Cost guide

What does a qualified lead actually cost?

Agency retainers. In-house SDRs. Paid ads. LinkedIn InMail. Cold email. The numbers side by side, with no rounding in your favor.

Cost per contact reached, by channel

These are median numbers. Your mileage varies, but the order of magnitude stays the same.

Cold email agency $6 per contact reached $3,000-$10,000/month retainer. Typically 500-2,000 prospects contacted per month. Does not include time spent briefing and reviewing.
In-house SDR $6 per contact reached Loaded cost of $7,000-$10,000/month. At 50-100 personalized emails per day, you reach roughly 1,000-2,000 contacts per month.
LinkedIn InMail $35-$80 per message sent InMail credits at market rate. Sales Navigator gives 50 credits per month at $99, but credit packs and enterprise seats push the real cost far higher.
Distribute $0.07 per contact reached Research, writing, delivery included. $25 starter pack. No retainer, no seat fee.

The full breakdown

Cost-per-lead is one number. Here's what you're actually signing up for.

Channel Monthly cost Setup time Cost per contact Scales without you
Cold email agency $3,000-$10,000 2-4 weeks $2-$15 Sort of
In-house SDR $6,000-$10,000 2-3 months $3-$10 No
Paid ads (Google/LinkedIn) $1,000+ 1 week $40-$150 / lead Yes
LinkedIn InMail $99-$149 1 day $35-$80 per message No
DIY cold email (tools + time) $200-$500 1-2 weeks $0.15-$0.50 No
Distribute $25 to start 5 minutes $0.07 Yes. No SDR, no setup.

Why cold email used to cost so much

The old way to run cold email required three things: a domain infrastructure (separate domains, warmed inboxes), a data provider (Apollo, Clay, or similar), and a sending tool (Instantly, Lemlist). Each costs $50-$300/month. Getting them to work together without hurting deliverability took two weeks of setup.

Then there was the time cost. Writing copy, uploading leads, managing follow-up sequences. Most founders who tried it gave up before getting results. The ones who kept going spent 5-10 hours per week on it.

Distribute handles all of that automatically. Drop in your product URL. Set a weekly budget. The system finds the prospects, writes the emails, warms the inboxes, and sends. You get notified when someone replies positively.

$0.07 per contact reached, research and writing included
5 min median time from URL to first campaign running
48 hrs median time to first positive reply

The costs agencies don't put in the proposal

Every engagement has line items that don't show up on the invoice.

01
Onboarding time (yours, not theirs) Agency kickoffs take 3-5 hours of your time in the first two weeks. You brief them on ICP, review copy, approve sequences. Then repeat every time they want to test something new.
02
The 30-day ramp Domain warmup and sequence testing mean you won't see results in the first month. You're paying full retainer for a month of setup. Some agencies are honest about this. Most aren't.
03
Commission on deals they touched Agency contracts often include 5-15% of deal value for deals sourced through their campaigns. On a $10,000 contract, that's another $500-$1,500 per deal, on top of the retainer.
04
Lock-in and renegotiation risk Most agency contracts run 3-6 months with a 30-day cancellation notice. If results disappoint at month 2, you're paying through month 3 minimum while looking for a replacement.

Common questions about cold email costs

Does cold email require buying a separate domain?

Traditionally, yes. Sending cold email from your main domain risks hurting its deliverability. The standard approach is to buy 2-3 lookalike domains (distribute-hq.com, trydistribute.com) and warm them up over 4-6 weeks before sending. Distribute handles this automatically when you add a campaign.

Why is $0.07 per contact so much cheaper than an agency?

Agencies price in their cost of labor, tools, account management, and margin. A good agency rep handles 5-10 clients simultaneously and spends maybe 2-3 hours per week on your campaign. You're also paying for their overhead. Distribute automates the parts that consume that labor: prospect finding, email writing, inbox management, and sending.

What exactly does "$0.07 per contact" include?

Every contact Distribute reaches includes prospect research (finding and verifying the email), personalized copy generation (the AI reads each prospect's website before writing), and delivery through a warmed sending infrastructure. The $0.07 figure comes from real campaign data: 680 emails sent across two campaigns for roughly $44 total. No seat fee, no retainer, no separate line items for data or tooling.

Is paid search cheaper than cold email?

For B2B with long sales cycles, rarely. Paid search CPLs for B2B SaaS average $40-$200 depending on keyword competition. LinkedIn ads run $6-$15 per click with low conversion rates, putting CPL at $80-$300. Cold email's advantage is direct personalization and no platform tax on distribution.

Can I run cold email alongside paid ads?

Yes, and they complement each other well. Paid ads generate inbound intent signals. Cold email targets the same companies proactively before they search. Some of the highest-converting sequences are triggered when someone from a target account visits your site and then receives a cold email the same week.

$25 to reach 350 contacts at $0.07 each.

No retainer. No 30-day ramp. No account manager to brief. First campaign runs in 5 minutes.

Start free, $25 credits
Keep reading

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Who uses Distribute?

SaaS founders, agencies, freelancers, and B2B brands. Different goals, same $0.07 per contact reached.

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