When asked for the best cold email software, 6 AI assistants named 9 brands between them this month. Mailshake was named most often, followed by Lemlist and Apollo. No brand was named by every assistant that answered.
Who named whom
| Brand | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Claude | Grok | DeepSeek | Cohere | Named by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailshake | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | 5 of 6 |
| Lemlist | ✓ | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | 4 of 6 |
| Apollo | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | 3 of 6 |
| Instantly.ai | · | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | 3 of 6 |
| Reply.io | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | 3 of 6 |
| Smartlead | · | ✓ | ✓ | · | ✓ | · | 3 of 6 |
| Woodpecker | ✓ | · | · | ✓ | · | ✓ | 3 of 6 |
| GMass | ✓ | · | · | · | · | ✓ | 2 of 6 |
| Saleshandy | ✓ | ✓ | · | · | · | · | 2 of 6 |
Share of voice
What each assistant said
ChatGPT
Named 6 brands, in this order: Mailshake, Reply.io, GMass, Lemlist, Woodpecker, Saleshandy.
Selecting the best cold email software for a small business depends on several factors, including budget, required features, ease of use, integration capabilities, and customer support.
Perplexity
Named 4 brands, in this order: Saleshandy, Mailshake, Apollo, Smartlead.
For a small business, the best cold email software is usually Saleshandy, SmartReach, or Mailshake if you want a balance of affordability, ease of use, and deliverability without much setup overhead.
Claude
Named 5 brands, in this order: Instantly.ai, Lemlist, Mailshake, Smartlead, Apollo.
Here are some top options depending on your needs and budget:
Grok
Named 4 brands, in this order: Instantly.ai, Lemlist, Woodpecker, Reply.io.
DeepSeek
Named 5 brands, in this order: Lemlist, Reply.io, Smartlead, Apollo, Mailshake.
There's no single "best" — it depends on your budget, list size, and how much automation you need.
Cohere
Named 2 brands, in this order: Mailshake, Woodpecker.
Choosing the best cold email software for a small business depends on your specific needs, budget, and goals.
The questions asked
- What is the best cold email software for a small business?
Asked between 2026-09-26 and 2026-09-26. Not answering this month: Gemini, Mistral.
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See the GEO suiteHow this was measured
Each month we ask every assistant the same plain buyer questions, worded the way a person shopping for this kind of product would ask them, with no brand suggested in the question except where the question itself names the market leader to find alternatives to. Each assistant answers in a fresh session with no earlier conversation, so an answer reflects what the assistant says to anyone who asks, not what it was steered towards.
From each answer we keep the product and company names it recommends. A name counts only when it appears in the answer as a proper name, is not a heading such as "Best for" or "Pricing", and is confirmed by a second assistant naming it too, by a website the answer cites, or by being the market leader named in the question. Share of voice is each brand's share of all brand mentions in the category this month. Assistants that could not answer this month are listed as not answering, never counted as naming nobody.
Cite this page
https://mentionfox.com/ai-recommends/cold-email-software