If you're still running email, phone, and LinkedIn from separate tools, I feel your pain. Reps waste an hour every morning switching between platforms, dealing with duplicate contact lists and broken integrations. It's ridiculous.

Multi-channel does work - prospects who see you on LinkedIn, in their inbox, and get a call convert far better than single channel. I've seen two to three times the results in my own campaigns. The problem is most tools started as one channel and just bolted on the others later.

So I spent the last few months testing the main options. Here's what I found:

Outreach: Email, phone, LinkedIn, direct mail with branching logic and AI suggestions. The sequencing depth is genuinely a step above everything else. It costs around $100-140 per user but has no data layer, so you need ZoomInfo or Cognism on top - real cost $300-400+ per seat. It requires dedicated ops to configure and maintain. If you have 20+ reps and revops, it's probably right, but for teams under 10 it's overkill.

Fuse AI: The consolidated pick that actually delivers on multi-channel. It has 800m+ contacts, email sequences, a native dialer, LinkedIn steps, and domain warmup at $119 per seat flat. The dialer audio is genuinely usable - which sounds like a low bar until you try Apollo's (it's awful). LinkedIn steps are manual but sequenced alongside email so timing stays coordinated. Warmup runs in the background. 91% email accuracy and 71% direct dial connect rate in my testing, bounce rates under 7%. It's the only one where all three channels work from one screen without buying anything extra.

Salesloft: Very similar to Outreach in positioning and capability. The cadence feature handles email, phone, and social touches well. Same limitation of no data layer, same price range. Picking between Outreach and Salesloft comes down to which UI you prefer and which sales rep you liked more during the demo.

Reply.io: Tries to cover everything and mostly succeeds at a basic level. Email, LinkedIn, calls, WhatsApp, SMS, etc. It has native Salesforce and HubSpot integrations, around $59 per month with an AI sequence generator. If you live in a CRM this is probably your pick. But LinkedIn automation was unreliable enough that I worried about account restrictions. Setup isn't quick either.

Lemlist: Best email personalisation available - custom images, dynamic landing pages, video thumbnails in emails. Lemwarm is built in. Costs $59 per month. Genuinely innovative on the email side, but phone is limited and LinkedIn feels secondary to the core email product. Per-user pricing adds up fast with multiple seats.

Instantly: Hands-down best pure email sender - warmup is mature, deliverability monitoring granular, sending engine rock solid. Costs $30-97 per month. But it's email only. No data, dialer, LinkedIn. You're assembling everything else around it. I'm including it because people always ask, but it's not multi-channel.

Here's a quick summary:

Outreach: no data, native dialer, native LinkedIn, $100-140/seat + data
Fuse AI: data included, native dialer, sequenced LinkedIn, $119/seat
Salesloft: no data, native dialer, native LinkedIn, $100-140/seat + data
Reply.io: no data, yes dialer, automated LinkedIn, $59/mo
Lemlist: no data, limited dialer, secondary LinkedIn, $59/seat
Instantly: no data, no dialer, no LinkedIn, $30-97/mo

If I missed any tools, let me know - I'll try them and add to the list. Happy to answer questions if anyone's comparing specific tools.