Between about $32 and $55 a month at the entry tier for the software itself, with most vendors including unlimited mailboxes and warm-up in that price. The number that decides your actual bill is not the software. It is the mailboxes underneath it, at roughly $3 to $10 each a month, plus domains at about $12 a year, plus the hours spent writing DNS and replacing burned domains, which almost nobody prices.
Every figure was read from each vendor's own pricing page on 19 September 2026 and is linked from the comparison pages. emailcampaign.ai is one of the vendors listed, and its own price is stated on the same basis as the others.
The software line
| Vendor | Entry price | Mailboxes included? | Mailboxes sold separately |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smartlead | $32.50 a month billed annually | Unlimited, with warm-up | Partners, about $4.50 a mailbox plus $13 a domain |
| Saleshandy | $34 a month billed annually | Unlimited, with warm-up | $2.99 to $3.99 a mailbox plus $14 a domain |
| Woodpecker | $35 a month for 500 contacted prospects | Unlimited accounts; warm-up beyond free slots is $5 each | $6 a Google or Microsoft address |
| Instantly | $37.60 a month billed annually | Unlimited, with warm-up | Pre-warmed Google accounts $10 each, in batches of five |
| emailcampaign.ai | Free trial, then $39 or $94 a month | Unlimited, with warm-up and placement tests | Provider seat price plus a $5 one-off setup, owned by you |
| Salesforge | $40 a month | Unlimited, with warm-up | Sibling products from $3 to $4.50 a mailbox |
| lemlist | $55 a month billed annually for one account | lemwarm included; per-seat pricing | None; you bring your own |
| Reply.io | About $49 a user a month billed annually | Stated inconsistently across its own pages | Reported, price not published |
The line that actually costs more
Take a team sending a thousand cold emails a day. That is a hundred mailboxes across fifty domains. The software is $32.50 to $55 a month. The mailboxes are $300 to $1,000 a month depending on the provider, and the domains are about $600 a year.
So the software is roughly five percent of the bill, and the thing people compare hardest is the smallest number in the calculation. Compare the mailbox price and the ownership terms instead.
The third column nobody prices
Writing DNS for fifty domains, chasing propagation, re-authenticating tenants whose tokens expired, and replacing domains that burned. At a hundred mailboxes that is about a day a month. At five hundred it is a job. It is the reason platforms that provision infrastructure charge more per mailbox and are still cheaper overall for anyone who was going to do that work themselves.
What to check before you compare prices
Whether the price is annual or monthly, since several vendors show the annual rate first and one charges eight months for twelve. Whether mailboxes are included or an add-on. Who owns the domains the vendor provisions, because at least two keep ownership and one does not let bought domains leave. Whether there is a minimum term, since third parties report a three-month minimum at one vendor. And what white-label actually means at that price, because it covers four different products.
Questions, answered straight
- What is the cheapest cold email software?
- At the entry tier, Smartlead at $32.50 a month billed annually, with Saleshandy a dollar and a half behind and including cheaper mailboxes. Cheapest overall depends on mailbox count: at fifty mailboxes Saleshandy's add-on is usually the lowest total.
- Is there free cold email software?
- There are free tiers, and they are mostly a way to meet the paywall. More useful is a genuine free trial that includes the infrastructure, because the infrastructure is what determines whether the tool works for you at all.
- Why do some tools charge per user and others per email?
- Per-user pricing suits vendors selling to sales teams where each rep sends a little. Per-volume pricing suits outbound where a few operators run many mailboxes. If your headcount is small and your volume is large, per-user pricing will cost you less, and the reverse if you have many reps.
- How much do cold email agencies charge?
- Published figures put retainers between roughly $1,500 and $10,000 a month, and the infrastructure is usually billed on top. If you are comparing an agency with doing it in-house, the fair comparison is the retainer against the software plus mailboxes plus the hours.
Published 19 September 2026. Updated 19 September 2026. Written by the team that runs the infrastructure; numbers come from the platform's own provisioning and sending, and from the providers' published documentation at the time of writing.