Cognism vs Waalaxy vs Emelia: The Ultimate Review

Looking for the perfect B2B prospecting tool in 2025? You've landed in the right place! The digital prospecting landscape is more competitive than ever, with countless options vying for your attention (and budget). Today, we're diving deep into three major players: Cognism, Waalaxy, and Emelia. This comprehensive comparison will help you make an informed decision about which platform best suits your prospecting needs.

In this no-holds-barred review, we'll explore the strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points of each platform. Spoiler alert: not all prospecting tools are created equal, and the differences in performance, features, and value might surprise you!

The B2B prospecting game has changed dramatically over the past few years. Gone are the days of generic cold outreach and hoping for the best. In 2025, successful prospecting requires precision, personalization, and a multi-channel approach.

In today's hyper-competitive business environment, the quality of your prospecting tool directly impacts your bottom line. A great tool helps you:

• Connect with the right decision-makers at the perfect moment

• Personalize outreach at scale without sounding robotic

• Track and optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI

• Maintain compliance with increasingly strict data regulations

Let's dive into our contenders and see how they stack up against these crucial requirements.

Cognism positions itself as a comprehensive sales intelligence platform with a vast database of business contacts. Let's break down what it offers and where it falls short.

Key Features of Cognism

Cognism comes packed with several tools designed to streamline your B2B prospecting:

• Prospector tool: Helps you find business contacts across industries

• Data enrichment: Adds missing information to your existing contacts

• Intent data: Identifies potential buyers showing interest in your solutions

• Telephone data: Claims high accuracy for direct calling campaigns

• Compliance framework: Adheres to GDPR and CCPA regulations

The Database Dilemma: Freshness vs. Size

While Cognism boasts an impressive database size (over 400 million contacts according to their claims), it faces a fundamental challenge that plagues all database-dependent tools: data decay.

Business information changes at a staggering rate:

• People switch jobs every 3-4 years on average

• Approximately 30% of employees change roles annually

• Email addresses become invalid when people leave companies

• Phone numbers get reassigned or disconnected

This creates a significant issue for database-dependent tools like Cognism. Many users report encountering outdated information, with one sales executive noting: "Many contacts I found had left the company or had no numbers, especially in Germany."

The Real-World Impact of Outdated Data

When working with outdated data, you face several serious problems:

• Wasted outreach efforts: Your team spends valuable time contacting people who can't help you

• Damaged sender reputation: Emails to invalid addresses bounce, hurting your email deliverability

• Missed opportunities: While you're chasing ghosts, your competitors are connecting with actual decision-makers

• Compliance risks: Contacting people who've moved on could violate data protection regulations

Pricing Transparency Issues

One of Cognism's most significant drawbacks is its lack of pricing transparency. The platform operates on a custom pricing model, requiring potential customers to contact their sales team for a quote.

Industry sources suggest that Cognism's solutions typically start at around $1,000 per month, making it primarily suitable for enterprise-level companies with substantial prospecting budgets. This lack of upfront pricing makes it difficult for smaller businesses to evaluate whether Cognism fits their budget without going through a potentially time-consuming sales process.

Other Limitations Worth Noting

Users have identified several other issues with Cognism:

• Limited data coverage in certain markets, particularly in Asia and emerging economies

• Strict cancellation policies with a 60-day notice period, locking you into longer commitments

• Unreliable Chrome extension that frequently malfunctions during crucial prospecting sessions

• Incomplete data requiring additional enrichment from other sources

Formerly known as Prospectin, Waalaxy has gained popularity for its LinkedIn automation capabilities. However, a closer examination reveals significant issues that undermine its effectiveness.

Waalaxy's Core Offering

Waalaxy provides several features for B2B prospecting:

• LinkedIn automation: Automates connection requests and messaging

• Email finder: Attempts to discover contact emails

• Cold email campaigns: Manages outreach sequences

• Multi-channel campaigns: Coordinates efforts across platforms

• Chrome extension: Facilitates LinkedIn scraping

Pricing: Expensive with Hidden Costs

Waalaxy's pricing structure has been a major point of contention among users. Since 2023, the platform has significantly increased its prices, with current plans ranging from €112 to €160 per month.

What's more concerning is that essential features like email finder credits and inbox functionality come at additional costs. This approach feels like nickel-and-diming customers, especially when comparing the value provided to the cost incurred.

The Real Cost of Waalaxy

Let's break down what you might actually pay for a comprehensive Waalaxy setup:

• Base subscription: €112-160/month

• Additional email credits: €30-50/month for adequate volume

• Inbox functionality: €20-30/month extra

• Total real cost: €162-240/month

This pricing approach makes Waalaxy one of the more expensive options in the market, especially considering the technical issues users frequently encounter.

Technical Issues and Persistent Bugs

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Waalaxy is its persistent technical problems. Users frequently report:

• Scraping tools that fail to work properly, leaving you with incomplete data

• System crashes during important tasks, forcing you to restart campaigns

• Import functionality that doesn't function as expected, creating data headaches

• General platform instability that makes the tool unreliable for daily use

The Productivity Impact

These technical issues significantly impact user experience and productivity. What should be time-saving automation turns into time-consuming troubleshooting. Users report spending hours trying to get campaigns running properly, negating the efficiency benefits the tool promises to deliver.

Poor Email Finding Accuracy

While Waalaxy offers email finding capabilities, the accuracy and reliability of this feature leave much to be desired. The platform's "AI Prospect Finder" often fails to deliver usable email addresses, making it ineffective for cold email campaigns.

Users report that:

• Many emails found are incorrect or outdated

• The verification process is unreliable

• The success rate is significantly lower than competing tools

The email editor is also quite basic, offering only standard personalization options despite the premium price point.

Subpar Customer Support Experience

Many users express disappointment with Waalaxy's customer support quality. Response times are often slow, and the solutions provided don't adequately address the issues at hand.

Common complaints include:

• Long wait times for responses to critical issues

• Generic troubleshooting advice that doesn't solve specific problems

• Limited technical knowledge from support representatives

• Difficulty escalating issues to more experienced team members

For a tool with premium pricing, this level of support falls significantly short of expectations.

Launched in 2021, Emelia has quickly established itself as a comprehensive and user-friendly B2B prospecting platform. Let's explore what makes it stand out from competitors.

Comprehensive Feature Set That Delivers Results

Emelia offers a complete suite of prospecting tools designed to work together seamlessly:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Scraper: Fresh Data Every Time

Unlike database-dependent tools, Emelia's scraper extracts fresh data directly from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This approach ensures you're working with the most current information available, significantly reducing bounce rates and improving outreach effectiveness.

The scraper is intuitive and powerful, allowing users to extract targeted prospect lists based on specific criteria in minutes. With unlimited scraping included in all plans, you can build comprehensive prospect lists without worrying about hitting arbitrary limits.

Email Finder and Verification: Industry-Leading Accuracy

Emelia's email finder stands out for its exceptional accuracy, finding approximately 70% of emails on average—significantly higher than the industry standard of 20-50%. What's more, Emelia only charges for successfully found emails, maximizing the value of each credit.

The platform also includes an email verification tool that checks the validity of existing email addresses, ensuring your outreach targets active inboxes and maintains a healthy sender reputation.

Phone Finder: Complete Your Multi-Channel Strategy

For teams that incorporate phone outreach in their strategy, Emelia offers a phone finder feature that locates professional phone numbers with high accuracy, enabling truly multi-channel prospecting.

This feature is particularly valuable for sales teams that follow up high-value prospects with phone calls after initial email contact, creating a seamless prospecting experience across channels.

Magic Writer: AI-Powered Personalization

Emelia's Magic Writer leverages advanced AI to help users create highly personalized and engaging email content. This feature saves time while improving response rates through better personalization and messaging.

The AI analyzes prospect data and suggests personalized opening lines, pain points, and call-to-actions that resonate with each specific audience segment. This level of personalization at scale was previously impossible without dedicating hours to manual writing.

Email Warmup: Built-In Deliverability Protection

Email deliverability is crucial for successful campaigns. Emelia includes a built-in email warmup feature that gradually establishes your sender reputation, significantly reducing the risk of landing in spam folders.

This automated process:

• Sends and receives emails between your account and other accounts

• Gradually increases sending volume to establish credibility

• Automatically rescues emails from spam folders to improve reputation

• Provides detailed metrics on your warmup progress

Having this feature built into the platform saves users the cost and hassle of subscribing to separate warmup services.

Multi-Channel Automation That Actually Works

Emelia excels at automating both LinkedIn and email outreach:

• LinkedIn Automation: Automates connection requests, profile visits, message sending, and post engagements through a secure cloud-based system.

• Email Automation: Creates sophisticated email sequences with precise timing, A/B testing, and detailed tracking.

These automation capabilities can be combined into powerful multi-channel campaigns that engage prospects through their preferred communication channels, significantly increasing response rates compared to single-channel approaches.

User-Friendly Interface Designed for Efficiency

One of Emelia's standout qualities is its intuitive interface. While competitors like Waalaxy overwhelm users with complex navigation and excessive options, Emelia prioritizes simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

The platform features:

• Clean, logical navigation that makes finding features intuitive

• Step-by-step campaign creation wizards that guide you through the process

• Visual campaign builders that make sequence design straightforward

• Comprehensive but uncluttered dashboards that provide key metrics at a glance

Users can set up and launch campaigns in minutes rather than hours, making it accessible even to those with limited technical expertise.

Exceptional Customer Support That Sets the Standard

Emelia has built a reputation for outstanding customer support. The team is highly responsive, often providing assistance directly from the founders. This level of support ensures that any issues are quickly resolved, and users can maximize the platform's potential.

Users consistently praise:

• Quick response times, often within minutes during business hours

• Knowledgeable support staff who understand the product deeply

• Personalized assistance tailored to specific use cases

• Regular check-ins to ensure everything is working optimally

This commitment to customer success creates a partnership rather than just a vendor relationship.

Transparent and Affordable Pricing

Unlike Cognism's opaque pricing and Waalaxy's expensive plans with add-on costs, Emelia offers transparent and affordable pricing:

• Free trial with full feature access

• Monthly plans starting at just $19 per connected email

• Email search credits at competitive rates (1,000 credits for $19)

• No hidden fees or surprise charges

This pricing structure makes professional-grade prospecting accessible to businesses of all sizes, from solopreneurs to enterprise teams.

Continuous Innovation Driven by User Feedback

Emelia stands out for its rapid development cycle and commitment to improvement. The platform regularly introduces new features and enhancements based on user feedback, ensuring it remains at the cutting edge of B2B prospecting technology.

Recent innovations include:

• Enhanced personalization options for multi-channel campaigns

• Improved analytics for better campaign optimization

• New integration options with popular CRM systems

• Advanced targeting features for more precise prospecting

This commitment to evolution ensures that users always have access to the latest prospecting capabilities without needing to switch platforms.

Let's compare these three platforms across key dimensions to see how they stack up:

Data Quality and Freshness

• Cognism: Large database but suffers from outdated information. Users report finding contacts who have left companies or changed roles.

• Waalaxy: Relies on LinkedIn scraping but execution is buggy and unreliable.

• Emelia: Direct LinkedIn Sales Navigator scraping ensures the most up-to-date information available, with unlimited scraping included in all plans.

Email Finding Accuracy

• Cognism: Variable accuracy depending on region and industry, with many users reporting outdated email addresses.

• Waalaxy: Limited email finding capabilities with questionable accuracy and high failure rates.

• Emelia: Industry-leading 70% average success rate, with verification to ensure deliverability and a pay-for-success model.

User Experience

• Cognism: Professional interface but can be complex to navigate, with a steep learning curve.

• Waalaxy: Cluttered interface with many features but poor organization and frequent technical issues.

• Emelia: Clean, intuitive interface designed for efficiency and ease of use, with logical workflow progression.

Automation Capabilities

• Cognism: Limited automation focused primarily on data enrichment rather than outreach.

• Waalaxy: Offers automation but plagued by technical issues and crashes that interrupt campaigns.

• Emelia: Robust, reliable automation for both LinkedIn and email channels, with advanced sequencing options.

Customer Support

• Cognism: Enterprise-level support but can be slow for smaller clients, with tiered priority based on plan.

• Waalaxy: Widely criticized for poor response times and ineffective solutions to technical problems.

• Emelia: Highly responsive support with direct access to the team, including founders, regardless of plan level.

Pricing

• Cognism: Expensive with custom pricing requiring sales consultation, typically starting around $1,000/month.

• Waalaxy: High monthly fees (€112-€160) plus additional costs for essential features like email credits.

• Emelia: Transparent, affordable pricing starting at $20/month with pay-for-success email credits at $19/1,000.

Based on our comprehensive analysis, here's who would benefit most from each platform:

Best for: Large enterprises with substantial budgets who need extensive database access and can afford to deal with some data inaccuracies.

Not recommended for: Small to medium businesses, startups, or companies needing highly accurate, up-to-date contact information.

Best for: It's difficult to recommend Waalaxy given its combination of high pricing and persistent technical issues.

Not recommended for: Companies that need reliable automation, accurate email finding, or responsive customer support.

Best for: Businesses of all sizes seeking an affordable, comprehensive prospecting solution with accurate data and reliable automation.

Particularly valuable for: Companies focused on efficient, multi-channel outreach who want to maximize ROI on their prospecting efforts.

If you're currently using Cognism or Waalaxy and considering a switch to Emelia, here are some key considerations:

• Data freshness improvement: Expect significantly more up-to-date contact information by scraping directly from LinkedIn.

• Cost savings: Most businesses see substantial cost reductions while gaining more features and flexibility.

• Learning curve: Emelia's intuitive interface makes for a smooth transition, with excellent onboarding support.

• Campaign performance: Users typically report higher response rates due to fresher data and better personalization options.

• Reliability upgrade: Say goodbye to crashes and bugs that interrupt your workflow and compromise campaigns.

• Feature parity+: Gain all the essential features of Waalaxy plus additional capabilities like AI-powered writing assistance.

• Support improvement: Experience responsive, helpful customer service that resolves issues quickly.

• Cost efficiency: Get more features for a lower price, with transparent pricing and no hidden fees.

To maximize your results with Emelia, consider these best practices:

1. Leverage Multi-Channel Approaches for Maximum Impact

Combine LinkedIn outreach with email sequences to create comprehensive prospecting campaigns. Emelia's unified platform makes this seamless, allowing you to engage prospects through their preferred channels.

The Power of Channel Coordination

Research shows that prospects need 8-12 touchpoints before converting. By coordinating your outreach across multiple channels, you can:

• Create a more memorable impression with consistent messaging

• Reach prospects who are more active on one platform than another

• Build familiarity through repeated but varied interactions

• Increase overall response rates by 2-3x compared to single-channel approaches

2. Personalize at Scale Without Sacrificing Efficiency

Use Emelia's Magic Writer and variable fields to create highly personalized messages without sacrificing efficiency. Personalization significantly improves response rates.

Effective Personalization Strategies

• Research your prospects' companies and reference recent news or achievements

• Mention specific pain points relevant to their industry or role

• Reference mutual connections or shared experiences when applicable

• Customize your value proposition based on the prospect's specific situation

3. Test and Optimize Continuously

Take advantage of Emelia's A/B testing capabilities to refine your messaging and approach. Small improvements in open and response rates can lead to substantial increases in overall campaign performance.

Key Elements to Test

• Subject lines: Test different approaches (question-based, benefit-focused, curiosity-driven)

• Opening paragraphs: Compare different hooks and personalization approaches

• Call-to-actions: Test various meeting request formats and value propositions

• Sending times: Determine optimal days and times for your specific audience

4. Maintain Data Hygiene for Better Results

Regularly use Emelia's verification tools to ensure your contact lists remain clean and accurate. This practice improves deliverability and protects your sender reputation.

Data Hygiene Best Practices

• Verify emails before sending to prevent bounces

• Remove unresponsive contacts after multiple attempts

• Update contact information regularly

• Segment your lists based on engagement and relevance

5. Warm Up New Email Accounts Properly

Before launching major campaigns, utilize Emelia's built-in warmup feature to establish sender reputation and maximize inbox placement.

Effective Warmup Strategy

• Start the warmup process at least 2-3 weeks before major campaigns

• Begin with low daily volumes and gradually increase

• Send to a mix of known contacts and warmup system addresses

• Monitor deliverability metrics closely during the warmup period

The B2B prospecting landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Here's how each platform is positioned for future developments:

Cognism faces the ongoing challenge of database maintenance in an increasingly dynamic business environment. As job mobility increases and remote work becomes more common, static databases will struggle to keep pace with changes.

The company acknowledges this challenge in their own 2025 cold calling report, noting a shift from "spray and pray" methods to more targeted approaches based on fresh data. However, their fundamental reliance on database information rather than real-time scraping remains a structural limitation.

Given its technical issues and pricing concerns, Waalaxy will need significant improvements to remain competitive. The platform must address its core stability problems before adding new features.

User feedback suggests growing frustration with the combination of high prices and persistent bugs, creating an opportunity for competitors to capture market share. Without a fundamental overhaul of their technical infrastructure, Waalaxy may continue to lose ground in the prospecting tool market.

Emelia is well-positioned for the future with its agile development approach and focus on user experience. The platform continues to introduce new features based on user feedback and industry trends, ensuring it remains at the forefront of B2B prospecting technology.

Recent developments in AI-powered writing assistance and multi-channel campaign coordination demonstrate Emelia's commitment to innovation. By maintaining its core strengths of data freshness, user-friendly design, and affordable pricing, Emelia is likely to continue gaining market share in the prospecting tool space.