How to choose a lemlist alternative: a guide for EMEA sales teams

Start with the job, not the feature list

Feature lists are long, and most of them look alike. Before you open a comparison table, write down the job in one or two sentences. For example: "Three account executives, each running about 150 new prospects a month, on email and LinkedIn, with replies landing in HubSpot."

That sentence tells you what matters. It names the number of seats, the channels, the volume and the CRM. Anything a tool offers outside that sentence is a nice extra, not a reason to choose it.

Then list the things you will not give up. For most EMEA teams that list includes three items: email must go out from the team's own mailboxes, LinkedIn accounts must not be put at needless risk, and the vendor must sign a Data Processing Agreement. Keep that list short. A long list of must-haves usually means nothing is ranked.

Channels: what is included, and on which plan

Most tools now say they are multichannel. The useful question is narrower: which channels come on the plan you will actually buy?

lemlist's pricing page lists email on every plan. LinkedIn, SMS and calls come on Multichannel and above, and WhatsApp is an add-on there. So if your team needs LinkedIn, the plan you compare is Multichannel, not Email.

On Sequenz, email and LinkedIn are on every plan, the 14-day trial included. WhatsApp is part of the Growth plan and above, not a separate add-on. You can check this on our pricing page and the LinkedIn feature page.

Two details are worth checking whatever tool you choose:

• Whether a reply on one channel stops the other channels. If a prospect answers your email, they should not get a LinkedIn message the next morning. In Sequenz, a reply on any channel stops every channel for that lead. Auto-replies and out-of-office messages do not count as replies.
• Whether a missing channel is handled. Some of your leads will have no LinkedIn profile URL or no phone number. A good tool tells you before launch how many leads each step will skip, instead of failing quietly.

Pricing model: per seat or per credit

This is where two tools with similar headline prices can end up far apart. There are two common models.

Per seat. You pay a fixed price for each person on the team. The bill changes when you add or remove people, not when you send more.

Credits or usage. You pay for what you consume: enriched contacts, verified emails, intent signals, messages. Many tools combine a seat price with credit-based add-ons.

lemlist's pricing page showed us Email at $69 and Multichannel at $109 per user billed monthly, or $55 and $87 billed yearly, in US dollars. It also lists pay-per-success add-ons: data enrichment at $75 a month for 10k credits, and intent signals at $21 a month for 100. Those add-ons are optional, but if your process depends on them, they belong in the comparison.

Sequenz is priced per seat only. Starter is €49, Growth is €69 and Scale is €99 per seat per month billed monthly, or €39, €55 and €79 billed yearly, excluding VAT. There are no credits, no per-message fees and no pay-per-success add-ons. WhatsApp conversations are billed to you by Meta directly. We compare the two models in more depth in AI SDR pricing explained.

Do not compare a dollar price with a euro price by converting it in your head. Exchange rates move, and VAT treatment differs. Instead, build the full monthly cost for your own team in the currency you will be invoiced in, including every add-on your process needs.

Deliverability starts with your own mailbox

Where your email is sent from matters more than any template. Mail sent from your own Gmail or Outlook account carries your domain's reputation and sits in your own Sent folder. Replies come back to you as normal.

lemlist connects to Gmail, Outlook or an IMAP/SMTP account to send. Sequenz sends campaigns from your own Gmail or Outlook mailbox, connected over OAuth, so we never see your mailbox password. On this point the two tools work the same way. See how email works in Sequenz.

Because both send from your mailbox, deliverability depends mostly on you. A few habits help with any tool:

• Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your sending domain before the first campaign.
• Keep daily volume per mailbox modest and steady. Sequenz has a default daily email limit per mailbox for this reason.
• Write to people with a real reason to hear from you. Relevance does more for inbox placement than any setting.
• Remove bounces and unsubscribes at once, and never email someone who asked you to stop.

Be wary of any tool that promises a deliverability rate. Inbox placement depends on your domain, your list and your content. No vendor controls those.

How the tool handles LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the channel where the way a tool works matters most, because the account at risk is a real person's profile.

Ask four questions of every tool:

• Where does it run? Some tools need your browser open. Others run in the cloud. Cloud tools keep working when your laptop is closed, which is convenient, but ask what IP address the activity comes from.
• Does it want your password? A tool should never need your LinkedIn password or your two-factor codes.
• What are the default limits, and who can raise them? Defaults should be conservative, and raising a limit should be a deliberate act.
• What happens with a brand-new account? A fresh account should start slowly.

lemlist runs LinkedIn steps inside sequences on the Multichannel plan and above.

In Sequenz, a small browser extension hands your LinkedIn session over once. After that, outreach runs in the cloud from a dedicated IP address in your country. We never ask for or store your password or a two-factor seed. Every account starts at 15 connection requests a day and 80 a week, and a newly connected account ramps up from 5 a day. Raising a limit on a paid plan takes an explicit confirmation, and trial accounts stay locked.

No tool can guarantee that LinkedIn will not restrict an account. Limits and pacing lower the risk. They do not remove it. We explain what actually reduces risk in Is LinkedIn automation safe?.

GDPR: the documents to ask for

For EMEA teams, GDPR is not a checkbox at the end. Your outbound tool processes personal data about your prospects on your behalf, which usually makes it your processor. Before you sign, collect these:

• A Data Processing Agreement. Article 28 of the GDPR requires a contract with your processor. Check whether you can read it before you buy, or only on request.
• A sub-processor list. You should know which other companies handle the data, and in which countries.
• A privacy notice for prospects. The people you contact have a right to know who holds their data and why.
• An answer on AI. If the tool writes messages with AI, ask which provider is used and whether your data is used for training.

Also ask where your leads come from. A tool with a built-in contact database is convenient, but you still need a lawful basis for contacting each person, and you should be able to say where you got their details. Sequenz has no contact database of its own. Leads come from your CRM, a CSV file, Google Sheets or your own LinkedIn searches, so you always know the source.

Sequenz publishes its Data Processing Agreement and its sub-processor list on its website, so you can read both before you start a trial.

A short scorecard you can reuse

Fill this in for each tool on your shortlist, using your own team's numbers. Write the source next to each answer.

Where Sequenz fits

Sequenz suits a team that wants email and LinkedIn on every seat, WhatsApp from the Growth plan, and one predictable price per person. It suits teams that would rather send from their own mailboxes and work from their own lead sources than buy data inside the tool.

If your scorecard points somewhere else, that is a good outcome too. The point of the exercise is to buy the tool that fits the job you wrote down.

For a side-by-side view with every lemlist fact linked to its source, see Sequenz vs lemlist.

Questions to ask in any trial

A trial is the only comparison that uses your data. Use it well:

• Import a real list of 50 to 100 prospects, not a demo file.
• Connect the mailbox you will actually send from.
• Build one sequence that mirrors your real process, with every channel you plan to use.
• Read every AI-written message before it goes out, and edit what does not sound like you.
• Check how replies arrive, and who on the team can see them.
• Ask support one hard question and judge the answer.

Sequenz has a 14-day trial with one user and no card. When it ends, your campaigns pause and your data is kept, so you can pick a plan and carry on, or walk away with nothing to cancel.