What cold email costs in 2026
Every way to run cold email costs money and someone's time; they differ in how the bill is split between the two. Here are the published prices, line by line, as of 12 October 2026.
Updated 2026-10-12 · Markdown
The short answer
| Way to run cold email | What it costs | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself with tools | Roughly $100–$400 a month in software, domains, inboxes and data for a small program | You: lists, copy, setup, warmup, sending and replies |
| Done-for-you agency | $2,500–$10,000 a month on retainer for most programs ($3,000–$7,000 typical), $11,000–$19,000+ for premium programs, SDR teams and campaign pods from about $8,000 to $30,000; plus $500–$2,000 a month for infrastructure and data and a $1,500–$5,000 onboarding fee | The agency's team, on a typical setup of 6–15 inboxes |
| AI SDR software | From $250 a month for 200 new contacts (AiSDR) to $2,500 for 2,500; some vendors quote only after a call | Software, with you reviewing |
| In-house SDR (US) | About $95,000–$135,000 a year fully loaded | One person, plus a manager |
| SLSBMB AI | $500 one-time playbook (launch price), then an all-inclusive Sending Engine budget from $800 a month — $3,000 runs 40 inboxes and 13,200 campaign emails; or contacts alone at $0.10 per verified email found | Specialist AI agents research and write; SLSBMB finds the contacts, sends and reads replies; you take the conversations |
The rest of this page shows where those numbers come from. Prices were checked on 12 October 2026 on the vendors' own pricing pages unless a published guide is named; they change often, so check the vendor before you buy.
Doing it yourself: the line items
| Line item | Published prices (12 October 2026) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sending domains | About $13–$19 a year each through Smartlead's mailbox add-ons | Never send cold email from your main domain; most setups use 2–10 domains |
| Inboxes | Puzzle Inbox lists Outlook 365 at $0.35 and Google Workspace at $3.00 per inbox; Smartlead's add-ons are $4.50 per Google or Outlook mailbox a month, $9 pre-warmed | Each inbox sends a small daily number of cold emails, so volume means more inboxes |
| Sending platform | Smartlead Base $39 a month (6,000 emails, 2,000 contacts); Instantly Growth $47 a month (5,000 emails) — both with unlimited mailboxes and warmup | Higher plans: Smartlead Pro $94 (90,000 emails), Instantly Hypergrowth $97 (125,000 emails) |
| Contact data | Apollo Basic about $49 per user a month on annual billing (published 2026 summaries); Anymail Finder from £22 a month for 400 credits, charged only when a verified email is found; Instantly lead credits from $47 a month | Verify every address before sending; bounces hurt deliverability |
| Enrichment and research workflows | Clay Launch from roughly $167–$185 a month (its pricing page shows both figures) | Optional; needs someone who builds workflows |
| Copy, research and replies | Your time, or a freelancer | The part the subscriptions don't cover |
A small do-it-yourself program — two domains, eight Google inboxes, a basic sending plan and data for several hundred new people a month — comes to roughly $130–$200 a month in subscriptions. The real cost is the hours: choosing audiences, writing sequences, configuring DNS, waiting out warmup, pacing sends and reading every reply.
Sources: Smartlead pricing, Instantly pricing, Puzzle Inbox, Clay pricing, Anymail Finder pricing, Apollo from Docket's 2026 pricing research.
Done-for-you agencies: what the money buys
Agency prices cover a wide range, and the retainer is rarely the whole bill:
- Most cold email programs cost $2,500–$10,000 a month on retainer; most B2B programs land between $3,000 and $7,000. The retainer covers only 60–70% of the real spend: domains, mailboxes, data and warmup add $500–$2,000 a month, onboarding fees run $1,500–$5,000, and most agencies require a three-month minimum (Smartlead, 8 October 2026).
- A typical agency sending setup is 3–5 domains with 2–3 inboxes each — 6 to 15 inboxes per client — launched at 25–30 emails per inbox a day (BounceZero, July 2026).
- Premium programs run $11,000–$19,000+ a month, commonly fixed for 3–6 months (Intelligent Resourcing, June 2026).
- Named agencies: Belkins starts email-only campaigns at $6,500 a month and omnichannel at $7,995; memoryBlue charges about $11,000 a month per dedicated SDR; Callbox charges $15,000–$30,000 a month per campaign pod; CIENCE charges a $5,000 one-time setup plus $2,000 a month, with SDRs at $1,500–$5,500 each on top (ZoomInfo, June 2026). SalesHive charges $8,000 a month for one US SDR on phone and email (250+ touches a day) and $12,000 for two (Prospeo, 2026).
- Pay per meeting: $200–$700 per booked meeting (Smartlead).
A few smaller agencies publish volume-based prices: Outbound System lists $1,499 / $2,499 / $3,999 a month for up to 15,000 / 30,000 / 60,000 emails, Sales.co $2,000 / $2,500 / $3,000 a month for up to 10,000 / 15,000 / 20,000 emails, and OutreachBloom starts from $2,400 a month. Our agency comparison puts each budget next to the Sending Engine.
AI SDR software
AiSDR publishes three plans: Solo at $250 a month for 200 new contacts a month (month to month), Explore at $900 for 800 (quarterly contract) and Scale at $2,500 for 2,500 (quarterly), with managed service as an extra. Several other AI SDR products, such as Artisan and 11x, quote prices after a call. See SLSBMB AI vs AI SDR software for how the approaches differ.
An in-house SDR
Published 2026 benchmarks put a US SDR at about $95,000–$135,000 a year fully loaded, with a ramp of three to four months before full output. The sources are on our SDR comparison.
SLSBMB AI
SLSBMB AI is priced in public for every step:
- Free AI interview — about ten minutes; PROXY writes your business brief.
- AI Outreach Playbook — $500 one-time at the launch price through 31 December 2026, then $1,000: every audience worth reaching, with evidence and a size estimate, and an opener plus two follow-ups for each.
- AI Contacts — $0.10 per verified business email found, with search and a sample free.
- Sending Engine — one monthly budget that includes the domains, inboxes, warmup, verified contacts, sending and reply reading:
| Monthly budget | Sending domains | Inboxes | Campaign emails a day | Campaign emails a month | New people a month | Cost per email |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $800 | 2 | 8 | 120 | 2,640 | 880 | $0.303 |
| $1,150 | 3 | 12 | 180 | 3,960 | 1,320 | $0.290 |
| $1,500 | 4 | 16 | 240 | 5,280 | 1,760 | $0.284 |
| $1,800 | 5 | 20 | 300 | 6,600 | 2,200 | $0.273 |
| $2,100 | 6 | 24 | 360 | 7,920 | 2,640 | $0.265 |
| $2,350 | 7 | 28 | 420 | 9,240 | 3,080 | $0.254 |
| $2,600 | 8 | 32 | 480 | 10,560 | 3,520 | $0.246 |
| $2,800 | 9 | 36 | 540 | 11,880 | 3,960 | $0.236 |
| $3,000 | 10 | 40 | 600 | 13,200 | 4,400 | $0.227 |
| $4,000 | 16 | 64 | 960 | 21,120 | 7,040 | $0.189 |
| $5,000 | 28 | 112 | 1,680 | 36,960 | 12,320 | $0.135 |
| $6,000 | 37 | 148 | 2,220 | 48,840 | 16,280 | $0.123 |
| $7,000 | 48 | 192 | 2,880 | 63,360 | 21,120 | $0.110 |
| $8,000 | 61 | 244 | 3,660 | 80,520 | 26,840 | $0.099 |
| $9,000 | 78 | 312 | 4,680 | 102,960 | 34,320 | $0.087 |
| $10,000 | 100 | 400 | 6,000 | 132,000 | 44,000 | $0.076 |
| $15,000 | 166 | 664 | 9,960 | 219,120 | 73,040 | $0.068 |
| $20,000 | 240 | 960 | 14,400 | 316,800 | 105,600 | $0.063 |
| $30,000 | 360 | 1,440 | 21,600 | 475,200 | 158,400 | $0.063 |
| $50,000 | 600 | 2,400 | 36,000 | 792,000 | 264,000 | $0.063 |
| $75,000 | 900 | 3,600 | 54,000 | 1,188,000 | 396,000 | $0.063 |
| $100,000 | 1,200 | 4,800 | 72,000 | 1,584,000 | 528,000 | $0.063 |
Reference forecast: 22 sending weekdays at mature capacity, with one opener and two follow-ups. Actual purchases follow the paid calendar, deliverability and remaining campaign work; these figures are not monthly contact limits.
Full capacity follows a 21-day warmup; the first campaign emails go out on day 22. There is no setup fee and no long-term contract.
The playbook behind the campaigns is where SLSBMB puts the work: PROXY's brief goes to a team of specialist AI agents — a researcher, a copywriter and a targeting specialist — working from a 30,000-word methodology refined through more than 300 revisions. One playbook takes 30–47 million tokens of AI work; a chatbot answer takes a few thousand. On the earlier version of this engine, SLSBMB delivered hundreds of replies for B2B clients within two months, and a client on the 8-inbox entry engine received leads within the first days of sending.
The same budget, side by side
| Monthly budget | At an agency | In the SLSBMB AI Sending Engine |
|---|---|---|
| $3,000 | Most programs cost $3,000–$7,000 for a 6–15 inbox setup, plus $500–$2,000 for infrastructure and data | 40 inboxes, 13,200 campaign emails to 4,400 new people, about $0.227 an email |
| $5,000 | Inside the typical $3,000–$7,000 retainer range | 112 inboxes, 36,960 campaign emails to 12,320 new people, about $0.135 an email |
| $8,000 | SalesHive: one US SDR on phone and email, 250+ touches a day | 244 inboxes, 80,520 campaign emails to 26,840 new people, about $0.099 an email |
| $12,000 | SalesHive: two US SDRs, 500+ touches a day | 500 inboxes, 165,000 campaign emails to 55,000 new people, about $0.073 an email |
| $15,000 | Callbox: one campaign pod costs $15,000–$30,000 | 664 inboxes, 219,120 campaign emails to 73,040 new people, about $0.068 an email |
Every Sending Engine figure includes the verified contacts, the domains and inboxes, their warmup, the campaigns from your playbook and reply sorting — with no setup fee and each month paid separately. The price of an email keeps falling as the engine grows, down to about $0.063 from $20,000 a month.
What quotes often leave out
- Setup or onboarding fees, which some agencies charge before the first month.
- Domains and inboxes, which tools and some agencies bill separately.
- Contact data overages once the plan's credits run out.
- The warmup weeks: new inboxes need two to three weeks before full volume, so the first month sends little whatever you pay.
- Who answers replies: "reply handling" can mean anything from forwarding replies to booking meetings.
- Minimum terms of three to six months, which some agencies require.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a cold email agency cost per month?
Most cold email programs cost $2,500–$10,000 a month on retainer, typically $3,000–$7,000, plus $500–$2,000 for infrastructure and data and a $1,500–$5,000 onboarding fee. Premium programs run $11,000–$19,000+ a month, and SDR teams or campaign pods cost from about $8,000 to $30,000. A few smaller agencies publish volume prices from about $1,500 a month. Many quote only after a call.
What is the cheapest way to run cold email?
Doing it yourself with a sending platform, a few inboxes and pay-per-result contact data, for roughly $130–$200 a month in subscriptions — if you have the time and skill to research, write, set up and run it. If you don't, the cheapest managed option depends on volume: compare what each price includes, not only the headline.
How much does SLSBMB AI cost?
The interview is free, the AI Outreach Playbook is $500 one-time at the launch price, verified contacts are $0.10 each, and the Sending Engine starts at $800 a month for 2 domains, 8 inboxes and 120 campaign emails a day, with contacts included. Every price is on the pricing page.
Why does the first month send so little?
New domains and inboxes must be warmed for two to three weeks before they can carry cold email without landing in spam. SLSBMB warms them for 21 days and sends the first campaign emails on day 22; agencies and do-it-yourself setups face the same wait.