Starlight vs
Smartlead

Starlight is the list and the copy. Smartlead is the mailbox. Buy the work that creates replies, not the pipe that delivers templates.

Start free See the difference

Free plan, no credit card. Every message waits for your approval.

One prompt searches the web for your best-fit buyers

See the difference

Where Starlight pulls ahead of Smartlead, row by row.

Starlight vs Smartlead: a feature-by-feature comparison
Feature	Starlight	Smartlead
Scope	Leads, research, writing, sending, replies, booking	Sending, warmup, and reply capture
Lead sourcing	Describe your buyer; the agents work out the searches	Bring your own list
Outreach writing	Written for each person from live research	Bring your own copy; templates and spintax
Human review	Review mode or autopilot, per agent	Campaign sends once launched
Mailboxes	Your own Gmail or Outlook, 1:1 volume	Unlimited mailboxes with rotation and warmup
LinkedIn outreach	Our own Chrome extension, aware of who you're connected to	Email only
Replies and booking	Shared inbox with AI-drafted replies, plus booking pages	Unibox for replies; booking via other tools
Pricing	Free plan, then pay for what you use	From $39/mo, unlimited mailboxes at every tier

Why Starlight wins

List and copy included. The hours and the extra tools go away.
Live research plus a quality judge on every draft.
LinkedIn in the same cadence, not a separate product.
Inbox, booking, CRM, Claude — one subscription, one free plan.

What you'd still do in Smartlead

You still bring the list. You still bring the copy. You still staff both.
No research. No judge. No LinkedIn. Templates go out as-is.
A mailbox farm. Not a sales motion.

What using it actually looks like

You describe the buyer. Starlight does the rest, and shows you its work.

Starlight's search page, where an ideal customer is described in plain language

Describe the buyer. That's the setup. One sentence about who you're trying to reach. Starlight works out the searches, runs them, and keeps digging once the obvious results run out.

A Starlight contact record showing a match score and the reasoning behind it

Bad-fit prospects never reach you. Everyone is scored against your ideal customer before you see them, with the reasoning shown. You spend your attention on the ones worth having.

Starlight's metrics dashboard with a written summary above the charts

You'll know if it's working. Your numbers come with a plain-English read on what changed and what to do next, instead of a dashboard you have to interpret yourself.

AI outreach you'd put your name on.

The worry with an AI sales agent is simple: what is it saying to people, and would you have said it? Starlight answers that by showing you. Every draft is graded before it reaches you, and the weak ones are rewritten automatically.

Grounded
Every claim traces back to something real about that person or their company. Invented details get caught.
Human
It has to read like you wrote it on a good day, not like a template with the gaps filled in.
On brief
It does what you actually asked for. Ask for a reply and it won't quietly push for a call instead.

What's left takes a few seconds each to approve, edit, or delete. Once an agent has earned it, you can let it send on its own.

Starlight's Messages page showing drafted outreach waiting for review and approval

5xMore replies to cold outreach

3xMore qualified meetings per rep

50%More pipeline per rep in 90 days

5xFaster from first touch to booked

60%Fewer leads lost to slow follow-up

Why you switch from Smartlead

A cheap mailbox is a cheap mailbox. It does not know your buyer and it does not write. If you already solved list and copy, you solved the hard problem and then rented a pipe. Most teams have not solved it. They buy Smartlead and wonder why the hours didn't shrink.

Starlight is the hard problem, shipped. Agents source, score, research, write, and grade. Sends go from your inbox. LinkedIn and booking ride along. That is a sales product, not a sending product.

Stop assembling a stack to do one job. Start free and look at a finished sequence tonight.

Frequently
asked questions

Yes. Smartlead delivers what you bring. Starlight produces the list and the copy, then sends, follows up, and books. Delivery is the cheap half. Starlight is the half that creates replies.

No. Starlight sends from the Gmail or Outlook accounts you connect, with warm-up-aware daily limits and business-hours staggering in the recipient's timezone. That's a deliberate fit for personalized 1:1 volume rather than mailbox-rotated bulk sending.

Yes. Agencies come to Starlight for the part that doesn't scale by adding mailboxes: research and writing that survives a reply. Whitelabel workspaces don't write the email. Starlight does.