TL;DR
- Smartlead offers the clearest published agency workspace add-on; Instantly gives a distinct workspace and subscription per client. Those are different billing and control models.
- Woodpecker meters contacted prospects across the agency account and sells an Agency Panel per active client. Snov.io lets an agency manage separate client accounts within a team, but the client does not automatically get remote access to an account the agency operates.
- Reply.io, lemlist and Mailshake can run outreach, but their per-user or client-owned account structures need to be costed against your operators and client access model. An email-slot count alone does not prove a client boundary.
- Scenario: five or twenty clients, each with 1,000 new prospects/month and up to three planned touches, gives 5,000/20,000 contacts and 15,000/60,000 planned email attempts. These are software-capacity assumptions, not recommended send volumes or a claim that provider policies permit the traffic.
What an agency is buying
A solo sender can choose a sequencer on price and convenience. An agency must also decide where each client’s contacts, campaigns, mailboxes, replies and suppression records live; whether the client can inspect its own work; and what happens when the contract ends.
“Workspace”, “team” and “client panel” are not interchangeable. A workspace may isolate campaigns and contacts but still share billing or administrator access. A client portal may expose reporting but not transfer ownership. A seat may mean a human sender, while a mailbox slot is an address. Before comparing totals, define both the contact/send workload and the required access boundary.
This comparison covers tools that support agency use. It does not recommend using ordinary business mailboxes for unwanted or policy-prohibited bulk messages. Check the sending provider’s terms, recipient law and domain owner’s requirements before launch.
Quick comparison
| Platform | Agency structure and billing unit | Published capacity / main gate | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smartlead | Pro account plus optional client workspaces; Prime includes three | Pro $94/month, 30,000 contacts and 90,000 sends; Prime $379, 500,000 sends and three workspaces | Email-led agency needing an explicit workspace model |
| Instantly | Separate workspace and subscription per client | Hyper Growth $97/workspace, 25,000 uploaded contacts and 125,000 emails/month | Agencies that want strong client separation and can price per client |
| Reply.io | Per user on Multichannel; annual or monthly selector | Annual: $89/user/month equivalent and 10 mailboxes/user; monthly: $99 and 5/user | Teams combining email with LinkedIn, calls or SMS |
| Woodpecker | Contacted prospects across account; Agency Panel $27/active client | Entry price $35 for up to 500 contacted prospects; mailboxes and team members are unlimited | Agency panel, contact-based economics and client access |
| lemlist | Email by volume; Multichannel per user | Email $55/month equivalent for 50,000 emails; Multichannel $87/user-month annual equivalent, five sender slots/user | Small operator team needing LinkedIn plus email |
| Snov.io | Recipient and data credits shared within selected account/team | Starter $39 with 5,000 recipients; Pro S $99 with 25,000; client-account billing must be confirmed | Agency needing prospecting and outreach together |
| Mailshake | Paid users and connected mailboxes; agency can work in client-owned teams | Email Outreach $49 monthly, two addresses/account; Sales Engagement $99 monthly, advertised ten/account but help says five/user | Agencies willing to have each client own and pay for its team |
Prices are public figures checked 29 September 2026, before tax, mailbox hosting and implementation. The table labels annual-equivalent and monthly figures separately; it is not a normalised cost ranking. Several price selectors are dynamic; verify the chosen term, currency, usage and annual cash due before signing.
Seven platforms
1. Smartlead: agency workspaces with an explicit add-on
Smartlead’s official plan guide lists Base at $39/month (2,000 stored contacts, 6,000 monthly sends), Pro at $94 (30,000 contacts, 90,000 sends), Unlimited Smart at $174 (unlimited contact storage, 150,000 sends) and Unlimited Prime at $379 (unlimited contact storage, 500,000 sends and three client workspaces). Base has no client workspaces; Pro and Unlimited Smart make workspaces optional add-ons. The pricing FAQ lists one free Pro client and $29 for each additional white-label client, while the plan guide calls workspaces optional without matching that exact entitlement. These may describe different commercial units. The safe budget is the $94 base plus a vendor-confirmed client-workspace and white-label quote, with plan capacity checked across all clients.
Unlimited mailboxes are included, but that does not answer how teams separate client replies, suppression or exports. Smartlead is strongest where email sending is the core job and the agency wants to model client workspaces separately from sender count. Its documented Master Inbox categories and API can support operations, but roles and client visibility should be tested against the actual account.
2. Instantly: client data separated by workspace
Instantly’s July 2026 plan guide lists Hyper Growth at $97/month with 25,000 uploaded contacts, 125,000 monthly emails and unlimited connected email accounts. Light Speed lists 100,000 contacts and 500,000 monthly emails at $358. Agency View appears on Hyper Growth and Light Speed. The official workspace guide says each workspace has separate campaigns, contacts and analytics and requires its own subscription. Team roles include Owner, Admin, Editor, View/VA and Client.
This makes the multiplication clear: five Hyper Growth client workspaces are $485/month; twenty are $1,940, before extras. Each account in the scenario needs only 1,000 contacts and 3,000 planned sends, so the individual plan capacities fit on paper. That is software arithmetic, not a claim that this sending pattern complies with mailbox provider terms. The trade-off is cost per client and the work of administering separate subscriptions.
3. Reply.io: sales-engagement seats and channels
Reply’s pricing page lists Multichannel from $89/user/month equivalent on annual billing with ten mailboxes per user. The monthly selector instead lists $99/user/month and five mailboxes per user. These are separate configurations with different commitment and included slots. The product also has email-focused routes and active-contact allowances. Do not price an agency by multiplying only the headline Multichannel seat if each client requires its own login, CRM boundary or mailbox owner.
Reply suits an agency whose deliverable includes human follow-up tasks and a sequence that crosses channels. Its unified inbox can consolidate email and LinkedIn threads. What the public page does not resolve is whether a seat, mailbox capacity or inbox can be partitioned by customer exactly as your contracts require. Model named operators separately from mailbox count and use client-owned teams if separation is contractual.
4. Woodpecker: contact-metered with an Agency Panel
Woodpecker’s current pricing page starts at $35/month for up to 500 contacted prospects. Its billing guide says contacted prospects are counted across the account; the same person placed in two campaigns counts twice, while follow-ups do not count toward the monthly contacted-prospect allowance. Connected mailboxes and team members are unlimited. The Agency Panel adds $27 per active client; white-labeling is another $5 per active client. API and integrations are a separate add-on, displayed at $20/month.
At five clients the Agency Panel component is $135/month; at twenty it is $540. Those figures are only the active-client add-on, not total platform cost. The base contacted-prospect tier must also cover 5,000 or 20,000 distinct first-contact actions in the stated scenario, and the live calculator determines that amount. Agency Panel advertises separate prospect databases, bulk account actions, client view-only access and centralized billing. This is a better fit for agencies that want a portal and account-level contact metering than for a team seeking a flat, all-inclusive fee.
5. lemlist: seats for multichannel, volume for email
The current pricing page lists Email at $55/month equivalent for a 50,000-email monthly tier with unlimited users and senders. Multichannel is $87/user/month equivalent on annual billing, with five sender slots per user and LinkedIn automation. Current help material differs on Email sender slots, so do not use the Email tier to promise a specific mailbox quantity without confirming the exact checkout entitlement.
For an agency, Multichannel suits a small number of operators who need email and LinkedIn actions in one sequence. It is not a client-account price: five users are $435/month equivalent, while twenty client-owned operator seats would be $1,740. Those are separate-user examples, not a required seat count for five or twenty client workspaces. Mailbox/domain hosting and data credits are additional considerations. The current plan’s user permissions and cross-client visibility need careful review before centralising customers.
6. Snov.io: client accounts inside an outreach-and-data suite
Snov.io combines prospect credits, contacted recipients, mailbox warm-up, campaigns, email finding and verification. Its public page lists Starter at $39 with 5,000 recipients and Pro S at $99 with 25,000 recipients. Paid Pro tiers advertise unlimited team seats, sender accounts and follow-ups, but recipient and credit quotas remain the meaningful constraints. Do not confuse unlimited mailboxes with unlimited first contacts or enrichment.
The agency guide describes adding client accounts under an administrator team. The five-client illustrative 5,000 first contacts fit Starter’s recipient count on paper if one account shares that allowance; 20,000 fit Pro S’s 25,000, but this does not establish which team/client accounts need separate subscriptions or how credits are allocated. Client data, campaigns and reports are separated by account, but clients managed by the agency do not automatically get remote access. The team guide says paid plans provide teamwork and access controls. It can suit an agency that wants prospecting and outreach under one subscription structure; map quotas by client and confirm whether each client account needs its own paid plan before comparing total cost.
7. Mailshake: straightforward seats, client-owned agency model
Mailshake’s current pricing page lists Starter at $29/month (one sending address and 1,500 sends), Email Outreach at $49 monthly or $45 annual-equivalent (two sending addresses), Sales Engagement at $99 monthly or $85 annual-equivalent (ten addresses), and a custom Agency plan with unlimited addresses. The pricing explainer says each paid user has one account on Starter, two on Email Outreach and five on Sales Engagement, whereas the public price card advertises ten addresses on Sales Engagement. Treat ten as a plan-card claim and five as the help-centre user rule; confirm the effective allowance and whether extra addresses need paid seats. The two sources are not enough to promise a ten-address operator.
The vendor recommends that an agency have each client create its own team and add the agency as a user. That places billing and account ownership with the client and makes the agency less of a central data custodian. Mailshake may fit a service model built around client-owned instances. For a central agency account, the per-user model and the custom Agency quote need to be compared with the actual active-client and operator counts.
Five and twenty-client workload
Assume 1,000 new prospects per client per month and at most three planned email touches per prospect. That produces 5,000 or 20,000 first-contact records and, at the maximum, 15,000 or 60,000 campaign email attempts before replies, suppressions or bounces. In practice, sequence steps are conditional, so the upper bound is not a forecast. Provider policy may also make this use inappropriate; the scenario only tests software units.
| Cost/control question | Five clients | Twenty clients |
|---|---|---|
| Instantly Hyper Growth, one subscription per workspace | 5 × $97 = $485/month | 20 × $97 = $1,940/month |
| Woodpecker Agency Panel add-on | 5 × $27 = $135/month, plus qualifying contacted-prospect tier | 20 × $27 = $540/month, plus qualifying contacted-prospect tier |
| Smartlead Pro base | $94/month plus separately confirmed client-workspace/white-label entitlement; 30,000 contacts and 90,000 sends | Same shared limits; 20,000 first contacts and 60,000 maximum attempts fit on paper, but 20 client boundaries need a quote |
| Mailshake | Depends on client-owned teams, paid seats and plan; no valid single agency subtotal without ownership choice | Same structure; model each team's operator/mailbox needs |
The Smartlead FAQ prices additional white-label clients at $29, while its plan guide lists client workspaces as an optional add-on. Because the published texts do not prove these are identical entitlements, no five- or twenty-workspace total is asserted. Obtain one quote that states workspace access, white-label scope and whether the shared Pro quotas cover all client activity.
The table makes the unit mismatch visible. Instantly charges by workspace. Woodpecker combines one account-level contacted-prospect tier with active-client fees. Smartlead combines plan capacity and client add-ons. lemlist prices email volume or multichannel users. Snov.io uses recipient and data quotas. A true quote compares the exact same clients, operators, mailboxes, contacts, send volume and data access.
How to choose
Choose Instantly when per-client workspace separation is the priority and the per-client subscription is acceptable. Choose Smartlead when email capacity and agency-oriented operations matter, after confirming how workspaces use shared quotas. Choose Woodpecker when its Agency Panel and account-level contact meter suit your campaign pattern. Choose Snov.io when prospect data and sequencing belong in the same product. Choose Reply or lemlist when channel tasks and multichannel sequences are central. Choose Mailshake when clients can own and pay for their own accounts.
Before migration, run one client through restricted user roles, a reply, opt-out, export and disconnection. Verify that the suppression list, thread ownership, connected mailbox and campaign statistics remain with the correct client. A polished agency dashboard is not proof that its isolation matches your contract.
For a campaign operating template that keeps client signals and outreach decisions separate, see the signal-based outbound playbook.
FAQ
Which tool is cheapest for five clients?
There is no universal winner without contacts and operator counts. Instantly’s listed Hyper Growth workspaces are $485/month at five clients. Smartlead’s $94 Pro base requires a client-workspace and white-label quote before it can enter a total-cost ranking. Woodpecker adds $135 for five active clients, then a contacted-prospect tier. These totals cover different included limits and are not interchangeable.
Does unlimited email accounts mean unlimited sending?
No. It describes connected mailbox slots in a product plan. Monthly send limits, mailbox provider policies, reputation controls and account restrictions are separate. Check the relevant plan and provider terms.
Should client suppression lists be shared?
Keep each client's opt-outs effective within its own data boundary. A global agency suppression list may be appropriate for a person who opted out of the agency's outreach across all clients, but this depends on the notice, legal basis and contracts. Define the rule before importing lists.
Is a workspace the same as a client portal?
No. A workspace can separate campaigns and contacts, while a portal may show reports or allow replies. Ask what a client role can see, edit, export and administer, and test with a deliberately restricted login.
How should I model mailbox and operator costs?
List humans, sender identities, mailboxes, domains, contacts and sends separately. Add the software’s billing unit and mailbox provider cost. Do not assume one user equals one mailbox or one client; confirm the plan’s seat and slot rules.
Do these tools ensure that cold email is allowed?
No. A sequencer can enforce steps and suppression, but cannot establish legal permission or override a mailbox provider’s terms. Check current provider rules, local law, list source and recipient expectations before sending.
