The "easy button" for personalized sales outreach
There isn't much to say here. It was advertised as 'Unlimited content generation for individual prospects via the Chrome extension', but after the AppSumo campaign ended, the limits were reduced to 150 credits in total, for both bulk and individual messages!
With 2 credits per message, that makes a meager 75 messages if you only write individual messages. Quite a difference from 'Unlimited'. Moreover, and this is worth noting, the current Free Plan from Autobound already offers 250 credits - 100 more than what was sold in Plan 1 here.
This approach by Autobound is deceptive and lacks ethics to an extreme degree. This is a rip-off! I contacted Autobound and, unsurprisingly, received no response as yet.
I have also reported this issue to AppSumo support, and I'm confident that they have established policies in place to punish this kind of behavior.
You can read the product description (still here on AppSumo):
"Unlimited content generation for individual prospects via the Chrome extension" (for all tiers).
Then after their AppSumo campaign ended, they changed "unlimited" to 150 credits/month in the plugin (for Tier 1). i.e. they sold unlimited content generation, but what they actually deliver is... 75 pieces of content a month. Considering that their FREE plan (available on their website to anyone) gives you 100 credits (50 pieces of content), basically they fooled all of us here and sold a glorified free trial with only 50% over what they are giving away for free to anyone.
Selling an LTD with a big promise and then instantly going back on what was promised and failing to deliver what was sold is pure deception. AppSumo, if you are reading this, you should force them to refund all the LTD buyers who were misled and sold a bill of goods - they are clearly in violation of AppSumo's terms.
If you are still within your 60 day refund period, I suggest you go for it before it runs out - that's what I am doing.
Instant refund and I blacklisted both the product and the founder to remember never to make the mistake to buy anything from them again. No matter how good a product is, if the founder thinks it's acceptable to deceive their customers and early supporters, they don't deserve to succeed.
So where do I begin.. I've wanted to step up my cold outreach personalization, so I gave it a try. Money and time wasted, oh I was wrong. Fully stacked up 5 codes, and now they are going straight for the refund.
There are some good aspects of the app, but compared to what the intent of the app was, and what the outcome is - it highly underdelivered.
Here's a short list of PROs & CONs
PROs
- 'Free' Google Chrome extension that does the job. It's basically doing what it says. It allows you to chat with ChatGPT (3.5 I pressume?) and craft some email based on the data found on LinkedIn page
- Nice UI
- List Builder generous limits
... that's about it
Now for the CONs
- Buggy website - Drag & drop for CSV file upload is not working. List builder filters are also messed up. It seems they've spent more time making a nice UI than on the product itself. Their website is only somewhat usable on Chrome. If you use Firefox or another browser, your scroll may not work. You'll also have a bunch of other issues. And of course, it's not on their roadmap to make the App usable on Firefox. Shame..
- False promises - A lot of them.. They advertise API access, eventhough the API is non existent. They have a dedicated page for their API, where they will just snag your email and tell you "Thanks! We’ll get back to you in 24 hours. View our API docs in the meantime..." Now, when you look at their docs, you'd say they've worked very hard on their API. This is because they 'have' a 'v3.1' version. That in fact, is not true. When you ask them, they'll tell you it's not ready yet.
- More false promises - This one's funny ;). Got a pop-up to respond to survey, and I will get $50.00. Not a 'chance to win' - but 'will get'. Seemed fishy to me, but said to hell with it. Just a few survey questions, and bunch of false promises. Didn't even get an email, of course.
- List builder data - As of my last checking, average is 2 years old. That's not good enough no matter what kind of agency you are running. And that's why the advertised it as a free addon. 5000 export limit per run, unlimited runs.
- Output speed - Slow as a turtle. It takes around ~35min - 45h for 150 bulk email generations. As of my writing of this review - it's still spinning.
- Output quality - They are using GPT 3.5, as I can tell which usual words are from GPT 3.5. And the output doesn't make any sense. Most of the times, your data will come out as one big textual chunk. Other times it'll spit out properly formatted emails.
- Input data - They currently have only 2 options for personalization. Email and / or Linkedin URL. No option to choose which data you want to include for more personalized approach. It's all in their hands.
- Output data - App will replace your verified emails, and add some random it found on the web. Now, that wouldn't be a problem. For example, they could add it to a new column. But, good luck matching the output data with other details you have for that prospect.
-Lowerecased data as out - You can do whatever you want, set whichever casing you want, the app decides.
- Credits - I've stacked up 5 codes, and fully maxed out the plan. To break it down, that is 2000 personalized openeres, or 1000 complete emails. For the cost of the full code stack, I'd be well of hiring someone on Fiverr to do that. Probably would do it faster.
To wrap it up, I was left dissapointed.. This app is full of promises, but it is far from being ready for AppSumo sale. The idea and the app have the potential, I stand by that and I mean it. But if they're going to come back, they should return with an app that promises little and does a lot. Not the other way around.
I bought 5 codes because I was very excited seeing all the 5 star reviews of this product on app sumo, g2 (185). But I quickly learned that a lot of these reviews might not be what they seem.
After multiple days trying to figure this product out it seems it offers many different services. It offers a database to create list, chrome extension for quick replies, and it integrates with LinkedIn. While that all sounds amazing, there is some serious flaws to this program.
The emails need to be verified, my email verifier found that more than 50% were invalid and unusable. Some of the software sometimes glitches/crashes. I seem to be putting in more work and time. Which to me doesn't make sense since I bought this to save time.
I've spent 2 days just trying to get through the on-boarding process. The system is buggy, constant error message when looping through the first task. Support replied to my message saying my details had been manually input by them and to proceed with on-boarding....
Gave it another try, now I'm giving it back. Waited all day for support to respond in regard to resolving the continued system function failure, with no avail. Refund.
We've been looking for a tool that truly leverages AI to create relevant, customized emails. We've tried a few and they were OK, but didn't nail it.
With outbound B2B emails, the "standard" customization of name, business, city, industry, etc., just doesn't work. Full disclosure: It's taken several weeks to get Autobound fine-tuned (writing style, value props, buyer personas), but now that we have, our response rates have more than doubled.
Autobound is the real deal today. Having said that, the Autobound team is currently working on the ability to create fully custom sequences. That will take an already great solution and make it next-level.
If having a predictable flow of quality leads is the lifeblood of your business, look no further.
Thanks Daniel and Kyle for your efforts!
Tom Poole
CEO
MarketSense
I went all in with 5 codes and was very excited from all the 5 taco reviews.
The system is really 3 different software bolted together with no coherence between them.
The AI section which builds potential emails crashed and had to be done 3 times. Looked to have potential but the emails are not personalised. Only the opener is personalised (1 sentence, a couple of which looked suspect).
The leads section cannot be searched by keywords apart from company name. Then once selected the leads have to be exported as a CSV to be uploaded for the email opener section.
It is disjointed and not well thought through. It is a good idea but I am unsure why there is such amazing reviews. A simple database would allow the leads to be pushed into the opener area and then the system chooses the appropriate email.
Unfortunately, it doesn't add anything extra to my workflow apart from more work.
I've only put a bit of time into Autobound thus far. The onboarding process was automagical and very impressive. It's chrome extension for Linkedin was a welcome bonus that I did not expect. It seems to do a lot more than I understand just yet but even with just what I've seen thus far it is more than worth the price tag.
Autobound impressed me right from the onboarding process, helping me to define and clarify my offering descriptions and ideal customer profiles. The onboarding concluded with some very insightful videos that showcased the solution's power.
It offers a great deal of customizability and feels mature, which is particularly noteworthy for products found on Appsumo.
Overall, I'm very satisfied with the current version and am eager to see which features will be added in the future.
If you're looking to craft customized introductions based on prospects' data in seconds, then Autobound is definitely worth checking out.
I've been using Outbound.io, found through AppSumo, and I'm really impressed by its capabilities. It offers an intuitive platform for automating and customizing email marketing campaigns, making it easy to engage with my audience effectively.
However, there's one area for improvement that I believe could make a significant difference, especially for non-English users. The initial setup wizard is exclusively in English. This poses a challenge for those of us operating in a different language - my team and I work primarily in French.
It would be greatly beneficial if Outbound.io could allow users to select their preferred language at the start of the setup process. This change would make the platform more accessible and user-friendly for a global audience, ensuring businesses like mine can leverage it to its full potential without language barriers.
Overall, Outbound.io is a fantastic tool, and with this enhancement, it could cater even better to its diverse user base.
Really like the ability to create emails, and other messages on demand using AI suggestion. I enjoy using the tool just have a few gripes.
First, it picked up some weird information about my company and someone else's company. For some reason the tool doesn't pick up my name and someone else's name when I'm the owner of the business... I find it really strange it uses someone else's info in my company and not mine.
The set up process is a bit tedious and requires a bit of work.
Don't see much on analytics. List builder is cool. I'd like to be able to target companies based on web tech their using.
Overall solid tool. Still early in development. But I can tell it will be good in the future. But I find it still weird that Autobound can't recognize my name even when I signed up with my email. Tool is too focused on linkedin.
I'm really happy with the creators of Autobound. I've been looking for a tool to improve my outreach and I really like what I found!
Here's what I like:
The chrome extension which is helping me with my 1-on-1 outreach.
I played with the personalization generators (two options) and have been testing them out in my outbound campaigns. I like what's generated.
Its really cool that you can work with the AI to improve and better fit the writing style to me and my brand.
I'm struggling with managing lead lists and such. I understand there are limitations but it would be really cool if instead of running into the 5000 lead limit at one time, it could allow me to take chunk of a larger number at a time and come back to the next chunk. Right now I'll have a list of 10,000+ that I can take the first 5,000 but how do I come back and get the others?
Oh, I also appreciate their Q&As that their doing. I'm trying to catch more of them.
Thanks for your time and efforts!