7 Best Woodpecker Alternatives for Cold Email Outreach

7 Best Woodpecker Alternatives for Cold Email Outreach

If you search for cold outreach software, Woodpecker generally makes it to the list of top contenders.

It has been a strong player in the sales outreach industry and was introduced around the time when many startups were manually handling their cold outreach. When it proposed a way to set up automated outreach campaigns to reach more of your prospects in less time, everyone’s minds were blown.

They’ve been riding on the coattails of that old fame ever since. However, what works for one business might not work for the other. For example, Woodpecker is great for sales teams with a significant tech budget but not a startup getting its first customers.

Some of the best Woodpecker alternatives offer the features you are looking for at a lower cost.

We’ve compiled a list of the 7 best Woodpecker alternatives that compensate for Woodpecker’s limitations. (P.S. Some are especially convenient for bootstrapped founders!)

What Are the Limitations of Woodpecker?

Woodpecker helps B2B companies accelerate their outreach efforts by automating redundant and time-consuming processes, such as sending bulk emails, following up, tracking email campaigns, and so on.

Personalization, CRM integrations, automated follow-ups, email warm-up, you name it, Woodpecker offers you everything you’ll ever need to run a successful outreach campaign. One of the coolest things about Woodpecker is that you can customize the labels on your campaign responses as ‘interested,’ ‘uninterested,’ and so on.

However, the cold outreach tool cannot necessarily be every sales team’s cup of tea!

Here are some areas the outreach software fails to serve its users.

Cost: Woodpecker Needs a More Affordable Alternative

As pointed out by a Capterra user, there are better options than Woodpecker for startups and bootstrapped founders when it comes to cost.  

Source

It offers three different plans for cold email, sales automation, and agency outreach to serve various audiences with different outreach budgets.

However, the basic plan (under the cold email plan) costs $49 per month, which excludes sales automation capabilities such as LinkedIn outreach and integration with SMS or calling features.

Moreover, the basic plan only allows you to send emails to up to 1500 new prospects in a month, which can be a deal-breaker for many.

UI

Some G2 users expressed their disappointment over its slow UI. They found the tool difficult to use and navigate.

source

Best Woodpecker Alternatives

1. Saleshandy

UI and UX are something Saleshandy excels at. The cold outreach tool has an intuitive UI that’s easier to navigate and grasp. You can get started within 5 minutes (per a G2 review), provided your prospect list is ready to upload.

Why We Love Saleshandy as a Woodpecker Alternative

  • You can hyper-personalize your emails with merge tags.
  • It allows you to send email sequences to up to 5000 contacts a day.
  • The basic pricing allows you to contact up to 2000 prospects daily, which is great for startup founders looking to scale their outreach efforts.
  • The email warm-up feature helps you get a higher delivery rate. However, it supports only a handful of known service providers, such as Google, SendGrid, etc.
  • Its AI-powered writing assistance helps make your emails ‘spam-free’ and clean!

Price: Starts from $27/month

2. Super Send: The Best Woodpecker Alternative

Super Send is specifically designed to be the simplest and most robust option for effective cold outreach.

It works like a charm for bootstrapped founders looking to get their first 100 customers through outbound sales without burning a hole in their pockets.

It covers a lot of grounds like multi-channel outreach (including Twitter and LinkedIn outreach), email warm-up, and automated follow-ups.


Additionally, its minimalistic dashboard and easy-to-use functions make it a great choice for small teams or entrepreneurs just starting their outreach efforts.

Why Super Send Is the Best Woodpecker Alternative

  • Super Send has a very straightforward email warm-up process—just enable the feature while creating a new sender profile, and you’re good to go!
  • The basic plan allows the onboarding of unlimited teams and contacts and the creation of unlimited campaigns.
  • Users love the inbox rotation feature that allows them to send emails for one campaign from multiple addresses.
  • You can add personalized images to your emails for better engagement.
  • It allows an automatic following of Twitter accounts, and you can directly DM them from the platform itself.
  • You’ll love the support for LinkedIn outreach, too!

Price: Super Send starts at $25/month for:

  • Up to 1,000 messages/month
  • 3 campaigns
  • 2 senders
  • Unlimited contacts
  • Email warming
  • Email validation

3. Mailtrack.io

If your goal is to track who has opened your emails and ignored them, Mailtrack is the best tool for the mission.

It not only tells you whether your email has been opened but also how many times it was opened and when it was opened. This leaves you with a stronger hunch about the interest levels of a lead and whether or not you should follow up.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer cold email automation, so use it as part of your stack - but not a direct Woodpecker replacement.

Why Mailtrack Makes a Great Woodpecker Alternative?

  • It does what it claims and is super light.
  • It easily integrates with Gmail.
  • You can see real-time notifications in your inbox—just hover over your sent emails to see the data.
  • It’s free to use and offers unlimited tracking, email alerts, desktop notifications, and daily reports. The paid version provides a complete tracking history, email support, link, PDF tracking, and many other features.

Price: Paid version starts at $1/month

4. Reply.io

Reply is a great choice when you need a multi-channel sales engagement platform that covers multiple channels, including:

  • Email outreach
  • Email search
  • Calls
  • Whatsapp messages
  • LinkedIn outreach

Its built-in analytics feature shows how many people are opening your emails versus how many actually respond—that way, there's no guesswork involved when it comes time for follow-up emails!


Moreover, the platform primarily focuses on improving your deliverability rate with its AI-powered spam detection to spot keywords that could trigger spam filters.

Features That Make Reply.io Better Than Woodpecker

  • It has a built-in processing system that directly links LinkedIn prospects to different cadences.
  • The outreach tool guides you on the quality and relevance of your emails with its AI-based scoring system.
  • You can easily integrate it with Sales Navigator to bring in more quality leads for your campaign.

Price: Starts at $50/month

5. Gmass

If you prefer the convenience of sending out bulk emails, tracking them, and responding to them, all within your inbox, then Gmass is just the right outreach tool for you!

You only need to download the extension, install it in your browser, and you can start using Gmass directly from your Gmail account.

What Makes Gmass a Great Woodpecker Alternative?

  • It’s lightweight and doesn’t require you to switch to any other platform for cold outreach.
  • You can conveniently pull your leads database via Mail Merge and personalize your emails at scale.
  • Save yourself from making blunders (typos, wrong names, poor formatting) in a live campaign, as you can run them in draft mode in Gmass.

Price: Starts at $19.95/month

6. Mailshake

Mailshake focuses heavily on user experience and is super easy to use. Even though its free plan is loaded with many essential features, the paid tier is worth it if you want to scale your outreach efforts and track your success on different campaigns and landing pages.

Mailshake’s interface is simple and easy to use, with only two tabs: Campaigns & Lists (which houses all of your contacts) and Messages (where you can send out emails).

You can also access everything from their mobile app by signing in with either Facebook or Google account.

Why We Love Mailshake as a Woodpecker Alternative

  • Mailshake efficiently detects missing data from CSV files and suggests fallback replacement.
  • It provides extensive reporting across all campaigns on the dashboard.
  • You can easily drop new prospects to an already running campaign.
  • Its AI-based copywriter helps you create more relevant and engaging emails.

Price: Starts at $58/month

7. Yesware

Yesware is another excellent choice for solopreneurs and startup founders as it’s reasonably priced and sits inside your inbox.

It easily integrates with Gmail, Outlook, and Salesforce so you can build stronger relationships with prospects and track your email marketing campaigns effectively.

Features That Make Yesware a Suitable Woodpecker Alternative

  • Yesware’s library of email templates allows users to save time on sending out replies or follow-ups. It also has amazing templates for press releases, newsletters, and drip campaigns.
  • You can schedule automatic emails based on certain criteria, such as time intervals or keywords used in your previous interactions with your leads.
  • You can easily integrate its meeting scheduler with your Gmail or Outlook inbox.
  • Its multi-channel campaigns allow you to cover multiple customer touchpoints.

Price: Starts at $15

Which Woodpecker Alternative Should You Choose?

The answer depends on your sales outreach goals, the current number of customers, and your budget for outreach campaigns.

Some of the tools we’ve listed here are cheaper than Woodpecker, offering more or less what Woodpecker offers in their basic plan (see: Super Send).

Consider them if you’re looking for a reliable cold emailing tool that covers all the essential features at a reasonable price.

The costlier tools offer more features and functionalities than Woodpecker and help you take your outbound sales efforts to the next level.

If you’re ready to get your first 100 customers with all the cold outreach functions you need (and plenty of help with templates and tutorials), head over to Super Send and launch your first campaign!