Best Sales Engagement Software

Fits a sales team that wants admins to decide who can edit templates and switch sequences on, and can buy by quote.

A sequence in Outreach. Reps build a sequence from steps: an automatic email that sends on its interval, a manual email that lands as a task, a phone call, a LinkedIn touch such as a connection request or InMail, and a generic task. Steps are spaced by days or by an exact date, and a step blocked by a sending limit moves to the next sending slot. Each sequence is private, visible to others or usable by others, and sequences start disabled, so a non-admin may need an admin to switch one on.

Governance and testing. Per Outreach's help center, template rights are set per user profile: view private templates, create, edit and share. Content Governance can limit a profile to the sequences, templates and snippets it owns. For a messaging change, put old and new copy on one email step as an A/B test. Outreach splits prospects evenly between two templates, tracks open and reply rate, asks for about two weeks and at least 150 emails per variant, and flags a winner. It doesn't switch off the loser for you, and editing a template mid-test voids the result. Turn off the ruleset option that lets reps customize step templates when they add a prospect, or per-rep edits will skew the test.

Outreach prices per user in four tiers, Essentials, Core, Plus and Pro, with AI credits from 10,000 to 100,000, and publishes no USD amounts. The pricing page lists sequences from the Core tier.

Fits a team that wants cadences from the same vendor as deal management and forecasting, and can buy by quote.

What changed. Clari and Salesloft completed their merger on December 3, 2025, and on September 2, 2026 the company announced one Salesloft brand, with Clari Forecast keeping its name. Cadence now sits beside Deals, Rhythm, Inspect and Conversation Intelligence in one product line. Neither announcement mentions pricing or packaging changes.

A cadence in Salesloft. A cadence mixes email, calls and social steps, with texting from the dialer and LinkedIn InMail mentioned, and reps can run any step from the mobile app. Templates and snippets keep messaging consistent while reps personalize them. An email step can hold a second template as a variant: add a variant from the step menu, pick the template and switch it on. Salesloft's guidance is to change one element at a time. Each step must keep at least one variant, and deleting one moves the people on it to the next step. A built-in dialer logs calls automatically, and Meetings lets buyers book from emails.

What we couldn't confirm. Salesloft's pricing page is a talk-to-sales form with no tiers. The help center redirected to a page that didn't load, so the step types and the variant steps come from older help articles and search summaries, and we didn't check them against the live product. Template sharing rights and current reporting are unconfirmed. Ask for a demo of template permissions and per-template reports before you buy, because you'll want to see both.

Fits a team that already runs on HubSpot CRM and wants sequences, A/B tests and reply and meeting rates on the contact record.

A sequence in HubSpot. Sequences need a Professional or Enterprise Sales Hub or Service Hub seat, and each user needs a Sales or Service seat assigned. A sequence holds automated emails (with delays of up to 90 business days), manual email tasks, call tasks and general tasks, plus LinkedIn InMail and connection-request tasks that need the Sales Navigator integration. Contacts unenroll by default when they reply or book a meeting. Dynamic sequences send automated emails and surface manual tasks only for contacts who open or click.

Testing and sharing. A/B tests run on sequence emails in standard sequences: up to six versions per email, four live at once, and HubSpot recommends 100 contacts per version. The sequence's Performance tab shows enrollments, reply rate and meeting rate, with a step table that includes the A/B results, and it filters by enrolling user and date. Sequences and templates are private by default, so you'll need Manage sharing set to everyone or to named teams before a rollout. A sequence that uses a private template can fail to send or render for people who can't open the template. One sequence holds at most 10 email templates.

Limits and price. Each seat can send 500 sequence emails a day on Professional and 1,000 on Enterprise, through the connected Gmail or Outlook inbox. Professional costs from $90 per seat per month (the page also shows $100) plus a $1,500 one-time onboarding fee; Enterprise starts at $150 plus $3,500. The Deal rate and Total revenue sequence metrics are Enterprise only.

Fits a team that works in Salesforce all day and wants cadences and a work queue in the same org.

A cadence in Salesforce. A manager with the Cadence Creator permission set builds a cadence from email, call, LinkedIn InMail, LinkedIn connection request, task, automated email and screen-flow steps. Reps work them from the Work Queue, which shows up to 1,000 prospects at a time. Branching on a call result needs an admin to map call results first. Email steps point at a Lightning email template that has to sit in a folder the assignee can open, and merge fields are limited to sender, recipient and organization.

Sharing and testing. You share the cadence folder, not the cadence, and folder access doesn't grant access to the templates inside, so you'll need both the cadence folder and the template folder shared for a rollout. Variant testing of email templates and call scripts on one step is an admin setting, and managers compare results per variant on the cadence record. Sales Engagement Performance Dashboards run on CRM Analytics. Automated email is capped at 1,000 a day with the full permission and 100 with the basic one, and Salesforce recommends sending through Gmail or Office 365.

Price. Sales Engagement is $50 per user per month billed annually as an add-on on top of a Sales Cloud edition ($100 per user for Pro Suite, $195 for Core). The pricing FAQ says it's included in Unlimited and Agentforce 1 Sales, while the implementation guide names Performance, Einstein 1 and Unlimited. Salesforce doesn't offer trial licenses for it.

Fits a small team that wants a contact database and sequences in one place and wants to try it free.

A sequence in Apollo. Start one with AI, from a template, by cloning or from scratch. Steps are automatic email, manual email, phone call, action item and LinkedIn (connection request, message, profile view, post view). Only the automatic email sends itself, and the rest become tasks the rep completes, so LinkedIn here is a reminder, not automation. Rulesets decide whether Apollo keeps sending after a reply, and the sending mailbox is picked per contact when you enroll.

Sharing and testing. Sequences can be shared with the whole organization or with named users and teams as can view, can edit or full access, and sequences and templates can sit in folders. A/Z tests work on email steps and need Professional or above. Variants are split evenly and randomly, you can't assign them to contacts, and Apollo says to wait for 90% confidence before you pick a winner. Deactivating a sequence clears its pending emails.

Limits and credits. Free allows two sequences per team, 250 emails a day and one mailbox per user. Basic ($49 per seat per month billed annually) has unlimited sequences but the same 250-a-day cap. Professional ($79) adds A/Z testing and unlimited daily emails, and Organization ($119, minimum three seats) adds more mailboxes. The contact database is paid by credits: one for an email address, eight for a phone number. The parallel and power dialers need a $119 per team monthly add-on.

Fits a team that wants a sequence to branch on what the prospect does and to report per step and per variant.

A sequence in Reply.io. Steps are email, LinkedIn, call, WhatsApp, SMS, Zapier and task, plus two logic steps: a condition, which branches yes or no on things like opened, replied, LinkedIn connected or email valid, and an action that moves the contact to another sequence. Reply checks engagement every 10 minutes within the window you set.

Testing and reporting. Email steps take A/B variants by random split, so a contact can get version A in step one and B in step two, and LinkedIn steps have their own tests. The Stats tab shows delivery, open, reply, interested, meetings booked, opt-out and bounce rates per channel, per step, per variant and per sending mailbox, with CSV export. Roles and Permissions set sequence access to team or own only, and seeing and editing are separate permissions, so a marketer can publish a sequence that reps can use but not change.

Price and limits. Email Volume starts at $49 per user per month billed annually and is email only, with 1,000 active contacts a month; LinkedIn automation is a $69 per account add-on and calls and SMS are $29. Multichannel starts at $89 and includes email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS and WhatsApp as semi-automation, with unlimited active contacts. Jason AI SDR is a separate product from $500 a month.

Fits a team that wants email, LinkedIn and calls in one sequence, with manual steps assigned to a named person.

A sequence in lemlist. Multichannel sequences combine email, LinkedIn (visits, follows, invites, messages, InMail), an in-app dialer, SMS and, as an add-on, WhatsApp. Manual task steps carry an assignee, a priority, instructions and an optional delay, and they live in a Tasks section filtered by type. Marking a task Interested or Not interested stops the sequence for that lead, and Ignore doesn't.

Testing. One email step can run two variants split 50/50. You've got to set the test up before launch, because leads that are already in a launched campaign stay on version A, and picking a winner in the Performance view is permanent. lemlist also describes whole-sequence tests that vary step order and waits. We read that only in a search summary, so check it in the trial.

Price and plans. The Email plan is $55 a month on yearly billing ($69 monthly) and lists unlimited users and senders, 50,000 emails a month and no LinkedIn, call or SMS steps. Multichannel is $87 per user per month yearly ($109 monthly). Lead data is a separate credit add-on. Custom roles, permissions and SSO are Enterprise.

Fits an agency or small team that sends cold email from many mailboxes and wants one plan priced by volume, not by seat.

A campaign in Instantly. Instantly is email-first. A sequence is a run of email steps, with LinkedIn and webhook steps mentioned on its outreach page, and replies land in a unified inbox called Unibox. Every plan has unlimited sending accounts and warm-up. Volume is what you pay for: 5,000 emails a month on Growth, 125,000 on Hypergrowth and 500,000 on Light Speed.

Testing. A/Z tests allow up to 26 variants per step, and an auto-optimize setting can pick the winner on reply, click or open rate. That's the most variants of the eight tools, and it suits testing a new message against several old ones. Instantly's own post doesn't say which plan unlocks it.

Where it's thin. The pages we read show no shared template library, template approval or view of which reps still send old copy. Instantly's built-in CRM has a master inbox for email, calls, SMS and tasks under one subscription with unlimited seats. The outreach plans cost $47, $97 and $358 a month on monthly billing, with a discount toggle that lowers them, and lead credits and bundles are sold separately.