A Cold Email Machine for Under $120/Month
Cold email has a reputation for being expensive and technical. It's neither. On a recent onboarding call we mapped the entire stack an owner needs to run real outbound — and it came in around $120 a month, most of which is optional.
The whole stack, and what each piece does
- Instantly (~$50/mo) — the sending engine. It runs your sequences, rotates your inboxes, and manages replies.
- Apollo (~$70/mo) — lead sourcing. It builds targeted lists of the exact companies and roles you want to reach.
- Google inboxes (~$10/mo each) — the accounts you actually send from, on domains separate from your main business domain.
- Omega ($100/mo) — the brain that ties it together: connect Instantly and Apollo via the Integrations tab, and Omega writes the sequences, builds the lists, and runs the campaign with full memory of your offer.
Apollo is optional
If you'd rather not pay for lead sourcing, you can have Omega build lead lists for you and upload them straight to Instantly. That drops your core stack to roughly $50/mo plus inboxes.
The part everyone skips: deliverability
The fastest way to waste money on cold email is to blast from a brand-new domain and land in spam. Two rules keep you inboxed:
- Send from separate domains, not your main one. Protect your primary domain's reputation. Use dedicated sending domains.
- Create two inboxes per domain and warm them up first. Two inboxes is standard practice — it improves deliverability and lets you A/B test. Warming means gradually ramping activity so inbox providers trust the account before you start real outreach.
"Warm up the new domains before you launch. It's the single most-skipped step, and it's the one that decides whether you land in the inbox or the spam folder." — From a recent Omega onboarding session
A note on AI voice cold calling
Owners often ask whether they should skip email and go straight to AI voice agents dialing cold lists. Short answer from the trenches: don't. Cold AI voice calling is a legal minefield and tends to underperform. AI voice shines on warm, opted-in leads — think speed-to-lead callbacks — not cold outreach. Start with email.
Your launch sequence
- Set up dedicated sending domains + two Google inboxes each.
- Connect Instantly (and optionally Apollo) to Omega.
- Warm the inboxes before sending a single real email.
- Let Omega build the list and write the sequence around your offer.
- Launch, watch replies, and route booked calls to your calendar.
Why run it through a second brain
The tools are cheap; the skill is in the writing and the targeting. Because Omega already knows your offer, proof, and voice, the sequences it writes don't read like templates — they read like you, aimed at the exact people most likely to buy.
Fill your pipeline without hiring an agency.
Book a call and we'll stand up your cold-email machine — stack, deliverability, and first campaign — with Omega running it.
Book your onboarding call →