An AI cold email tool is one of three things: a writing aid that drafts emails for you to paste somewhere, a sending tool with AI features added to it, or an agent that finds the people, writes, sends and handles replies. The label is the same on all three, and the prices run from nothing to hundreds of dollars a month. Pick by the job you are short on. If drafting is slow, a writing aid is enough; if sending and tracking is the gap, you want a sender; if the whole thing is not getting done, you want the agent.
Writing is rarely the actual problem. A decent email is a few hundred words of effort, and any chat model can draft one. The slow parts are finding the right people, finding something true to say to each, sending without wrecking your domain, and answering the replies on time. That is where the products differ, and it is the lens for this page.
Three kinds, and what the AI is doing in each
| Kind | The AI does | You still do |
|---|---|---|
| Writing aid (generators, chat models) | Drafts subject lines and bodies from what you paste in | Find the people, research them, send, follow up, answer |
| Sender with AI features | Writes copy, varies it per contact, sometimes sorts or drafts replies | Choose the audience, supply the list, check quality, handle the conversation |
| Agent | Finds people, researches each, writes, sends, follows up, replies, books | Describe the buyer, set limits, take the meetings |
Our piece on a cold email ChatGPT prompt shows the first kind in detail, including why pasting one email at a time stops working around twenty.
What the sender tools list, read on 2026-10-30
These are the entry plans shown on each vendor's own pricing page that day. Plans move, and some pages disagree with themselves in small ways, so open the page before you buy.
- Smartlead: Base at $39 a month ($32 on annual billing), with 6,000 emails and 2,000 contacts a month.
- Salesforge: Pro at $40 a month for 1,000 active contacts and 5,000 emails. Its Agent Frank AI SDR is a separate line at $499 a month billed quarterly.
- Instantly: the Growth outreach plan at $47 a month for 5,000 emails and 1,000 uploaded contacts. The page also lists an AI Email Writer and, on higher bundles, an AI Reply Agent.
- lemlist: the Email plan at $69 a month, or $55 on yearly billing, with up to 50,000 emails a month and AI agents named on the plan. Lead data is a separate add-on.
- Rocketship: Starter at $12 a month with 250 credits, so about 62 people found with emails at 4 credits each.
The first four charge for sending capacity. The people come from somewhere else. The fifth charges for the people found, and the writing, sending and replying come with them. That is why $12 and $47 are not the same product at different prices.
A worked comparison: 200 people in a month
Say a recruiting firm wants to email 200 hiring managers. With a sender at about $40 to $70, add a source of 200 verified emails and the hours to research and write them. With Rocketship, 200 people at 4 credits each is 800 credits. Starter's 250 is not enough, Launch includes 500, and one extra pack of 1,000 credits at $45 covers the rest, so the month is $24.99 plus $45, which is $69.99. These are not the same thing. One buys capacity, and you do the work. The other buys the work and gives you less control over each sentence.
The 20-email test for any of them
Whatever you pick, run this before you trust it.
- Generate 20 emails to 20 real companies in your target group.
- Read five aloud. If you would not say it to a person at a conference, it fails.
- Check one fact in each email against the company's own website. A made-up detail is the most damaging failure. Rocketship says it reads each buyer's own website and does not invent facts about them, which you should verify rather than take on trust, here and anywhere else.
- Look for repeats. If ten of the twenty open with the same sentence, filters and readers will notice.
- Check that the call to action is one clear, easy next step.
Do AI emails land in spam?
Filters do not detect AI as such. They measure authentication, complaints and bounces. Google's bulk sender guidelines say to keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and avoid reaching 0.30%, and they apply once you send more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses. Do AI-written cold emails go to spam goes through the signals. The practical advice is to start small, keep the lists clean and send from an address you control.
The legal baseline does not change
The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email. It requires accurate header information, an ad disclosure, a physical postal address and a working opt-out honored within 10 business days, with penalties of up to $53,088 per email, and hiring another company to send does not shift responsibility to them. If the tool does not make it easy to add your address and honor opt-outs, it is not ready to use.
If you are comparing sending tools in more depth, best cold email software covers sending, inbox setup and a two-week test.
For the agent kind, where the whole job is done, see Rocketship's plans and credits; it sends from your Gmail, does not send from Outlook, and leaves the meeting itself to you.