If you do B2B outbound and wonder which channel to build, you have three structurally different options: Lemlist (or Apollo, Smartlead), an in-house SDR, or an external managed service. This article breaks down the real costs of each approach.
Option 1 · Lemlist self-serve · real cost
Lemlist shows $59/user/month. For 5,000 personalized emails/month on 1 user, that's $708/year in pure license. But nobody operates Lemlist with zero effort.
To actually use it: deliverability setup (8-12h), warmup (2-3 weeks), template writing (4-6h/sequence), lead sourcing (8-15h/month), monitoring (6-10h/month), A/B testing (4-6h/month). Total ~30-45h/month operational. At $100/h founder time = $36-54K/year captured.
Option 2 · In-house junior SDR
Option 3 · External managed service
Example: Orkelia Commercial Pro at €497/month for 2,500 emails/month with branded tracking, AI personalizer (Claude Sonnet), reply classification (Claude Haiku), deliverability monitored, auto suppression list.
Synthetic comparison
Managed service: 7-10× cheaper.
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