Smartlead Vs. Folderly Vs. Lemlist: Which is Best for Lead Generation?

Remember when businesses relied on flyers and phone calls to reach customers? Today, the online world offers a treasure trove of options, from fun social media posts to engaging video marketing campaigns. But guess what? Even in this digital age, a classic strategy like email marketing, particularly sending cold emails, can still be a goldmine for finding new leads. The key is reaching out to the right people in a way that grabs their attention.

However, with so many cold email tools on the market, choosing the one that's the perfect fit for your business can feel overwhelming. Don't worry, we're here to help! By comparing the top 3 contenders – Smartlead, Folderly, and Lemlist – we'll break down their features and show you which might best match your specific needs and budget.

Overview: Smartlead Vs. Folderly Vs. Lemlist

What is Smartlead?

Smartlead is a cold email outreach tool designed to maximize the effectiveness of your outreach efforts. It offers features like unlimited mailboxes and warmups to ensure your emails land in inboxes and not spam folders. You can also automate follow-up emails to stay on top of potential leads. Smartlead is a good fit for companies like lead generation agencies, marketing agencies, and sales leaders.

With Smartlead, you get access to a complete cold email API Infrastructure - allowing you to take control of your processes.

Here are some key strengths of Smartlead:

• Boosted Deliverability and Sender Reputation: Smartlead employs unique features like dedicated IP servers per campaign, unlimited email warmups, and AI-powered "natural conversations" to ensure your emails land in inboxes and protect your sender score.
• Automated Lead Generation: Its powerful cold emailing API allows you to automate campaign creation, lead management, and outreach processes, saving time and effort.
• Scalable Cold Email Automation: Smartlead offers unlimited sender accounts, one-click campaign creation with mailbox auto-rotation, and the ability to integrate with various channels like WhatsApp and Twitter for a broader outreach strategy.
• Personalized Cold Email Sequences: Set up custom triggers based on lead behavior and create multi-step email sequences for targeted engagement.
• Automated LinkedIn Outreach:  Similar to its email automation, Smartlead lets you automate sending connection requests, visiting profiles, sending messages, and managing interactions from one platform.
• Streamlined Sales Engagement:  The master inbox organizes all communication for easy management and response.  Track key metrics like opens, clicks, and replies to analyze campaign performance and optimize your strategy.

What is Folderly?

Folderly is an email deliverability software that helps improve email campaigns by checking email placement, IPs, and DNS records before sending. It offers features to monitor email health and fix deliverability issues. Folderly boasts a variety of successful client results and integrates with many email service providers.

Folderly is a great tool for:

• Landing emails in inboxes: Folderly helps improve your sender score and identify spam triggers, ensuring emails reach their intended recipients.
• Maintaining high deliverability rates: Its automated warm-up feature helps consistently keep your emails out of spam folders.
• Tracking email performance: Folderly provides insights into open and reply rates, allowing you to gauge campaign effectiveness.
• Data security and compliance: Folderly prioritizes data security with features that adhere to GDPR and CCPA regulations.

What is Lemlist?

Lemlist is a software tool that helps with email outreach, particularly cold emailing. It lets you email potential customers and personalize them for better results. Lemlist can also automate follow-up emails and track your emails' performance. It integrates with other tools you already use, making it easier to manage your outreach efforts.

Lemlist is ideal for:

• Personalized Outreach at Scale: Lemlist lets you personalize emails with features like variable text, images, and even videos tailored to each lead. You can also create personalized landing pages for better engagement.
• Multi-Channel Outreach: Lemlist goes beyond email, allowing you to integrate your cold email campaigns with LinkedIn outreach and cold calling for a more comprehensive approach.
• Improved Email Deliverability: Lemwarm, Lemlist's email warm-up feature, helps ensure your emails land in inboxes by gradually increasing sending volume.
• Streamlined Sales Engagement: Automate tasks like LinkedIn visits, invites, and messages. You can add calls to your campaigns for a more integrated outreach process.

Feature Comparison: Smartlead Vs. Folderly Vs. Lemlist

1) Personalization

• Smartlead: Offers a variety of personalization features within its email sequences. Moreover, it is integrated with Clay - one of the leading AI personalization tools in the market. This integration allows you to personalize at scale and enjoy added features like lead finder, email verifier, etc.
• Folderly: Folderly does not prioritize email personalization but focuses on email deliverability.
• Lemlist: Stands out in personalization. You can tailor emails with text variables, personalized images, and videos for each lead and even create custom landing pages.

2) Multi-Channel Outreach

• Smartlead: Offers the most extensive multi-channel outreach options. You can integrate cold emails with LinkedIn outreach, WhatsApp, and Twitter for a broader approach.
• Folderly: Doesn't offer multi-channel outreach functionalities.
• Lemlist: Provides limited multi-channel outreach by allowing some integration with LinkedIn outreach, primarily for sending connection requests and messages.

3) Deliverability

• Smartlead: Prioritizes email deliverability with features like unique IP servers per campaign, unlimited warmups, and AI-powered "natural conversations" to maintain a good sender score.
• Folderly: This is Folderly's main strength. It offers automated warmup features, spam trigger checking, and SPF generation to ensure your emails land in inboxes and avoid spam filters.
• Lemlist: While Lemlist offers an email warmup feature ("Lemwarm") to improve deliverability, its primary focus isn't on this aspect compared to Smartlead and Folderly. Additionally, Lemwarm is a separate offering (you might get it as a part of Lemlist’s paid plans).

4) Lead Generation

• Smartlead: Provides robust lead generation features. Its powerful cold emailing API allows you to automate campaign creation, lead management, and outreach processes, saving time and effort.
• Folderly: It offers limited functionalities specifically designed for lead generation.
• Lemlist: Offers limited lead generation features as compared to Smartlead. Their focus is more on personalizing and automating outreach efforts.

5) Sales Engagement Automation

• Smartlead: Offers a master inbox for managing all communication and tracking key metrics like opens, clicks, and replies. Auto-rotation of mailboxes saves time, and it provides a white-label experience.
• Folderly: It doesn't offer features specifically designed for sales engagement automation.
• Lemlist: Offers limited sales engagement automation features compared to Smartlead. While you can track some metrics, features like auto-rotating mailboxes or a master inbox are unavailable.

6) Master Inbox

• Smartlead: Smartlead offers a dedicated Master Inbox feature, providing users with a centralized hub for managing all email communications efficiently. This feature allows users to connect all mailboxes and automate lead follow-ups. It also has additional features like AI lead categorization, real-time replies, etc.
• Folderly: Unlike Smartlead, Folderly does not offer a dedicated Master Inbox feature. While Folderly prioritizes email deliverability, it does not provide specific tools for centralized email management.
• Lemlist: Similarly, Lemlist does not include a dedicated Master Inbox feature. While Lemlist excels in personalization and multi-channel outreach, it lacks a centralized hub for managing email communications like Smartlead's Master Inbox.

7) White Labeling

• Smartlead: Smartlead offers a White Labeling feature, allowing users to customize the platform with their own branding. This enables businesses to maintain a consistent brand identity throughout email outreach efforts, enhancing professionalism and credibility.
• Folderly: Folderly does not include a White Labeling feature. Unlike Smartlead, Folderly does not offer users the ability to customize the platform with their own branding.
• Lemlist: Similarly, Lemlist also lacks a White Labeling feature. While Lemlist excels in personalization and multi-channel outreach, it does not allow users to customize the platform with their branding, like Smartlead.

8) Email Follow-up Automation

• Smartlead: Smartlead provides a dedicated feature for Email Follow-Up Automation, allowing users to automate sending follow-up emails to prospects. This feature streamlines follow-up workflows, ensuring consistent and timely communication with leads throughout the sales cycle.
• Folderly: Folderly does not mention any specific feature for Email Follow-Up Automation. While Folderly focuses on email deliverability, it does not offer dedicated tools for automating follow-up sequences as Smartlead and Lemlist do.
• Lemlist: Lemlist also offers Email Follow-Up Automation capabilities, enabling users to automate follow-up sequences to engage with prospects effectively. This feature helps users stay organized and maintain momentum in their outreach efforts.

Important Note: Some features may be available under different names, through request, or via third-party integration. We didn't include them due to the lack of publicly available information. Readers are encouraged to verify feature availability directly with each platform.

Pricing: Smartlead Vs. Folderly Vs. Lemlist

Smartlead Pricing

Smartlead’s basic plan starts from $34/month. The popular plan is $66/month, while the Pro plan is $79/month. If you are an agency or have a large team under you, you can also go for the custom plan, where up to 2 million leads are available. You get a 14-day free trial as well.

Folderly Pricing

Folderly pricing starts at $96 per mailbox/month. For 10-24 mailboxes, you'll pay $72 per mailbox/month. For 25-99 mailboxes, the price is $56 per mailbox/month. For 100+ mailboxes, you'll have to go for a custom plan.

Lemlist Pricing

The Lemlist base plan starts from $39 per user/month, while the email pro plan is priced at $69/month for a user. They also have higher level plans - multichannel expert ($99/month/user) and Outreach Scale plan ($159/month/user).

So, which is the best tool for lead generation?

While selecting the ideal cold email outreach tool depends on your specific needs, here's a breakdown to help you decide:

If you prioritize email deliverability, the clear winner is Smartlead. It offers automation for campaign creation, lead management, outreach, and features like unlimited email warmup and dedicated IP servers to maximize deliverability (Popular Plan: $79/month). Smartlead boasts a user rating 4.8 on G2, indicating high customer satisfaction.

It prioritizes deliverability with features like automated warmup, spam trigger checking, and more.

Additionally, it offers robust features such as master inbox real-time replies to help you track your leads most efficiently. It further provides API Access (available in the pro plan) to help you easily integrate the platform with any third-party tool or your existing tech stack to build an entire cold email infrastructure around Smartlead.

Additional Considerations:

• Budget: Pricing structures vary. Smartlead's popular plan offers the most features at a mid-range price, while Folderly is priced per mailbox. Smartlead has the most affordable starting price, while many features are quite expensive in other solution providers.
• Customer Ratings: All three platforms boast high user ratings on G2, indicating overall user satisfaction.

Before finalizing the tool, also consider a few other factors:

• Consider your primary goal: Are you focused on lead generation, improving deliverability, or personalizing outreach?
• How important are multi-channel outreach options for you? Analyze your budget and choose the platform that offers the best value based on your needs.

If consistent high deliverability is crucial, Smartlead is a strong choice. If personalization is your top priority and deliverability is still essential, Lemlist could be a good fit. If your main focus is lead generation through high-volume email campaigns, Smartlead's automation features and deliverability tools can be highly beneficial.

The Final Word

As you dive into cold emailing, take the time to pick a tool that matches what you want to achieve, how much you're willing to spend, and how personalized and widespread your outreach needs to be. Finding a balance between affordability and functionality is critical. Look for a tool that offers a good range of features without draining your budget. By investing wisely in the right tool from the start, you'll be better equipped to launch effective email campaigns without overspending.