Reply.io vs Instantly: two ways of billing cold email
Instantly sells sending by volume: Growth sends 5,000 emails a month and holds 1,000 contacts for $47, Hypergrowth 125,000 emails a month (100,000 on the yearly price card and in the comparison table of the same page) and 25,000 contacts for $97. Mailboxes are unlimited and no one is billed per seat, but team members only come with Hypergrowth or a CRM subscription. Data, CRM and placement tests are separate subscriptions, and each workspace needs its own.
Reply.io counts people and contacts. Its Email Volume plan costs $59 per user a month for 1,000 active contacts, and the price rises with the contacts reached each month; from 10,000 active contacts ($179 a month) users become unlimited. Emails sent are unlimited. Its Multichannel plan is a flat $99 per user with unlimited active contacts and 1 LinkedIn account. Both bill in US dollars only.
One oddity on Reply.io’s side: the pricing page says "per user" below 10,000 active contacts, while its help center says the plan includes one team member, and the price of an added user is not published. We only price teams where users are unlimited.
LinkedIn steps: in Reply.io’s Multichannel plan, absent from Instantly
Reply.io automates LinkedIn inside its sequences: connection requests, messages, InMails, voice messages and profile visits. Multichannel includes 1 LinkedIn account per user; on Email Volume, each account costs $69 a month.
Instantly has none of this. There is no LinkedIn step in its sequences, and in its CRM, sold separately, the only LinkedIn feature its help center documents is a "Connect" button that opens the contact’s profile. So a LinkedIn price exists only for Reply.io and Emelia; the two are set side by side further down, in the LinkedIn plus email table.
14-day trials on both, with different limits
- Instantly: 14 days without a card, 2 mailboxes, 250 contacts, 1,000 emails, 100 credits; no API. An account that does not subscribe is deleted, and data cannot be exported without subscribing.
- Reply.io: 14 days without a card, 2 mailboxes, 300 active contacts, up to 50 data credits; the API and MCP server are included. LinkedIn is not part of the trial but can be bought during it, prorated.
- Emelia: 7 days without a card, with LinkedIn.
- Neither Instantly nor Reply.io refunds a period once paid, and Reply.io adds that there is no grace period after a renewal.
Same need, both prices: one sender with three mailboxes, a team of three
Cold email only, billed monthly. We count 30 emails per mailbox per day over 22 working days for the volume, and the contacts reached in the month for Reply.io. Every price here is in dollars: Reply.io and Instantly sell in no other currency, and Emelia’s dollar figure equals its euro one, so the marked winner is the cheapest for a dollar payer, unconverted.
One sender
3 mailboxes (≈ 1,980 emails), 1,000 contacts reached
Same, billed yearly (per month)
A team of 3
3 people, 9 mailboxes (≈ 5,940 emails), 3,000 contacts reached
On Instantly, Growth’s 1,000 contacts are a total that never resets: a sender who reaches 1,000 new contacts every month must delete the previous month’s leads to stay on it. On Reply.io, Email Volume allows 25 mailboxes per 1,000 active contacts under its fair use policy. Before tax, as read on October 6, 2026.
LinkedIn plus email, priced: Reply.io Multichannel and Emelia
Billed monthly
1 LinkedIn account + email, 3 mailboxes
3 people, each with 1 LinkedIn account + 5 mailboxes
Reply.io’s Multichannel includes 5 mailboxes per user billed monthly (10 billed yearly), unlimited active contacts, calls and SMS access. Instantly cannot fill these rows at any price.
Contact limits: active per month at Reply.io, loaded in total at Instantly
The two tools cap contacts in opposite ways. Reply.io counts the contacts reached in the billing month: anyone who receives at least one step, email or LinkedIn, counts once; a follow-up sent the next month counts them again, and the counter resets on your renewal date; that is the help center’s definition, while the pricing page speaks of unique contacts who get a first-step email in the month, follow-ups unlimited. The number of emails sent is not capped. Multichannel has no active-contact limit.
Instantly counts the contacts loaded, in total: every contact in your campaigns, active, paused, draft or finished, duplicates included, never reset. 1,000 on Growth, 25,000 on Hypergrowth, 100,000 on Light Speed; the way to free space is to delete leads.
In practice, a team that reaches a steady number of new contacts every month pays the same on Reply.io each month, while on Instantly it climbs towards the next plan unless it deletes old leads. Emelia caps neither: contacts are unlimited on every plan.
What each tool includes on its entry plan
Entry plan, billed monthly
Mailboxes
Emails a month
Contacts
Team members
Webhooks
1,000 emails found a month
Mailboxes and domains bought in the app
Emails found: 1 or 2 Instantly credits (we count the 1.5 average it states), 2 Reply.io credits after the 50 included each month (its Findy Chrome extension finds emails on LinkedIn without credits, one profile at a time), 1 Emelia credit; Emelia’s included credits are given once, at signup. Prices excluding tax, checked on October 6, 2026.
Instantly or Reply.io: one channel or several?
Instantly
- You send cold email only, from many mailboxes, and want a price that does not grow with your team.
- You can live with a contact total per plan (1,000 / 25,000 / 100,000) and add data as a separate plan.
- You run agency workspaces with white label.
Reply.io
- You want LinkedIn, calls and SMS in the same sequence, per user (Multichannel).
- Your monthly reach is stable and you want a contact count that resets each month.
- You want domains bought in the app that you can transfer out: Reply.io claims no ownership of them.
Emelia
- You want email and LinkedIn in one plan without paying per user.
- You want unlimited contacts and replies from one inbox on every plan.
- You are fine with 3 / 50 / unlimited mailboxes by plan.
Teams, data and dollars: Instantly or Reply.io?
For cold email only, Instantly: Hypergrowth at $97 a month covers team members and the volume of 9 mailboxes, while Reply.io’s Email Volume costs $179 at 10,000 active contacts, the level where users are unlimited. With LinkedIn for each person, Reply.io Multichannel costs $297 (3 × $99) and Emelia Grow €97.
Neither figure is stable: Reply.io claims 1 billion contacts on its pricing page and "100M+" on its blog; Instantly claims "450M+" contacts according to the pricing page, "610M+" according to the help center. Costs differ more clearly: 2 credits per email found at Reply.io, 1 or 2 at Instantly.
Yes. Instantly and Reply.io publish US dollar prices only; Emelia, for its part, lists one figure for euros and dollars alike.
Reply.io advertises a migration offer for new customers coming from another tool, Instantly included: 10% off monthly plans and 30% off yearly plans, according to its migration page.
Emelia is an Instantly competitor. We have tried to stay fair: every figure about Instantly comes from its own website or public review sites.
