AI outbound sales software contacts people who did not ask to hear from you, using email, the phone, LinkedIn or a mix. The channel decides most of what matters: email is cheap and the rules are simple, phone adds legal duties and cost, and LinkedIn limits what any tool can do for you. Pick the channel first, then the tool. For most founders, that means starting with email from your own inbox and adding other channels only when email is working.
The pages that rank for this phrase tend to list twenty tools in one table. That hides the fact that a dialer and an email sequencer are different purchases. This page goes channel by channel: what the software does, the rules, and what it costs.
What the software does. It finds contacts, writes or varies the message, sends from a mailbox, follows up on a schedule and handles replies. The cheapest tools only send. The ones sold as agents also find and answer.
The rules. The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email. You need accurate sender information, a message that identifies itself as an ad, a physical postal address, and an opt-out honored within 10 business days. Penalties run up to $53,088 per email, and hiring another company to send does not transfer responsibility. Google's bulk sender guidelines add that once you send more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools must stay below 0.30%, and Google's guidance is to aim for under 0.10%.
What it costs. Read from vendor pricing pages on 2026-10-30: Smartlead Base at $39 a month, Salesforge Pro at $40, Instantly Growth outreach at $47 and lemlist Email at $69 ($55 on yearly billing) for sending capacity. AiSDR charges $1.50 per person prospected on pay as you go. Rocketship starts at $12 a month. For how those compare, see best AI SDR tools.
Phone
What the software does. AI voice agents dial or answer calls, qualify the person and can book a time. Some tools add a dialer that connects a human to a list. AiSDR's pricing page mentions AI call steps through the Aircall dialer. Rocketship, on Launch and up, makes AI phone calls and answers your existing number when it is forwarded to a Rocketship line at $5 a month; the calls say they are an AI assistant and can book the meeting on the call.
The rules. On February 8, 2024 the FCC announced a Declaratory Ruling that recognizes calls made with AI-generated voices as "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which holds them to the same standards as other artificial or prerecorded voice calls. You need to know what consent applies to the numbers you are calling before you let a voice agent dial anyone. This is not legal advice, and is AI cold calling legal goes through it with the sources.
What it costs. Voice vendors price this in different ways, so ask each one for the cost of a single connected five-minute call, not just the monthly fee. On Rocketship the forwarding line is $5 a month on top of your plan.
What the software does. Some tools send connection requests and direct messages for you. AiSDR's page lists LinkedIn connection requests and DMs among its channels, and lemlist's Multichannel plan adds LinkedIn, SMS and calling to its email plan. Rocketship does not send LinkedIn connection requests or DMs.
The catch. Before you let any tool act as you on LinkedIn, read LinkedIn's own terms for yourself, because the exposure there is your personal account and not just an email domain. A cheaper, safer use of LinkedIn is to find the right person to email and to join public conversations by hand.
Public questions where people ask for what you sell
A fourth channel is not outbound in the classic sense: finding the posts on Reddit, Quora and LinkedIn where someone is already asking for your kind of help. Rocketship's Conversations (Launch and up) finds those and drafts the reply, comment or DM. You send it from your own account, or turn on Post for me, where the free Rocketship Chrome extension posts Reddit replies and LinkedIn comments from your own accounts, at most 5 a day per account, one at a time an hour apart. It never votes, never sends DMs or connection requests for you and never posts on Quora. Conversations has the details.
A cost sheet for 300 people a month
Say a cleaning company's founder wants to reach 300 facility managers a month. Email only: with Rocketship that is 1,200 credits at 4 per person with an email, which is Launch at $24.99 for 500 plus one pack of 1,000 at $45, a month of $69.99. At AiSDR's pay-as-you-go rate it is 300 times $1.50, which is $450. With a sender at $39 to $70 you add a data source and your own time. Add phone calls and you add credits or minutes on top, plus the consent checks.
A rule for adding channels
- Run email for four weeks and count replies and meetings per 100 people.
- If email works, add a second channel for the accounts that did not answer, not for everyone.
- Keep each channel's rules in a short note you can read in one minute.
- Stop adding channels when meetings per week exceed what you can take. At that point the constraint is the calls, not the outreach.
Our comparison of cold calling vs cold email has the trade for a startup. If you are not sure the whole exercise is worth it, do I need an SDR or can AI do outbound is the short version.
Rocketship is the option here that covers email, phone on Launch and up, and public conversations in one place, with plans from $12 a month on the pricing page; it does not do LinkedIn messages or Outlook and it will not run a video demo.