Apollo Email Warm-Up Alternative: Free for 10 Mailboxes

Apollo.io is an outreach platform with warm-up bundled, not a standalone warm-up tool. If you only need warm-up, the number that matters is 10: BobWork Email Warm-up is free for up to 10 mailboxes. If you ignore that difference, you may pay for prospecting and sequences you do not use. This page compares price, providers, limits and switching options.

Apollo can be the better choice if you want outreach software, not just warm-up. It includes a B2B contact database, sequences and managed Microsoft 365 mailboxes on paid plans. If you only need mailbox warming, start with the free warm-up tool and compare it against the plan you already use. Prices were read on 17 October 2026 from the vendor's pricing page; check before you buy.

What is the main difference?

Apollo.io and BobWork solve different problems. Apollo is a sales engagement platform with warm-up inside the paid product. BobWork Email Warm-up is a free warm-up tool, with an optional pay-as-you-go Outbound (beta) for sending, a shared warm-up network by default and an optional private pool per account.

That difference matters when you manage several mailboxes. With Apollo, warm-up sits beside credits, sequences and prospecting. With BobWork, the warm-up workflow is the product.

Apollo’s provider coverage is strongest if you want Microsoft support inside an outreach platform. BobWork’s coverage is stronger if you need standalone warm-up across many IMAP, SMTP and mailbox-provider setups.

If you are still choosing a general free option, compare this page with our guide to free email warm-up tools and trials. The core question is not “which tool has more features?” It is “which features will you actually use this month?”

Where does Apollo.io win?

Apollo should not be judged as a simple warm-up tool. It is larger than that. If your team needs prospecting, enrichment and campaign execution, Apollo may save you from stitching several tools together.

Apollo’s biggest advantage is the built-in B2B contact database. BobWork does not provide prospect lists. If your workflow starts with finding accounts, filtering contacts and building sequences, Apollo is closer to the centre of your sales process.

Apollo also gives you sequences. That matters when you want one place for outreach steps, replies and campaign work. BobWork warms mailboxes; it does not replace a sales engagement platform.

Apollo supports Microsoft Office on paid plans. That is a clear advantage if your outbound stack depends on Outlook or Microsoft 365. BobWork Email Warm-up does not support Outlook yet, because Microsoft requires OAuth for the route we plan to use.

Apollo also lists managed Microsoft 365 mailboxes among its stronger bundled platform features. If you want Microsoft mailbox setup and outreach together, Apollo may be the cleaner option.

Finally, Apollo can make sense when warm-up is a small part of a larger paid workflow. If you already pay for Apollo Basic or Professional and one warmed mailbox is enough, you may not need a separate warm-up tool.

For Microsoft sending, follow the provider’s current configuration rules. Apollo’s table notes Office 365 needs SMTP AUTH and an app password. Microsoft documents authenticated SMTP submission in its Exchange Online SMTP AUTH guidance.

When is free warm-up better?

BobWork wins when warm-up is the job. You do not need a contact database, credits, sequences or a paid outreach suite to raise mailbox activity gradually.

The free plan covers up to 10 mailboxes per account. There is no credit card, no time limit and no paid plan required until you go above 10 active mailboxes. Each active mailbox above 10 is $5/month, with lower per-mailbox pricing from 10 and 50 extra mailboxes.

The warm-up ramp is explicit. Each mailbox starts at 3 emails per day, adds 2 per day and caps at 30 per day by default. You can edit the cap per mailbox up to 100. Weekends run at 30%, and sends are spread between 09:00 and 18:00 in the mailbox’s own time zone.

The network is also explicit. BobWork uses a shared warm-up network by default, where active mailboxes exchange warm-up messages across accounts. If you prefer isolation, switch to a private pool in the dashboard under Mailbox pool → Pool mode. A private pool needs at least two mailboxes.

The engine uses short, plain-text office notes. There are no links, images or user-written promotional copy. About 40% of received warm-up mail gets a reply, and threads stop after three messages.

Spam rescue is limited to engine mail. If warm-up mail lands in Spam, it is moved to Inbox, marked read, labelled “Warm-up” and archived after 24 hours. Real mail is never read, moved or answered. Only warm-up mail carrying the engine’s hidden header, or a known Zoho-API subject, is touched.

BobWork measures spam landings directly inside receiving mailboxes. It does not use third-party seed lists. The health score and ready gate are based on warming age, received warm-up volume and the sender’s seven-day spam rate.

If you want to understand how the network model affects control and privacy, read private warm-up pools vs public networks. If you want the exact ramp behaviour, see the email warm-up schedule guide.

What will each mailbox cost?

The cleanest comparison is monthly cost at 1, 5 and 20 mailboxes. The assumption below is narrow: you only want warm-up, and you are comparing the minimum listed monthly software cost.

For Apollo, the table uses Basic at $49/month because that is the cheapest paid plan in the 17 October 2026 competitor table. Apollo’s pricing page states that warm-up is included on paid plans, uses credits, and paid plans warm 1 mailbox free. It does not state a clear warm-up cost for 5 or 20 warmed mailboxes on the pricing page.

For BobWork, the table uses the free allowance: up to 10 active mailboxes per account.

This table does not say Apollo is expensive for what it is. Apollo includes more than warm-up. It says Apollo is not the cheapest way to warm 5 or 20 mailboxes if you do not need its platform features.

The same logic applies to other cold-email platforms with bundled warm-up. If you already pay for outreach, included warm-up may be enough. If you only need warming, a standalone tool is easier to reason about. For broader pricing context, see cheapest email warm-up per mailbox.

Who should stay on Apollo?

Stay on Apollo if your team uses the contact database every week. That is not a warm-up feature, but it may be the reason the platform pays for itself.

Stay if your sequences are already live there. Moving warm-up is easy. Moving campaigns, contact logic, team workflows and reporting can be harder.

Stay if you need Outlook warm-up today. Apollo lists Microsoft Office support on paid plans. BobWork does not support Outlook yet. Do not move Microsoft mailboxes to a tool that cannot connect them.

Stay if you use managed Microsoft 365 mailboxes through Apollo. A standalone warm-up tool will not replace that part of the workflow.

Stay if one warmed mailbox is enough. Apollo paid plans warm 1 mailbox free, according to the competitor table. If that covers your sending setup, adding another tool may create work without a clear benefit.

Stay if your decision is mainly about sales operations. Apollo is built around prospecting and outbound execution. BobWork is built around warm-up signals, DNS checks and mailbox activity.

You can still use both. Keep Apollo for outreach, and warm separate Gmail, Zoho, Yahoo, iCloud, SES, SendGrid, Mailgun or IMAP mailboxes in BobWork when they are not covered by Apollo’s included warm-up.

When is warm-up alone enough?

Warm-up alone is enough when your outreach stack already exists. You may use another campaign tool, a CRM, a spreadsheet workflow or a custom sender. In that case, you only need mailbox activity, spam rescue and deliverability checks.

It is also enough when you are preparing mailboxes before campaigns begin. For an existing domain, we recommend 14 days of warming before outbound. For a new domain, use 3–4 weeks. Keep real outreach modest while signals build.

During campaigns, keep warm-up at about 10–15 emails per day per mailbox. Keep real outreach around 30–50 emails per day per mailbox. Add mailboxes instead of pushing one inbox harder. Pause a mailbox for a few days if its warm-up spam rate rises above 5%.

Authentication still matters. Warm-up does not fix missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC. Google’s sender guidance says complaint rate should stay under 0.1% and never reach 0.3%. See the current Google email sender guidelines before scaling Gmail or Workspace mailboxes.

BobWork checks SPF, DKIM and DMARC daily for each domain. It looks for common DKIM selectors, including google, zmail, default, selector1, selector2, k1, s1, mail, dkim, lark, feishu and zoho.

If your real messages are going to spam, treat warm-up as one part of the fix. Check authentication, sending volume, list source, complaints, bounce handling and content. The cold email sending volume guide gives a practical daily ceiling.

What if you also need to send campaigns?

BobWork has an optional Outbound feature (beta) in the same app. It sends cold email sequences of up to 4 steps from your own warmed mailboxes, priced pay as you go at $2 per 1,000 emails from prepaid credits ($10, $25 or $100, never expire), with no monthly fee. Only mailboxes that passed the warm-up ready check can send, capped at 30 cold emails a day per mailbox in the first week and 50 after, and warm-up keeps running on the same mailboxes.

It is deliberately simpler than Apollo's sales engagement platform: email steps with merge fields, one-click unsubscribe, replies that stop the sequence, and an automatic stop when a mailbox's bounce rate passes 5%. Replies from every mailbox show in one Inbox (beta), with optional AI reply drafts at $0.05 each. If you need Apollo's extra channels or advanced sequencing, keep Apollo for sending and use BobWork for free warm-up. If your sending is low or irregular, paying per email can cost less than a monthly plan. How Outbound pricing works.

How should you switch?

You do not need to cancel Apollo before testing standalone warm-up. The safer path is to run both for different jobs.

Use Apollo for sequences, prospecting and any Outlook or Microsoft mailbox work. Use BobWork for mailboxes that Apollo does not warm, or for teams that only need warm-up without Apollo’s outreach platform.

Map your mailboxes

List every mailbox you want to warm. Mark the provider, domain, current daily outbound volume and whether Apollo already warms it.

Do not connect the same mailbox to two warm-up systems at high volume. If you test both, keep only one warm-up tool active for that mailbox, or set one side to a low cap while you verify behaviour.

Choose the pool mode

Use the shared warm-up network if you want one mailbox to start immediately. Peers on a different domain or provider are picked twice as often.

Use a private pool if you prefer only your account’s mailboxes to write to each other. In BobWork, go to Mailbox pool → Pool mode and switch to Private pool. You need at least two mailboxes for private mode.

Connect Gmail or Workspace

Choose Google sign-in for Gmail or Google Workspace. BobWork requests the gmail.modify scope so it can handle warm-up mail. Google may show an unverified-app notice because BobWork has not completed the CASA audit.

You can also connect Gmail by IMAP with an app password if that is your preferred route. Follow your domain’s security policy before enabling app passwords.

If you are warming Workspace mailboxes, use our Google Workspace warm-up guide for the setup path and DNS checks.

Connect other providers

Use the Zoho Mail API route for Zoho, including Zoho’s free plan, or IMAP on Mail Lite and above. For Lark, Yahoo and iCloud, use IMAP with the provider’s app-password or mail-client-password method.

For Amazon SES, SendGrid and Mailgun, use the platform’s SMTP credentials for sending and the receiving inbox over IMAP. For other providers, choose any IMAP+SMTP mailbox.

BobWork does not support Outlook or Microsoft 365 yet. Keep those mailboxes in Apollo if you need Microsoft warm-up now.

Set conservative caps

Leave the default ramp in place at first. It starts at 3 emails per day and rises by 2 per day to 30. During live campaigns, consider a cap around 10–15 warm-up emails per day.

Watch the sender’s seven-day spam rate. BobWork marks a mailbox ready for outbound after 14 or more days of warming, a seven-day spam rate of 3% or lower, and at least 30 warm-up emails received.

Keep Apollo where it belongs

Do not move campaign execution unless you have a reason. If Apollo manages your sequences, contacts and Microsoft mailboxes, keep that work there.

The switch is really about avoiding paid outreach software for mailboxes that only need warm-up. That is where a standalone free tool fits.

Do this now

Use this checklist before you replace or add anything. It keeps the decision practical and avoids double-warming the same mailbox by mistake.

If Apollo is your sales operating system, keep it. If you only need warm-up for Gmail, Zoho, Lark, Yahoo, iCloud, SES, SendGrid, Mailgun or IMAP mailboxes, use BobWork Email Warm-up as the standalone layer. It is free for up to 10 mailboxes, starts with one mailbox in the shared network, and lets you switch to a private pool when you want account-only warming.

Frequently asked questions