lemlist: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is lemlist?

lemlist is a sales outreach platform for cold email and multichannel prospecting. You build a sequence of steps (emails, LinkedIn actions, calls and manual tasks), add a list of leads, and lemlist sends each step on schedule, personalised with the lead’s own data, until the lead replies or the sequence ends. It is made by the company of the same name (lemlist.com) and is best known for heavily personalised cold email driven by custom variables.

The product has grown beyond sending. lemlist now includes a lead database for finding prospects (its homepage advertises more than 650 million contacts at the time of writing), waterfall enrichment that tries several data providers to find a verified email or phone number, the lemwarm warm-up tool for sender reputation, and an AI assistant that drafts sequences and personalisation from a prompt. Data lookups are paid with credits, which are only spent when a result comes back.

The problem it solves is the gap between a list of prospects and booked meetings. Instead of exporting leads from one tool, verifying emails in a second, sending in a third and logging replies in a CRM by hand, lemlist does the finding, sending and follow-up in one place and syncs results to your CRM.

Who it is for

• SDR and BDR teams that run outbound every day and want email, LinkedIn and call steps in one cadence.
• Founders doing founder-led sales who need a working outbound system without hiring an ops person.
• Agencies and lead-generation freelancers running campaigns for several clients, who benefit from the Email plan’s unlimited users and senders.
• Recruiters and partnership managers who reach out to people one-to-one at scale and rely on personalisation.

lemlist is not the right tool for newsletters or marketing email to opted-in subscribers; use an email marketing platform such as ActiveCampaign for that. It is also not a CRM. Deals, forecasts and account history belong in a system like Close, HubSpot or Pipedrive, with lemlist syncing into it. Teams that only need to send very high volumes of plain cold email across many inboxes, with no LinkedIn or data needs, may find dedicated email-only senders cheaper.

Key features

• Multichannel sequences. A visual sequence builder with steps for email, LinkedIn (profile visit, invitation, message), calls and manual tasks. The step picker has a Steps tab and a Conditions tab for branching.
• Conditions. Branch on lead data or behaviour, for example opened or clicked an email, Has Linkedin URL, Accepted invite (with a wait time) or Is in my LinkedIn Network. Behaviour-based conditions cannot be the first step, because no lead has acted yet.
• Personalisation variables. Any CSV column becomes a variable you insert with double curly braces, such as {{firstName}} or {{companyName}}. Custom variables are case-sensitive and can take a fallback value after a pipe character for leads with missing data. AI variables can generate or clean a field per lead.
• Lead database and enrichment. Search for prospects inside lemlist, then find and verify emails and phone numbers through waterfall enrichment across several providers. Each successful result costs credits.
• lemwarm. Email warm-up that builds and maintains sender reputation. lemwarm Essential is bundled with Multichannel Expert and requires an active paid plan.
• AI campaign builder. lemlist’s AI assistant (lemAgent) can generate a multichannel campaign, with steps, timing and branching, from a short description of your offer and audience. The output is editable before launch.
• Calls and dialer. Multichannel Expert adds a built-in call dialer so call steps can be made from inside lemlist.
• CRM integrations. Native two-way sync with HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive, plus auto-launching leads into campaigns from other sources.

Pricing

At the time of writing lemlist sells three plans to new customers. The Email plan is priced by monthly sending volume for the whole team; Multichannel Expert is priced per user. Quarterly and annual billing are discounted against monthly billing.

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing	Key limits
Email	$69/month (50,000 emails/month tier)	$55/month	Cold email only; unlimited users, senders and contacts; no free trial; no monthly credits included
Multichannel Expert	$109/user/month	$87/user/month	Email, LinkedIn, calls and SMS steps; up to 5 sending emails per user; 400 credits per user per month; lemwarm Essential included; 14-day free trial
Enterprise	Custom	Annual only	Minimum 5 seats; advanced team management and custom setup; 400 credits per user per month

Other costs and rules worth knowing:

• Credits. Lookups in the lead database and enrichment are paid with credits. Extra packs can be bought (2,000 credits cost $28 as a one-off, with cheaper rates on monthly, quarterly and yearly subscriptions). Purchased credits roll over; trial credits do not.
• Plans cannot be mixed. The Email plan and Multichannel Expert cannot run in the same team, and you cannot switch directly between them. lemlist’s workaround is a new team on the other plan, or contacting support.
• Legacy plans. Customers on the older Email Pro plan keep it at their current price; it is no longer sold to new teams.

Prices change, so check lemlist.com/pricing before you buy.

How to use lemlist: step-by-step

1. Start the trial and connect a sending address

1. Sign up for the 14-day trial on lemlist.com. No card is needed. The trial includes 200 one-time credits and a cap of 50 emails per day.
2. Open Settings and go to the sending settings to connect an email account. Choose Google, Microsoft or another provider via SMTP and IMAP. Google accounts connect through OAuth; approve every permission requested or the connection will fail.
3. Make sure your sending domain has SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. lemlist requires them, and transactional services such as SendGrid, Mailgun or Amazon SES are not supported as senders.
4. Set a daily sending limit for the address. A missing limit or an unassigned seat are the usual reasons emails do not go out.

Use a secondary domain for cold outreach rather than your main company domain, so deliverability problems do not affect your everyday email. lemlist can also help you buy a domain and mailbox for this.

2. Create a campaign and build the sequence

1. Go to Campaigns and click Create campaign in the top-right corner. The campaign opens on the Sequence tab.
2. Click Add step. From the Steps tab, add your first email. Write a short, specific message and insert variables such as {{firstName}} and {{companyName}}.
3. Add a delay and a follow-up email that replies in the same thread.
4. On Multichannel Expert, add LinkedIn steps. Start with a condition from the Conditions tab: Has Linkedin URL, so LinkedIn actions only reach leads with a profile. On the Yes branch, add a profile visit and an invitation, then an Accepted invite condition with a wait time that sends a LinkedIn message to Yes and an email or call task to No.
5. If many leads may already be connections, use Is in my LinkedIn Network: send a message to Yes and an invitation to No.
6. To save time, describe your offer and audience to the AI assistant and let it generate a draft sequence, then edit each step.

3. Import leads

1. In the campaign, open the leads list and click Import new leads, then choose CSV import.
2. Your file needs a header row and an email address for every lead. Name columns after lemlist’s standard variables (for example firstName, lastName, companyName) so they map automatically; any other column becomes a custom variable named after its header.
3. Check the mapping, then import.
4. Alternatively, search the lead database for prospects matching your ideal customer, use credits to find verified emails, and add them straight to the campaign. You can also connect HubSpot, Salesforce or Pipedrive and auto-launch leads into the campaign.

4. Preview, test and launch

1. Open the Launch tab. It shows how many leads are ready, lets you preview the sequence for each lead and confirm the sending schedule and conditions.
2. Preview several leads to catch broken variables and awkward fallbacks.
3. Launch a small batch of 10 to 20 leads first to confirm that the condition logic behaves as expected, then add the rest.
4. Watch replies and results in the campaign reports, and let the CRM integration log activity and replies on the matching records.

Tips to get better results

• Warm up before you send. Turn on lemwarm for each new sending address as soon as you are on a paid plan, and give it time before launching campaigns at volume.
• Keep daily volumes modest per mailbox. Spread sending across several addresses (up to five per user on Multichannel Expert) rather than pushing one inbox hard.
• Personalise the first line, not every line. A relevant opening sentence driven by a custom variable outperforms heavy templating that breaks when data is missing.
• Always set fallbacks. Add a fallback to every variable so a missing first name never produces “Hi ,”.
• Use LinkedIn conditions to avoid awkward duplicates. Check network status before sending invitations, and stop LinkedIn steps for leads without a profile.
• Spend credits after you qualify a list. Filter the lead database tightly first, then enrich, because every successful lookup costs credits.
• Test with a small batch. The Launch tab preview catches most mistakes; a 10 to 20 lead pilot catches the rest.
• Write prompts for the AI with real context. Give the assistant your offer, audience, proof points and tone. Our guide on how to write better prompts covers the basics.

Limitations and common problems

• Plan lock-in between Email and Multichannel Expert. Pick carefully at the start, because moving between the two means creating a new team or contacting support.
• No warm-up during the trial. The trial also caps sending at 50 emails per day, so it shows the workflow but not real deliverability at scale.
• LinkedIn automation risk. LinkedIn limits automated activity. Keep daily invitations and messages conservative and personalise them, or the account may be restricted.
• Credits add a variable cost. Finding and verifying emails and phone numbers draws on credits. Heavy prospecting can exceed the 400 monthly credits per user, so budget for top-ups.
• Deliverability is still your job. lemlist requires SPF, DKIM and DMARC and cannot fix a poor list or a burned domain. Verify emails before sending and use a secondary domain.
• Not a CRM. Pipeline management, forecasting and account history need a CRM; lemlist syncs to one rather than replacing it.

Alternatives

• Reply.io - multichannel sales engagement with email, LinkedIn and calls, plus AI SDR features. See our Reply.io guide.
• Apollo.io - a larger B2B contact database with sequences and a dialer attached; better if data is the main need. See our Apollo.io guide.
• Close - a sales CRM with built-in calling, SMS and email Workflows, for teams that want the pipeline and outreach in one tool. See our Close guide.
• Amplemarket - an AI sales platform combining lead discovery and outbound, aimed at teams that want more automation of research.
• Instantly or Smartlead - email-only cold senders built for many inboxes at high volume, if you do not need LinkedIn or calls.

Browse the full list in our sales and CRM tools directory.

Verdict

Sign up for lemlist if you run outbound across email and LinkedIn, want prospect data and enrichment in the same tool, and value conditions that adapt the sequence to what each lead does. Use the 14-day Multichannel Expert trial to build one real sequence, import a small list and test the LinkedIn branches before committing. Choose the Email plan instead only if you will never need LinkedIn or calls and want a flat price for a large team. Skip lemlist if you need marketing email to subscribers, a full CRM, or the lowest possible cost per cold email at very high volume.