Autoklose vs Woodpecker in 2026: Bundled lead database vs deliverability-first cold email
Autoklose sells a database and a sequencer together, priced through a sales call. Woodpecker sells deliverability, free warm-up and inbox rotation on every plan, at a published price that scales with your prospect list.
Autoklose
Woodpecker- Autoklose bundles a searchable B2B lead database into every tier. Woodpecker has no bundled database at all; its Lead Finder is a separate credits-based add-on.
- Woodpecker publishes prospect-based pricing starting at $35/month for 500 prospects; Autoklose publishes no pricing at any tier.
- Free email warm-up and email verification are included on every Woodpecker plan; Autoklose's materials do not describe a warm-up or deliverability feature.
- Woodpecker offers a white-label option for agencies reselling the platform; Autoklose has no white-label feature described.
- Woodpecker supports LinkedIn outreach as a paid add-on alongside email; Autoklose is email-only with no LinkedIn or multi-channel steps mentioned.
- Autoklose's team collaboration and CRM integrations only unlock from the Small Business tier up; Woodpecker's core deliverability features (warm-up, rotation, adaptive sending, domain audit) are identical across all five prospect tiers.
- Woodpecker offers a 7-day trial with no free tier; Autoklose has no published trial or free option at all.
Autoklose and Woodpecker both do cold email automation, but they were built to solve different pain points inside that same category. Autoklose's pitch is consolidation: a built-in B2B lead database sits next to the sequencer so a small sales team never buys data separately, though pricing at every tier is "contact us" with no public number. Woodpecker's pitch is deliverability: free email warm-up, inbox rotation, adaptive sending, and a domain audit are included at every price point starting at $35 a month, and the company has been refining that infrastructure since 2015. Neither one includes the other's core feature, Woodpecker has no bundled database and Autoklose does not lead with warm-up or rotation, so the choice mostly comes down to whether you are missing prospects or missing inbox placement.
The tools at a glance
Autoklose
Email automation platform with a built-in B2B lead database, letting sales teams reach thousands of prospects from a single tool.
Autoklose's reason for existing is the bundled database. Search by industry, company size, job title, and location, pull results straight into a sequence, and skip the separate ZoomInfo or Apollo subscription most cold email tools assume you already have. For teams whose real bottleneck is finding people to email in the first place, that consolidation into a single bill has genuine value.
Where Woodpecker leads on deliverability infrastructure, Autoklose is comparatively quiet. There is no mention of email warm-up, no inbox rotation, and no domain health monitoring in its published feature set, meaning sending reputation is left largely to the customer to manage outside the platform. Campaign reporting covers open rates, reply rates, click-through, and sequence completion, useful for optimizing copy, but not a substitute for the inbox-protection tooling Woodpecker builds in by default.
Autoklose also asks for more trust upfront: every tier, Starter through Enterprise, is "Contact for pricing," so there is no way to size up the cost against your list before a sales call. Team collaboration and CRM integration are gated to Small Business and up, and the VanillaSoft backing makes this a better fit for teams already inside that ecosystem than for an independent buyer comparison-shopping cold email tools on price alone.
| Feature | Starter Contact for pricing | Small Business Contact for pricing | Enterprise Contact for pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built-in lead database | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email sequence automation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team collaboration | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CRM integrations | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| VanillaSoft integration | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dedicated support | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Woodpecker
Cold email and LinkedIn outreach platform with built-in warm-up, inbox rotation, and GDPR-safe sending.
Woodpecker has been running since 2015, and its feature set reads like a company that has spent a decade fixing deliverability problems for other people. Free email warm-up, automatic inbox rotation across connected accounts, adaptive sending limits, and a domain audit tool that flags DNS and blacklist issues are included on every plan, not reserved for a premium tier. For teams that have already burned a domain's reputation on a less careful tool, that built-in protection is the whole reason to switch.
Pricing is transparent and scales by active prospects rather than seats: $35 a month for 500 prospects, rising to $188 a month at 10,000. Condition-based campaigns let sequences branch on whether a prospect opened, clicked, or replied, and a centralized inbox consolidates responses across multiple sending accounts. Agencies get a white-label option to run campaigns under a client brand, something Autoklose does not offer at all.
What Woodpecker does not do is bundle a lead database. Its Lead Finder tool exists for in-platform prospecting, but it runs on a separate credits system layered on top of the subscription, meaning teams still typically supplement with a dedicated data source for serious volume. LinkedIn automation is also a paid add-on rather than a native inclusion, and there is no free tier, only a 7-day trial.
| Feature | 500 prospects $35/mo | 2,000 prospects $67/mo | 4,000 prospects $99/mo | 10,000 prospects $188/mo | 20,000 prospects $329/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email warm-up (free) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email verification (free) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Inbox rotation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Condition-based campaigns | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| LinkedIn automation | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on | Add-on |
| White-label | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | Available | Available |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Autoklose | Woodpecker |
|---|---|---|
| Built-in lead database | Yes, searchable database included on every tier | No, Lead Finder is a separate credits-based add-on |
| Pricing transparency | No public pricing; contact for pricing at every tier | Yes, published prospect-based pricing at every tier |
| Email warm-up | Not a stated feature | Yes, free on every plan |
| Inbox rotation | Not a stated feature | Yes, on every plan |
| LinkedIn outreach | Not offered | Yes, as a paid add-on |
| White-label option | Not offered | Yes, available from the 10,000-prospect tier up |
| Domain / deliverability audit | Not a stated feature | Yes, domain audit included on every plan |
| Condition-based / branching sequences | Not described beyond standard follow-up scheduling | Yes, branches on open, click, or reply behavior |
| Free trial | Not published; depends on sales conversation | 7-day trial, no free tier |
| Starting price | Contact for pricing | $35/month for 500 prospects |
Which should you choose?
AutokloseWoodpeckerWoodpeckerAutokloseWoodpeckerWoodpeckerThe two tools rarely fail the same customer for the same reason. Autoklose's weakness is opacity, no price, no warm-up, no visible deliverability tooling, offset by a real convenience if you value the bundled database and are already inside VanillaSoft. Woodpecker's weakness is that it assumes you already have (or can source) a prospect list, since it has no bundled database of its own, offset by genuinely strong deliverability infrastructure and pricing you can check before you ever get on a call. If your list-building is the hard part, that argues for Autoklose. If your bounce rate and spam placement are the hard part, that argues for Woodpecker.
Bottom line
Pick Autoklose if you need a prospect database bundled with your sequencer and do not mind a sales-led buying process to get there. Pick Woodpecker if deliverability, warm-up, inbox rotation, domain health, is the thing keeping your replies low, and you would rather see the price before committing. Most agencies running serious cold email volume will eventually want Woodpecker's protection layer regardless of where their list comes from.
Frequently asked questions
Is Autoklose or Woodpecker better for cold email deliverability?
Woodpecker is the clear choice for deliverability: free email warm-up, email verification, and inbox rotation are included on every plan, along with a domain audit tool that flags DNS and blacklist issues before they hurt a campaign. Autoklose's published feature set does not describe any comparable warm-up or sending-reputation tooling.
Does Woodpecker include a prospect database like Autoklose does?
No. Woodpecker has no bundled lead database; its Lead Finder is a separate, credits-based prospecting add-on layered on top of the base subscription. Autoklose includes a searchable B2B database with industry, size, title, and location filters on every tier, which is its main differentiator against Woodpecker.
Why does Woodpecker publish pricing and Autoklose does not?
Woodpecker prices by the number of active prospects in your campaigns, starting at $35 per month for 500 prospects and rising with list size, which lets buyers estimate cost before signing up. Autoklose lists "Contact for pricing" at every tier instead, a sales-led model tied to its ownership by VanillaSoft, so a direct cost comparison requires reaching out to Autoklose's team first.
Can I run LinkedIn outreach alongside email on either platform?
Only on Woodpecker, and only as a paid add-on rather than a native inclusion. Autoklose's published feature set is email-only, with no LinkedIn or other multi-channel sequencing steps described.
Is Woodpecker worth it for an agency running campaigns for multiple clients?
Yes, for agencies specifically, Woodpecker's white-label option (available from the 10,000-prospect tier) lets you run campaigns under a client's brand, and the centralized inbox makes managing replies across several client accounts more practical. Autoklose has no white-label feature described in its published materials, which makes it a weaker fit for agency resale.
How much does prospect-based pricing cost at scale on Woodpecker compared to Autoklose?
Woodpecker's published tiers run from $35 a month for 500 prospects up to $329 a month for 20,000, so cost scales predictably with list size. Autoklose does not publish comparable numbers at any tier, so an accurate side-by-side cost comparison at a specific prospect volume is not possible without contacting Autoklose's sales team directly.