Lemlist Review: Is This Cold Outreach Tool Worth $69+/Month?

Lemlist has been around since 2018 and has built a reputation as one of the more feature-rich cold email platforms on the market. It's used by over 37,000 businesses for multichannel outreach across email, LinkedIn, and cold calling.

But here's the thing: lemlist isn't cheap. Starting at $69/month per user for the email-only plan, it's positioned as a premium tool. The question is whether you're actually getting premium results for that price.

I've dug through the features, pricing structure, and real user feedback to give you a straight answer on whether lemlist makes sense for your outreach needs—or if you'd be better off with an alternative.

What Is Lemlist?

Lemlist is a sales engagement platform designed to help you automate outreach across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and cold calls while keeping messages personalized. The core pitch is that it makes bulk messages feel like they were manually written.

The platform targets sales teams, SDRs, account executives, founders, and lead generation agencies who want to run outbound campaigns without juggling multiple tools. You get lead prospecting, email sequencing, deliverability tools, and multichannel automation all in one place.

Lemlist was originally known for its dynamic image personalization feature—the ability to automatically insert prospect names or company logos into email images. That's still a differentiator, but they've since expanded into a full-stack prospecting tool with a 450M+ contact database, AI-powered personalization, and built-in email warmup through lemwarm.

Lemlist Pricing Breakdown

Lemlist offers three main paid plans. There's also a very limited free plan that only lets you use their Chrome extension to find up to 100 emails or 25 phone numbers per month—not useful for actual outreach.

Email Pro - $69/user/month

This is the entry-level paid plan for email-only campaigns. Here's what you get:

The Email Pro plan is designed for cold emailers, recruiters, and founders who just need email outreach. No LinkedIn automation or calling features here.

Multichannel Expert - $99/user/month

This is their most popular plan and adds multichannel capabilities:

If you want to combine email with LinkedIn outreach in a single workflow, this is the plan you need.

Enterprise - Custom Pricing

Requires a minimum of 5 seats. Includes:

Discounts and Hidden Costs

You can save 10% with quarterly billing or 20% with annual billing. So the Email Pro plan drops to roughly $55/month if you pay yearly.

But watch out for add-on costs:

These can add up. One analysis found that a 10-person team doing moderate prospecting could end up paying more in add-ons than their base subscription.

Key Features: What Works Well

Multichannel Sequences

Lemlist's sequence builder lets you create campaigns that mix email, LinkedIn actions, cold calls, and manual tasks in a single workflow. You can set up conditional logic—if a prospect opens your email but doesn't reply, automatically trigger a LinkedIn connection request.

The visual interface makes it easy to see your entire campaign flow. You can build sequences manually or use their AI to generate them based on your target audience, value proposition, and tone preferences.

Personalization

This is where lemlist genuinely stands out from competitors. Beyond basic merge tags like {{firstName}}, you get:

The AI personalization impressed me. You can give it a prompt like "create a one-line compliment based on LinkedIn profile details" and it generates surprisingly usable icebreakers that only need minor editing.

Lead Database and Enrichment

You get access to a 450M+ contact database with filters for company size, industry, location, job title, revenue, tech stack, and funding. Find prospects directly in the platform, then enrich their profiles with verified emails and phone numbers.

Data gets refreshed every 30 days. Quality can be inconsistent—some users report finding outdated information—but it's convenient having everything in one place.

Deliverability Tools

Every paid seat includes lemwarm, their email warmup tool. It automatically sends and receives emails from a network of 10,000+ users to build your sender reputation. You also get inbox rotation to spread sends across multiple addresses, deliverability monitoring, and spam score tracking.

In-App Calling

Lemlist recently launched native calling that supports 23 countries. You can make calls directly from the platform, record conversations, take notes, and get AI-powered summaries after each call. Call data syncs automatically to your CRM.

What's Not Great About Lemlist

Pricing Gets Expensive Fast

Per-user pricing hurts when you're scaling a team. At $99/user/month for Multichannel Expert, a 5-person team pays nearly $500/month before any add-ons. Competitors like Smartlead and Instantly offer flat-fee pricing with unlimited email accounts.

Multiple G2 reviewers have noted that "the pricing grows quickly if you need several users, which can be a blocker for small teams."

Limited Analytics

While you can track opens, clicks, and reply rates, the reporting isn't as robust as some competitors. For LinkedIn specifically, you only get metrics for visits, invites, and messages—no tracking for post likes or InMail engagement.

Learning Curve for Advanced Features

The basic email sequencing is straightforward, but setting up advanced image personalization, conditional logic, and multichannel workflows takes time to master. Several users mention that "the platform gets less intuitive as they dive into more advanced features."

Occasional Bugs and Technical Issues

Some users report bugs that disrupt workflows—email tracking that counts your own clicks as opens, delays in replies showing up, and occasional glitches with the LinkedIn automation. Not deal-breakers, but worth noting.

No AI Reply Agent

Unlike Instantly and Smartlead, lemlist doesn't offer AI-powered reply handling. You'll need to manage responses manually or through your CRM.

Lemlist vs. The Competition

Lemlist vs. Instantly

Instantly is often the go-to alternative for agencies and teams doing high-volume cold email. Key differences:

Lemlist vs. Smartlead

Smartlead is another popular alternative, especially for agencies:

In a data-backed test comparing both platforms, Smartlead showed higher open rates (45.9% vs 36.5%) and slightly better reply rates, suggesting stronger deliverability for high-volume campaigns.

Lemlist vs. Reply.io

Reply.io is a closer competitor with similar multichannel capabilities. Both offer email, LinkedIn, and calling in one platform. Reply tends to be slightly cheaper and includes AI reply handling, but lemlist has stronger personalization features and a larger native lead database.

Who Should Use Lemlist?

Lemlist is a good fit if:

Lemlist probably isn't right if:

The Bottom Line

Lemlist delivers on its promise of personalized multichannel outreach. The combination of email, LinkedIn automation, and cold calling in one platform—plus genuinely useful personalization features—makes it a solid choice for sales teams who want to stand out in crowded inboxes.

But the per-user pricing model is the elephant in the room. If you're scaling past a handful of users or running an agency with multiple clients, the math quickly favors alternatives like Instantly or Smartlead.

My recommendation: Start with the 14-day free trial and test your specific use case. If you're a small team that values personalization and multichannel sequences, lemlist earns its price tag. If you're optimizing for volume and cost-efficiency, look elsewhere.

Try Lemlist Free for 14 Days

For more cold outreach tool comparisons, check out our Close CRM review or our guide to the best CRM software for sales teams.