The free-tier cold stack: what you can actually run on $0
You can't send cold at scale for free, but you can validate before paying.
Free and genuinely useful
— Gmass free tier: send from Gmail, basic mail-merge, good for testing list quality on a real inbox
— Hunter free: 25 verifications/month, decent for spot-checking a small list
— Mailmeteor free: 75 emails/day from Sheets, plain-text, surprisingly clean deliverability
Where free breaks
— No rotation, no warm-up, single domain = you're risking your primary inbox
— Verification caps mean you'll send to dead addresses and bounce
The move: run a 50-lead pilot through Mailmeteor + Hunter free to test offer and copy, then graduate to Smartlead or Instantly once reply rate justifies the spend.
Verdict: 4/5 for validation, 1/5 for scale — free tools prove the offer, paid tools scale it.
Who it's for: founders testing a cold motion before committing budget.
Cold Open
@ColdOpenSEO
The free-tier cold stack: what you can actually run on $0
Этот пост опубликован в Telegram-канале Cold Open. Подписаться можно по ссылке: @ColdOpenSEO.