LinkedIn outreach tools all send but none of them answer replies
Expandi, Dripify, Waalaxy, HeyReach, Octopus CRM and WarmySender all automate sending. Compare what each one costs, who it suits, and who answers the replies.
Which LinkedIn outreach tools are people actually using?
The names that come up repeatedly are Expandi, Dripify, Waalaxy, HeyReach, Octopus CRM and WarmySender. They split by who runs them rather than by feature count: Waalaxy and Octopus CRM are aimed at solo users and SMBs, Expandi and HeyReach at mid-market teams with webhook integrations. All six send. None of them answer.
Every one of these will push 25 connection requests a day, wait, send a follow-up, and stop the sequence when someone replies. After that it is you, at 11pm, deciding whether "what does it cost" gets a price or a call link. At 500 invites a month and our published reply rates, that is 30 to 40 conversations landing in your inbox, most of them in the middle of your working day.
| Tool | Model | Who writes and answers | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| WarmySender | ~$7/seat, LinkedIn + email warm-up | You | Testing whether outbound works at all |
| Dripify / Waalaxy | Cloud sequences, LinkedIn-only | You | One or two accounts, clean UI, low volume |
| Expandi | Cloud-based sequences | You | Mid-market teams with an SDR already |
| Octopus CRM | Chrome-based, cheap | You | Solo users under 20 invites a day |
| HeyReach | Multi-account sender rotation | Your team | Agencies running 10 to 50 sender accounts |
| Gelee | AI SDR, $2,497/mo for 3 accounts | The software | Founders with no one to answer replies |
Is Dripify a good choice for LinkedIn-only outreach?
Yes, if LinkedIn is your only channel and you have time to run it. The interface is clean, sequences are quick to build, and the recommendation people land on is Dripify or Waalaxy when you want polish on LinkedIn alone. Dripify does not write your copy and does not answer replies.
Where it works: one or two accounts, 20 to 25 invites a day, a founder who checks LinkedIn twice a day anyway. Where it stops working: the week you get 40 replies and 12 of them are objections you have answered before. Forty replies at five minutes each is over three hours of typing, and it does not arrive in one convenient block. Dripify keeps sending regardless, which is how a campaign with a 25% accept rate ends with unanswered messages sitting in the inbox for four days.
Is a $7 seat really the cheapest option?
On the invoice, yes. WarmySender at around $7 a seat is the lowest number anyone quotes, and for testing whether your offer gets replies at all, it is the right purchase. The cost shows up in hours. Sending, personalising and answering at 25 invites a day runs about an hour a day.
That is 20 to 24 hours a month. At $50 an hour that is $1,000 to $1,200 of your time on top of the $7. At $100 an hour it is $2,000 to $2,400. We worked the full arithmetic in why a $7 LinkedIn outreach seat still costs you 24 hours a month, and the crossover point is not far from 500 prospects a month.
Which tool should an agency running many accounts use?
HeyReach. It rotates sending across a lot of LinkedIn accounts from one dashboard, which is the reason it gets named as the agency pick. If you run outreach for eight clients across 30 sender accounts, that architecture is worth more than any AI feature on the market.
Gelee does not compete with HeyReach on this. Our top tier is $4,997 a month for 10 LinkedIn accounts, which is roughly $500 per account, and there is no tier above it short of an enterprise contract. If you need 40 accounts under one login and you already employ the people writing the copy, HeyReach is the better buy.
Is Expandi still the default cloud tool?
It is still the tool named first for cloud-based outreach sequences. Expandi sends from a dedicated IP rather than from your browser, so your laptop can be shut and the sequence keeps running. A Chrome extension like Octopus CRM stops the moment you close the tab.
The practical difference between Expandi, Dripify and Waalaxy at 25 invites a day is small. Our accepts run 20 to 30% regardless of which one is doing the sending. What moves that number is who you target and what your profile says when they click it, which is why the LinkedIn headline rewriter is a better first hour than a tool comparison spreadsheet.
What results should I expect from any of these tools?
Across the campaigns we run: connection accepts of 20 to 30%, first-message replies of 12 to 18%, follow-up replies of 5 to 8%, and meetings at 3 to 5% of invites sent. Those numbers hold whether you send from Expandi, Dripify or Gelee. The tool does not move them much.
Work it forward. 500 invites in a month gets you 100 to 150 new connections, 12 to 27 first-message replies, another 5 to 12 from the follow-up, and 15 to 25 meetings if your targeting and offer are both solid. If you are seeing 5% accepts, roughly 25 connections from 500 invites, the problem is your list and your profile. Switching from Waalaxy to Expandi will not touch it, and you will have spent a month finding that out.
How many invites a day is safe?
LinkedIn does not publish a daily limit, and it moves with account age and how people respond to you. What we run: 20 to 25 invites a day on a warm account, 5 to 10 a day on a new one for the first two weeks. Every tool here can send more. Sending more is how accounts get restricted.
25 a day across 22 working days is 550 invites a month from one warm account. A brand new account at 5 to 10 a day produces 70 to 140 in its first two weeks, which is why a new profile takes about a month before it contributes real volume. Any vendor promising 100 connection requests a day is selling you a restriction. Expandi and HeyReach survived partly by throttling hard.
When does an AI SDR make more sense than a sequencer?
When the bottleneck is replies, not sends. Gelee is $2,497 a month for 3 LinkedIn accounts and writes in your voice, handles objections from your playbook, and books the meeting. There is a 3-month minimum, no self-serve signup, and setup takes 15 minutes.
The maths that decides it: 20 hours a month at $50 an hour is $1,000. At 500 prospects a month that becomes 40 hours, or $2,000, which is where $2,497 stops being the expensive option. Below 200 prospects a month, Dripify plus your own thumbs is cheaper and you should stay there. We split the same decision by who answers the inbox in the best LinkedIn automation tool depends on who answers replies.
Who should not buy Gelee?
Four groups. Agencies who need 30-plus sender accounts, because HeyReach does that better. Anyone testing an offer for the first time, because a $7 seat tells you whether people reply. Deal sizes under $2,000, since one meeting will not pay for the month. And anyone who wants to try it without a call, because there is no self-serve signup.
On that third group, the 3-month minimum means $7,491 committed before you have seen a full cycle of 1,500 invites. At a $2,000 deal size and 15 to 25 meetings a month, you need a close rate above 15% just to break even on the software. If you are selling a $20,000 contract, two meetings covers the quarter.
If you want a card-on-file, log-in-today experience, Waalaxy and Octopus CRM give you that in ten minutes.
So which one should I pick?
If you are testing: WarmySender at $7 a seat, 20 invites a day, four weeks. If LinkedIn is your only channel and you have the hours: Dripify or Expandi. If you run outreach for clients across many accounts: HeyReach. If you are a founder with 500 prospects a month and no one to answer replies: an AI SDR.
The switching point arrives the month your reply volume passes what fits in an hour a day, which for most founders lands between 300 and 500 invites a month. Below that, the cheap seat wins on both the invoice and the calendar. Above it, the cheap seat is the expensive option.