Instantly and Sendpilot cover two different channels, which is why they pair well. Instantly sends cold email. It does not run LinkedIn steps natively; its own blog says LinkedIn runs through integrations with LinkedIn outreach tools. Sendpilot is LinkedIn only: it does not send email and does not write cold emails. Put together, one tool owns the inbox and the other owns the LinkedIn profile, with no overlap in what they automate.
What Sendpilot Does on LinkedIn
Sendpilot runs outbound sequences (connection request, message, voice note, profile view, post like), inbound campaigns on your LinkedIn posts, a 300M+ lead database, a lead extractor for search results, Sales Navigator lists and post engagers, data enrichment, ICP Scoring, an AI post and lead-magnet writer, a post scheduler and Unibox, the unified inbox. Every connected LinkedIn account gets its own sending limits, and one workspace can run anything from a single profile to the 250+ accounts on Enterprise.
Three pieces matter most in a stack with Instantly:
- ICP Scoring: a 0–100 fit score that reads the whole LinkedIn profile — title, seniority, industry and company size, plus skills, endorsements, network, experience and activity — so the best-fit leads sit at the top of the list before anyone is messaged.
- Inbound campaigns: point one at a LinkedIn post, set the Action Words, and Sendpilot replies automatically to every comment that carries one. Everyone who engages with the post is captured and scored against your ICP, and the DM goes to the commenters you are already connected to. A commenter who is not a connection gets the connect-first reply instead, asking them to connect with you; once they send the request and you accept, the DM follows. It watches your own posts only; it does not identify website traffic of any kind.
- Account safety: every connected account gets a dedicated, geo-matched proxy, automatic warm-up and enforced per-account limits — 25 connection requests a day and a recommended ceiling of 75 messages a day. Used on its own inside those limits, Sendpilot keeps accounts safe, including the lead extractor. Restrictions come from connecting one account to several tools at once, or from sustained abuse. LinkedIn has no official API for this and endorses no vendor; it acts on behaviour, which is exactly what the limits control.
That is the LinkedIn half of an All-Bound motion: outbound to a targeted list, inbound from your own content, and one inbox to answer both.
What Instantly Does With Cold Email
Instantly is an email sending platform. Its Outreach plans are a flat per-workspace subscription with unlimited connected email accounts, so you can spread volume across many mailboxes without paying per mailbox. Its 450M+ lead database and enrichment sit on separate Credits plans rather than inside the Outreach subscription. Instantly does not run LinkedIn steps natively; LinkedIn runs through its integrations with LinkedIn outreach tools.
What it brings to the stack:
- Sending infrastructure: connect as many mailboxes as you need under one subscription and rotate sends across them. Warm-up and deliverability tooling are the core of the product; check their current feature list for what each plan includes.
- Lead database and enrichment: 450M+ contacts and waterfall enrichment on the Credits plans, listed from $47/month and sold separately from the Outreach sending plans. In this stack, that is where the email addresses come from — Sendpilot's enrichment never returns an email address.
- API and webhooks: API access is on all Outreach plans; webhooks start on Hypergrowth, listed at $97/month. That matters for the hand-off below.
Instantly's job in the stack is the email inbox: the sequence, the sending accounts, the replies. What it does not do natively is touch a LinkedIn profile, which is where Sendpilot starts.
How the Two Tools Divide the Work
| Stage | Sendpilot (LinkedIn) | Instantly (email) | Together |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead sourcing | 300M+ LinkedIn lead database, Sales Navigator lead extractor, post-engager extraction, enrichment, ICP Scoring | 450M+ lead database and enrichment on its Credits plans | One list, sourced from both, scored before anyone is messaged |
| Outbound | Connection request, message, voice note, profile view, post like; rotation across connected accounts; Unibox | Email sequences across unlimited connected mailboxes | Touches on two channels, each inside its own limits |
| Inbound | Captures everyone who engages with your posts, auto-replies to comments carrying an Action Word, DMs the commenters you are connected to, scores every engager | Reply handling on the email side | Post engagers whose email Instantly can find get an email follow-up; email replies get a LinkedIn touch |
| Hand-off and reporting | Campaign stats; webhooks, API, MCP server and the HubSpot and Slack integrations from Growth up | API on all Outreach plans; webhooks from Hypergrowth | Profile and company fields move from LinkedIn to email without a spreadsheet (Growth and up); the email itself comes from Instantly's enrichment or your own list |
| Pricing | Launch $79/month, or $66/month billed annually, per LinkedIn account | Outreach Growth listed at $47/month, per workspace | A starter stack of $126/month |
Sendpilot handles the top of the funnel on LinkedIn — the list, the connection, the first conversation, the engagement on your posts — and Instantly carries the email follow-up. Neither automates the other's channel.
How to Run Instantly and Sendpilot Together
- Build the list in Sendpilot: pull leads from the lead database or the lead extractor (search results, Sales Navigator lists, or the people engaging with a post), enrich them, and let ICP Scoring rank them 0–100. Work the highest scorers first.
- Run the LinkedIn sequence: a connection request, a message once it is accepted, a voice note where it fits. Keep each account at 25 connection requests a day (about 175 a week) and no more than 75 messages a day; ten established accounts is roughly 1,750 requests a week. Answer replies in Unibox.
- Capture engagement on your posts: an inbound campaign pointed at a post captures everyone who engages with it and replies automatically to any comment carrying one of your Action Words. Commenters you are already connected to also get the DM, with the first-name or full-name variable. A commenter who is not a connection gets the connect-first reply instead; once they send the request and you accept, the DM goes out. That is the mechanic worth planning for — the public reply is what asks a stranger who commented to connect, and the accepted connection is what earns the DM. Every engager is scored against your ICP and can be transferred into the outreach campaign from step 2.
- Hand leads to Instantly: on Growth and up, Sendpilot's webhooks and API let you push the record — name, title, seniority, company, website domain and LinkedIn URL — into Instantly as leads reach the step you choose. Sendpilot's enrichment returns LinkedIn profile and company fields, not an email address, and it runs only on leads that came from the lead database, the lead extractor or an inbound campaign — never on an imported CSV. The address therefore comes from Instantly's own enrichment on its Credits plans (listed from $47/month) or from a list you already own. Instantly's API is on all of its Outreach plans, so the hand-off works from its entry plan. If you would rather route the record through Zapier or n8n, connect them through those same webhooks, the API or the MCP server (Growth and up) — Sendpilot's native integrations are HubSpot and Slack. On Launch, export a CSV from Sendpilot and import it into Instantly.
- Write the email in Instantly: Sendpilot does not write cold emails. Draft the sequence in Instantly and reference the LinkedIn touch ("Thanks for the comment on my post last week"), so the email reads as a continuation rather than a cold start. Warm the sending mailboxes before volume goes up.
- Close the loop: replies on either channel go to a person, not a machine. Use Instantly's reply handling on the email side and Unibox on LinkedIn, and pause the sequence in the other tool once a conversation starts.
The spacing matters more than the order. LinkedIn first gives the email a reason to exist; email first gives the connection request a name the prospect half-remembers. Either way, run one channel a few days ahead of the other rather than both on the same morning.
What the Stack Costs
Sendpilot has one price grid, priced per LinkedIn account — never per user. Members are not billed; the plan sets how many can join. Credits are a single monthly balance per LinkedIn account, spent on enrichment, lead-database extraction, the lead extractor and ICP Scoring alike. Full matrix on /pricing.
- Launch — $79/month, or $66/month billed annually. One LinkedIn account, 800 credits a month, one workspace. Includes Unibox, voice notes, enrichment, the lead database and inbound campaigns, but not the API, webhooks, MCP server or the HubSpot and Slack integrations. Extra accounts are $79/month each.
- Growth — $329/month, or $274/month billed annually. Five accounts, 4,000 credits, three workspaces, five members. Adds API and webhooks, the MCP server, bring-your-own proxies and roles and permissions. Extra accounts are $49/month each.
- Agency — $699/month, or $583/month billed annually. Twenty-five accounts, 20,000 credits, unlimited workspaces and members, whitelabel, 1-on-1 onboarding and a dedicated Slack channel. Extra accounts are $29/month each.
- Enterprise — custom, from $1K+, for 250+ accounts. Sales-led: contact sales.
Instantly's Outreach plans are listed at $47/month for Growth (1,000 uploaded contacts, 5,000 emails a month, API but no webhooks), $97/month for Hypergrowth (25,000 contacts, 125,000 emails, webhooks and team members) and $358/month for Light Speed, with yearly billing roughly 20% lower. The 450M+ lead database is a separate Credits plan from $47/month. Check their current pricing page before you budget.
A starter stack is therefore $126/month: Sendpilot Launch at $79 plus Instantly Growth at $47, with leads moving between the tools by CSV. That Outreach plan carries no enrichment, so if you need Instantly to find the email addresses rather than supply them from a list you already own, budget its Credits plan (from $47/month) or the Starter bundle that combines the two, listed at $94/month. If you want the hand-off automated through webhooks and the API, Sendpilot's Growth plan is where those start — $329/month, or $274/month billed annually — and Instantly's API is already on its entry plan.
What to Expect
We do not publish reply-rate or pipeline figures for the combined stack, and you should be wary of anyone who does without showing the list behind them. In our experience, an email that lands a few days after an accepted connection request or a comment exchange gets answered more often than the same email sent cold, because the name is already familiar. Measure it yourself: run the LinkedIn-first sequence on half the list and email-only on the other half for a month, then compare replies and meetings in each tool's dashboard.
Where Sendpilot Fits
If you already run cold email in Instantly, keep it. Add Sendpilot for the LinkedIn side: outbound sequences, inbound campaigns on your posts, ICP Scoring and the lead database. A solo operator starts on Launch; a small team that wants the webhook hand-off starts on Growth; an agency running client accounts starts on Agency.
For a longer look at how the email tools compare on the LinkedIn side, see Smartlead vs Instantly for LinkedIn outreach, and for the day-by-day cadence, the multichannel outreach playbook. Otherwise, start a free trial and see /pricing for the full plan matrix.
