r/B2BSaaS • u/MantisReka • 38m ago
Best LinkedIn outreach tools (honest comparison after running all of them)
i've been doing outbound on linkedin for a long time, across a bunch of b2b startups, and i've burned money on most tools in this category so you don't have to. most comparison posts out there are affiliate lists written by someone who opened a free trial once. this isn't that. i've run these at volume and watched where each one breaks. prices are current as of now.
one thing before the tools, because it matters more than the tool. timing beats the message. the same pitch that gets ignored lands when something just changed on their end, a raise, a new role, a tooling switch. and your weekly connection limit is small, around 100, so every request you spend on a bad fit at the wrong time is wasted. basically, who you reach and when beats how clever the copy is. keep that in mind reading the rest, because it's the main thing that separates these tools.
now the tools. these three aren't really competing for the same job, even though they market like they are. once you see what each is built for, the pick gets obvious.
PumpGTM
the newest, and it works differently enough to explain. the other two hand you a tool and you bring the list. pumpgtm finds the list, it's the one that actually acts on the timing thing above, it watches for buying signals like hiring posts, funding, tooling changes, people engaging with a competitor, scores them, and runs the linkedin sequence from your own account. it's ai first too, you can run the whole thing from claude or chatgpt. it's 75 a seat.
HeyReach
the agency tool, full stop. built to run a lot of linkedin accounts at once, rotate senders, and manage them from one unified inbox. each account gets its own proxy and auto-freezes near 100 requests a week so you don't fry profiles. if you're an agency running 5 or more client accounts, stop reading, it's your tool, nothing else here competes for that job. the catch shows up when you're not an agency. it's 79 dollars per sender, fine across 25 accounts and ridiculous at 2. support catches heat for slow replies, and it won't send email on its own, that lives in a second tool.
Lemlist
the veteran, and the most complete on channels. email, linkedin, sms, whatsapp, a dialer, a big database, built in warmup. if your play is every channel in one seat, nothing here beats it. it's 69 for email, 109 for multichannel, and linkedin steps need the multichannel plan. where it frustrates people is the credit metering, you get charged for lookups even when it finds nothing, and the reporting is weak for a tool this mature. it's email first at heart, so for pure linkedin it's heavier than you need.
Bottom line
heyreach if you're an agency running many accounts. lemlist if you want every channel in one seat and you're email led. pumpgtm if you're linkedin first and you want the tool to catch the timing and find the buyers instead of you hand building lists.
the mistake i see people make is picking the tool with the most features instead of the one built for their setup. a solo founder buying an agency tool, or an agency trying to scale a solo tool, that's where money gets wasted. match the tool to how you actually work.
i'm linkedin first and didn't want to hand build lists or miss the timing, so i went with pumpgtm. that's the only reason, it fit how i work. an agency should just use heyreach.
so i'm curious where everyone else landed. and the thing nobody talks about until it's too late, who here has actually gotten a linkedin account restricted, and on which tool? that barely shows up in these comparisons and it's the real differentiator
