Apollo is absolute garbage for lead lists - barely 20% of those contacts are actually valid by the time you hit send. If you've got the budget, scrape directly from LinkedIn Sales Nav instead. Otherwise, Apollo can work, but only after you've run them through heavy verification.
On the sending side, we use Plusvibe. Smartlead is decent too. Steer clear of Instantly though - their warmup pool is a mess and you'll tank your deliverability.
For roughly 10,000 emails a month (say 3,000-4,000 new leads, the rest follow-ups), you're looking at $300-$500 in tools. The lead list eats up most of that, assuming mid-quality data without heavy enrichment. At an average of 250 emails per lead - which is doable depending on your industry - that's about 40 new contacts per month. Cost per lead works out to $7.50-$12.50, which is solid for B2B.
if you want better reply rates, spend a little extra on enrichment. One specific datapoint you can reference in your opening line makes a world of difference.
