Mailshake vs Instantly

by Gralio Feb 05, 2025

Mailshake and Instantly are both sales engagement platforms designed for outreach. Mailshake offers a broader range of features, including AI support and LinkedIn automation, while Instantly focuses on deliverability and community support. Both cater to small and medium businesses seeking to improve sales outreach, but Mailshake's expanded toolset may appeal to businesses needing more comprehensive features.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 3028 reviews and 57 websites, saving 17 hours, 17 minutes of reading.

Mailshake

Website LinkedIn Twitter

Instantly

Website LinkedIn

About

Mailshake is a sales engagement platform designed to help businesses of all sizes find and connect with potential customers. It allows you to send personalized cold emails in bulk, automate follow-ups, and track your team's performance all in one place. Mailshake also offers tools to improve email deliverability, analyze campaign results, and even generate email copy using AI. It integrates with popular CRMs and email providers for a seamless workflow.

Instantly is a sales engagement platform designed to help businesses find and reach potential customers through personalized email outreach at scale. It offers tools for building targeted contact lists, automating email sequences, and managing responses, all while prioritizing high email deliverability rates to ensure messages reach their intended recipients. Instantly also provides analytics to track campaign performance and offers resources like templates and a customer community to guide users.

Summary

Main difference

Mailshake offers a more robust set of features, including AI-powered email generation and LinkedIn automation. Instantly prioritizes high email deliverability and provides a dedicated customer community for support.

Relative strengths of Mailshake (compared to Instantly)

Stronger feature set with AI email writing and LinkedIn automation.
Integrates with popular CRMs and email providers.
Offers prospect email search via its Data Finder tool.

Relative weaknesses of Mailshake (compared to Instantly)

Data Finder needs further development and has limited contact list size.
Template builder could be more intuitive.
New contact data quality is sometimes poor.

Who is using Mailshake and Instantly?

No data

Top Sales and SDR Consultant

Show all 11 stacks

Who should use Mailshake VS. Instantly

Mailshake is a sales engagement platform that streamlines cold outreach for sales and marketing teams. Users praise its ease of use and effective email deliverability. However, some have noted limitations with the Data Finder tool and contact list size. Mailshake offers AI-powered email generation, campaign automation, and integrations with popular CRMs.

Instantly is a sales engagement platform ideal for outbound sales and email marketing. Users praise its ease of use, helpful customer support, and high email deliverability. However, some users mention inaccurate metrics and limited free trial functionality. Best for agencies, recruiters, and entrepreneurs.

Best fit for sales and marketing teams in small to medium businesses (SMBs).
Ideal for various sectors, including Healthcare, Finance, E-commerce, and more.

Best for startups and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) leveraging outbound sales and email marketing.
Ideal for marketing & advertising, software, and IT companies.

Mailshake and Instantly features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

AI-powered writing

Supported

Mailshake offers AI-powered email generation using its SHAKEspeare tool.

Supported

Instantly uses AI to generate personalized email sequences and marketing copy.
LinkedIn automation

Supported

Mailshake offers LinkedIn automation including connection requests, messaging, and profile views.

Partially supported

Instantly.ai integrates with LinkedIn via Zapier for basic automation.
Custom email provider integration

Supported

Mailshake supports custom email provider integration via SMTP.

Supported

Instantly supports custom email providers via IMAP/SMTP, except for Outlook which uses OAuth.
Prospect email search

Supported

Mailshake offers prospect email search via its built-in Data Finder tool.

Supported

Instantly supports prospect email search with filters and keywords.
Drip Campaigns

Supported

Mailshake supports the automation and sending of pre-defined sequences of emails to nurture leads or onboard users with personalized content.

Supported

Instantly.ai supports automating and sending pre-defined sequences of emails to nurture leads or onboard users with personalized content.
Email Sequences

Partially supported

Mailshake supports automated email sequences but does not fully automate based on lead behavior or specific sales pipeline stages without additional setup.

Supported

Instantly AI supports creating and automating a series of emails triggered by lead behavior or specific stages in the sales pipeline.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

+1

Strongly positive sentiment

-0.01

Neutral sentiment
Customer Service

+0.91

Strongly positive sentiment

+0.94

Strongly positive sentiment
Ease of Use

+1

Strongly positive sentiment

+0.95

Strongly positive sentiment
Reliability and Performance

+0.63

Rather positive sentiment

+0.72

Strongly positive sentiment
Ease of Implementation

+0.29

Neutral sentiment

+0.76

Strongly positive sentiment
Scalability

No data

+0.6

Rather positive sentiment

Mailshake and Instantly Pricing

Mailshake offers email outreach and engagement solutions with various pricing plans based on the number of users and features. Data Finder, a separate product, offers various credit-based plans for finding sales leads.

Plans

User sentiment

Strongly positive

See full Pricing page

Instanty offers various pricing plans for their Sales Engagement & Lead Intelligence platform. The plans are divided into Sending & Warmup, Leads, and CRM categories, each with its own set of features and pricing tiers.

Plans

User sentiment

Neutral

-0.01

See full Pricing page

Mailshake and Instantly review insights

2957 reviews analysed from and

Users love

Easy to set up and manage campaigns.
Very user-friendly and intuitive interface.
Excellent and responsive customer support
Effective at getting emails through to user mailboxes.

User-friendly and easy to set up
Customer support is very responsive and helpful
The mobile app allows for staying connected on the go
The email deliverability is great and emails land in the primary inbox
Domain and email setup service saves time and effort

Users dislike

The Data Finder needs more development work, it wasn’t able to find very many emails at all, compared to other tools.
Limited contact list size, only 5,000 per campaign
The template builder is not as intuitive as it could be.
The new contact data quality was poor and incomplete.

Metrics on open/click-rates are sometimes inaccurate
Weekend delays are factored into email sequences even when emails are scheduled for weekdays
Relatively simple features like replying to emails from the CRM require upgrading
The free trial is misleading as you can’t use the useful features
Lead finder results are limited

Mailshake and Instantly Ratings

G2

4.7/5

(277)
Capterra

4.6/5

(113)
TrustPilot

3.6/5

(3)

G2

4.9/5

(2593)
TrustPilot

4.6/5

(68)

Company health

Employee growth

4% decrease in the last year

79% increase in the last year

Web traffic

41% decrease in the last quarter

15% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

No data

How do Mailshake's AI writing tools compare to Instantly's email sequences?

Mailshake offers AI-powered email generation through its "SHAKEspeare" tool, while Instantly focuses on automated email sequences triggered by lead behavior or sales pipeline stages. Essentially, Mailshake helps with content creation, while Instantly emphasizes automated delivery and follow-up within pre-defined workflows.

Which platform provides more reliable email deliverability, Mailshake or Instantly?

Instantly appears to provide more reliable email deliverability. User reviews highlight Instantly's strong deliverability, with emails frequently reaching primary inboxes. While Mailshake users also mention good deliverability, Instantly's higher reliability and performance score (0.72 vs. 0.63) and specific user comments about inbox placement suggest a potential advantage in this area.

What are the advantages of Mailshake?

Mailshake offers AI-powered email generation, a built-in prospect email search tool, and LinkedIn automation features, which are not available in Instantly. Mailshake also appears to have better user reviews regarding customer support responsiveness.

What are the disadvantages of Mailshake?

Mailshake's data finder tool has been reported to be less effective than competitors. Users have also noted a limited contact list size, which could hinder larger outreach campaigns. Some users find the template builder less intuitive than desired, and there have been reports of poor data quality for new contacts. Finally, while Mailshake integrates with CRMs, it lacks a built-in CRM, potentially requiring additional software subscriptions for full sales management.

Is Mailshake cheaper than Instantly?

No, Mailshake is not cheaper than Instantly. Mailshake's annual plans range from $2925 to $9985, while Instantly's monthly plans range from $30 to $492 (making the annual cost between $360 and $5904), with custom pricing for Enterprise. Therefore, Instantly offers lower-cost options than Mailshake.

Alternatives to Mailshake and Instantly

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot Marketing Hub is a comprehensive marketing platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a suite of tools including email marketing, marketing automation, social media management, analytics, and SEO optimization, all within a single platform. This helps businesses streamline their marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and track results. Its focus on inbound marketing and lead generation makes it a popular choice for businesses looking to attract and convert leads into customers. HubSpot Marketing Hub integrates seamlessly with HubSpot's CRM platform for enhanced sales and marketing alignment.

Saleshandy

Saleshandy is a sales engagement platform that helps businesses, particularly sales teams, improve their cold outreach. It allows you to send personalized email campaigns, track email opens and replies, and automate follow-ups, all while managing your client base. Saleshandy focuses on improving email deliverability and provides tools like sender rotation and email warm-up to help your messages reach the inbox.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It helps you create personalized customer journeys across various channels like email, SMS, and ads. You can automate repetitive tasks, track customer behavior, and improve your marketing campaigns with its CRM and sales automation features. ActiveCampaign integrates with over 900 popular business tools and offers a wide range of pre-built templates and automation recipes to streamline your marketing efforts.

Brevo Transactional Email

Brevo Transactional Email helps businesses send important emails like order confirmations and password resets. It offers easy email design tools, integrates with existing business systems, and automates sending based on customer actions. You can track if emails are opened or clicked and the service is secure for your customer's data. Brevo Transactional Email is suitable for both small and large businesses.

HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub is a sales software platform designed to help mid-sized and growing businesses streamline and automate their sales processes. It offers tools for managing contacts, tracking deals, sending emails, and analyzing sales performance. Its focus is on providing a user-friendly interface and a suite of integrated tools that work together seamlessly. HubSpot Sales Hub aims to improve sales efficiency, increase productivity, and drive revenue growth by providing a centralized system for managing all aspects of the sales pipeline.

Salesloft

Salesloft is a sales platform designed to help sales teams close deals more efficiently. It offers tools to manage sales calls, emails, and customer interactions. Salesloft provides insights and analytics to help improve sales performance and forecast future sales. Its focus is on providing a single platform to manage the entire sales process, making it particularly beneficial for mid-sized companies in the USA seeking to streamline their sales operations and boost revenue.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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