAu does not support Smart sequences, which can, as we’ve learned, largely improve your outreach efforts.

Conclusion

Our journey with LinkedIn bots led us to the conclusion that you should be able to trust in your tool’s effectiveness. Therefore its features should be bug-free and trustworthy.

32. MeetAlfred

Best for social selling on LinkedIn.

MeetAlfred is a cloud-based tool that focuses on social selling on LinkedIn with automated social media features, such as Instagram and Twitter.

Pros

All connections are stored in one convenient place - MeetAlfred’s native CRM. With this bot, you can personalize messages, and all prospect responses can be found in an integrated inbox. 

MeetAlfred also offers an email outreach feature. However, it can only send emails to your 1st-degree contacts, whereas Skylead can find, verify, and send emails to anyone.

Cons

MeetAlfred does not support progressive features such as smart sequences and email discovery & verification. Additionally, the tool doesn’t support a LinkedIn Recruiter account, and there’s no native image & GIF personalization. However, it supports Hyperise for an additional fee per month.

Conclusion

After researching and testing, we found many negative user feedback about the MeetAlfred bot. Also, the additional cost aspect is not a good thing, as you should opt for keeping all your native features under one solution.

33. LaGrowth Machine

Best for automated outreach.

LaGrowth Machine is a LinkedIn and email outreach platform with lead enrichment and actionable analytics.

Pros

With LaGrowth Machine, you can automate your outreach and create sequences with a series of actions. Another notable feature is the lead enrichment feature. You get to manage your leads effectively and get useful reports. Lastly, you can integrate with almost any other tool thanks to Zapier webhooks.

Cons

Despite the fact that the bot can perform so many actions, a crucial part is missing - the option to hyper-personalize your messages. We know that using them can significantly boost response rates. What's more, no native image & GIF feature can only lead to paying extra for a third-party service, which is something you should avoid doing.

Conclusion

Go for a tool that offers more features in one place without the need to pay for add-ons and third-party apps.

Frequently asked questions

If you’re still unsure of whether you need a LinkedIn bot or some things still might be unclear, we’ve prepared a list of FAQs just to be sure we’ve covered the basics.

Does LinkedIn allow bots?

The answer is no. LinkedIn does not support bots. This is why they constantly make an effort to impose limitations on their users (e.g., the number of connection requests per week). Their algorithms analyze user behavior and can restrict certain profiles only to send them to LinkedIn jail.

Is LinkedIn automation illegal?

It’s not illegal. However, LinkedIn does not like its users to use automation tools. That's why all account activity is under surveillance, and if LinkedIn notices something suspicious (e.g., excessive use of automation), they might restrict your account. Be sure to pick a tool that has your safety in mind.

How to tell if someone on LinkedIn is a bot?

Fake bot profiles usually lack crucial information, or the data provided is nonspecific and vague. This could mean no educational background, nonsense job titles, and missing or incomplete work histories. Watch out for a small number of connections, stock profile photos, no recommendations, and stolen identities as well.

Does LinkedIn block bots?

LinkedIn does not block bots but doesn’t support their usage, either. The platform fights against browser plug-ins, crawlers, browser extensions, or third-party add-ons by imposing certain limitations, such as limiting the number of sent connection requests and InMail messages.

Does LinkedIn have bots?

Yes. LinkedIn presented an AI-writing tool that is meant to help LinkedIn users create posts. However, the built-in LinkedIn AI bot is not a classic automation tool and cannot send connection requests and messages but rather just generates AI-powered post content.

Is using LinkedIn bots safe? 

Depending on which bot you choose, using LinkedIn bots can be safe. In fact, some tools have multiple protection layers that battle against LinkedIn’s limitations. This includes a dedicated IP address, human-like behavior, and priorly set limits and delays that shield any account using a LinkedIn bot.

Ready to automate your LinkedIn outreach yet?

Our journey with LinkedIn bots began with a simple curiosity, and it led us to a series of surprising discoveries that we’ve shared with you. And now that we’ve reviewed the LinkedIn bots' potential, the options you have, and the FAQs, it’s safe to say that you are fully equipped to make a well-informed decision - Skylead! 😆

We’re kidding (or are we?!)

In all seriousness, having a comprehensive, all-in-one tool and getting your money’s worth is important. LinkedIn bots are a good investment and can significantly improve your business. If you choose correctly, that is. If you’re comfortable using your newly acquired tool, you can focus more on making top-performing results. Your competitors won’t stand a chance!

Now go, automate away, and remember to choose wisely, as it may determine the next successful phase of your business.

Need more guidance? Chat with us! Say hello to Skylead’s support team, and let them help you start your 7-day free trial now!

Nowadays, to get qualified prospects, you need a detailed plan and a few prospecting tools. 

A detailed plan will make your lead generation smoother and increase conversion rates. At the same time, B2B sales prospecting tools help you speed up specific discovery and lead management tasks that would take up so much of your time otherwise. 

The most widely-known prospecting tool is, for sure, LinkedIn, the #1 professional social media aimed at connecting companies from all over the world and encouraging them to make meaningful business-to-business connections. Even though LinkedIn prospecting is the best way to find new leads, there is still a lot of manual work, such as finding the leads’ contact information. 

That said, here are 18 other B2B prospecting tools you should consider using. They are meant for sales teams doing in-house prospecting activities or for a prospecting company offering it as a service.

Why use B2B prospecting software & sales prospecting tools? 

B2B prospecting software is designed to automate otherwise time-consuming prospecting activities, giving you more time to nurture qualified leads and close the deal. 

In other words, these tools give you the following:

• A way to get to your potential customers faster, 
• More time as they streamline the most tedious research tasks,
• A way to create personalized emails or LinkedIn messages so you can reach more people genuinely.

All B2B prospecting tools listed below are software as a service (Saas), which means they are entirely delivered over the Internet and are accessible from anywhere on the planet. 

This makes them suitable for anyone interested in sales and marketing automation - from cold email campaigns and messaging on LinkedIn, to email finder, data generator or any other step in the outbound marketing process and lead management overall. 

18 best B2B prospecting tools you need in 2024 [Including free tools]

1. Skylead - LinkedIn prospecting tool

Skylead is one of the best sales outreach and prospecting tools on the market. To clarify, it is LinkedIn automation and cold email software as service (Saas). It helps you find your B2B leads’ data, maximize touchpoints with your leads and, therefore, reach your qualified prospects faster. 

How? Firstly, Skylead supports Premium, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Recruiter URLs. So salespeople can search for your new prospects via these platforms and import them directly into your Skylead outreach campaign. Or you can import your sales leads via CSV.

Secondly, Skylead can find your qualified leads’ B2B contact data with native Email finder & verifier. This feature is unique on the market because you don’t need any 3rd-party tool or the need to connect with leads on LinkedIn first.

Moreover, Skylead combines LinkedIn connection requests, connection messages, free and paid InMails, and the View and Follow steps with cold emails into Smart sequences. This way, you can use multichannel outreach and maximize getting in touch with every lead.

Lastly, Skylead offers its users the Boost mode to bypass LinkedIn connection limits and send over 500 invites per week. 

Skylead has an All-in-one pricing plan of $100 per seat/month. You can, though, test out all of Skylead’s features by signing up for a 7-day Free Trial. 

2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Sales prospecting tool for lead generation 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is Premium built for salespeople to discover and connect with the most qualified leads for their business. 

With Sales Navigator filters, you can see all targeted members’ LinkedIn profiles, but you can access a series of sales-oriented features. These features are perfect for handpicking high-quality prospects, getting company data, segment target accounts for different outreach, and so on. 

It’s best when used with a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software such as Skylead. To clarify, you can import leads through a Sales Navigator search result or Lead list. Once you do, you can create the outreach sequence with the highest number of touchpoints with your leads. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has 3 pricing plans:

• Core - $109 per month + VAT
• Advanced - The pricing depends on your contract details, the number of seats, and your chosen features;
• Advanced plus - You need to request a demo with LinkedIn for this information.

3. Hubspot - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Another tool that is widely used for prospecting and lead management is Hubspot. They offer a free CRM solution to help anyone track their prospect lists and outreach stage. 

This free CRM helps you take complete control of your sales process, starting with creating your prospect lists. Once you import new prospects, Hubspot’s enrichment feature will get you essential company insights. 

Hubspot also has a paid version within its Sales Hub product. Its pricing goes for $500 a month per minimum of 5 users and includes the following main features:

• Creating email sequences and email campaigns;
• ABM tools & tools to automate lead generation; 
• Workflow integration with other apps;
• Target accounts dashboard;
• Identifying logged-in website visitors to send personalized emails or live chat replies;
• Streamlining new lead assignation to your sales representatives;

4. Zoominfo

Zoominfo is a B2B database and a Chrome extension used by salespeople, marketing, and talent acquisition professionals. Accordingly, it has 3 pricing plans:

• SalesOS - offers sales teams company data, such as insights, buying intent signals, and accurate emails and employees’ phone numbers.
• MarketingOS gives contact information, advanced company insights, and digital marketing solutions for display advertising. What’s more, marketers gain access to plugins, website chat, and forms management for lead generation. 
• Lastly, TalentOS provides recruiters with advanced candidate search with accurate contact information, candidate alerts, and different engagement apps and integrations.

That said, to get pricing for each plan, you must leave your contact information and jump on a call with their sales representative. In addition, the word on the street is that Zoominfo makes contracts with companies, not single users, which implies the pricing height. So if a minimum of 3 seats per contract is not for you, you should consider using other solutions.

Keep in mind that it's not entirely necessary to buy contact data from companies such as Zoominfo. Instead, you can use Skylead's "Email finder & verifier" feature as part of your outreach workflow. This way, you can gather all B2B contact data such as company name, business email & domain.

5. Contactout - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Inspired by Zoominfo, Contactout is a subscription-based, Chrome extension database suitable for occasional searches and long-term use.

Namely, it has a free plan that allows you to search up to 40 emails and 3 phone numbers and works for basic LinkedIn profiles only. Contactout’s free plan can also be an excellent way to test the database before committing to a paid pricing plan. 

Speaking of pricing, Contactout has 3 paid plans, billed annually:

• Sales plan costs $79 per user a month. In addition, it offers 6000 emails a year, 600 phone numbers, CRM integration, and connection to other apps through Zapier.

• The Recruiter plan goes for $199 per user a month. This plan offers 12000 emails and 600 phone numbers a year. In addition, it can find prospects’ personal or business emails. Moreover, like the one before, this plan offers CRM integration and a chance to link Contactout with other apps. 

• Lastly, a customized plan, Team, offers everything in the Recruiter pricing plan plus volume discount and team collaboration. However, you need to contact their sales reps to get a quote on this one. 

6. Lusha - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Another solution similar to Zoominfo is Lusha. This B2B prospecting tool helps you find prospects that belong to your ideal customer profile and respective decision-makers. 

Lush does this by accessing your LinkedIn account and using Chrome extension to scrape your leads’ contact information like company name or email. However, remember that Chrome extensions are not the safest since they inject code into this social media platform. In other words, LinkedIn can easily detect this code and get your LinkedIn account restricted.

Lusha has 4 pricing plans billed annually, with the following main features:

• Free - 5 credits to enrich contacts and get phone numbers or email verifications.
• Pro - Lusha charges $29 per user a month. It offers 480 credits and the ability to manage prospect lists.
• Premium - Lusha estimates this plan at $51 per user a month. It offers 960 credits, 25 contacts enrichment per bulk, and prospect list management. 
• Scale - custom plan. It offers everything from the previous plan plus: 1000 contact enrichment in bulk, CSV enrichment, intent signals, CRM integration like Salesforce, and so on. However, Lusha requires you to schedule a call with their sales reps.

7. Clearbit - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

This is another database sales prospecting tool that lets you automate finding high-quality leads. Even though it helps sales teams find potential customers and enrich the data, Clearbit is more of an inbound lead generation solution for marketers. 

To clarify, Clearbit turns your website visitors into a sales pipeline by automating autofill on website forms. Moreover, Clearbit ties anonymous visitors with accounts and can immediately enrich your contacts. 

In addition, Clearbit gets more high-quality leads to your sales team by capturing intent. It does this by automating adding accounts and key buyer contacts to your CRM (Salesforce or Hubspot) from websites such as G2. 

Lastly, it offers marketers a unified dash for Google, Facebook, or YouTube ads and can perform exclusion for people who don’t belong in your ideal customer profile. 

Clearbit has 3 pricing plans:

• Free - includes finding 100 emails through Chrome extension and enriching 50 domains and emails per month. 
• Business - includes data enrichment, lead scoring, form optimization, advanced personalization, and conversion targeting. 
• Powered by Clearbit - includes IP de-anonymization, company name and contact data, and free data credits.

However, you need to schedule a call with their salespeople to get to the price. This way, they can give you a custom quote based on the number of credits you need. 

8. SalesIntel

Another database classified as a pretty good outbound sales prospecting tool is Salesintel. They provide 95% accurate and human-verified account and contact data so you can search through and find your ICP or a decision-maker.

They have 17 million contacts and 22 million company records and have 65% coverage of SaaS decision-makers. This is a nifty tool because you only need to insert the firmographic or demographic filters and let SalesIntel do its job. After you find your leads, you can import them to your outreach tool and send LinkedIn, multichannel, or email sequences. 

SalesIntel has one pricing plan that offers:

• Unlimited emails and phone numbers if you prefer cold calling; 
• Account and contact enrichments;
• Unlimited saved searches;
• Sales intelligence Account firmographic and technographic filters;
• Buyer intent.

However, you’d need to contact their sales reps to get a custom quote. 

9. Seamless AI - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Like SalesIntel, this outbound B2B sales prospecting tool is a simple database solution to find new leads. Sales professionals use Seamless AI to get real-time data verification, such as social media profiles and company insights, and use email finder. 

Salespeople can also use sales intelligence, aka buyer intent, to increase their prospecting efforts and determine their ICP’s needs. This way, they can write the right messaging and even follow-ups before the cold outreach. 

Lastly, Seamless AI offers data for social media advertising via lookalike audiences and retargeting to drive inbound B2B leads. 

Seamless AI has 4 pricing plans:

• Free - up to 50 credits for emails or phone number search, AI Writer, and real-time search engine.
• Basic - everything in Free, plus 250 monthly credits for finding emails or phone numbers and live training webinars.
• Pro - everything in Basic plus daily credit refresh, integrations, job changes, buyer intent data, priority support, and dedicated success manager.
• Enterprise - everything in Pro plus custom credits per user and phone support. 

10. Leadfeeder - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Leadfeeder is a prospecting software that helps ABM managers step up their lead generation game. To clarify, Leadfeeder has an IP enrichment API feature that can transform IP addresses into firmographic data in real time. 

In other words, once a lead visits your website, Leadfeeder can recognize the companies and filter out the ones that are not interested. In addition, it can filter visitors by country, industry, or pages they visited. You can then use the Leadfeeder Contacts feature to identify decision-makers from that company. Or you can personalize your chat to send particular messages depending on their behavior. 

Once you generate leads, you can integrate Leadfeeder with your CRM, such as Salesforce. This way, you can send potential customers along with the notification to your salespeople and help out their prospecting efforts.

Lastly, with the Leadfeeder, you can monitor the existing customers’ behavior. This way, if you see any anomaly, you can alert sales professionals, improve their sales process and prevent potential churn.

Leadfeeder has 2 pricing plans:

• Free - no time limit, data from the last 7 days only, up to 100 companies identification.
• Paid - starting at $199 per month and is paid annually. It includes 2500 credits, 3 seats, website visitor company identification, and other features listed above. 

11. Aeroleads - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

If you primarily cold email outbound campaigns, then AeroLeads is for you. AeroLeads ease up your sales process with the email verification feature that can find business and personal emails. In addition, this tool can even find phone numbers if you prefer cold calling. 

Only keep in mind that you’d need to use their Chrome extension to extract these emails from LinkedIn, Aeroleads search, and other websites. In addition, you can send your LinkedIn prospect to your CRM via plugin, thus sending a notification to your sales team. 

Aeroleads has 4 pricing plans:

• Free - 50 monthly credits, where credit means a record of sales leads and 100 verified emails. In addition, you get contact data such as company name, phone number, or title, email campaigns, integrations, and prospects discovery from LinkedIn, Crunchbase, etc.
• Take off - goes for $49 a month. It offers everything in the Free plan, plus 2000 monthly credits and 2000 verified emails. 
• Climb - costs $149 for 5 users per month. It offers everything in the Free plan, plus 8000 monthly credits and 8000 verified emails. 
• Cruise - costs $499 a month for an unlimited number of users. It has everything like in the Free plan, plus 30K monthly credits and 30K emails verified.

12. Rocketreach

This is one of the best sales databases with 700M profiles and 35M companies that you can search by title, industry, and company details. In addition, with Rocketreach, you can find social media profiles and discover company connections from any platform.

Lastly, Rocketreach supports workflow integrations with CRM or any other app. 

Rocketreach has 3 pricing plans:

• The Essentials plan costs $53 per user per month with 125 monthly lookups, which is used like a credit in other B2B prospecting tools. 
• Pro is priced at $107 per user monthly with 300 monthly lookups.
• The Ultimate plan costs $269 per user a month, with 833 lookups per user. 

13. Salesloft

This is a sales engagement platform that can help you use a single app to: 

• Track your prospecting process, 
• Discover what stage your leads are in,
• Find out the next steps you need to take
• Calculate the closed deal value and LTV.

In addition, Salesloft makes it easy for you to make calls, create emails, follow-ups, and meetings through the platform, and it will automatically sync with your CRM. 

Moreover, Salesloft can Identify sales leads’ buyer engagement on your website and in your communication so you can act on situations fast. 

Lastly, you can create a library of email templates, and Salesloft will keep track of the number of emails sent, clicks, and replies. This way, you’ll know what follow-ups or cold email templates are a winner. 

Salesloft has 3 pricing plans:

• Essentials - You get automated workflows, sales pipeline performance data, insights, guidance, and conversation sales intelligence (call recordings and transcription integrated into your workflow).
• Advanced - Everything in the Essentials plan, plus sales pipeline visibility (from prospecting to the conversation).
• Premier - Everything in the Advanced plan, plus automatic forecast roll-up, submissions, and AI-driven next steps of the prospecting processes. 

However, you need to schedule a call with their sales team to get the pricing for each. 

14. Datanyze

The next tool that can help your prospecting process is Datanyze. Essentially, it's a Chrome extension to help you gather the sales lead info from LinkedIn and other company websites. 

In addition, Datanyze provides ideas for icebreakers by what is happening in a prospect's world, curated from personal social media feeds, current weather, etc.

Datanyze has 3 clear pricing plans:

• Free (limited) - You get 10 monthly credits to test the platform for 90 days. 
• Nyze Pro 1 - You get 80 credits per month. Additional credits are charged $0.363 per credit.
• Nyze Pro 2 - You get 80 credits per month. Additional credits are charged $0.344 per credit.

15. Voila Norbert - B2B prospecting tool 

Voila Norbert is an extension-based email finder tool that, in addition, offers email verification and enrichment services. In other words, if you want to collect data beyond emails, Voila Norbert can find the prospect’s location, job title, and social media profiles. All you need to start is a prospect’s name and company URL. 

With a 98% success rate and ease of use, Voila Norbert can find any email provider including Gmail. And this is why it ranks among the best sales prospecting tools for lead generation. 

This tool doesn’t have a free plan. However, it provides the first 50 emails free of charge. Speaking of costs, Voila Norbert has 4 basic pricing plans. Every plan includes 50 bulk workers and API usage, and:

• Valet ($49 per month) offers 1000 leads per month;
• Butler ($99 per month) provides 5000 leads per month;
• With Advisor ($249 per month), you get up to 15000 leads per month;
• Counselor costs $499, and it offers 50K leads a month.

However, verification and enrichment services are charged separately: 

• One verified email costs $0.003, 
• and email enrichment costs $0.04 per email. 

16. Hunter - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Another software on our best sales B2B prospecting tools list is Hunter. This is a Chrome extension tool that can find emails by company or name and verify them. It can also perform a domain search to find out who to contact within the company. 

Even though they are an email outreach platform, they are still most used for email discovery. However, Hunter can automate sending cold email campaigns and follow-ups from your Gmail and Outlook accounts.
Lastly, you can integrate Hunter with any other tool and, for example, send your high-quality leads to your CRM.

Hunter has 4 pricing plans:

17. Evaboot - Sales prospecting tool with free plan

Evaboot is a Sales Navigator scraper. To clarify, it is a Chrome extension-based tool that finds emails using Sales Navigator and adds additional data such as name, company size, and job title. Then, you can later export data via CSV and use it elsewhere. 

It can automatically clean the names, job titles, and company names of any emoji or symbols. Moreover, it can detect leads that are not your Buyer Persona and remove them automatically.

Evaboot has 3 subscription plans:

• $49 a month for 2K export and email credits each;
• $99 a month for 5K export and email credits each;
• $199 a month for 50K export and email credits each.

However, if these plans do not suit your needs, you can always pay their one-time fee for different amounts of emails you want to find and export. Lastly, when you install their extension, you get one-time 1000 credits free to export leads. 

18. GetProspect - B2B prospecting tool with free plan

Last but not least, we have GetProspect. This is a simple email finder solution that scrapes the contacts from LinkedIn using the Chrome extension.

Moreover, they have a B2B contact database, which you can access, find leads via 15 filtering options, and get real-time data and email verifications. 

Lastly, you can link and sign up with your Gmail or Microsoft emails and try the tool for free.

GetProspect has 5 pricing plans, paid monthly or yearly: 

• Free for 50 emails and 100 verifications;
• $49 for 1K emails a month and 2K verifications;
• $99 for 5K emails and 10K verifications;
• $199 for 20K valid emails and 40K verifications;
• $399 for 50K emails and 100K verifications;

Frequently asked question

How do these tools ensure data privacy and comply with regulations like GDPR?

B2B prospecting tools prioritize data privacy and compliance with regulations like GDPR by implementing secure data handling practices and providing features for consent management.

What integration capabilities do these tools have with existing sales and marketing platforms?

These tools often feature robust integration capabilities with popular CRM, sales platforms, facilitating seamless data flow and activity tracking across sales ecosystems.

For businesses with global outreach, how do these tools handle and segment data across different regions and languages?

For global outreach, many B2B prospecting tools offer functionalities to segment and manage data by region and language, enabling businesses to tailor their strategies to diverse markets.

Wrap up and advice

Choosing the right B2B prospecting tools can be challenging. However, it doesn’t have to be hard - our advice is to start the research by defining what you need. 

If, for example, you need an email finder only, then use tools such as Voila Norbert or GetProspect. However, if you need an entire database, check Salesintel or Contactout.

Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where you need all the above and the multichannel solution, then choose Skylead. Simple as that. Just define what you want and then go for it.

Speaking of Skylead, wish to try it out for free? Then sign up for a  7-day free trial, and we’ll help you get onboard in no time. 😊 

If LinkedIn prospecting, lead generation, and even marketing automation are a part of your job, you’ve probably heard of Dux-Soup. This tool helps you to find and engage with your target audience in real-time and on autopilot.

However, there is a lot of discussion about whether Dux-Soup is safe to use for your LinkedIn account, how effective it is, or if there is any better alternative. So, to resolve any mysteries revolving Dux-Soup, in this article, we cover everything you need to know, including:

• What Dux-Soup offers;
• How much Dux-Soup subscriptions cost;
• Is using Dux-Soup really safe;
• And the best Dux-Soup alternatives with the feature comparison table.

Let’s dive into it.

Dux-Soup or alternatives?

LinkedIn automation software, Dux-Soup, helps sales teams, recruiter specialists, and outbound marketers find LinkedIn prospects, reach them on autopilot, and close deals. In other words, it optimizes outreach workflow by streamlining some of the time-consuming tasks on LinkedIn. 

These tasks include: 

• Scanning your target audience’s LinkedIn accounts; 
• Sending connection requests, LinkedIn InMails, and regular LinkedIn messages; 
• And auto endorse feature. 

Dux-Soup also offers drip outreach campaigns that allow you to send messages and follow-ups in a simple sequence. In addition, you can add up to 12 messages in the campaign and set delays between them. However, these features are only available for Turbo plan subscribers.

Moreover, Dux-Soup is able to find email addresses of your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections. However, you will need to buy additional Dux-Soup points to do so. Prices of these points range from $11.91 for 100 emails, to $135.44 for 2000 emails.

For all those who wonder how it works, this LinkedIn automation software is a chrome extension. To clarify, you need to create your account and install a chrome extension to use it. Moreover, you need to keep your PC and browser on to run successfully.

If you use any CRM, like Pipedrive or Hubspot, you can integrate it via Zapier. If you need help with integration, you can always contact the Dux-Soup support team.

Lastly, Dux-Soup is considered one of the simplest LinkedIn lead generation software, as it doesn’t offer many prospecting and outreach features. So it’s suitable for small businesses that are just getting started and freelancers who are beginners.

Chrome extension disadvantages

Being a chrome extension, Dux-Soup does come with some severe drawbacks. 

Firstly, chrome extensions are unsafe since they automatically inject the code into LinkedIn. This code injection would’ve been fine if this social media platform didn’t like its users to use any LinkedIn automation. Thus, by injecting the code into this social media platform, LinkedIn can register if you’re using automation software. Furthermore, you risk getting your LinkedIn profile restricted.

Moreover, this LinkedIn automation tool doesn’t offer a dedicated IP to shield your activity. 

Secondly, chrome extensions cannot work unless your PC or laptop is on. This means you cannot set the software to run in the background, turn off your computer and forget about it for the day. 

Apart from these disadvantages, chrome extensions don’t offer an advanced reporting system or integrated inbox, nor do they mimic human-like behavior.

Due to the previously-mentioned limitations, you might find worth in exploring cloud-based LinkedIn automation tools. In other words, a cloud-based solution provides a dedicated IP address, doesn’t inject any code, and mimics human-like behavior. What’s more, with this type of automation, you can manage multiple accounts, have an integrated inbox, and, most importantly, it works even when your PC is turned off. What’s better than that? 🙂