| Criteria | Lemwarm | Instantly |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | Standalone deliverability tool focused on automated warm-up and monitoring. | Cold email platform with integrated warm-up included on all Outreach plans. |
| Warm-up network | States a network of 20,000+ healthy domains; personalized warm-up is available on the Smart plan. | Vendor reports 1M+ to 4.2M+ accounts, along with automated placement tests. |
| Pricing model | Per email address: Essential €29/mo; Smart €49/mo. The Essential tier is included with specific lemlist plans. | Flat fee per workspace: Growth $37, Hypergrowth $97, Light Speed $358; all plans include unlimited accounts and warm-up |
| Initial ramp guidance | Typical warm-up phase runs approximately 3–4 weeks; continue warm-up alongside campaigns. | Guided, gradual day-by-day ramp with a stable limit near 30 sends per inbox; warm-up should remain active. |
| Monitoring & testing | Includes deliverability score, DNS checks, and alerts for potential risks. | Offers automated inbox placement tests and blacklist monitoring. |
| Best fit | Ideal for teams seeking robust warm-up and monitoring, particularly those already using lemlist. | Designed for agencies and high-volume teams that need unlimited accounts within one plan. |
Warm-up is a technical necessity, not a marketing channel. The right pricing structure depends on how many inboxes you need to prepare and how frequently you add new domains to your outreach workflow.
Lemwarm charges on a per-email basis, with Essential at €29/month and Smart at €49/month. If you already subscribe to qualifying lemlist plans, Lemwarm Essential is included per user, and you may upgrade to Smart at a reduced rate. This integration helps teams already using lemlist manage budgets and deliverability more efficiently.
Instantly uses tiered flat-rate pricing per workspace: Growth ($37), Hypergrowth ($97), and Light Speed ($358) monthly. All Outreach plans come with unlimited inboxes and warm-up capabilities, appealing to agencies and teams rotating many email accounts. Optional add-ons are available for data or CRM enhancements.
Warm-up simulates authentic, positive mailbox activity, helping providers recognize trustworthy sender behavior. The process is technical at its core, meant to establish good reputation, not merely boost engagement.
Lemwarm conducts automated exchanges within a closed pool and reports a network of over 20,000 domains. The Smart plan provides personalized warm-up messages and offers the option to use your actual templates, ensuring alignment with your real campaign signals. Lemwarm recommends an initial warm-up period of around 3–4 weeks, and ongoing activity during live campaigns.
Instantly states that warm-up occurs across a vast proprietary network, combining a progressive ramp-up with placement checks. According to vendor sources, this network ranges from 1M+ to 4.2M+ accounts, though users are encouraged to evaluate effectiveness based on their own experiences and placement tests.
If you are unfamiliar with warm-up routines, review the complete guide to email warm-up in 2025 provided by our team for hands-on frameworks and common pitfalls.
Effective monitoring allows you to catch authentication lapses, reputation drops, or content-related filtering before they negatively impact outreach. Placement testing enables prompt adjustments ahead of full-scale sending.
Lemwarm offers a deliverability score, real-time alerts, and comprehensive DNS setup checks, including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, and related domains. It monitors risky behavior patterns and helps maintain consistent signals during both ramp-up and active campaigns.
Instantly combines automated inbox placement tests and blacklist monitoring with its warm-up services. These tests can be used to validate system updates or DNS changes, and maintaining a habit of verifying with external tools is advantageous when deliverability is business-critical.
Most deliverability setbacks can be traced back to overly aggressive sending patterns or scaling. Restricting per-inbox daily volume and distributing sending across multiple domains helps build and maintain sender reputation.
Lemwarm focuses on preparing and monitoring inboxes, but is not designed to send outreach emails directly. The advised approach is to keep warm-up running during production campaigns, and maintain a consistent activity pattern after the initial 3–4 week ramp period.
Instantly recommends a cautiously paced, day-by-day ramp-up, with a mature sending cap set at around 30 emails per inbox each day. For higher sending needs, the platform suggests scaling horizontally (adding more warmed inboxes), rather than increasing volume per account.
Your best option depends on whether you seek a dedicated warm-up service or a comprehensive platform that incorporates outreach, testing, and monitoring.
Lemwarm integrates closely with lemlist. Eligible lemlist plans include Lemwarm Essential seats for every user, with the possibility to upgrade to Smart at a discounted rate. This creates a smooth experience for multi-user teams already invested in lemlist. Independent Lemwarm subscriptions may lack certain multi-inbox conveniences available to lemlist users.
Warm-up is fully incorporated within Instantly’s outreach tool. All plans allow unlimited accounts, which is ideal for teams and agencies managing numerous email addresses and domains while ensuring a unified workflow for ramp-up, sending, and testing.
Mailbox providers monitor aspects such as authentication, complaint rates, bounce rates, and irregular sending activity. A solid warm-up complements foundational standards, like authenticated DNS, consistent sending, and clear opt-outs.
Lemwarm uses OAuth for secure connections and reports adherence to provider requirements. Keeping your DNS aligned and making incremental changes can help preserve a healthy sender record.
Instantly's resources stress the importance of authentication checks, measured ramp-up, and inbox placement testing prior to scaling volume. These represent important safeguards, and pausing campaigns if deliverability signals fall can help avoid longer-term problems.
Select Lemwarm if your priority is a focused layer of warm-up and monitoring, especially if your team already runs cold campaigns on lemlist and can leverage the included Essential seat. The platform’s deliverability scoring, alerts, and DNS verifications simplify long-term sender health management.
Choose Instantly if you require management of multiple inboxes within a unified platform that combines ramping, sending, and deliverability testing. Its flat pricing and unlimited account provisions are especially well-suited to agencies and teams with large-scale programs, as long as recommended ramp-up and placement checks are followed.
If you want a simple, dedicated warm-up tool without the complexity of a full outreach platform, Mailwarm is the most straightforward choice. Its controlled network, clean ramp-up, and consistent engagement signals quickly strengthen domain reputation, making it easy to plug into any existing outbound setup.
Regardless of tool choice, remember: warm-up is about establishing a reliable sender reputation. Ensure authentication is configured, scale volume incrementally, and verify inbox placement with independent resources when deliverability stakes are high. For comprehensive guidance, read our step-by-step warm-up guide for 2025.
If you’d like expert advice on your domain health or ramp-up approach, you can connect with deliverability professionals at mailadept. A brief consultation could streamline your path to high deliverability.
Lemwarm focuses exclusively on email warm-up and monitoring, while Instantly offers a comprehensive cold email platform with integrated warm-up. This makes Instantly more suitable for agencies needing a single solution for sending and warming up emails across multiple accounts.
Warm-up establishes a sender's reputation by simulating positive interactions that mailbox providers trust. Ignoring this step can lead to high bounce rates, spam folder placement, and a tarnished domain reputation.
Absolutely. Lemwarm uses per-email pricing which may escalate costs for managing multiple inboxes, whereas Instantly offers flat-rate pricing per workspace with unlimited inbox capability, suited for high-volume users.
While a large network suggests robust warm-up capabilities, the actual impact depends on the quality and usability of those accounts. Cross-verifying with independent metrics is essential to ensure the network's effectiveness meets your needs.
Yes, but the full feature set and streamlined workflow are optimized for integration with Lemlist. Users not employing Lemlist might miss out on some convenience and cost advantages Lemwarm offers within that ecosystem.
Lemwarm is not designed for sending emails; it focuses on warming up inboxes only. Instantly, on the other hand, recommends a conservative approach to ramping up sends, managing increased throughput by adding more inboxes rather than overloading individual ones.
