‍Sales engagement is the combination of all the sales outreach that takes place during a sales cycle. For a well-run sales team, this includes emails, calls, text / SMS messages, and even direct messages on social platforms. Sales engagement is important because the difference between a well-run and a poorly-run sales engagement process can have a massive impact on the growth of your company; When sales engagement is run well, your team may experience significantly higher initial response rates from new leads and this impact can be felt down the funnel.

Outplay, a popular sales engagement platform, has long been a go-to choice for sales teams aiming to streamline their outreach and increase conversions. However, as technology continues to advance and new players enter the market, sales professionals are discovering fresh alternatives that offer unique features and enhanced capabilities. Whether you're looking to optimize your workflow, access advanced analytics, or integrate seamlessly with your existing tools, exploring different options can give your sales team a competitive edge. In this blog, I’ll extensively discuss the top 7 sales engagement alternatives to Outplay in 2024 that can help elevate your sales strategy and boost your results with emphasis on their key strengths, misses, and pricing structure.

Let's get started!

What is Outplay?

Outplay offers a sophisticated cloud-based sales enablement solution designed to empower enterprises in effectively engaging with their target audience while enhancing visibility into key business metrics, thereby driving revenue growth. The platform equips sales teams with comprehensive tools to track, manage, and streamline their objectives, fostering meaningful interactions with customers across diverse marketing channels such as SMS, calls, LinkedIn, and email.

Notably, Outplay's automation capabilities seamlessly handle task management, ensuring efficiency and productivity. Furthermore, the platform seamlessly integrates with a wide array of third-party applications, including but not limited to HubSpot, Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Gmail, Zapier, and Pipedrive, facilitating a seamless workflow and maximizing utility for users.

Why is Outplay the right fit for your Sales Engagement needs?

• Outplay possesses comprehensive task management capabilities, including creating, viewing, assigning, editing, and completing tasks.
• Its Chrome extension helps to move leads from Gmail into your sequences with a single click.
• It provides sufficient analytics that allows you to track your sales performance, thereby understanding how prospects are engaging with your emails in real-time.
• Outplay provides tools for creating, personalizing, and automating email sequences, with AI assistance for drafting emails.
• Seamlessly integrates with CRMs like HubSpot and Pipedrive, automating the inclusion of form submissions into sales sequences.
• Features a built-in leaderboard to track and encourage high performance among sales reps.

Why do yo need an Outplay Alternative?

• Costly when compared to its features and other options.
• Its segmented interface complicates navigation and presents a tricky learning curve for users.
• Limited CRM integration.
• Customer support may not be the best.

What are the top 6 Sales Engagement Alternatives to Outplay in 2024?

1. Distrobird
2. SalesLoft
3. Freshsales
4. Klenty
5. Reply
6. Outreach

1. Distrobird

Distrobird is a powerhouse designed to supercharge sales engagement. With a robust suite of features encompassing contact organization, lead management, intuitive sales pipeline visualization, seamless email integration, task scheduling, and detailed performance analytics, Distrobird equips sales teams with everything they need to drive success.

What sets Distrobird apart is its unwavering focus on empowering sales teams to excel in every aspect of customer engagement. From efficiently tracking leads to nurturing relationships and closing deals with precision, Distrobird provides a centralized platform for seamless communication and collaboration across the sales pipeline. The result? Skyrocketing revenue growth and unparalleled customer satisfaction.

But that's not all—Distrobird takes sales engagement to new heights with cutting-edge AI-driven automation. By intelligently funnelling inbound leads into tailored multi-channel sequences based on prospect characteristics, Distrobird ensures timely and relevant outreach at every touchpoint. With advanced automation that dynamically adjusts outreach strategies based on prospect responses and interactions, Distrobird maximizes engagement and conversion opportunities like never before.

Distrobird best features

• Its free plan allows you to start using Distrobird's best features for free with unlimited teams and users - no demo or credit card required.
• Distrobird allows you to manage your entire sales process in one place thus simultaneously doubling your sales team's output with fewer tools.
• Seamlessly capture leads from your website and funnel them into multi-channel campaigns or sequences that will help close the sale.
• Our customer success team is available to help you import your customer or prospect list, CRM data, templates, automations, and more for free.
• Distrobird extends the familiarity of email clients to every other channel your customers engage with; SMS, voice, and social; this means you can onboard your team and deploy in minutes, not days.
• Distrobird’s contacts data is automatically enriched so your team knows exactly who they’re talking to, and how to keep them delighted.

Distrobird limitations

• Distrobird currently lacks a mobile application.
• Its free plan supports a maximum of 3 users and 4 teams.

Distrobird pricing

• Free plan for the Voice, Sequences, and Shared Inbox products.
• Startup plan for Shared Inbox: $8/month.
• Startup, Growth & Enterprise plans for both the Sequences and Voice products: $25,$50, & $75 respectively.

2. SalesLoft

SalesLoft is a dynamic sales engagement platform created to elevate sales team performance and optimize sales workflows. Its robust suite of tools empowers sales professionals to effectively engage prospects, efficiently manage leads, and seamlessly navigate the sales cycle. Serving as a central nexus for communication management, outreach automation, and customer interaction tracking, SalesLoft plays a pivotal role in driving sales team success.

At its core, SalesLoft offers a multifaceted toolkit that equips sales reps with actionable insights into prospect engagement, enabling personalized communication and targeted messaging strategies. With essential features such as email tracking, cadence creation, and comprehensive analytics, SalesLoft serves as a catalyst for enhancing sales efficiency, amplifying conversion rates, and cultivating enduring customer relationships.

SalesLoft best features

• Great customer support.
• Streamlines communications between sales teams and their prospects with a perfect blend of simplicity and advanced technology.
• Its deep integration with CRM systems and other sales tools ensures a seamless workflow that boosts productivity and enhances customer engagement.
• It's particularly valuable for sales professionals & businesses that focus on multi-channel sales engagement and require comprehensive analytics.

SalesLoft limitations

• Limited integrations.
• The VOIP calling regularly gets lagged and distorted needing to regularly close and reopen the browser.
• Importing individual items into SalesLoft can be time-consuming, and if a crash occurs, it may take a while to resume normal operations.
• Some users might find less appealing is the learning curve associated with SalesLoft.

SalesLoft pricing

• Available on request.

3. Freshsales

Freshsales is a popular sales engagement platform designed to empower businesses of all scales in optimizing various aspects of their operations. This includes streamlining lead management, client interactions, marketing insights, and customer relationship management processes. Notably, the platform empowers organizations to craft customized workflows featuring event-based triggers, thereby automating repetitive tasks efficiently.

One of Freshsales' key features is its capability to enable teams to tailor sales pipelines according to diverse criteria, such as geographical regions, teams, or specific processes. Moreover, it facilitates the maintenance of a product catalog encompassing pricing, discount, and tax information. The platform boasts an array of functionalities, including customizable email templates, sales goals management, predictive contact scoring, sales forecasting, audit logs, and role-based access controls. Administrators benefit from an intuitive analytics dashboard that offers insights into key performance indicators (KPIs), team performance, sales metrics, client communication, and other pertinent data.

Freshsales best features

• Mobile compatibility.
• Ease of use; Freshsales has a very user-friendly platform which makes it easy to learn all its features and functions.
• It provides its users with its library of APIs, which lets you access and update your data and build other functionalities atop the Freshworks platform.
• Freshsales has its artificial intelligence tool (called Freddy) and it helps with processes such as lead management and lead generation.

Freshsales limitations

• Mobile app usage is not as seamless as web usage.
• Slow refresh rates and longer loading times.
• Poor customer support.
• Fewer third-party integrations than those offered by competitors.
• Reports are not available in the free plan version.

Freshsales pricing

• Growth: $11
• Pro: $47
• Enterprise: $71

4. Klenty

Klenty is another comprehensive sales engagement platform meticulously designed to streamline and automate various facets of email marketing, lead management, drip campaigns, cadence tasks, and prospect activity tracking. Notable features encompass event-triggered emails, customizable fields, template management, an image library, email campaign oversight, domain blacklisting, administrative controls, and seamless CRM integration.

Empowering sales teams, Klenty simplifies the process of uploading contact details, and sending personalized emails and follow-ups, while intelligently detecting email bounces, replies, and out-of-office messages. Moreover, it offers sophisticated mechanisms to detect prospect duplication and collision, thus averting simultaneous communication efforts from multiple representatives. The intuitive dashboard furnishes organizations with insights into prospect status, facilitates cadence management, and enables precise filtering based on various parameters such as bounce rates, replies, and cadence completion.

Klenty best features

• Its intuitive interface makes it easy to use and customize.
• Seamless integration with CRM platforms.
• Effortless communication with prospects via phone calls, and real-time tracking.

Klenty limitations

• Verified users have complained about the quality of customer support received.
• Limited integrations and functionality issues.
• Migrating all data from previous software can be clumsy.
• A reviewer on SoftwareAdvice noted that Klenty charges per mailbox.

Klenty pricing

• Startup: $60 per user per month*
• Growth: $85 per user per month*
• Pro: $125 per user per month*
• Enterprise: Customizable
• Billed quarterly

5. Reply

Reply is an innovative AI-driven sales engagement platform engineered to streamline and amplify sales communications across email and social networks. Central to its functionality is the automation and scalability it brings to sales outreach efforts. Leveraging cutting-edge tools and strategic partnerships like Email Health Check and MailToaster for email warm-up, Reply significantly enhances email delivery rates. Integration with Google Postmaster further ensures ongoing performance monitoring, optimizing campaign effectiveness.

A standout feature of Reply is its robust B2B contact database, Reply Data, empowering users to curate prospect lists comprising millions of contacts, filtered according to specific criteria. This meticulous targeting ensures that messages reach the most pertinent recipients, thereby augmenting the impact of awareness campaigns and fostering meaningful connections with potential leads.

Reply best features

• Ease of setup and user-friendly interface.
• Advanced personalization.
• AI assistance for email writing.
• Reply offers a diverse range of analytics metrics that provide invaluable insights into the performance of each campaign.

Reply limitations

• Limited integrations.
• It may take some time to familiarize yourself with the interface.
• Low quality of contact data.
• Glitches in functionality.

Reply pricing

• Free: $0.
• Starter: $59 per user per month.
• Professional: $99 per user per month.
• Ultimate: $139 per user (billed annually).
• Agency: From $166 per month (customizable).

6. Outreach

Outreach stands out as a Sales Execution Platform, purpose-built to orchestrate intelligent revenue workflows. Leveraging the extensive reservoir of customer interactions and data from go-to-market teams worldwide, Outreach equips teams with the essential tools to craft, execute, and iteratively refine revenue strategies tailored to each stage of the customer journey. Renowned global enterprises like Cisco, Okta, SAP, Siemens, and Verizon trust Outreach to energize their workflows, prioritize customer-centric approaches, and dominate their respective markets.

With over 6,000 companies relying on its capabilities, Outreach is at the forefront of revolutionizing revenue team performance. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Outreach operates as a privately held company dedicated to empowering businesses worldwide.

Outreach best features

• Automates repetitive and time-consuming sales tasks
• Outreach empowers teams to build quality pipelines by ensuring they get the right message to the right prospect at the right time.
• Provides real-time data insights to improve deal health and minimize any risks to deal closing.
• With Outreach, teams can predict revenue outcomes accurately and build an informed and achievable revenue plan through data-driven forecasting and actionable customer insights.

Outreach limitations

• Integration with necessary tools can sometimes be slow.
• The interface can be a little bit daunting, especially for beginners.
• Clunky UI
• Customer support isn’t the best.
• Its reporting features could use some improvement.

Outreach pricing

• Available only on request.

What Sales Engagement Platform Should You Choose?

If you're seeking an inclusive and cost-effective solution that includes a complimentary plan, Distrobird presents an excellent choice. It consolidates essential functionalities for managing your sales and customer engagement technology stack into one convenient platform. This encompasses multi-channel sequences and campaigns, web messenger, outbound dialer, inbound call center software, shared team inbox, and conversation analytics.

Distrobird stands out for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with numerous popular applications. In essence, it serves as a robust and adaptable tool capable of enhancing sales operations for businesses of any scale. In light of these exceptional capabilities and user-friendly approach, I highly recommend Distrobird as your preferred sales engagement platform.