Email outreach is a critical part of almost every content marketing and/or link building (especially white hat) project.
In order to be effective in the outreach process, you’ll need a good outreach tool, but the challenge lies in finding the most suitable one that’ll help you efficiently manage your projects while fitting into your business’ workflow every day.
There are many such outreach tools available on the market today, which makes it hard to see the forest from the trees. However, two of the best tools, which are a staple in the email outreach category, are Pitchbox and Ninja Outreach.
You may spot some crossover between the two email outreach tools, but they differ in their workflow, how they manage your projects, and the directions your campaign process should flow.
We’re going to compare the two email outreach tools against each other by reviewing the all-important features you’d need for your email outreach campaign.
We’ll conclude with our opinion and recommendations to give you a clear winner between the two tools.
Ninja Outreach & Pitchbox: What Are They?
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach is an email outreach tool useful for outbound marketing that combines prospecting and outreach into one CRM.
It has more than one million websites in its growing database so you can type a keyword and find lots of business leads and bloggers in just seconds regardless of the niche.
It also allows you to drill down on the important metrics using a filter that packs more than 25 metrics including SEO, location, contact information, Social and Special Posts.
From here, you can organize your contacts, create customized templates for personalized outreach, and use the service to send the emails.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is an influencer outreach and link building platform that in-house teams, agencies, and brands can use to optimize their link building and outreach processes.
The tool helps you find influencers and bloggers in record time as well as link building opportunities. You can automate your outreach and follow-up sequences, while still maintaining a personalized style for your emails.
It also helps you make decisions based on advanced SEO integrations and data from outreach analytics, plus carry out link building to improve your site’s rankings hassle-free.
We took a closer look at each of these tools and what follows is our detailed comparison to help you make a decision based on the one that best suits your needs.
Specifically, we’ll look at the following key areas:
- The setup process
- Prospecting
- Availability of templates, customization, scheduling, and follow-ups
- Reporting
- Support
- Extras
- Ease of Use
- Pricing
- Pros and cons
The Setup Process
In order to balance several email outreach campaigns, you need a proper structure, which can be split up into different, multiple campaigns that require different email addresses.
To perform outreach for each of your clients, you need different contact information as some influencers and bloggers may not be willing to work with pitches that stem from addresses without a proper domain.
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach has a pretty straightforward structure and process for setting up email addresses. If you use any of the common email service providers, you can select from a list of presets, and connect up to 10 different email addresses for every user.
Once you set up the email, create your campaign or project using different options. The tool is specific about project management, so instead of dealing with campaigns, it deals with lists.
You’ll see all your lists in the List of Prospects tab, where you can also create new lists or blacklist sites you don’t want to reach out to. You can also see your outreach progress based on who hasn’t been contacted yet.
The tool offers a clear overview of the campaigns you’re running, but if you have bigger projects you’re managing, it may pose a challenge where there are different campaigns on the same list. This is because you can’t group them each into their own folder to separate them.
However, you can assign different members of your team to different projects, tagging them with certain keywords and clients, but that’s not necessarily a permanent solution to the bigger problem.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox, on the other hand, has a clear structure for the management of campaigns and projects.
In the email setup screen, you can add a new email account, enter all the details yourself, or just the name and password, and use the Autodiscover feature.
If the email uses standard ports and configurations, Autodiscover will connect your email account with Pitchbox successfully in most cases.
In the project section, you’ll find all your created projects there, but you can still search for them by name or look for them in the drop-down menu.
Once you create a new project, you’ll enter some basic information about your client’s site, and the time zone.
The time zone allows your emails to be sent based on the specific working hours you pick and the time zone itself.
You can also pick the team members you’d like to collaborate with in the project, or leave as is if you want every team member to have access.
The granular user project access option is useful when you want to outsource a certain part of the project and give limited access without worrying whether something will go wrong or not.
Now that your project is ready, you can start a campaign. Pitchbox gives you several options to do so including keyword suggestions, metrics (can be filtered), and much more.
Verdict
Both Pitchbox and Ninja Outreach have a quick setup process. So, it’s a draw for this category.
Prospecting
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach offers many options for prospecting such as its Ninja Outreach plugin, websites and blogs, CSV import, finding social influencers on social media platforms including TikTok, and manually adding websites to your prospecting lists.
The Ninja Outreach plugin lets you save results from your Google search directly into your lists to accelerate your reviewing process. It also lets you decide which prospect to keep or remove, add comments, relationship status, and more.
Each prospect reviewed gets a Reviewed tag so you don’t repeat the inspection for each site over again. It also comes as a Chrome extension so you can open an article, select text, and quickly load and review links found in the article right there and then.
The plugin has a basic version, but the Pro version offers more tools such as using pre-made templates to fill out contact forms and reach out to opportunities that didn’t have a valid email address.
Ninja Outreach also lets you get lists of people and sites that write about specific keywords so you can save what you like to your lists. There are several filtering options available for this too.
If you’re looking for influencers, or social prospecting as it’s often called, you can use Ninja Outreach to crawl social media channels to find journalists, influencers, bloggers, and other executives.
You can also import a CSV file or add opportunities manually by hand with the contacts you want to reach out to. At the end of the day, you’ll have a list of possible prospects ready to reach out to, and enter relationship statuses and notes for every opportunity.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox has a few ways to make lists compared to Ninja Outreach, and these include manual addition of sites, keyword prospecting, and CSV import.
You can create a campaign and enter the keywords you want to search for on the web, but Pitchbox breaks down the process into three phases: Inspection, Personalization, and Compose.
It crawls the web to find possible prospects and metrics using the Inspect field, after which you can inspect the site within the tool’s interface or open in a new tab.
Once you’re done, you can move the sites you want to personalize or delete the ones you don’t want, and add different tags to each site or move it to another campaign altogether.
You can also add sites manually to your lists using Pitchbox, or just import using a CSV file.
Verdict
Ninja Outreach comes out on top here. Its plugin and browser extension simplifies leads prospecting and outreach.
Templates And Customization
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach has a template management section that offers pre-made templates or you can create your own from scratch. There are some fields you can include inside your templates that are customizable, and you can fill them with the information gathered from prospecting such as name, website details, and other detected data.
You can include personalized fields like Guest Post title or description, page title, notes, and more, but you’ll have to fill them out manually before you send out your pitches.
Pitchbox fills out such fields at its Personalization phase, which is much better than having to manually key in all the information.
However, Ninja Outreach lets you automatically create and fill in custom fields if you import your prospects from a CSV file with the same fields having the details already filled in. If your prospects don’t have such data fields, then you’re going to have to do it manually.
It also has a different tool that fills out contact forms, which is useful where the sites on your list don’t have any email addresses, though this feature requires the Chrome extension of the software to work.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox allows you to create an outreach template for each project on your list as easy as you would when composing a new email. Once you define the fields you’d like to use with the template, you’ll find built-in fields but you can add as many as you want.
It comes with some pre-made templates, which you can select, add personalization fields or default contact fields, and if you don’t know the prospect’s name, you can use filters in such cases.
Plus, templates can be used interchangeably. For example, if there’s a project with a template you’d like to duplicate, you can import it and tailor it to the campaign or new project you’re working on.
Another good feature that can save the time you take to write replies is the Quick Replies feature. It allows you to create quick reply templates for situations that call for it. For instance, you can write a template to thank an editor for publishing your guest post when he or she alerts you that your article is live, instead of composing a whole new message.
Its Advanced Conditional Logic feature lets you change the tone of your pitch or add a reference depending on the site you’re reaching out to, the date, or other variables.
Verdict
There is not much difference with how Ninja Outreach and Pitchbox provides customizable templates for prospecting.Hence, it is a draw for this Pitchbox vs Ninja Outreach category.
Scheduling and Follow-Ups
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach lets you schedule outreach calendars for every list you have, and once the templates are ready, just go to Outreach Mode and send them out. You can also schedule the date and time of sending plus add a limit of emails that can go out daily.
The tool also allows you to see what’s being tracked and whether you want to add follow-up emails or not, plus you can use a pre-made template for follow-up purposes. You’ll get a notification in case some fields are missing email addresses so you can edit before sending them.
You can also send emails to individual prospects by composing one from scratch or using a template. However, once you press Send, they’re sent out – you can’t schedule such emails.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox lets you define outreach schedules for every campaign so you can spread them out to send one after another to improve email deliverability.
It allows you to add up to three follow-ups and determine how many days per follow-up, though you can’t choose the timing for every one of them. The time interval you choose will be applied to all follow-ups, but you can change the interval or make another campaign in the same project.
You can also pause or stop campaigns in a project, or pause/stop the entire project, which helps when you want to avoid sending pitches at specific times of the year, like during holidays.
Once you set the outreach at the Inspection and Personalization phases we mentioned above, your emails will be sent to the Compose phase for checking before sending them out individually or as bulk emails. You can rewrite messages by clicking Compose to edit a specific email that you’d like sent out before they all go out.
If there are any fields missing data, Pitchbox warns you about it, but only if you had marked them as required fields.
It doesn’t offer email tracking like Ninja Outreach though, so you won’t know when an email is opened or if someone clicks a link you put in the emails.
They do this because they believe such emails usually end up in the recipients’ spam folders and the domains sending out the emails can get blacklisted, so they prefer not to have the tracking codes in their emails.
Verdict
Pitchbox slightly edges out Ninja Outreach in this category. This is because of the effectiveness of its follow-up schedule functionality. Also, users can easily determine when your emails go out at any time of the year with Pitchbox.
Inbox Messages
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach sends you a bell notification whenever you receive a new message in your inbox. When you click on it, you’ll get into the Inbox mode and you can view all replies across lists, or pick the one you’re currently managing.
Picking All lists will show you the email statuses, plus there are filters that help when you’re looking for a specific email, but you have to click on Emails History to see the reply. You can also use a pre-made template to reply or compose one manually, but you can’t resize the window if you have a long reply.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox organizes emails into Inbox, Unmatched emails, and All emails, similar to how Gmail organizes mail into categories. For every new email, you’ll see a notification at the top right side that disappears in seconds, but once you click on it, or open a project, you can read your emails as many times as you want and they’ll still remain in your Inbox.
There’s another option to preview the whole content of the email by hovering over the email message, and you can see different details like personalized data, history, or opportunity information when you open an email from your inbox. You can add a note, delete, replace, archive, or change a milestone among other options.
To reply to emails, you can use the Quick replies feature or write a custom response.
Unmatched emails are those that the tool can’t connect to a specific opportunity and are usually from people you didn’t contact via Pitchbox, or you reached out to using a contact form or your own email and they replied via a different email.
You have the option to delete or ignore spam mail sent to your outreach email, but you can stop the outreach after receiving the replies. However, Pitchbox continues sending follow-ups, whether or not you get a reply from the particular opportunity and it’s among the unmatched emails.
The All emails tab shows you all emails for a specific project, but there are filtering options and custom search options you can use such as domain authority, domain ranking, and more metrics.
Verdict
Pitchbox gives you a little more flexibility with your inbox. By hovering over the mail notification you can grasp the mail content. This can be useful when you are short on time to read email responses.
Reporting
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach falls short in this area as it only shows statistics of opened and sent emails, reply, and click rates.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox offers multiple reports such as team performance, comparison of different campaigns and other segments, reports on the campaign performance for each month, client reports that show them how much time was spent on outreach, and custom field reports to create specific reports.
Verdict
Pitchbox wins in this Ninja Outreach vs Pitchbox category. Besides, Pitchbox offers comprehensive reporting, unlike Ninja Outreach.
Help & Support
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach offers help via a knowledge base and guides. Support is available via live chat during working hours.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox offers helpful articles via its help center and feature tutorials or FAQs, and support is available via live chat or you can open a support ticket.
Verdict
Both Ninja Outreach and Pitchbox offer similar support systems to their customers.
Extras
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach offers additional features like the Email Finder to find associated emails for specific domains, Email Validation to verify the existence of an email address, and the Ninja Outreach Lite Chrome extension for faster inspecting of opportunities.
It also has its own global templates, supports email tracking, and integrates with more than 100 CRMs and email marketing tools.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox offers a link monitoring domain, and The Flag, which shows previous interactions with prospects on your list or any of your campaigns, a Pipeline feature for managing opportunities, and integration with many tools like Ahrefs, Moz, Zapier, and more.
Verdict
Each tool has its own unique selling point. Based on this, we can agree that both link building outreach tools stand out in their ways. So, it is a draw here as well.
Ease Of Use
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach has an easier learning curve compared to Pitchbox, which is easy to learn but needs more work to master it thoroughly. It offers a more intuitive process for outreach, with a visually appealing interface, fast and responsive experience, and information is only a click away, though there’s no obvious way of managing lists.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is somewhat clunky and a bit slower, plus it takes time to navigate to certain information.
Verdict
Ninja Outreach is relatively more easy to use than Pitchbox; so, it is the winner for this category.
Pricing
Ninja Outreach
Ninja Outreach has different packages with a seven-day trial and discounts for annually billed packages. However, there’s no custom plan available though you can discuss it with them.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox doesn’t display its pricing structure on its website, but their plans aren’t limited by the features you can use. Instead, they bill based on variables like users per account and emails you can send out daily, so it’s probably a customized plan based on your needs so you can contact them for details.
Pros And Cons
Ninja Outreach
Pros
- Plenty of features
- Relationship-focused
- Automation features available
- Allows for scalability
- Free Chrome plugin
- Support is impressive with quality responses
- Email tracking available
Cons
- Seems clunky
- Reporting could use some attention
- Little data on campaigns
Pitchbox
Pros
- Comprehensive
- Offers systematic outreach
- Customized outreach templates adapted to each prospect based on merge data
- Excellent Keyword-based prospecting and internal contact scraping
- Detailed reporting
Cons
- Focused on large, team-based outreach
- Feels somewhat clunky
- Navigation can be slow
- Has a learning curve
- Expensive
- Isn’t aligned to most webmasters who perform link building
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Ninja Outreach Have An Affiliate Program?
Ninja Outreach has an existing affiliate program that you can join. Although there are certain criteria that you must meet before you can be accepted into the program.
As an affiliate partner, you have access to an affiliate account manager, and you can use your affiliate link for referral.
However, you must note that Ninja Outreach will only pay out affiliate commission that is at least $100. This payment is usually done through a third party.
Does Pitchbox Have An Affiliate Program?
Unlike other Pitchbox alternatives, it does not have an existing affiliate or referral program in place. If you are looking for an affiliate opportunity, then you should reach out to the Pitchbox team to discuss how to make this possible. Better still, you can try out other email outreach software that offers an affiliate program.
Is Ninja Outreach Legit?
Ninja Outreach is a legitimate email outreach software. It offers you a great tool that saves you money and helps you scale your business in no time.
Their customer reviews on G2 are largely positive and they report a very helpful customer support system from the Ninja Outreach team. Overall, Ninja Outreach delivers on its promises of helping customers with their specific marketing needs.
Is Pitchbox Legit?
Pitchbox is a legitimate business. If you are looking to do influencer and content marketing outreach on a large-scale basis, then Pitchbox is the right tool for you.
In addition to this, Pitchbox user reviews on G2 are particularly encouraging. These reviews point to the excellent user interface, and the supportive Pitchbox customer service team.
Conclusion – Ninja Outreach vs Pitchbox
Ninja Outreach and Pitchbox have their benefits and challenges in terms of ease of use, features, pricing, and more parameters. They score close to each other but ultimately, each of them has their strong points and areas where they both fall short depending on your priorities.
Ninja Outreach is great for beginners starting out with outreach, as it’s quick and easy to use with lots of prospecting options. Smaller teams will appreciate the tool, but it’s not scalable once you get multiple projects and need extensive performance tracking reports.
Pitchbox is a great choice for teams with more than 5 members working on multiple projects at the same time. It’ll also scale up with your business as you grow in your outreach or link building process.
If we were to pick one among the two, we’d go for Pitchbox as it checks all the boxes in terms of requirements for email outreach.
