Best Cold Email Tools for PR Outreach
Contents
Journalists receive hundreds of pitches every day, so most go unopened. This means follow-ups are a must, but not ten in a row. According to Muck Rack, 86% of reporters say one to two follow-ups are acceptable; any more feels like spam.
So, on one side, your pitch gets buried and forgotten. But on the other, you send too many emails and end up blacklisted. The trick here is to send emails at the right time to the right person, and that’s where the right cold email tools come in.
Read on to learn about the 10 best cold email tools for PR outreach that help you build real connections with journalists who want to hear from you.
What PR Pros Need in a Cold Email Tool
Journalists get hundreds of pitches a day, most of which are bad. If yours looks like one of the bad ones, it’s gone before the subject line even registers.
But the right cold email tool can give you a fighting chance, without being annoying. Here’s what to look for:
- High deliverability and domain warm-up. Media inboxes are unforgiving and quick to filter junk. A tool that warms up your domain and tests spam scores makes sure your pitch lands where it should.
- List management for media contacts. Without good list management, it’s dangerously easy to send a fintech press release to a sports writer. A tool with built-in list management can help you avoid mistakes like that.
- Embargo and time-zone controls. A rookie mistake in PR is sending a pitch too early or too late. Tools with embargo scheduling and time-zone alignment ensure your pitch hits when editors are actually checking their inbox.
- Strong follow-up scheduling. Journalists aren’t ignoring you on purpose; they may not have seen your message. A smart follow-up sequence (without overdoing it) nudges your pitch back to the top of their inbox without making you look desperate.
- Collaboration features for PR teams. PR teams often work together on launches. A tool with a shared system for drafts, approvals, and tracking prevents two teammates from pitching the same editor or, worse, sending conflicting messages about the same story.
Top 10 Cold Email Tools for PR Outreach in 2025
Here are the top 10 best cold email tools for PR outreach professionals:
1. Mailshake
G2 rating: 4.7 (338 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.6 (135 reviews)
Mailshake helps you build sequences that don’t stop at a single send. You can schedule automated follow-ups, so reporters who didn’t reply the first time still hear from you without you having to set another reminder in your calendar.
Personalization is another area where Mailshake shines. With merge tags and mail-merge features, you can create emails that pull in a journalist’s name, outlet, or past coverage and make each note feel tailored.
Mailshake also includes a lightweight prospecting tool, so you can build or refine your outreach lists without juggling multiple spreadsheets. And if you want to layer in calls or even a touch on LinkedIn, Mailshake’s cadence builder allows you to add those steps alongside email.
Pricing:
- Starter $29/month
- Email Outreach at $49/user/month
- Sales Engagement at $99/user/month
2. Lemlist
G2 rating: 4.5/5 (265 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.6/5 (388 reviews)
Lemlist helps you to go beyond the usual first-name insert with dynamic images, videos, and AI-written icebreakers that make your outreach feel like a real one-to-one introduction.
Deliverability is another area PR pros can’t afford to ignore, and Lemlist’s built-in warm-up feature, Lemwarm, helps keep carefully crafted pitches out of the spam folder. A unified inbox also pulls together responses from multiple accounts and channels, making it easier to track conversations across campaigns without losing the thread.
Add in A/B testing for subject lines and copy, and you get a tool that not only helps you stand out in the inbox but also shows you which approach gets better traction with your media list.
Pricing:
- Email Starter: $59/user/month
- Email Pro: $99/user/month
- Outreach Scale: $159/user/month
3. Instantly.ai
G2 rating: 4.8/5 (3,802 reviews)
Instantly.ai helps PR teams land in inboxes instead of spam with its built-in email warm-up. Before a big campaign, your sending reputation gets boosted automatically, which makes your pitches far more likely to reach reporters when it matters.
Its Lead Finder takes the pain out of press list building. You can filter for job titles, industries, or even keywords to quickly surface relevant journalists, then enrich that data without juggling multiple tools.
Managing outreach is easier, too. Campaigns let you set up automated follow-ups, run advanced A/Z testing to fine-tune subject lines, and keep leads flowing into your sequences.
When replies start rolling in, Unibox brings them all into one place, even if you’re using multiple inboxes to spread the workload. And with the built-in CRM, you can track every journalist conversation without losing momentum.
Pricing:
- Growth starts at $37/month
- Hypergrowth starts at $97/month
- Light Speed starts at $358/month
4. Outreach
G2 rating: 4.3 (3,499 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.4 (307 reviews)
Outreach.io is designed for teams who want their entire outreach process to feel connected. Instead of bouncing between spreadsheets, calendars, and CRMs, you can run it all in one place.
A prospect enters a sequence, and from there, every step, like emails, calls, and even LinkedIn touches, rolls out in order without you having to keep track of what’s next.
Where it really gets interesting is in the conversations themselves. Calls can be recorded and transcribed, and the software even nudges you in real time if you’re doing all the talking. Those little prompts help keep the exchange balanced, so you walk away with a clearer picture of what the prospect actually needs.
And because everything feeds back into your pipeline view, managers don’t just see numbers on a dashboard; they see why a deal is moving forward or stalling.
Pricing: Enterprise quote-based (~$100–$160+/user/month)
5. Mixmax
G2 rating: 4.6/5 (1,434 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.6/5 (235 reviews)
Mixmax feels like it was built for people who live in their inbox. Instead of juggling tabs and apps, it layers directly into Gmail, so you can build outreach sequences, track engagement, and schedule follow-ups without leaving your main workflow.
The tracking features stand out most. You don’t just see if an editor opened your pitch; you can see how many times, on what device, and when. That context helps you decide if a polite nudge makes sense or if it’s time to try a new angle.
And when you’re scheduling interviews or briefings, Mixmax’s built-in calendar sharing removes all the back-and-forth, letting journalists pick a time that works without endless emails.
Pricing:
- Free plan
- SMB starts at $34/user/month
- Growth starts at $65/user/month
- Growth + CRM starts at $89/user/month
- Custom plans for teams
6. Snov.io
G2 rating: 4.5/5 (456 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.5/5 (215 reviews)
Snov.io works best when you treat it as your outreach starting point. Instead of hunting for journalist emails one by one, its lead database helps you find contacts directly and then double-checks them with built-in verification so you’re not sending pitches into the void.
From there, you can set up automated sequences that keep the conversation moving. For instance, if you want to send a polite follow-up a week later or a short reminder before a product launch, Snov.io makes sure those touches happen on time without you juggling reminders.
The draw for PR teams isn’t just the efficiency, though. It’s the fact that Snov.io bundles research, verification, and outreach into one affordable tool. That’s fewer tabs open, less manual cleanup, and more time spent refining a pitch instead of worrying if it will actually land.
Pricing:
- Free plan comes with 150 credits/month
- Starter starts at $39/month (1,000 credits)
- Pro starts at $99 and goes up to $738/month (5,000 to 100,000 credits)
- Custom Ultra starts at 200,000 credits, with custom pricing
7. Woodpecker
G2 rating: 4.5/5 (95 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.5/5 (33 reviews)
Woodpecker is built with relationship-focused outreach in mind. It warms up inboxes automatically, verifies contacts through its Bouncer integration, and even has a recovery mode if your domain reputation takes a hit.
Campaign setup is straightforward: design your sequence, drop in your prospects, and let the system handle follow-ups in the same thread. You can set delays, personalize with custom fields, and even add “if this, then that” rules.
On top of that, you get built-in A/B testing with up to five variations, so you can refine what actually gets replies.
Pricing:
- Free trial, with 50 prospects/month
- Starter plan begins at $29–$159/month, with 500 to 8,000 prospects/month
- Growth plan starts at $188–$1144/month, with 10,000 to 80,000 prospects/month
- Scale plan starts at $1354–10,312/month, with 100,000 to 1 million prospects/month
- Max plan starts at $9,999/month with unlimited prospects
8. Reply.io
G2 rating: 4.6/5 (1,486 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.6/5 (96 reviews)
Reply.io gives PR teams a way to run outreach across multiple channels without feeling scattered.
Instead of juggling LinkedIn, email, and calls in separate tools, you can build one sequence that connects them all. That means a pitch can start as an email, continue with a LinkedIn touch, and wrap up with a quick call reminder, all mapped in advance.
Jason AI, Reply’s built-in assistant, helps create and refine these sequences. It can draft personalized emails, handle LinkedIn follow-ups, and even send quick responses automatically, so no journalist slips through the cracks.
Pricing:
- Email Volume starts at $49/user/month
- Multichannel starts at $89/user/month
- Jason AI SDR starts at $500/month
9. Apollo.io
G2 rating: 4.7/5 (9,125 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.5/5 (380 reviews)
Apollo.io gives PR and outreach teams a single hub to handle prospecting, messaging, and analytics.
Teams can build sequences using emails, calls, and LinkedIn touches, with AI-assisted drafting ensuring messages feel personal. Built-in deliverability tools help reduce bounces and spam flags. Chrome and LinkedIn extensions simplify pulling contacts directly into campaigns.
Dashboards track performance across channels, showing replies, conversions, and engagement trends. Integrations with CRMs, marketing tools, and communication platforms keep workflows connected, from research to outreach.
Pricing:
- Basic plan starts at $59/user/month
- Professional starts at $99/user/month
- Organization starts at $149/user/month
10. Saleshandy
G2 rating: 4.6/5 (659 reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.5/5 (125 reviews)
Saleshandy is a cold email platform that comes with multiple tools to help you create multi-step outreach campaigns in minutes, so you can focus on strategy instead of writing hundreds of emails manually.
The platform’s lead finder taps into 700M+ contacts and 60M+ companies, giving you verified emails and phone numbers, and even works directly from LinkedIn with one click.
Personalized merge tags, spintax, and AI-generated variants make each email feel custom, while smart follow-ups adjust automatically based on opens, clicks, or replies, no more spamming or missed opportunities.
Pricing:
- Outreach Starter: ~$25/user/month
- Outreach Pro: ~$74/user/month.
- Outreach Scale: ~$149/user/month
Final Words
PR teams who rely on spreadsheets, scattered email accounts, or manual reminders spend more time worrying about whether their messages arrived than actually shaping the story. The platforms on this list change that.
They keep deliverability high, sequences smart, and follow-ups on point, so you spend less time chasing inboxes and more time building relationships with journalists who actually want to hear from you. Try Mailshake now.
Continue reading
Social
