Instantly AI cold email tool: what you get, and what is an add-on

What unlimited pricing hides

Shared warm-up networks: you get what the network is worth

At Instantly, every plan shares the Standard warm-up pool, but with a limit of SMTP mailboxes per plan (100 / 500 / 1000 on Growth, Hypergrowth and Light Speed): beyond it, the whole workspace moves to the Basic pool, made mostly of SMTP accounts, with lower engagement and weaker deliverability according to its help center. A Premium pool, made of older Google and Microsoft accounts, starts at $500 a month per workspace (help center, checked on October 29, 2026).

A shared warm-up network is only worth the mailboxes in it. When plans are cheap and mailboxes unlimited, one account paying a few dozen euros can warm hundreds of throwaway mailboxes in the same network, and customers on entry plans share that network: their warm-up can be weaker. At the other end, dedicated warm-up services such as MailReach (from $16 to $25 per mailbox a month, checked on October 18, 2026) charge more to keep a smaller, very clean network.

Emelia sits in between: every account pays a price consistent with its mailboxes (3 mailboxes on Start, 50 on Grow, then Scale), so there are no accounts warming thousands of throwaway mailboxes, and enough users to send at scale.

Same mailboxes, same pace: Instantly’s bill grows with your contacts, Emelia’s does not

Instantly caps the contacts you load (a running total that never resets) and the emails you send each month. Hypergrowth and Light Speed accept stackable add-ons, $87 a month for 25,000 more contacts and 125,000 more emails; Growth accepts none (help center, checked October 29, 2026). Count what the same mailboxes send on Emelia (35 new contacts and 100 emails a day each) and the cheapest Instantly plan that holds both caps costs $184 (Hypergrowth + 1 add-on) for 50 mailboxes, $358 (Light Speed) for 100 and $619 (Light Speed + 3 add-ons) for 200.

Emelia charges $97 for 50 mailboxes (Grow) and $297 for 100 or 200 (Scale), with no cap on contacts or on emails sent, and LinkedIn accounts included. The table below runs from 3 to 500 mailboxes.

Instantly API and documentation: v2 on the sending plans, webhooks from Hypergrowth

Instantly’s public API is version 2, a REST API documented at developer.instantly.ai. Keys are created under Settings > Integrations > API Keys, as many as you like, each limited to the scopes you tick, and sent as bearer tokens; Instantly displays a key once and cannot show it again. The routes reach most of the product: mailboxes and their warm-up, campaigns and subsequences, leads and lists, Unibox emails, analytics, inbox placement tests, SuperSearch searches and enrichment, the AI agents, done-for-you mailbox orders and workspace members. Instantly also publishes an official TypeScript SDK, still in beta, and a command-line tool.

Which plans get it depends on the page. The plan comparison in Instantly’s help center gives the API to Growth, Hypergrowth and Light Speed, and its pricing.md file counts "API access" among what every plan includes; the comparison table on instantly.ai/pricing, though, ticks its "API, webhooks, and integrations" row for Hypergrowth only. The free trial gets no API, no Zapier and no integrations, according to the help center table. Webhooks start at Hypergrowth whichever page you read: below that plan, Instantly never notifies your server when a lead replies, opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, changes status or books a meeting, and your code has to ask for those events instead.

Rate limits apply to the whole workspace: 100 requests a second and 6,000 a minute, however many keys the calls are spread over, with v1 traffic counted in the same budget; beyond that, calls are rejected with a 429 error. Version 1 was deprecated on January 19, 2026. Its keys do not open v2, so a script written for the old version needs a new key and new routes, while connectors built on it, Zapier among them, keep working according to the help center.

AI assistants connect through an MCP server hosted by Instantly, which takes the same API keys. The help center lists 31 tools in 5 categories, whereas the developer documentation says each v2 route is exposed as a tool. Emelia puts its API and webhooks on all three plans, at up to 100, 300 or 1,000 requests a minute on Start, Grow and Scale, with webhooks from the entry plan.

Instantly email warmup and "unlimited" inboxes: the caps in the help center

Warm-up is included on every sending plan, through a network Instantly sizes at "1,000,000+" accounts on its warm-up page ("4.2M+" in its llms.txt file). A new mailbox sends 2, 4 and 6 warm-up emails over its first days, then ramps up. "Unlimited mailboxes" holds, within four limits written in the help center:

• 30 campaign emails per mailbox per day is Instantly’s recommendation for Google, Outlook and other SMTP mailboxes, 20 at most for its AirMail mailboxes; with its "Campaign Slow Ramp" option on, campaigns ramp up by 2 emails a day.
• Your plan’s monthly email cap. At 30 a day over 22 working days, Growth’s 5,000 emails keep fewer than 8 mailboxes busy. Past that, you need Hypergrowth, however many mailboxes the plan accepts.
• SMTP mailboxes in the standard warm-up pool: 100 on Growth, 500 on Hypergrowth and 1,000 on Light Speed, plus 500 per Outreach add-on. Above that number, the whole workspace, Google and Outlook mailboxes included, moves to the "Basic" pool, which Instantly ranks below it. A Premium pool costs from $500 a month per workspace, a private pool from $1,000.
• Done-for-you domains stay Instantly’s. For its Google and pre-warmed accounts, it keeps ownership and admin access of the domains it sets up (.com, .org only, 5 accounts per domain at most), and those mailboxes only work inside Instantly.

Instantly AI for LinkedIn: what its own blog and feature board say

Instantly does not automate LinkedIn. Its own blog, in an article on LinkedIn automation tools updated on May 6, 2026, sums Instantly up as "Email + CRM + Calling/SMS". On Instantly’s public feature board, the request for a LinkedIn integration (connection and message steps in sequences) is still open, with 169 votes.

Inside the product, LinkedIn shows up only as data: a LinkedIn field on each lead, LinkedIn profile URLs in SuperSearch, and in the CRM (a separate subscription) a "Connect" button that opens the contact’s LinkedIn profile, where you act by hand: the only LinkedIn feature its help center documents. Sending on LinkedIn goes through other tools: Instantly’s automations push leads to Aimfox, Expandi, HeyReach, Valley and La Growth Machine. HeyReach, billed per LinkedIn account ($79 per LinkedIn account a month, $59 from 10 accounts), names Instantly among the email tools it works with. Each is a second subscription, with a second inbox to watch.

Emelia runs LinkedIn steps in the same sequence as your emails, with a built-in proxy: 1 LinkedIn account on Start, 3 on Grow, 10 on Scale, then $29 a month per extra account.

Instantly CRM: unlimited seats, US calling, a bill of its own

Instantly’s CRM is sold apart from sending: Growth CRM at $47 a month and Hyper CRM at $97, according to the help center’s plans overview (its CRM article speaks of a flat $97 a month). It left the pricing page between January 18, 2026 and April 3, 2026.

It brings unlimited seats, which is the other way to work as a team without Hypergrowth (the first sending plan that accepts team members), along with opportunities, tasks and reporting. Calls and text messages run on American numbers (on Hyper CRM, according to Instantly’s llms.txt file and its former pricing page): call credit is bought on top at Twilio rates, and texting US numbers requires A2P 10DLC registration. The CRM has its own 14-day trial; cancelling it ends it at once if another Instantly subscription stays active.

Emelia connects to your CRM: one CRM on Start and Grow, several on Scale. Instantly connects natively to HubSpot, Pipedrive and HighLevel; Salesforce goes through its partner OutboundSync.

Instantly vs Clay: a sender and a list builder that plug into each other

Clay is a data workbench before it is a sender. You search its 900M people and 70M companies, then enrich each row from data providers and AI research, paying in two counters, actions and data credits: a free plan, then Launch from $185 a month. Its own Sequencer sends cold email only, runs on Smartlead and holds 4 emails per sequence at most. Instantly works the other way round: sending from many mailboxes comes first, and its data, SuperSearch, is a separate credits plan from $9 a month.

The link between them lives in Clay, which offers these Instantly actions: "Find leads", "Verify Email" and "Add Lead to Campaign". They look up a lead already in Instantly from its email, check whether an address is a valid inbox and whether its domain accepts everything (catch-all), and push a row into a campaign, optionally skipping anyone already in the workspace. Each one runs on an Instantly API key (v2), which a paid sending plan provides and the trial does not.

Instantly’s own setup guide, dated March 12, 2026, still asks for a Clay account on the "Explorer Tier or higher". Explorer belongs to Clay’s former price grid, replaced in March 2026 by Free, Launch, Growth and Enterprise; the current pricing page lists sending "via Clay or integrations" from Launch. That guide describes the split Instantly expects: the list researched and personalised in Clay, the emails sent by an Instantly campaign. Each tool then bills you on its own, in dollars.

Instantly.ai explained: cold email billed by emails sent and contacts loaded

Instantly.ai is an American cold email platform. You connect as many Gmail, Outlook or SMTP mailboxes as you like; Instantly warms them up, rotates them across your campaigns and gathers the replies in its Unibox. What you pay depends on your Outreach plan, which sets two limits: the emails you can send each month and the contacts you can load.

The first is easy to read: 5,000 emails a month on Growth, 125,000 emails a month (100,000 on the yearly price card and in the comparison table of the same page) on Hypergrowth, 500,000 on Light Speed. The second is the one people miss. It counts every contact present in your campaigns, whether active, paused, draft or finished, duplicates included, and it never resets: 1,000 on Growth, 25,000 on Hypergrowth, 100,000 on Light Speed. The help center’s only way to free space is to delete leads.

Instantly is the trading name of Foo Monk LLC, a company registered in Wyoming. It says it was founded in 2021 and launched on AppSumo; Raul Kaevand and Nils Schneider are its co-CEOs. Its careers page counts "40,000+ Clients" and its CRM page 40,000+ teams; other pages say 35,000+, 50,000+ sales teams or 3M+ users.

What Instantly does, product by product, and which ones are billed apart

Each product below is its own subscription, billed, renewed and cancelled on its own tab, and you need one set per workspace: an agency that keeps three clients in three workspaces pays three times. Sending runs on the Outreach plan: without it, a credits plan only lets you put 250 leads in campaigns.

Same outreach, two bills: Instantly’s add-on subscriptions against one Emelia plan

Take a team that sends from 50 mailboxes (about 33,000 emails a month at 30 a day), answers its prospects from the unified inbox and finds 10,000 new emails a month. At Instantly, the volume and the replies both call for Hypergrowth, and the emails need a credits plan: Hyper 2, 20,000 credits, covers 10,000 emails at the 1.5 credits Instantly gives as its average. At Emelia, Grow covers the mailboxes, and 10,000 credits cost $99 a month on top: the credits included with a plan are given once, at signup.

Hypergrowth also stops loading contacts at 25,000 in total: at 10,000 new contacts a month, the third month calls for an add-on at $87, not counted here. Grow also includes 3 LinkedIn accounts, which Instantly cannot run at any price; they are not counted here.

Sending only: which plan each tool needs, from 3 to 500 mailboxes

Sending only, no data, no LinkedIn. Each row sizes the plan to what those mailboxes send on Emelia, at its quotas (35 new contacts and 100 emails a day each, over 22 working days), then takes the cheapest Instantly plan that holds both caps, emails a month and contacts loaded in total, stacking its $87 add-ons past Hypergrowth (Hypergrowth counted at 125,000 emails). Instantly invoices in US dollars and nothing else, while an Emelia price is the same number in euros or dollars: each tick therefore names the cheaper side for someone paying in dollars, with no exchange rate applied.

Billed monthly

3 mailboxes (≈ 2,310 contacts, 6,600 emails)

Instantly$97 (Hypergrowth)

Emelia$37 (Start)

50 mailboxes (≈ 38,500 contacts, 110,000 emails)

Instantly$184 (Hypergrowth + 1 add-on)

Emelia$97 (Grow)

100 mailboxes (≈ 77,000 contacts, 220,000 emails)

Instantly$358 (Light Speed)

Emelia$297 (Scale)

200 mailboxes (≈ 154,000 contacts, 440,000 emails)

Instantly$619 (Light Speed + 3 add-ons)

Emelia$297 (Scale)

500 mailboxes (≈ 385,000 contacts, 1,100,000 emails)

Instantly$1,402 (Light Speed + 12 add-ons)

Emelia$297 (Scale)

Beyond the monthly price

Replying from the unified inbox

InstantlyFrom Hypergrowth

EmeliaEvery plan

Contacts

Instantly1,000 / 25,000 / 100,000 loaded in total

EmeliaUnlimited

LinkedIn accounts

InstantlyNone: a separate tool is needed

Emelia1 / 3 / 10 included

Credits validity

InstantlyTwo months after purchase on a monthly plan (12 months on a yearly one)

Emelia12 months, even after cancelling

Free trial

Instantly14 days, no card

Emelia7 days, no card, plus 20 free credits at sign-up with a work email

Billed monthly, Emelia costs less at 3, 50, 100, 200 and 500 mailboxes. Growth ($47) holds only 1,000 contacts loaded in total and 5,000 emails a month: even under both caps, it costs more than Start ($37). At 100 mailboxes, Hypergrowth alone ($97) would stay under Scale ($297) only while the total of contacts loaded stays under 25,000: at Instantly’s recommended pace (30 emails a day), 100 mailboxes send 66,000 emails a month, about 22,000 new contacts a month in a 3-step sequence, and that total is passed in the second month. Every scenario, with data costs, is on the pricing page. Excluding tax, checked on October 6, 2026.

Instantly’s price range, from Growth to Light Speed

The three self-serve sending plans, billed monthly in US dollars, with 20% off when paid yearly. Credits, CRM and the rest come on top; the Instantly pricing page details every tier, the bundles and a simulator.

Hypergrowth’s volume differs within the same pricing page: 125,000 emails a month (100,000 on the yearly price card and in the comparison table of the same page). Enterprise, above 500,000 emails, is on quote. Bundles of sending and credits run from $94 to $555 a month.

Instantly ratings: a G2 score we can’t verify, none on Capterra, hidden on Trustpilot

Trustpilot hides Instantly’s score, citing "a breach of our guidelines", and says it removed fake reviews; 1,171 reviews remain, 25% of them one star.

G2 turns automated checks away, so Instantly’s score there is not one we could read ourselves: search engines display 4.8/5 and Instantly’s pages cite 4.8/5, and we present neither as verified. Capterra lists Instantly with 0 reviews.

What the remaining reviews say, praise and complaints, is on our Instantly review page.

Instantly alternatives: Emelia, Reply.io, Apollo, Smartlead and lemlist

Emelia, then the four tools people compare Instantly with most, each with its detailed comparison.

ToolEntry price (cold email)Cold emailPhone numbersContact databaseLinkedIn automationEmail + LinkedIn

for reference

Entry price (cold email)$47/monthGrowth plan · 5,000 emails a month · unlimited mailboxes

YesCold email

NoPhone numbers

YesContact database

NoLinkedIn automation

NoEmail + LinkedIn

Email and LinkedIn in one sequence

Entry price (cold email)$37/monthStart plan · 3 mailboxes · 1 LinkedIn account

YesCold email

YesPhone numbers

NoContact database

YesLinkedIn automation

YesEmail + LinkedIn

Per-user billing, LinkedIn on its Multichannel plan

Entry price (cold email)$59/month per userEmail Volume plan

YesCold email

YesPhone numbers

YesContact database

YesLinkedIn automation

YesEmail + LinkedIn

Starting from a contact database

Entry price (cold email)Free plan, then $65/month per licenceBasic plan · 2,500 credits

YesCold email

YesPhone numbers

YesContact database

NoLinkedIn automation

NoEmail + LinkedIn

The same volume-based model

Entry price (cold email)$39/monthBase plan · 6,000 emails a month · unlimited mailboxes

YesCold email

not checkedPhone numbers

YesContact database

NoLinkedIn automation

NoEmail + LinkedIn

Email, LinkedIn and calls

Entry price (cold email)$69/monthEmail plan · 50,000 emails a month

YesCold email

YesPhone numbers

YesContact database

YesLinkedIn automation

YesEmail + LinkedIn

Monthly prices, billed monthly unless stated, excluding VAT, read on each publisher’s site (checked between October 6, 2026 and October 14, 2026). Emelia’s prices follow your currency; tools billed in dollars only stay in dollars, and those billed in euros only stay in euros. –: not offered, or not checked for this need.

1. 1

   

   Best for: Email and LinkedIn in one sequence

   Cold email from 3, 50 or unlimited mailboxes and 1 to 10 LinkedIn accounts in the same sequences, with unlimited contacts and replies from the unified inbox on every plan.

   • YesPhone number finder
   • NoBuilt-in B2B contact database
   • YesCold email from your own mailboxes

   Price

   from $37/month

   Emelia pricing
2. 2

   

   Best for: Per-user billing, LinkedIn on its Multichannel plan

   Reply.io bills per user and by active contacts; its Multichannel plan adds LinkedIn steps, which Instantly does not have.

   • YesPhone number finder
   • YesCold email from your own mailboxes
   • YesLinkedIn automation

   Price

   from $59/month per user

   Instantly vs Reply.ioSee our full Reply.io analysis
3. 3

   

   Best for: Starting from a contact database

   Apollo.io is built around its contact database (240M contacts according to its site) and sends from it, billed per licence with credits included; Instantly is built around sending and sells its data as credits.

   • YesPhone number finder
   • YesCold email from your own mailboxes
   • YesEmail finder

   Price

   free plan, then from $65/month per licence

   Instantly vs ApolloSee our full Apollo.io analysis
4. 4

   

   Best for: The same volume-based model

   A price set by emails sent, like Instantly, with mailboxes sold as unlimited (its fair use policy still lists caps); its entry plan sends 6,000 emails a month for $39.

   • YesCold email from your own mailboxes
   • YesMailbox warm-up included
   • YesBuilt-in B2B contact database

   Price

   from $39/month

   Smartlead vs InstantlySee our full Smartlead analysis
5. 5

   

   Best for: Email, LinkedIn and calls

   An email plan billed by volume, plus a per-user plan that adds LinkedIn and calls.

   • YesPhone number finder
   • YesCold email from your own mailboxes
   • YesLinkedIn automation

   Price

   $69/month (Email plan · 50,000 emails a month)

   lemlist vs InstantlySee our full lemlist analysis

To go further: the alternatives to Instantly and the Instantly reviews.