To scale your outreach, using an efficient email automation tool while sending cold emails that get opened, you need more than just automation. You need a solid lead generation strategy:
That’s where tools like Salesforge and Smartlead come in, enabling businesses to effortlessly engage in cold emailing. But the way they approach these challenges is very different, allowing businesses to engage in cold outreach to pick their best suited platform.
Salesforge is more than just an email sequencing tool. It's a full modular ecosystem, with its own infrastructure (Infraforge, Mailforge, Primeforge), Leadsdatabase (Leadsforge), enhanced by unlimited warm-up (Warmforge) and finally, it is all combined with Agent Frank; It’s AI SDR. The fact that these are all available is not special, but what makes The Forge ecosystem special is that it is completely modular. It would allow for everything to be done within it, together with mailboxes from Mailreef, for example. This allows for extra flexibility for its users, creating their perfect techstack.
But moving back to just Salesforge. The platform itself is also optimized for success, with numerous features which can save 100s of hours, making it suitable for 1000s of agencies sales and individuals. This makes it an amazing standalone tool for anyone who wants to optimize their cold email campaigns.
– Verified G2 Reviewer, February 2025
Smartlead offers a robust set of automation tools and CRM integrations, appealing to agencies, sales leaders, recruiters all using smartlead. It’s favored by users who need volume sending and center their generation strategy with Smartlead. For these users, Smartlead is an absolutely great solution!
– G2 Reviewer, June 2024
Some users on Reddit have reported that Smartlead has some issues with its warmup. The issue is that the mailboxes get disconnected during the warmup, or as is the case in the example below, the quality of the warmup is just subpar, which harms your email limits or email reputation.
This is a review of Smartleads warmup.
If someone sends out large scale email campaigns. The warmup of their mailboxes are incredibly important, as campaigns which are not warmed up will have damaged deliverability and under perform compared to others.
This is why Salesforge has an advantage in this case, as the platform has Warmforge included. This is an incredibly reliable and high quality warmup service, which has features like inbox placement tests to ensure the optimized deliverability and quality that help you to build your pipeline.
An example of a review of Warmforge hosted on g2.com
Another part about Smartlead where it’s customer have raised concerns is in regards to it’s customer service.
Overall it is quite versatile and provides plenty of touch points where its clients can reach out to, but its users have voiced complaints about the long response times and their quality. This means that although users mention that Smartleads support has been useful, they still have to wait at least a day for a response, and in some cases still are not able to solve the issues at all. This of course causes lots of frustration and anger and can even pause the entire lead generation process.
Salesforge on the other hand, provides 24/7 customer support staffed by humans, which respond quickly and help however they can. This means that their clients always get helped as soon as possible and there are no delays for clients who have issues.
Salesforge leads in cold email outreach personalization and is considered an absolute game changer by using AI to generate unique cold emails tailored to each recipient, in multiple languages, making it a solution for diverse industries . It doesn’t just rely on templates, which results in higher reply rates and more human-like conversations.
Smartlead uses dynamic variables and sequences but lacks the AI first approach. You’ll need to write your templates manually or repurpose them across campaigns. This can proof time consuming and make it less intuitive compared to others, which can be a put-off for it’s users.
While Salesforge itself does not offer white labeling yet, this features is expected to come out in the very near future. In the mean time agencies and service providers can access this functionality through Infraforge, which is part of the broader Forge ecosystem. Infraforge provides a fully brandable cold email infrastructure, making it a compelling option for teams that need control over branding without the burden of extra fees, whilst also enabling for an extra revenue stream for agencies.
This makes Infraforge (and soon also Salesforge) an excellent fit for agencies and consultants who want to offer a professional, branded experience to their clients while relying on the an engine that is made to close deals.
By contrast, Smartlead offers white labeling as part of its platform, but typically ties it to higher tier plans. Additionally, users often need third-party tools to achieve the same level of deliverability and infrastructure customization available natively through Infraforge and Salesforge, highlighting their customizable platform and cost advantages.
In short: if you’re looking for a customizable platform, Infraforge and Salesforge are strong, scalable options for modern agencies, offering cost effective pricing and the best email marketing tool out there.
Both tools offer competitive pricing with different models. Smartlead however, again has some caveats to this, namely in regards to add-ons.
It may seem like Smartlead is a very straight forward choice, with a good price but this is not all. This is because Smartlead has some features locked as add ons, which cost extra money for its users to use.
Salesforge on the other hand is clear with its pricing, offering two possible plans, with accompanying costs for Personalization credits. This effective pricing have revolutionized how easy it is to use, and also to scale up with. This makes Salesforge the best platform and cost effective as well.