# Cold outbound (solo)

> When you're a one-person team sending under 500 emails a month, you don't need Clay enrichment or Smartlead infrastructure. Apollo basic for leads, Claude for the email, Gmail for delivery.

Source: https://aistack.sh/stack/cold-outbound-lite
Category: Sales · Outbound
Level: Beginner
Last verified by a human: 2026-05-05

## The tools

### Apollo — Lead source + light enrichment

- Pricing: Free · $49/seat/mo Basic · $79/seat/mo Professional (annual billing)
- Site: https://apollo.io
- Why this one: Free tier or $49 Basic gives you the contacts plus what little enrichment you need at solo scale.
- More: https://aistack.sh/tool/apollo

### Claude — Per-lead copy

- Pricing: Free · $20/mo Pro · $100/mo Max 5x · $200/mo Max 20x · Sonnet API $2/$10 per M tokens (input/output)
- Site: https://claude.ai
- Why this one: Solo volume means you can hand-personalize. Claude drafts from a 1-line trigger you write yourself.
- Swap in instead: ChatGPT
- More: https://aistack.sh/tool/claude

### Gmail — Send

- Pricing: Free · $7/user/mo Workspace Starter (annual)
- Site: https://mail.google.com
- Why this one: Use one secondary domain inbox, hand-send. Skip Smartlead until you exceed 500 sends/month.
- More: https://aistack.sh/tool/gmail

## Monthly cost

### $26/mo — 100 sends/mo, hand-sent (small)

- Apollo: Free
- Claude: $20
- Gmail: $6 Workspace

### $75/mo — 300 sends/mo (medium)

- Apollo: $49 Basic
- Claude: $20
- Gmail: $6 Workspace

### $105/mo — 500 sends/mo (max before Smartlead) (heavy)

- Apollo: $79 Pro
- Claude: $20
- Gmail: $6 Workspace

## Workflow

### 1. Build a tight list (Apollo)

Apollo: filter to your tightest ICP. Cap the export at 100 contacts. At solo scale, list quality beats list size.

### 2. One trigger per lead

For each contact, jot one specific trigger (recent post, funding, hire, product launch). 30 seconds per lead.

### 3. Draft each email (Claude)

Paste the trigger + ICP into Claude. One email per lead.

**Prompt: Hand-personalized cold email**

```
Write a 4-line cold email.

Recipient: {{first_name}}, {{title}} at {{company}}.
Trigger I noticed: {{1 specific thing, e.g. "their post about hiring 3 SDRs in Berlin last week"}}.
Pain we solve: {{1 line}}.
Proof: {{1 specific outcome with a number}}.
CTA: open to a 12-min look next week?

Constraints:
- Subject: 3 to 5 words, lowercase. Output 2 options.
- Body: 4 lines (hook with the trigger, pain, proof, CTA).
- Under 80 words.
- No "I noticed", no "I hope this finds you well", no "quick question".

Output: subject options, then the email body.
```

### 4. Send + follow up by hand (Gmail)

Send from your secondary inbox. Two follow-ups: +3 days (1 line, sharper hook), +7 days (1 line, breakup). Stop there.

## What it produced

**Solo founder, ProServ B2B**

300 sends over 6 weeks: 8.4% reply rate (high, because hand-personalized), 14 booked calls, 3 closed at $4k average. Total tooling cost in that window: $90.

## Pitfalls

- **Gmail send limits + spam triggers** — Hard cap at 30 sends/day from a single inbox. Past 500/mo, deliverability collapses. That's when you graduate to the recommended stack.
- **Skipping the trigger** — Without the per-lead trigger this stack falls apart. The whole reason it works at solo scale is that each email earns the open. Don't paste-and-blast.

## Other ways to do this

- [Cold outbound](https://aistack.sh/stack/cold-outbound): Full motion: enrichment, deliverability, CRM — $342/mo

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Curated by alex-w on aistack.sh. Last updated 2026-05-05.