Walego vs Instantly: cold email or LinkedIn prospecting?

Two tools, two philosophies

Let's start with the most important thing: Walego and Instantly don't do the same thing. This isn't like comparing Waalaxy and La Growth Machine, which play in the same court. Here, we're comparing two distinct acquisition channels.

Instantly is cold email at scale. The idea: you buy domains, warm them up, plug in mailboxes, and send hundreds (even thousands) of emails per day. Volume is the strategy. The tool excels at this — unlimited email accounts, automatic warmup across a network of 4 million accounts, IP rotation, deliverability monitoring. For pure cold email, it's probably the best value on the market.

Walego is LinkedIn prospecting. The approach is different: instead of sending 500 cold emails, you send 30 targeted connection requests to people whose profiles you've analyzed, whose data you've enriched, and whose intent you've qualified. The volume is lower, but the reply rate is significantly higher — and every conversation happens on LinkedIn, where your prospects already spend time.

Cold email vs LinkedIn: the numbers in 2026

Let's be real: cold email has a problem. Spam filters are getting more aggressive, Apple Mail Privacy Protection skews open rates, and the sheer volume of emails everyone receives makes the competition for attention fierce. A good reply rate in B2B cold email in 2026 is 5 to 10%. Above 10%, you're among the best.

On LinkedIn, the dynamic is different. A connection request with a personalized note is a social interaction — not a sales pitch in a saturated inbox. Connection acceptance rates hover around 30-40% when targeting is good, and reply rates on follow-up messages can reach 15-25%. It's a different world.

The flip side: LinkedIn enforces strict limits. You can't send 500 invitations per day without risking a restriction. It's 80-100 per week max on a standard account. So the volume is naturally lower than cold email — but each interaction carries much more value.

Database and enrichment

This is an area where both tools invest heavily, but differently.

Instantly offers SuperSearch, a database of 450M+ B2B contacts with waterfall enrichment across 5+ providers. It's impressive on paper, and it's a real advantage for finding verified emails at scale. The catch: it's a separate module starting at $47/month, with a credit system that drains fast when you're exporting a lot.

Walego takes a different approach. Enrichment is baked directly into workflows: when a prospect passes through the "Full Enrich" block, they're enriched via 20+ providers (FullEnrich, DropContact) in a single action. You get the email, phone number, and company data. For the French market, the Pappers block gives access to SIREN data, revenue, headcount — a real edge that Instantly doesn't have.

The fundamental difference: with Instantly, you start from an email database to send emails. With Walego, you start from LinkedIn to identify, qualify and engage — and email becomes a complementary channel, not the main one.

The CRM: built-in vs bolt-on

Instantly launched a CRM module, but let's be honest: it's still basic. It's a recent addition, billed separately, that gets the job done for tracking simple deals but doesn't replace a real CRM. Most Instantly users still rely on HubSpot or Pipedrive alongside it.

Walego built its CRM into the product from day one. Sales pipeline, AI-powered lead scoring, dynamic segments, custom properties, contact groups, complete LinkedIn interaction history. It's not an afterthought — it's the core of the platform, right alongside automation.

In practice, this changes a lot. When a prospect accepts your LinkedIn connection and replies to your message, their status updates automatically in the CRM. When the AI classifies them as a "qualified lead", they move into the right pipeline. No copy-pasting between tools, no risk of losing a prospect along the way.

AI: two different approaches

Instantly bets big on email-side AI. The Reply Agent automatically reads incoming replies, handles objections, sends calendar links, and updates the CRM status. The Copilot helps create sequences and email subjects. It's well-designed for the email workflow.

Walego uses AI differently, at multiple levels of the prospecting chain. Natural language prospect search lets you describe your ideal target in plain English ("find me HR directors at mid-size manufacturing companies in Western Europe") and the AI finds matching profiles. Automatic persona classification routes each prospect to the right workflow. Message generation is based on the full LinkedIn profile analysis — not just a first name and company.

Both approaches are valid. Instantly's AI optimizes email. Walego's AI optimizes prospecting end-to-end.

Pricing: watch out for hidden costs

Instantly's pricing looks attractive at first glance: $30/month on an annual plan for Growth. But the reality is more nuanced, because Instantly bills each module separately.

If you ONLY need cold email, Instantly is unbeatable on price. If you want a complete prospecting stack (LinkedIn + CRM + enrichment), Walego often comes out cheaper overall — and it's one tool to manage instead of three or four.

Email deliverability: Instantly's advantage

This is Instantly's playing field, and credit where it's due: on email deliverability, they're above everyone else. Automatic warmup across a network of millions of accounts, server and IP rotation (SISR), real-time reputation monitoring — everything is designed to land your emails in the inbox, not in spam.

Walego offers email sending via SMTP, Gmail or Outlook, with open and click tracking via Brevo. It's functional, but it's clearly not the tool's core focus. If high-volume cold email is your main strategy, Instantly does it better.

But there's a counter-argument: on LinkedIn, "deliverability" isn't even a question. Your message lands. Always. There's no spam filter, no promotions folder, no domain blacklist. When you send a LinkedIn message, your prospect sees it — period.

Walego + Instantly: the complete stack?

A lot of high-performing teams in 2026 combine both approaches. The idea: use Walego for LinkedIn prospecting (targeting, qualification, engagement) and Instantly for cold email in parallel or as a follow-up.

A typical workflow: you identify your targets with Walego (AI search + enrichment), engage them on LinkedIn (connection + personalized message), and for those who don't accept the connection after 2 weeks, you switch to an email sequence via Instantly using the email retrieved through Walego's enrichment.

That's the multichannel approach that actually works — not one tool doing everything half-heartedly, but two tools each nailing their own channel. Walego's native webhook lets you push non-responders directly to Instantly without any manual work.

Who is it for?

Our verdict

The question isn't really "Walego or Instantly" — it's "LinkedIn or cold email?" And the answer depends on your market, your target and your volume.

Instantly is the king of cold email. If that's your channel and you're doing volume, it's the tool you need. Nobody does it better in terms of deliverability and value for money on large-scale email.

Walego is built for teams who believe B2B prospecting in 2026 starts with LinkedIn. Because your prospects are there, because conversations are more natural, and because a built-in CRM with native enrichment and AI workflows eliminates the chaos of maintaining 4 tools in parallel.

And if you're on the fence: start with whichever channel your prospects are most responsive on. You can always add the other one later.

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