people kept arguing in here about which sending platform is "the best" and i got tired of opinions so i just... tested it myself.
im the founder of a b2b saas (keeping it vague on purpose, sorry). 5 of us, $73k MRR, i do all outbound personally because we cant afford a dedicated SDR yet. every dollar in my stack comes out of product budget basically so i care a lot about what actually works vs what looks cool in a demo.
the test: same exact campaign, same copy, same list, sent from 3 platforms over 6 weeks. Instantly, Lemlist, and Reply.io. i wanted to know if the platform itself actually matters or if its all just infrastructure and copy.
BEFORE
i was running everything through Instantly because someone in a slack group told me it was the cheapest option for multi-inbox sending. and it is cheap. but my numbers were rough. 1.8% reply rate, open rates hovering around 38-41% depending on the week, and bounce rate sitting at like 4.2% which i now know is way too high. i was also warming up inboxes for only 10 days because i was impatient and wanted to start booking meetings yesterday.
the list was 2,400 contacts. mid-market ops leaders, director level and above. i used Clay to pull the initial list and Prospeo for email finding, then ran everything through ZeroBounce before sending. after verification i had about 2,100 usable contacts so i split them into 3 groups of 700 each.
same subject lines. same 3 step sequence. same sending schedule (8am-11am recipient timezone, weekdays only). only variable was the platform.
AFTER
ok so 6 weeks later here are the actual numbers.
Instantly: 44.1% open rate, 2.9% reply rate, 1.7% bounce rate. this was on 5 inboxes warmed for 21 days this time (learned my lesson from rushing warmup before, cost me 2 domains that got burned). sending 35/day per inbox. the deliverability dashboard in Instantly is honestly the best part of the product. the campaign builder UI is... fine. its fine.
Lemlist: 47.3% open rate, 3.4% reply rate, 1.4% bounce rate. same inboxes warmed for the same duration on Maildoso. lemlist surprised me here. the open rate bump might be noise but the reply rate was consistently higher across all 3 steps of the sequence. the liquid syntax stuff for personalization is nice but i didnt use it for this test since i wanted to keep variables controlled. costs more though, $59/mo per seat vs Instantly at $30/mo for the growth plan.
Reply.io: 41.8% open rate, 2.1% reply rate, 2.3% bounce rate. this one disappointed me. same list, same copy, worse results across the board. the bounce rate being higher on the same verified list is weird and i dont have a great explanation. maybe their sending infrastructure handles throttling differently? i tested it for the full 6 weeks and it never really caught up. the multichannel stuff in Reply.io is cool if you need linkedin + email in one place but for pure cold email it came in last.
so the winner was Lemlist by a decent margin. not massive but 3.4% vs 2.9% vs 2.1% reply rate on 700 contacts each is enough for me to care.
the thing i didnt expect: platform matters less than i assumed. the gap between first and third place was like 1.3 percentage points on reply rate. meanwhile when i fixed my warmup protocol (going from 10 days to 21 days) my reply rate on Instantly alone went from 1.8% to 2.9%. thats a bigger jump than switching platforms entirely. i spent weeks agonizing over which tool to use when the real problem was that i was being lazy about infrastructure.
my total monthly spend for outbound right now is about $280/mo. Lemlist seat, Maildoso for inboxes ($84/mo for 10), ZeroBounce credits, and Clay on the starter plan. thats it. for a company our size thats manageable but i feel it every month.
im sticking with Lemlist for now. the extra $29/mo over Instantly is worth the reply rate difference at my volume. if i was sending 10x more i might think differently because Instantly scales cheaper.
anyway thats basically it. the test took way longer than i wanted and i probably should have been doing product work instead but at least now i know

Been running a gym for a while, changed CRM software a couple of times, you know, checking out different options

So here's the deal. What gets advertised by these software companies isn't really aligning with what gym owners like me truly need on a daily basis.

Stuff I use all the time:

• an easy mobile booking system (if members need to tap 8 times to book, they won’t bother)
• a billing system that isn’t a headache and deals with failed payments by itself
• a simple check-in process, not one that feels like hacking into the Pentagon
• waitlists that automatically bump people up when a spot opens
• a quick way to send messages to attendees of tomorrow’s early class without needing a degree in data extraction

The stuff they pitch to me:

• fancy dashboards fit for big corporations (look, I have around 150 members, I don't need all that serious business tooling)
• links to dozens of other apps that I’ll probably never click on
• branded merchandise stores (really, during a demo with Mindbody this was a big sell, pretty sure none of us need that)

And what’s still missing:

• being able to see who hasn’t shown up for weeks and nudge them with a message directly through the software
• introductory offers that don't take an age to figure out
• a mobile admin interface that doesn’t crash (I mean, I should be able to manage stuff on my phone on-the-go)

Signed up with GloFox about 8 months back, and it’s doing okay for the stuff we do every day. The app works well, payments are smooth, and waitlists manage themselves. Still some features missing for keeping in touch with members, but, hey, it could be worse.

Sometimes I wish these software developers would just sit in a gym for a day to see what we really need, not what a big corporate buyer might want.

A few weeks ago I started looking into this more seriously as we expand our European pipeline. Our legal team is breathing down my neck about b2b data compliance gdpr for our cold outreach campaigns.

The main issue is making sure the b2b data we're using has proper consent mechanisms and audit trails. Our current provider basically shrugged when I asked for their GDPR documentation. not exactly confidence inspiring when you're sending 5000 emails a week to EU prospects.

I've been evaluating alternatives and narrowing it down. About to pull the trigger on Prospeo because they have detailed GDPR compliance docs and their data comes with audit trails for legitimate interest. Also looking at Apollo but their compliance page seems more generic, like it was written by marketing and not legal.

For those doing heavy European outreach - how are you navigating this? are you just crossing your fingers or have you found data providers that actually take gdpr cold email compliance seriously? Would really love to hear what's working before we make the switch.

We're a CPG brand that's been killing it D2C but we're trying to expand into wholesale/B2B. Having a hard time finding retailers and distributors that would be a good fit.
Right now we're basically doing manual outreach on LinkedIn and cold emailing lists from trade shows. Also tried some lead generation tools but most are built for SaaS/tech companies not physical products. Looked at Lemlist briefly but it felt very much geared toward software outreach sequences, not really what we need.
For those of you doing wholesale, how are you finding new B2B accounts? Are you going to trade shows? Using brokers? Or just grinding it out with cold outreach? Would really love to hear what's working for other ecom brands in the wholesale game.