There are so many tools to choose from - which one is best and why?
So many sales teams fail the first step of outbound - landing in the primary inbox. Everyday, sales reps spend hours on outreach that their prospects never even get to see. That’s the reality of email deliverability in 2024.
Email warmup is the process of sending and replying to emails automatically to boost your sender reputation. Our full-length guide on everything you need to know about email warmup covered why you need this and exactly how to improve, monitor and repair your sender reputation so you can land in the primary inbox more often.
Unlike every other article on this topic online, we are not an email warmup tool. We are an outbound agency that has spent years understanding everything there is to know about email outreach, and in the process we have tested several email warmup tools. We’ve even tried doing this manually through our own network of inboxes at one point.
You can do this automatically, or manually (don't bother).
Email warmup tools have thousands of email addresses in their network. When you sign up, you allow the tool to automatically generate and send emails to other addresses in their network, that they will reply to. You will also receive emails from other email addresses in their network. By ramping up your volume gradually, you build a strong reputation for your individual account and the domain you are sending from and avoid being categorized as a spammer.
Visiting the Features page of email warmup tools can be confusing. What matters the most for your outbound resutls?
Lemwarm has been a leader in the warmup space for years now. They ran into some hiccups at one point briefly in 2021 but resolved their sending issues. They have the advantage of a massive inbox network and thousands of customers who use lemlist, their outbound sending tool. Their unique advantage is clustering your emails according to your industry and audience, which is a unique level of personalization that we haven’t seen from many other tools.
G2 rating: 4.1/5, 130 reviews
Pricing: $29 to $45 per month total.
Warmup Inbox stands out for the insights they provide about your reputation, along with solutions to improve your deliverability. They also have a wider net of integrations that go beyond just Gmail and Outlook.
G2 rating: 4.7/5 from 28 reviews.
Pricing: $15/month per inbox. This can be less attractive if you have many inboxes, as some other tools charge by outbound volume rather than total number of email addresses.
We love using Instantly for the depth of features they provide in their warmup settings - limits, reply rates, time spent reading your email, and spam protection. Instantly is an email sending tool that comes equipped with email warmup, as opposed to selling warmup as a standalone tool.
G2 rating: 4.9/5, from 304 reviews.
Pricing: free on top of their sending tool ($97/month for unlimited inboxes)
Some interesting stats - their customers see a 140% deliverability increase on average and a 68% improvement on engagement rates. We like them for their email spam test, which can otherwise be expensive when you try with other tools. This gives you valuable info on your inbox placement rate before you’ve even begun warming up.
Capterra rating: 5/5, 16 reviews
Pricing: $25 / email account per month
Warmy stands out for:
G2 rating: 4.9/5, 10 reviews
Pricing:
Warmbox offers a very robust solution, with a massive network of reputable inboxes. They are as reputable as anyone on this list. Their pricing is also flexible to your needs, as is their 4 separate warm-up recipes: growth, flat, randomize, and customized.
G2 rating: 4.7/5, 28 reviews
Pricing:
Folderly is used more by marketing teams than sales teams, which makes them a bit of an exception on this list. They still cover the main features you want: reliable warmup, deliverability testing, realistic messaging. They are more advanced, however that means they are also much more expensive at $200 per month per mailbox.
G2 rating: 5/5, 66 reviews
WUYE, by Mailshake, claims to have a real team of senders to help make the process even more realistic. This tool also comes for free if you use Mailshake as your outbound sending platform.
G2 rating: 4.5/5, 1 review
Pricing:
This is another all-in-one outbound tool that offers warmup as part of its package. Interestingly, Saleshandy predicts your deliverability percentage, rather than just handing you a health score for your domain.
G2 rating: 4.6/5 stars, 442 reviews (for their full outbound solution, not just warmup)
Pricing: free with all outbound plans
A lot has been said about whether email warmup will still exist in a year, or even 6 months from now. We covered this when it was announced that GMass was forced by Google to shut down their email warmup system. You can imagine why, as warmup puts a lot of tension on their end for emails that aren’t “real”.
This is what you need to know - stay away from any tool that uses the Gmail API for sending. It’s now considered a violation of their terms of service. The tools we’ve mentioned here have been running perfectly for months since the announcement that GMass had to shut down, so feel free to continue using them unless there are other major announcements made. We’ll update this article right away if that happens.
We evaluated tools with a wide range of pricing and functionality. Whichever software you end up choosing, be sure to keep up with all your warmup data, before and after your campaign has launched. We've covered everything you need to know about this in our Email Warmup Guide.
We help founders and sales leaders solve their entire outbound motion. Zevenue writes your campaigns, manages your sending infrastructure, and handles all your lead list building and troubleshooting to give you differentiated, unique campaigns that lead to real sales pipeline. If you’re working on this right now, let us know what questions you have. Send us a message and we’d be glad to help!
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