10 Best Cold Calling Software: What It Really Costs

I opened fourteen cold calling pricing pages back to back. Five of them don't show a price.

Not "starting from." Not "custom for enterprise." No number at all, on the page the vendor titled Pricing.

That's the part every roundup skips. They rank dialers by feature lists and connect-rate stats, then quote a headline price that turns out to be annual, per seat, three seats minimum, and missing the minutes.

So this ranking of the best cold calling software works differently. Every tool here got priced the same way: what does it cost to get one rep dialing, this month, including the parts nobody puts on the pricing card? 👇🏼

TL;DR: the 10 best cold calling software at a glance#

How I ranked the 10 best cold calling software#

Feature lists are easy to write and easy to fake. Bills are not. So each tool got scored on five things, in this order:

1. Cost to first dial. Licence price at monthly billing, times the seat minimum, plus whatever tier the dialer actually sits on. Not the number in the hero section.
2. What happens to minutes. Included, metered, or billed by a third party you have to sign up with separately. This one gap swings the real bill more than the licence does.
3. Caller ID and spam protection. Your connect rate dies the day carriers start labelling your number. Is number rotation, registration and remediation included, or sold?
4. Dialer type and honesty about it. Power, parallel or predictive, and whether the marketing word matches the mechanism.
5. Pricing transparency. Whether a buyer can budget without booking a call. I graded this openly, because it's the difference between a two-week evaluation and a two-month one.

Every price below came off the vendor's live pricing page with monthly billing selected where a toggle existed, and every rating came off the live G2 profile. Where a vendor publishes nothing, it says so.

One disclosure before you read another line. I work at SmartReach.io, which competes with most of this list. That's exactly why SmartReach gets the same seat-minimum, minutes and add-on treatment as everyone else, including a cons section that names a real gap. A rigged list is the fastest way to lose a buyer who's already got three tabs open.

The 10 best cold calling software compared#

Sorted the way the bill arrives, not the way the marketing reads.

Scroll the table sideways to see all columns →

*Real monthly floor: the smallest realistic bill at monthly billing to get one rep dialing on the plan that actually carries the dialer, including seat minimums. Excludes phone numbers and usage where the vendor meters them.

†Dialpad no longer maintains a separate G2 listing for its sales product; the rating shown is for Dialpad Connect, which the Sell plans sit alongside. ‡Myphoner's score rests on a very small review base, so treat it as a signal rather than a rating.

The 10 best cold calling software: full reviews#

1. SmartReach.io: best for calling inside a multichannel sequence#

SmartReach.io is a multichannel sales engagement platform whose cold calling software, PowerCaller, runs inside the same sequence as your email and LinkedIn steps. That's the whole argument, and it's a structural difference rather than a feature one.

Most tools on this list hand a rep a call list. The list lives in the dialer, the email sequence lives somewhere else, and nobody reconciles the two. A prospect who replied to an email on Tuesday still gets dialed on Wednesday.

PowerCaller works the other way round. A dial is step three of a cadence, a LinkedIn touch is step four, and a reply on any channel pauses every other channel for that prospect. Priya isn't switching between a dialer, an inbox and a CRM tab. She works one task list, top to bottom.

The trade is that it's a sequencing platform with a dialer in it, not a dedicated dialer. If your reps do nothing but dial, the tools further down this list will out-dial it.

A walkthrough of PowerCaller: building the call queue, working it, and where dispositions land.

Here's what PowerCaller actually does 👇🏼#

• Power dialer: Works a whole day's call list from a single screen. The next number loads as you hang up, and disposition, notes and next step all sit on the same view, so nothing gets logged "later" and then never.
• Calling inside a cadence: Add call steps to an email, LinkedIn and WhatsApp sequence rather than running a parallel list. Reply-pause works across channels, so an email reply on Tuesday stops Wednesday's dial automatically.
• Account-level pause: If anyone at the prospect's company replies, the whole account goes quiet. That's the rule that stops two reps calling two people at the same buyer in the same week.
• Campaign call scripts: The pitch is attached to the campaign and renders on screen during the call, with merge tags filled in, so a new rep isn't reading from a doc in another tab.
• Listen, whisper and barge-in: Three levels of live coaching. Listen silently, whisper to your rep only, or join the call outright when a deal is about to slip.
• Call sentiment and dispositions: Tag every call positive or negative and map that back to the account, so you can see which segments are worth re-dialing instead of guessing.
• Call recording and transcription: Every call stored and searchable, which is what turns coaching into a weekly habit rather than an occasional review.
• Call task manager: Timely reminders for upcoming calls, with snooze and reschedule, so callbacks don't live in a rep's notebook.
• Reach across 200+ countries: Pick a calling number for the country you're dialing rather than showing a foreign number to a local prospect.
• Personalised caller ID: Control the number prospects see, per campaign.
• Two-way CRM sync: HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zoho, with fields mapping in both directions, so call outcomes reach the CRM without a rep retyping them.
• Mobile calling app: Included on every plan, for reps working callbacks away from a desk.

How much does SmartReach.io cost?#

Add-ons: Extra calling seats $19/month per phone number. LinkedIn automation $29/month per account.

Real cost for a 5-rep calling team: $99/mo on Sales Engagement Plus covers three calling seats and unlimited users, plus $38/mo for two more seats. That's $137/mo for five reps dialing, emailing and running LinkedIn from one queue. Compare that with five Aircall Professional licences at $250/mo for calls only.

Up next: Close ↓

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2. Close: best for a CRM and dialer on one bill#

Close is the only vendor on this list that prints what a minute costs. Right there on the pricing page: outbound calls run around $0.02 a minute, phone numbers start at roughly $1 a month. After thirteen other pricing pages, reading a real rate felt like someone opening a window.

The product is a CRM with the dialer built into it, not a dialer that integrates with a CRM. Leads, calls, emails, SMS and the activity timeline are one object, so there's no sync to maintain and no field mapping to debug. For a team of five that's a genuine reduction in moving parts.

The catch is tier placement, and it's steeper than the headline suggests. Solo at $19/user monthly and Essentials at $49 have no dialer at all. Power dialing starts at Growth, $109/user monthly. Predictive dialing is another tier up at $149.

So the honest entry price for cold calling is $109 a seat, not $19. Still reasonable for what you get, but it's five times the number on the pricing card.

Worth knowing before you shortlist it: adopting Close means adopting its CRM. If Salesforce or HubSpot is your system of record, this isn't a tool you trial alongside them, it's a migration.

Here's what Close does 👇🏼#

• Built-in calling: Inbound and outbound worldwide, no third-party softphone.
• Power dialer (Growth): Queue-based single-line dialing with automatic logging.
• Predictive dialer (Scale): Multi-line dialing for larger floors.
• SMS and email in the same timeline: One thread per lead across channels.
• Call coaching and unlimited recording retention: Both on Scale.
• Workflows: Automated follow-up sequences, from Growth up.

How much does Close cost?#

Usage on top: ~$0.02/minute outbound, ~$1/month per number.

Up next: Kixie PowerCall ↓

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3. Kixie PowerCall: best for CRM-native power dialing#

Kixie has the highest G2 rating on this list and the least helpful pricing page I opened. Three plans (Professional, Single-Line PowerDialer, Multi-Line PowerDialer), complete feature lists, unlimited US and Canada minutes stated clearly on every card, and not one dollar figure anywhere on the page.

That's a shame, because the product is genuinely good at the thing it claims. Dialing happens through a Chrome extension layered over your CRM, so a rep never leaves the record they're working. Click a number in HubSpot, the call fires, the log writes itself back.

Multi-Line PowerDialer takes that up to four numbers at once, with calling session management so a manager can run a block rather than hope reps are dialing. AI Human Detection, which skips voicemail systems and hands the rep only live humans, is flagged as a premium add-on rather than a plan feature.

The spam story is the strongest part. AI local presence matches your caller ID to the prospect's area code, and spam detection sits inside the dialer plans rather than being sold separately the way CloudTalk and PhoneBurner do it.

What you're really buying is a dialer, though. Calls and SMS, no email sequencing, no LinkedIn. It sits beside your outreach stack rather than replacing it.

Here's what Kixie does 👇🏼#

• Multi-line power dialer: Up to four lines at once with calling session management.
• Chrome extension dialing: Click-to-call from any CRM record or web page.
• AI local presence: Matches your caller ID to the prospect's area code.
• Spam detection and progressive caller ID: Built into the dialer plans, not sold separately.
• Voicemail drop and SMS templates: Pre-recorded drop plus follow-up text in a couple of taps.
• Live call coaching: On every plan, including the entry tier.

How much does Kixie cost?#

Kixie publishes plan names and features but no prices. Professional is the base, Single-Line PowerDialer adds one-line dialing, Multi-Line PowerDialer adds up to four lines and AI Human Detection as a premium add-on. All three state unlimited US and Canada minutes. There's a 7-day free trial with no card, which is the fastest way to find out what your quote will look like.

Up next: JustCall ↓

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4. JustCall: best for a phone system first, dialer second#

Here's the JustCall thing worth knowing before you get excited about that $29 headline. JustCall sells two separate products under one pricing page: an AI Communication Suite, which is the business phone system, and a Sales Suite.

The published $29 to $89 tiers are the phone system. They're good value for what they are: unlimited inbound and outbound minutes in the US and Canada, 100+ integrations, unlimited AI transcription, and SMS and WhatsApp threading alongside the calls.

The Sales Suite, called SalesPro, is the one with multi-line dialing and the connect rates the marketing talks about. Its price is "Request a Quote," billed annually only, minimum two licences.

So the honest read: JustCall is a well-priced phone system with a cold calling dialer you have to negotiate for. If your team mostly answers calls and dials occasionally, the published tiers are a bargain. If outbound volume is the point, you're in a sales cycle.

One nice touch the bigger vendors skip: the pricing page has a region selector, so a buyer outside the US sees real local numbers rather than a converted guess.

Here's what JustCall does 👇🏼#

• Business phone system: Unlimited inbound and outbound minutes on the suite plans, US and Canada.
• SalesPro multi-line dialing: Quote-only sales tier with local numbers and workflow automations.
• 100+ integrations: CRMs, help desks and the usual sales tooling.
• AI transcription: Unlimited on the published plans.
• SMS and WhatsApp: Follow-up messaging in the same thread as the call.
• AI Voice Agent: Separate add-on for handling inbound around the clock.

How much does JustCall cost?#

Up next: CloudTalk ↓

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5. CloudTalk: best for international calling#

CloudTalk is the international specialist here. Local numbers in 160+ countries, number porting so you keep what you've already built, and a visual call flow builder that holds up under real routing complexity without needing an admin.

If Jordan's team is dialing five markets before lunch and wants a local number in each, this is a serious option, and the alternatives thin out fast at that requirement.

Two things the pricing page tells you if you read past the headline. First, the dialers live on Expert, which is $69/user monthly with a three-licence minimum. That's a $207 floor to get a rep power-dialing, not $34.

Second, and this is the one that made me sit up: anti-spam number protection and branded caller ID are both marked as add-ons. Those are the two features that decide whether your calls get answered at all. Selling them separately, on the plan tier built for outbound, is a choice.

Credit where it's due on transparency though. CloudTalk shows both billing terms, a currency selector, the seat minimums, and it flags the add-ons on the plan card rather than burying them. Monthly billing runs about 40% above annual, which is steep but clearly stated.

Here's what CloudTalk does 👇🏼#

• Local numbers in 160+ countries: With porting, so you keep what you've built.
• Power, predictive and smart dialers: All on the Expert tier.
• Visual call flow builder: Routing, queues, queue callback and IVR without a ticket.
• Salesforce and real-time analytics: Deeper reporting than the mid tiers offer.
• Anti-spam number protection: Add-on.
• Branded caller ID: Add-on.

How much does CloudTalk cost?#

Up next: Aircall ↓

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6. Aircall: best for plug-and-play setup#

Aircall's pitch is speed to set up, and it's earned. 250+ integrations, no hardware, a softphone on desktop, Android and iOS, and a team can be dialing the same day rather than waiting on a telephony project.

The pricing page is refreshingly blunt about minimums, which almost nobody else here manages. Essentials is $30 a licence, but the card says plainly: "3 licences for $90/month, billed annually." Professional is $50 a licence, so $150. Custom needs 25 licences.

The bit to watch is what sits where. The Power Dialer is a Professional feature, so cold calling proper starts at $150/month for three seats, not $90.

And there's a quieter one. "Unlimited outbound calls" appears only on the Custom tier, which means outbound usage is metered on Essentials and Professional. For a team dialing hard, that's a variable line item you won't see until the invoice.

AI is priced by the minute rather than bundled, with AI Voice Agents from $0.14/minute. Fine if you use it lightly, expensive as a habit.

Here's what Aircall does 👇🏼#

• 250+ integrations and open API: The broadest app ecosystem in this group.
• Power Dialer and voicemail drop: On the Professional tier.
• Salesforce CTI: Native integration, also Professional.
• Advanced analytics and live monitoring: Call quality and rep activity in one view.
• Unlimited simultaneous outbound calls: On every plan, though usage is metered.
• AI Voice Agents: Priced separately from $0.14/minute.

How much does Aircall cost?#

Up next: PhoneBurner ↓

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7. PhoneBurner: best for high-volume single-line dialing#

PhoneBurner is the most expensive tool here per seat and the most honest about why. There's no connect delay, that half-second of silence that tells a prospect they've been auto-dialed and gets you hung up on before you've said a word. Unlimited calling is included rather than metered.

You're paying for talk time, not licences, and the maths only works if dialing is genuinely the job. For a rep making 40 calls a week, $165 a seat is wildly over-specified. For Tanya running 300 dials a day, the cost per conversation is lower than anything else on this list.

The bundled bits are more generous than the price suggests: workflow automation, call analytics and a light CRM all come with the seat, so you're not buying a system of record separately.

The add-ons are where the page goes quiet. Numbers, ARMOR and Connect Scores are all listed as add-ons with no prices attached. ARMOR is the one that matters, since it handles number monitoring and spam-flag remediation, which is what keeps a high-volume dialer working past month three. Connect Scores filters out disconnected and unlikely-to-connect numbers before a rep wastes a dial on them.

Both are features a high-volume caller will end up wanting, and neither has a published price.

Here's what PhoneBurner does 👇🏼#

• No connect delay: The most-cited reason teams move here.
• Unlimited calling: Included on every plan, not metered.
• Softphone dialing and Krisp noise cancellation: From the Professional tier.
• Live call monitoring and coaching: Professional and up.
• ARMOR: Number monitoring, spam-flag remediation and answer-rate analytics. Add-on.
• Connect Scores: Real-time filtering that skips disconnected and unlikely-to-connect numbers. Add-on.

How much does PhoneBurner cost?#

Add-ons (prices not published): Numbers, ARMOR, Connect Scores.

Up next: Orum ↓

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8. Orum: best for parallel dialing at volume#

Orum does one thing and does it very well: it rings several numbers at once and hands the rep whoever picks up. Launch parallel-dials up to five lines, Ascend up to ten. If your bottleneck is dials per hour rather than list quality, that's a step change, not an improvement.

Then there's Salesfloor, a shared virtual room where a team dials together with live visibility of who's connected. It's the closest thing to a physical bullpen that software has managed, and for a remote SDR team it does something no feature list captures: it makes the calling block social again.

Ascend adds the parts a scaling team needs. International calling across 160+ countries, 200 enrichment credits a month, and 10 caller IDs per user rather than five per account.

Both plans say "REQUEST PRICING." Both carry a three-seat minimum, stated clearly, which at least tells you upfront that it isn't built for solo reps.

My honest opinion: this is a better pure dialer than several tools ranked above it. It sits at eight because you cannot evaluate it without entering a sales cycle, and for a lot of buyers that's the whole decision rather than a footnote.

Here's what Orum does 👇🏼#

• Parallel dialing: Up to 5 lines on Launch, up to 10 on Ascend.
• Salesfloor: Shared virtual room so a team dials together with live visibility.
• Boost Connect: Connection-rate tooling on both plans.
• Caller ID pool: 5 caller IDs per month on Launch, 10 per user per month on Ascend.
• International calling: 160+ countries and regions, Ascend only.
• Data enrichment: 200 credits per month, Ascend only.

How much does Orum cost?#

Orum publishes no prices. Launch and Ascend both show "Request Pricing" with a three-seat minimum. Launch covers unlimited dials, 5 caller IDs a month, parallel dialing to 5 lines, Salesfloor and Boost Connect. Ascend adds international calling across 160+ countries, 200 enrichment credits, parallel dialing to 10 lines, 10 caller IDs per user per month and the coaching suite.

Up next: Nooks ↓

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9. Nooks: best for AI-assisted parallel dialing#

Nooks shares the top G2 rating on this list with Kixie, and it's the most ambitious product in the group. Where Orum is a very good parallel dialer, Nooks is trying to be the whole SDR workspace: the dialer, the salesfloor, signal-based triggers that decide who to call, an engagement assistant and an AI coach.

The modules stack into one motion rather than a plan ladder, which is unusual and mostly good. You buy the pieces you'll use instead of climbing tiers to reach one feature.

The spam-protection layer deserves specific credit, because it's the one place a vendor here treats number reputation as core rather than an upsell. Automated number rotation and reputation monitoring sit inside the dialer product. CloudTalk sells the equivalent as two add-ons, and PhoneBurner's has no published price at all.

The AI coaching is also more than transcription with a summary bolted on. It reviews calls and produces rep-level feedback, which is the difference between a recording archive and something a manager actually uses on a Friday.

Pricing is a form. The page is titled "Get Nooks pricing" and asks for your email. That's the whole pricing page, and it's the reason a genuinely strong product sits at nine.

Here's what Nooks does 👇🏼#

• AI parallel dialer: Multi-line dialing with zero latency and voicemail detection.
• Automated number rotation: Spreads dials across numbers to protect reputation.
• Reputation monitoring: Watches your numbers for spam flags.
• Virtual salesfloor: Shared dialing sessions with live coaching.
• AI engagement assistant and signal-based triggers: Prioritises who to dial and when.
• AI coaching: Call review and rep feedback built in.

How much does Nooks cost?#

Nooks publishes no prices. The pricing page lists product modules (the AI dialer, signal-based intelligence, AI coaching and agentic optimisation) with feature breakdowns, then asks for an email to get a quote. Budget for an enterprise conversation.

Up next: Dialpad ↓

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10. Dialpad: best for real-time AI coaching#

Dialpad's differentiator is what happens while the call is live. Real-time recommendations, objection prompts and a sentiment read appear on screen as the prospect is still talking.

That's a genuinely different coaching model from everyone else here. Most tools record the call and let a manager review it tomorrow. Dialpad tries to fix the call while it's happening, which matters most for a rep in their first month who freezes on a pricing objection.

The manager side is properly built out too: rep leaderboards, coaching groups and call metrics, rather than the rep-side-only tooling most dialers ship.

The entry tier got meaningfully cheaper. Essentials is now $39/user annually, down from $60. Advanced and Premium held at $95 and $150.

Watch the tier placement, because it's the same pattern as everywhere else on this list. Local presence dialing, the feature that moves connect rates most, sits on Advanced at $110/user monthly. The cheap tier is a phone with AI notes on it.

One oddity worth flagging: Dialpad no longer runs a separate G2 listing for its sales product. The rating above is for Dialpad Connect, the business phone system the Sell plans sit alongside, so it reflects a broader user base than outbound sales teams.

Here's what Dialpad does 👇🏼#

• Real-time AI coaching: Objection prompts and recommendations during the live call.
• Local presence dialing: Advanced tier and up.
• Call recording and transcription: Automatic on every call.
• Rep leaderboards and coaching groups: Manager-side tooling, not just rep-side.
• CRM integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk and the rest.
• Voicemail drop and outbound dialer: Standard across the Sell tiers.

How much does Dialpad Sell cost?#

Up next, kicking off the bonus four: Klenty ↓

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Plus 4 bonus tools worth giving a try#

These four didn't make the ten, but each owns a niche the main list doesn't cover: CRM-tied SDR calling, contact-centre scale, queue-routed appointment setting, and the cheapest seat here.

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11. Klenty: for SDR teams tied to a CRM#

Klenty's CRM sync is the smoothest part of the product, and its cadence playbooks are genuinely ready to run rather than a folder of empty templates. For a team that already lives in HubSpot or Pipedrive, that's a fast start.

The calling story needs reading carefully though, because it's split across three places on the pricing page.

Starter at $50/user annually is email only, no calling at all. Cold calling begins on Growth at $70/user annually, and it arrives with 200 minutes a month included, which is roughly three hours of talk time across a whole month. Plus at $99 raises that to 1,000.

Then the dialer itself. Parallel and power dialing isn't on any tier: it's a $45/user/month add-on. So a Growth seat that actually power-dials costs $115/user monthly, and you're still counting minutes.

Priced honestly, Klenty is a sequencing tool with calling attached rather than a cold calling platform. Which is fine, as long as that's what you're shopping for.

Up next: RingCentral RingCX ↓

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12. RingCentral RingCX: for contact centres at scale#

RingCX is a contact centre platform that happens to do outbound well, rather than a cold calling tool that scaled up. That distinction shapes everything about it.

You get three dialer modes out of the box (progressive, predictive and preview), so you can match the mechanism to the campaign instead of forcing one approach on every list. Agent scripting and campaign management come with it, plus voice and 20+ digital channels on the entry tier.

The number that matters for a floor doing volume: unlimited domestic inbound and outbound minutes are included. At 300 dials a rep per day, metered minutes are what kill a budget, and RingCX takes that variable off the table.

Standard is $65/user monthly paid annually, down from a listed $75. Professional is $95 and Elite $145, both also reduced.

The catch is shape, not price. There's no monthly billing option published, every tier routes through "Contact sales," and the AI Receptionist is an add-on on all three published tiers. For a five-person outbound team this is heavy machinery. For a floor of forty, it's the right category.

Up next: VanillaSoft ↓

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13. VanillaSoft: for appointment setting off a queue#

VanillaSoft's queue-based lead routing is the real product, and it's a different philosophy from everything else here. Rather than a rep opening a list and choosing who to call, the system decides the next-best lead and serves it up. No cherry-picking, and no stale records sitting at the bottom of a list nobody scrolls to.

For appointment setting and fundraising, where the job is working a large list evenly and fast, that model consistently beats list-picking. The auto dialer, call recording, scripting and cadence automation all hang off that routing engine.

Pricing has moved away from anything public. VanillaSoft now uses an annual bundle model, with the first five seats, initial setup, ongoing support and updates included in each bundle, across four plans: Core, Advantage, Enterprise and Fundraising.

No figures are published anywhere, so treat any starting price you read on another roundup as stale. The bundle structure also means a three-person team is buying five seats whether it wants them or not.

The interface shows its age next to Nooks or Orum. What it lacks in polish it makes up for in routing logic those newer tools haven't tried to build.

Up next: Myphoner ↓

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14. Myphoner: for solo callers on a light queue#

Myphoner is the cheapest seat here at $27 a month, and the most upfront about what that price doesn't buy. Straight from its own pricing page: you must have an active Twilio subscription to use the calling integration, and usage charges are billed by Twilio, not by Myphoner.

Read that as a feature rather than a warning. The seat price is genuinely just the software, and your telephony bill is whatever Twilio charges you at cost. For a solo caller with modest volume, that can land cheaper than any bundled plan on this list. For a team of ten, the admin of a second vendor stops being worth it.

What you get for the seat is a properly good lead queue: duplicate detection, bulk deduplication and lead recycling, which matters more than it sounds when you're working the same list for the third month. Smart caller ID management arrives on Plus at $38.

Premium at $59 is where the team features live: callcenter tools, client silos and subaccounts, live monitoring, and a white-label add-on. That's the tier an agency would need.

One number to treat carefully. Myphoner's G2 score sits at 4.5, but off a very small review base. Other roundups print it beside four-figure review counts as though the two are comparable. They aren't.

What the best cold calling software actually costs to run#

Here's the thing thirteen of these fourteen pricing pages won't tell you plainly: the licence is rarely the biggest line on the bill.

There are four other lines, and they're the ones that move.

1. The seat minimum. Aircall's $30 licence is a $90 bill. CloudTalk's dialer tier needs three licences at $69, so $207. Orum needs three seats. JustCall needs two. Only SmartReach.io, Close, PhoneBurner and Myphoner bill you for one rep when you have one rep.

2. The tier the dialer sits on. This is the most common gap between headline and reality. Close's power dialer is on the third tier, not the first. Aircall's is on Professional. CloudTalk's dialers are Expert-only. Dialpad's local presence is Advanced-only. Klenty's isn't on a tier at all: it's a $45/user/month add-on.

3. The minutes. Kixie and PhoneBurner include unlimited US and Canada calling. RingCX includes unlimited domestic. Close bills roughly $0.02 a minute. Klenty gives you 200 minutes on Growth. Myphoner gives you none and points at Twilio.

4. Caller ID and spam protection. CloudTalk sells anti-spam number protection and branded caller ID as add-ons. PhoneBurner's ARMOR remediation is an add-on with no published price. Nooks and Kixie build number reputation into the product.

That last one is worth understanding properly, because it decides your connect rate. Carriers use the STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication framework to verify that a call is coming from who it says it's coming from. Unverified or heavily flagged numbers get labelled, and a labelled number gets ignored. If you're calling US consumers, the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule sets the ground rules on top of that.

How to choose the best cold calling software: 5 questions#

Skip the feature matrix. Ask these instead, in this order.

Is calling the job, or one step in the job?#

If your reps do nothing but dial, buy a dialer: PhoneBurner, Orum, Kixie. If a call is one touch among email, LinkedIn and WhatsApp, a standalone dialer creates a second queue and a second set of numbers nobody reconciles. That's the case for running calls inside a sequence.

What good looks like: Your rep opens one tool at 9am and never opens a second.

What's the real bill for one rep, this month?#

Licence × seat minimum, on the tier that carries the dialer, at monthly billing. Then add numbers, minutes and caller-ID protection.

What good looks like: You can write the number down without booking a call.

Power, parallel or predictive?#

A power dialer works one call at a time from a queue. A parallel dialer rings several numbers and connects you to whoever answers. A predictive dialer forecasts agent availability and dials ahead of it. Parallel and predictive lift dials per hour, and both raise the odds of an awkward opening pause.

What good looks like: The dialer type matches your list quality, not your ambition.

Who owns your number reputation?#

If nobody in the product is monitoring whether your numbers are getting flagged, you'll find out from your connect rate three weeks late.

What good looks like: Rotation, registration and remediation are named features, not add-ons you discover on the invoice.

Can you test it without a sales cycle?#

Five of these fourteen won't let you see a price without talking to someone. Sometimes that's worth it. Often it just means your evaluation takes six weeks instead of one.

What good looks like: A free trial with no card, so you can put real calls through it before anyone quotes you.

Best cold calling software by use case#

Running calls next to email and LinkedIn: SmartReach.io. Calling is a step in the cadence, and a reply on any channel pauses the rest. From $39/month with a calling seat included.

Highest dials per hour: Orum, Nooks. Parallel dialing at up to 10 lines, with a shared salesfloor. Budget for a sales conversation before you see a price.

Dialing straight from your CRM: Kixie, Close. Kixie dials from the record via a Chrome extension. Close puts the dialer inside its own CRM.

Calling across borders: CloudTalk. Local numbers in 160+ countries with porting, though the dialer tier carries a 3-licence minimum.

Tightest budget, solo rep: Myphoner, Close. $27/seat plus Twilio, or $19/user for Close Solo if you don't need a power dialer yet.

Coaching a new team: Dialpad, SmartReach.io. Real-time prompts during the call from Dialpad, listen/whisper/barge-in from SmartReach.

So which is the best cold calling software for your team?#

Honest answer: it depends on whether the phone is the whole job or part of it.

If your reps do nothing but dial all day, PhoneBurner or Orum will beat everything here on dials per hour, and you should pay for that. If you're already inside HubSpot or Salesforce and want click-to-call on the record, Kixie is the smoothest experience on this list, assuming you're fine getting the price by phone.

For everyone else, which is most sales teams of 2 to 50 reps, I'd pick SmartReach.io. And yes, I work there, so weigh that. Three reasons that survive the bias:

• A calling seat costs $39/month with no seat minimum. Four of the fourteen tools here make you buy two or three seats before you can start.
• Calls sit inside the sequence. Email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and the dial run off one queue, and a reply anywhere pauses everywhere.
• The price is on the page. You can budget the whole thing today, including the $19/month extra calling seats.

Where we lose: local calling is on the Scale plan, and we don't do parallel dialing at all. If either is your deal-breaker, buy Orum or Nooks and don't think twice about it.

Try SmartReach.io free for 14 days, no card required.

Best cold calling software FAQs#