Outreachstack is a comparison directory for cold-email and sales-engagement tools. We make money when readers click an affiliate link and convert. That conflict of interest is real, and the way we manage it is by being explicit about what we measure, how we measure it, and where the data comes from. If a tool doesn't perform on a measurement, we say so — even if it pays us a higher commission than the alternative.
The four scoring axes
Every tool in the directory is scored on the same four axes. We don't weight them equally — the weighting depends on the persona reading the page. A solo founder reading best cold email for founders gets a different ranking than an agency reading best cold email for agencies, even from the same underlying scores.
1. Pricing
We scrape each tool's public pricing page weekly via headless browser. Every price displayed on Outreachstack has a last_scraped timestamp attached to it. Pricing pages where we can't extract structured data (typically enterprise "Contact us" tiers) are marked as such — we don't fabricate price ranges.
2. Deliverability
For cold-email senders and warmup tools, we run a 30-day inbox-placement test using a fresh sending domain on each platform, sending against a 100-inbox grid spanning Google, Microsoft, and Apple endpoints. The score reflects inbox-vs-spam-vs-promotions placement at the end of the period. We re-test annually or whenever a tool ships a deliverability-related feature update.
3. Integrations
We pull the integration count from each tool's published directory and audit a random 10% of the listed integrations to confirm they're real and functional. Tools that list inflated integration counts (e.g., every Zapier app shown as a "native" integration) are scored on functional natives only.
4. Use-case fit
This is the editorial axis. A tool that scores well on the first three axes can still be wrong for a specific buyer — Smartlead's strength at $39/mo per workspace is wasted on a solo founder running 1 mailbox. Use-case fit is hand-assigned per persona by the editorial team and revisited whenever the tool's positioning changes.
How tools enter the directory
We seed the directory with the most-searched tools in each category, identified via Google search volume and keyword overlap with category head-terms. New tools are added when (a) they have a public pricing page, (b) they appear on ProductHunt or BetaList with credible launch traction, and (c) they fit a category we already cover. We don't accept paid inclusion. Sponsored placements get a visible Sponsored badge and don't alter editorial scores.
Affiliate disclosure
Outreachstack participates in affiliate programs with most of the tools we cover. When you click a "Try [Tool]" button or link on this site, you may pass through a tracked URL that earns us a commission if you sign up. The commission rate varies by tool and ranges roughly from 10% to 35% of the first year of subscription revenue, sometimes recurring for the lifetime of the account.
The commission rate does not affect editorial scoring or ranking. A tool paying 35% lifetime can rank below a tool paying 10% if the second tool is a better fit for the page's persona. We've made this explicit because the "comparison sites secretly rank by commission" pattern is a real problem in this category — we'd rather you trust the methodology than the brand.
How to challenge a rating
If you build one of the tools we cover and disagree with our scoring, email hello@outreachstack.io with the specific score you contest and evidence. We'll re-test against the same methodology and update — or explain why we didn't. We don't change scores in response to commission negotiations or sponsor requests.
What we don't do
- We don't run paid placements in editorial rankings.
- We don't accept gift cards, free accounts above the public free tier, or "thank you" bonuses from vendors.
- We don't rewrite reviews because a vendor's affiliate manager asked us to.
- We don't publish tool reviews without testing or substantive editorial — empty templated pages get held in
drafts/, not pushed.
Last refreshed 2026-05-29. Methodology changes are tracked in this page's commit history at our GitHub repo.