| Functionality | 3 <p>As a sales engagement tool, Instantly is extremely lightweight. The only channel you can configure in outbound sequences is email (however, you can configure calls and texts from their CRM manually). Therefore if multi-channel outreach is important to you you're better off looking elsewhere. That being said, we were pleased to find a native contact database and lightweight CRM provided.</p> | 3 <p>Saleshandy is a very basic tool. It really only offers email as a channel (it lacks any kind of integration or native dialler needed for proper LinkedIn and phone call steps). Additionally, its analytics offering is bare bones - lacking any kind of customizability or non-email metrics. However, we were pleased to see a decent prospecting database provided natively.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Instantly's web app is intuitive and easy to navigate. Additionally, its onboarding was simple and not overwhelming. It's core sequence building and analytics pages are intuitive and easy to get acquainted with. It would take an average SMB employee less than 30 minutes to master its use.</span></p> | 8 <p>Both Saleshandy's simplicty and modern design contribute to making it a very easy tool to use. When tested, we find both its core sequence builder and prospecting interfaces to be intuitive and familiar. Additionally, its analytics offering is also easy to get to grips with. On average, it would take an SMB employee 15 minutes to master its use.</p> |
| Look and feel | 8 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Instantly's design aesthetic is modern and clean. Unlike many competitors, we found most pages to be well laid out and not overflowing with information. When tested, we find its page load times to be fast (often <1s) and core interfaces such as the sequence builder to be slick and intuitive.</span></p> | 7 <p>Saleshandy's design aesthetic is modern and simple. We found most of its interfaces intuitive to use and snappy. Whilst we do miss the presence of a traditional drag & drop builder for sequences, we still find the drafting interface to be easy to use.</p> |
| Customisability | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Instantly offers a number of channels for customisation, including basic ways such as creating custom searches in the prospecting database or adding custom fields to individual leads. There are also some deeper levels which you can customise your experience such as by connecting to OpenAI via API and creating custom prompts to do small tasks such as cleaning company names or guessing company pain points. </span></p> | 3 <p>Saleshandy offers very little in terms of customizable facets when compared with competitors. For example, its analytics suite is rigid and offers no routes for tweaking. Additionally, it lacks the depth of AI functionality that most products offer these days meaning you won't be able to richly personalize personas or details about your business.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Instantly offers a simple, self-serve free trial for their platform. When tested, we found the initial setup to be simple (taking <10 mins). Additionally, connecting email addresses to their outbound platform was relatively trivial too - with a one click connect feature for popular providers like Google and Outlook. However, when choosing a paid plan, their pricing model is very complex with varied plans depending on if you need standalone lead generation or need some outbound sequencing functionality too.</span></p> | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Saleshandy offers a simple, self-serve free trial for their platform. When tested, we found the initial setup to be simple (taking <10 mins). Additionally, connecting email addresses to their outbound platform was relatively trivial too - with a one click connect feature for popular providers like Google and Outlook.</span></p> |
| Customer Support | 5 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You can contact Instantly's support agents via a live chat widget within their web app. When tested, we find it relatively easy to contact a real agent (<30 minutes). However, we find agents to be relatively unhelpful at times, often referring to unhelpful help centre documents instead of answering questions directly. Additionally, though Instantly does provide a help centre, its articles are often light on detail.</span></p> | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Lemlist's primary means for customer support is via a live chat widget within their web app. It was quick and simple to contact a real support agent (often <5 mins) and when tested, we find them to be helpful and about to troubleshoot technical questions often in the first response.</span></p> |
| Integratability | 4 <p>Though instantly does provide integrations with core CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), automation platforms (Zapier) and email providers (Gmail, Outlook) - we would like to have seen native integrations with more established lead sources such as Apollo.</p> | 4 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Saleshandy provides a number of integrations with popular CRMs (Salesforce, Hubspot) and automation platforms like Zapier. However, we were disappointed to see a lack of integration with more popular lead sources such as Apollo or ZoomInfo as well as a lack of integration with LinkedIn.</span></p> |
| Ease of Migration | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Instantly offers self-serve export functionality via their web app. Additionally, Instantly offers an API through which businesses are able to interact with their database directly - however, documentation for this remains relatively light.</span></p> | 5 <p>Saleshandy offers self-serve export functionality within its web app.</p><p>Additionally, Lemlist offers an API through which businesses are able to interact with their database directly.</p> |
