We’ve used 5 best Mailshake alternatives that will get you more replies [in-depth comparison]

It seems that Mailshake doesn’t satisfy your needs.

Don’t worry - you’re not the only one and fortunately - there are various Mailshake alternatives that will definitely help you achieve your goals and get bigger reply rates.

Now don’t get me wrong.

I'm not saying that Mailshake is a bad product. Even more - it’s really good. But simply - it’s not the right fit for everyone.

And after reading this article - you’ll be able to identify the best outreach tool for your needs that will help you personalize your campaigns, achieve better open rates and get more replies.

Over the course of 5 weeks, we’ve used the 5 best Mailshake alternatives - and here’s our honest and in-depth feedback on:

• lemlist
• Outreach.io
• Reply.io
• Woodpecker
• MixMax

We analyzed all 5 Mailshake alternatives by different parameters and rated them from 1 to 5:

- Personalization level (or: how well can you personalize your outreach emails?)

- Email deliverability (or: will your emails arrive in the spam or the main folder?) - yeap - it depends on the tool.

- UX/UI (or: how easy it is to use it?)

- Unique features (or: does a particular tool has some unique features no one else has?)

- Customer Support Effectiveness (or: is its’ customer support helpful or not?)

As you will see - we rated each of those 5 Mailshake alternatives for all 6 parameters for easier comparison.

If you also don’t want to read the entire in-depth feedback, you can jump on the bottom of the article to see our full comparison table.

Now, before we start giving our feedback on each of those 5 Mailshake alternatives, let us first see the Mailshake’s advantages and shortcomings.

Mailshakes’ advantages

As I said at the beginning - Mailshake is definitely a good product. It has a couple of advantages worth mentioning:

- It’s incredibly simple to use - Mailshake has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. Even the very beginners in sales outreach will find it easy to use. Its’ UX/UI is eye-catchy, and it’s very hard for you to get lost inside the product.

- It warns you about sending two emails to the same person - this isn’t something WOW - but it’s still something rarely what email outreach tool has. It’s very easy to make mistakes while prospecting - even I find myself sometimes sending two different cold emails to the same person. If you accidentally do this inside Mailshake - you will be notified that you already sent one email to that person.

- It lowers your bounce rate - Huge bounce rates will increase your chance for getting into spam - and if you have some invalid emails inside your list - Mailshake can clean your list and move out all the invalid emails for you. Inside the Pro and Omni package, you’re able to clean 5000 and 10.000 emails. While if you want to clean more - you can always pay an additional $10 for 5000 emails.

Now when we saw some of the Mailshake’s advantages - let’s see the most frustrating shortcomings and problems you can face while using it.

Mailshake’s shortcomings and problems

None tool is perfect. While having some nice features and functionalities, like everything else - Mailshake has a couple of disadvantages - and believe me - some of them can be really problematic and frustrating:

- Bad email deliverability - Mailshake isn’t famous about its email deliverability. Chances that your email will get into spam when using Mailshake aren’t low.

- There is no trial - for a lot of people I know (and for myself as well) - not having a trial is the pain in the 🍑. In the Mailshake’s case - you can either get a 1 on 1 demo or go straight with using the tool and paying for it. Although they’re offering 30-day money-back guarantee - I still want to try it before paying.

Keeping all of this in mind - we’re now going to show you the 5 best Mailshake alternatives that will help you to personalize your email campaigns better, have amazing email deliverability and reach your 2020 sales goals.

As for everything else - for easier comparison - we also gave our score to Mailshake as well:

Full disclosure before we start: We’re building lemlist - one of the Mailshake alternatives. We identified the common problems inside the email outreach tools and building up the best solutions for our target audience. In this article - we’re going to review all of our competitors (and ourselves) honestly - without taking sides. As for everyone else - we will highlight lemlist’s advantages and shortcomings.

Now let’s get started!

lemlist - Mailshake alternative with better personalization and email deliverability

As I already mentioned - lemlist is our own tool - but we’re going to review it honestly as we will review other tools as well.

In short - lemlist is the email outreach tool suitable for sales, backlink building, hr, and other things. It’s very similar like Mailshake - but it has a couple of hot features and functionalities that no other email outreach tool has.

Advantages of lemlist

There’re a lot of things that are great about lemlist - but let me just highlight the most important ones (but it’s still worth to mention that we’re cool guys and that you’ll find using our product to be very funny 🤩):

- It’s the only tool on the market with personalized images - Yap - you read it right. Besides personalizing your emails with the first name, company name and other parameters, lemlist also allows you to create personalized images with your prospect’s website screenshot, name, logo, image, or anything else you want.

Why is this great?

Because it enables you to build meaningful relationships with your prospects and get better reply and open rates.

- Chances of getting into spam are very very low - If you’re careful and if you follow the basic email deliverability rules - your emails will never land in spam. Why? Because for each paid lemlist seat you'll get access to lemwarm - a warm-up and deliverability booster that ensures high deliverability for the long run.

In short, you’ll be able to:

1. Save time and money by automating your warm-up process
2. Gain a good sender reputation with a tailored strategy
3. Maintain high deliverability with detailed reporting

- You can personalize videos and landing pages - besides personalized images - in lemlist’s premium plans you can also personalize your videos and landing pages. This allows you to build meaningful relationships with your prospects, improve your reply rates and close more deals.

In short - here’s how we used personalized videos and landing pages to improve our event show rate.

This is the email we sent:

Don’t pay attention to the French language - what’s important here is this video layout. As you can see - it’s personalized with the prospect’s name and logo. Once he clicks on this video - he’s gonna be redirected to this landing page:

As you can see - this landing page is personalized with the prospect’s name and logo. Pretty amazing, right? 😎

You can personalize your videos, images and landing pages by using any data or picture you want.

Now, once we saw the advantages of lemlist - let’s see its shortcomings and downfalls.

Shortcomings and advantages of lemlist

As we already mentioned - we’re going to talk about the lemlist’s shortcomings as well. So - here’re the biggest and most frustrating ones:

- It’s a little bit hard to use it at the beginning - because of its’ robust platform and a lot of great features - the learning curve of lemlist is a little bit longer than for other tools. But don’t worry - that isn’t such a big problem. After a day of using it, you will already know everything you need in order to crush your 2020 goals. Not to mention that there’s our dedicated champion Ena that’s gonna help you with your campaigns and onboarding 🥰.

- It restricts you with the number of emails you can send per day - unlike most of other email outreach tools - lemlist restricts you with the number of emails you can send each day. Depending on the package - you can send either 100 or 500 emails each day per user.

But, this is not because we don’t want to let you send more. It’s because we care about you, your success and your email deliverability. Sending A LOT of emails each day (500+) is bad for your email deliverability and you will end up in spam (that’s why Mailchimp is bad for email outreach campaigns).

So no worry - this won’t restrict you from getting your 2020 goals crushed. Even more - this is gonna help you with that 😉.

lemlist’s pricing

You’re probably thinking right now:

“Well, all of this sounds very cool - but what about pricing? Features like these must definitely be really expensive!”

You can start with a 14-day free trial, to test things out.

Mailshake vs lemlist - how are they different?

This is the question worth a million dollars.

Is the lemlist the right Mailshake alternative for you?

There’re certainly some very important distinguishing points worth considering if you want to switch from Mailshake to lemlist:

- lemlist has better personalization - if you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative with more personalization options - then lemlist is the right tool for you. Why? Because with lemlist - besides ordinary personalization options you can do inside Mailshake as well, you can also personalize images, videos and landing pages.

- lemlist has better email deliverability - with our specific sending algorithm and lemwarm feature, your cold emails will never land in spam again.

On the other side:

- lemlist has a little bit bigger learning curve - While you can learn how to use Mailshake really quickly, you’ll need a little bit more time to get used to using lemlist because of its robust features - but don’t worry - because our customer hero Ena is always there to help and assist you.

lemlists’ ratings as the Mailshake alternative

As promised - here’re the lemlist’s ratings:

Total: 4.8/5

Start your free trial on lemlist - no credit card required

Outreach.io - Mailshake alternative for enterprise companies

If you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative that’s built for enterprise companies - then Outreach.io can be your best choice.

In short - Outreach.io is a similar tool as both Mailshake or lemlist (although it doesn’t have some features lemlist has).

Let’s crack the Outreach.io out.

Outreach.io’s advantages

As I already mentioned, Outreach.io is built for enterprise companies - so there we can expect a large variety of features that are suitable for them:

• It has 60+ integrations - Enterprise companies are usually using a large variety of tools - thus - having a lot of integrations is more than important for them. Well - luckily for all of you - Outreach.io is the email outreach tool with probably the most integrations out there. Besides some basic integrations such as Salesforce, Drift, Intercom, and others, you will also find out integrations with a big variety of customer support, productivity, project management and other types of tools.
• It has a very robust platform - Outreach.io is probably the Mailshake alternative with the most available features and functionalities. Inside Outreach.io, you can expect a lot of things such as call follow-ups, text messaging with your prospects, and so on.
  

Now when we know Outreach.io’s advantages - let’s see some of its’ shortcomings.

Outreach.io’s shortcomings

• It’s very expensive - if you don’t have a big budget - then Outreach.io is probably not the right fit for you. Although outreach.io’s pricing is not publicly visible, its’ lowest package is $100/user/month with only the most basic features available.
• It has a really big learning curve - look at it this way: Mailshake is very easy to use, lemlist is just a little bit harder (like you’ll need 10 more minutes to figure out what’s going on), but Outreach.io is extremely hard. But this is reasonable - it’s built for enterprise businesses. So if you decide to go with Outreach.io - besides paying a tremendous amount of money - also expect to spend a lot of time learning and onboarding yourself and your teammates.
• It doesn’t allow you to pay monthly - Outreach.io doesn’t support monthly payments - if you decide to go with it, expect to make a commitment for the entire year.

Outreach.io’s pricing

As we already mentioned - Outreach.io is very expensive. There is no publicly available pricing. You need to submit a form and you’ll get it on your email (even if I waited for over a day to get their pricing - which was very frustrating).

But, when you Google Outreach.io’s pricing around, you will see that the most common pricing (for the lowest package), is $100/user/month.

Given that in mind, if Mailshake costs you $295 for the middle package and for 5 users, you will end up paying $6000 each year. Please just keep in mind that you can’t pay monthly - only yearly. So make sure to have at least $6000 on your bank account if you decide to go with 5 users. I also think that Outreach.io doesn’t work with individuals, and that the minimum number of users you must have is 2.

Mailshake vs Outreach.io - how are they different?

It’s clear that both companies are targeting different customers - so to some point - they can’t be comparable.

But, here’s what we learned so far:

• Outreach.io has more features - if you’re looking for more robust Mailshake alternative, then Outreach.io can be a great choice.
• Outreach.io is 2x more expensive than Mailshake - make sure to have a huge amount of money on your bank account before purchasing Outreach.io
• Outreach.io doesn’t support the trial and monthly payments
• Outreach.io has more integrations than Mailshake

Outreach.ios’ ratings as the Mailshake alternative

Total: 4.2/5

Reply.io - Similar Mailshake alternative - but a little bit more expensive

If you’re looking for the very similar Mailshake alternative (in terms of features and everything else) - Reply.io can be your best choice.

Let’s crack it down.

Advantages of Reply.io

As already mentioned - Reply.io is very similar like Malishake, but here’re the most important things I like about it:

• It has a short learning curve - If you’re looking for the tool that’s gonna be easy for your team to onboard - then reply.io can be the right choice for you. It’s very easy to learn almost everything about the tool. Its’ UX/UI is eye-catchy and intuitive.
• They have good customer support/success team - Indeed - whenever I needed help - Reply.io’s team was there for me. Not to mention that they also have a cool “email rating” feature. Whenever you write a new email, you will have ratings on the right to see how likely your email is to get a reply.
  

• It’s good for drip campaigns as well - Not all sales outreach tools are also good for drip campaigns - but reply.io is. Although it’s definitely not the best in the market (since it’s not built for that), it has some basic functionalities that can help you to create onboarding or retention drip campaigns.

Now when we saw what are the Reply.io’s advantages, let’s see its’ shortcomings and the most common problems.

Shortcomings of Reply.io

• Reply.io is the more expensive Mailshake alternative - Reply.io is very similar like Mailshake (but with a few additional features). Unfortunately, it’s more expensive. So if you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative that’s similar to Mailshake, but does a slighter better job at email outreach - the expect to pay more for Mailshake.
• It has some unnecessary features - There is no perfect product, and every tool has something that’s unnecessary (at least for me). In Reply.io - it’s the “project management” part of the product. You have a couple of project management features (such as tasks for example), that can be good for tracking who’s doing what. But in my case - I find it pretty much overwhelming - since I’m already using a lot of project management tools on the side. Why would I need that as well?

Reply.io’s pricing

As we already saw - Reply.io expensive pricing. In short - you can purchase software for each user individually or the team of 3,5 or 10 users. After that, if you need more than 3, 5 or 10 users - you can always purchase an additional one for the very expensive rates.

Of course - there’re also individual plans that are priced per user - but they’re very expensive.

Medium package for 5 users will cost you $300/mo.

Mailshake vs Reply.io - how are they different?

There’re a couple of main differentiating factors between those two tools.

• Reply.io is more expensive
• Reply.io has a better email deliverability rate - Reply.io’s email deliverability isn’t perfect - but it’s definitely better than Mailshakes’
• Reply.io supports drip campaigns as well - Unlike Mailshake, reply.io supports drip campaigns. Although they’re not perfect, they can still satisfy some basic things.

Reply.io’s ratings as the Mailshake alternative

Total: 4.3/5

Woodpecker - Good Mailshake alternative for small teams

Woodpecker is not the best tool on the market, it has some shortcomings, but its’ basic features make it great for small teams that are not depending on the cold outreach campaigns.

Advantages of Woodpecker

Woodpecker is the sales outreach tool that’s proud of its algorithm that imitates the human sending (it doesn’t send all the email in bulk). But the thing is, that isn’t new or revolutionary. Almost every cold email outreach tool does that at the moment so you will avoid the spam folders. Lemlist does it as well, and Mailshake too.

So, even if I desperately wanted to find some advantages of Woodpecker that no one else has, I couldn’t. It’s totally same as every other product.

But - there’s one thing that I really liked about Woodpecker:

• They have “specific conditions” for follow-ups - when you create your campaign in Woodpecker, you will see a “condition” option for follow-ups. The reason I like this is that there are some really unorthodox conditions to choose from. For example, you can send a specific, custom-made follow up to those who opened your initial email for more than 5 times (although I think that this rarely happens).

Shortcomings of Woodpecker

It almost all things - Woodpecker is very similar like Mailshake. But there are some things that I don’t like:

• The app knows to be buggy sometimes - This can happen occasionally - but it’s still very frustrating. For example, when I was adding my email inside the app - I waited for almost 5 minutes for Woodpecker to do the backend work.
• UX is not so great - besides having a big learning curve, I really don’t like Woodpecker’s UX/UI. This can be subjective, but I don’t find their font and illustrations so engaging. Even more - they’re disrupting me in my work since I really need to focus in order to understand and see their text inside the app.

Woodpeckers’ pricing

Since there is nothing fancy inside the product, it can be good for small teams and solopreneurs that are not depending too much on cold email outreach.

Medium package for 5 users will cost you $250/mo.

Mailshake vs Woodpecker - how are they different?

The only Woodpeckers’ advantage I have to mention is its’ “condition” feature when sending follow-ups. When we take a look at everything else, both tools are pretty much the same - except that Woodpecker has a slightly better email deliverability rate.

Woodpeckers’ rating as the Mailshake alternative

Total: 3.2/5

MixMax - the most affordable Mailshake alternative

MixMax is probably the most affordable Mailshake alternative on the market. So if you’re not planning to spend as much as money on Mailshake and other alternatives, then MixMax can be the right choice for you.

But - not rarely - with more affordable pricing comes the bad quality as well.

Advantages of MixMax

One of the biggest advantages I can notice about the MixMax is that it can be directly integrated into Gmail.

Having that in mind, you can not just create cold email outreach campaigns from your app dashboard - but you can also use different templates and chose the time to send emails directly from your Gmail.

Also, it’s important to mention that MixMax is extremely cheap compared to other Mailshake alternatives and Mailshake itself.

Shortcomings of MixMax

Here’re a couple of problems I faced during my MixMax testing:

• It’s really hard to learn the product - MixMax probably has the largest learning curve from all Mailshake alternatives. I found it really complicated to use at the beginning. But, after the 3 days - I made used to it.
• Email deliverability isn’t great - It’s not the worst, but it’s not the best as well. I found out that a lot of my emails arrived at spam.

MixMaxs’ Pricing

As already mentioned - MixMax is extremely cheap. That makes it good for solopreneurs and small teams that are not depending on sales outreach (just like Woodpecker).

Medium-sized package for 5 users will cost you $120/mo.

Mailshake vs MixMax - how are they different?

• MixMax has Gmail integration - MixMaxs’ Gmail integration makes it very easy for you to send manual emails by using different templates and send later option
• MixMax is more affordable - If you’re looking for a way too cheaper Mailshake alternative, then MixMax can be the right tool for you
• Mailshake is easier to use - Without any doubt, you will need more time to get accustomed to Mailshake

MixMaxs’ ratings as the Mailshake alternative

Total: 4/5

What’s the best Mailshake alternative for you?

And here we are. At the end of this pretty extensive and in-depth review of the 5 best Mailshake alternatives, you should consider if you want to move out from Mailshake.

So, the question is, “what is the best Mailshake alternative for you?”

Here’s the answer.

• If you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative that’s more suitable for Enterprise companies - then definitely the Customer.io should be your go-to choice
• If you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative that’s very similar to Mailshake but a little bit better and with a few features more - then Reply.io can be the right move to make
• If you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative that’s good for very small teams, then Woodpecker can be a good tool for you
• If you’re looking for the more affordable cold email outreach solution than Mailshake - then you should probably go with MixMax

And,

• If you’re looking for the Mailshake alternative with more personalization options, personalized images, videos, landing pages, and most importantly, with the best email deliverability rate on the market, then lemlist is the right choice for you