Cold Email Software Pricing Compared in 2026: What 5 Mailboxes and 15,000 Emails a Month Cost

A cold email tool's headline price buys one unit, and the bill grows on another. Instantly's entry plan stops at 1,000 uploaded contacts, Saleshandy's at 2,000 active prospects, Snov.io's at three inboxes warming up at once and Mailshake's at one mailbox per seat, so a plan that suits a pilot rarely suits a working sender. This guide prices one basket on every tool, called S1: one user, 5 sending mailboxes on 2 domains, 3,000 new prospects contacted a month in a 5-step sequence (3,000 x 5 = 15,000 emails sent a month, our assumption) and inbox warmup on. Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 152 sales engagement tools, and 35% of the sales engagement tools on Toolradar are free, freemium or open source, so the first price you read is rarely the unit you are billed on.

Methodology: we weighed 152 tools in the sales engagement category and priced nine cold email tools whose own pages print a dollar price for these units: Instantly, Smartlead, Lemlist, Saleshandy, Woodpecker, QuickMail, Snov.io, Mailshake and Reply.io. Every price was read on the vendor's own pages on 20 Oct 2026. Totals are our arithmetic on printed prices, taken on each vendor's yearly toggle unless a row says otherwise, and they leave out lead data, email verification, LinkedIn, calling and the mailboxes and domains themselves. Promotions seen that day, such as a promo-code banner on Reply.io, a trial banner on Lemlist and a 50% off first month banner on Smartlead, are in no total. Contact caps on Instantly and Smartlead are ceilings on uploaded or stored contacts: Instantly's own guide calls its cap a fixed ceiling, not a monthly reset, and Smartlead counts a lead as a prospect stored in the account. QuickMail also meters uploaded contacts, and its page does not say whether the cap resets. S1 therefore prices the first month for all three, and 3,000 new contacts a month with none removed reach the 25,000 cap of Instantly Hypergrowth in the ninth month and Smartlead Pro's 30,000 after 10 months.

The table is sorted by the S1 price on the yearly toggle, and each row names the plan whose own caps cover mailboxes, emails, active prospects and seats at once. QuickMail prints no yearly price, so it sits last at its monthly rate. Mailshake is ranked eighth on the favourable reading of its mailbox rule, one Sales Engagement seat for 5 mailboxes, which gives $1,020 a year; on the one-per-user reading in its pricing FAQ, S1 needs five seats, or $5,100 a year, and it would rank last. GMass is left out because it sells per Google account and its plan list shows no warmup row. Platforms that are not priced on this basket are covered in our sales engagement platforms guide, and the cold email software ranking compares these tools on features.