Trellus
Real-time coaching inside the dial, not a scorecard delivered after the deal is lost
Trellus is an AI dialer and real-time sales coaching tool that installs as a Chrome extension inside sales engagement platforms such as Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Apollo, and Amplemarket, converting them into power or parallel dialers while providing live guidance during the call, AI practice conversations, call recording and scoring, and team-level conversational intelligence on its quoted Business plan; individual plans are published at $34.99 a month and bought through self-serve Stripe checkout.
Overview
Trellus was founded in 2020 by Craig Bonnoit and Ajinkya Nene, both former MIT researchers, and went through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. It is a small company, roughly seven people, headquartered in New York, and it occupies a specific corner of conversation intelligence that the rest of the category mostly ignores: the cold call, while it is happening.
The architectural choice that defines Trellus is that it does not ask you to change tools. It is a Chrome extension that embeds inside the sales engagement platform your team already uses, turning Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Apollo, Salesforce, Amplemarket, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Clay, or a Google Sheet into a power dialer or a five-line parallel dialer. The reps keep their existing workflow and gain dial throughput plus live coaching, rather than migrating to a separate dialer platform with its own data model.
Coaching happens in three places. During the call, adaptive live guidance surfaces objection handling and script prompts as the conversation moves. Before the call, unlimited AI practice conversations let a rep rehearse against a synthetic prospect, which is a genuinely useful onboarding mechanism that most conversation intelligence vendors do not offer at all. After the call, automatic scoring identifies performance patterns, and the team plan adds conversational intelligence, team analytics, custom reporting, and a virtual sales floor where managers can listen to live calls.
The important qualification for a small business buyer is the pricing structure. The individual Power and Parallel plans are published at $34.99 a month and bought through Stripe with no sales conversation, which is genuinely self-serve. The Business plan, which is where team analytics and conversational intelligence live, is quoted. So Trellus passes the self-serve test for an individual rep or a founder, and reverts to a conversation for the team coaching layer. Treat it accordingly.
Best for
Outbound SDR and BDR teams running high-volume cold calling inside an existing sales engagement platform, and individual reps or founders who want parallel dialing plus live coaching for $34.99 a month without changing any of their tooling.
Not the right fit for
- AE teams whose selling happens in scheduled Zoom discovery calls and demos; Trellus is built around the dial, and a meeting-based motion is far better served by Grain, Avoma, or Rafiki.
- Managers who want structured scorecards against MEDDICC or SPICED applied to every recorded meeting; Trellus scores calls but is not a methodology scoring platform, and the team analytics layer is quoted rather than published.
- Buyers who want the team coaching features self-serve; the Business plan with conversational intelligence and team analytics requires a sales conversation, unlike the individual tiers.
- Teams that do not already use a supported sales engagement platform, CRM, or list tool, since Trellus is explicitly an overlay rather than a standalone system.
- Organizations with strict compliance requirements around call recording consent at volume; parallel dialing across jurisdictions creates two-party consent exposure that a small vendor cannot manage on your behalf.
How it works
- 1
You install the Chrome extension and it activates inside whichever sales engagement platform, CRM, or list tool you already dial from. Nothing migrates. The extension converts the platform's click-to-call into power dialing on the individual plans, or up to five parallel lines on the Parallel plan, with automated voicemail drop.
- 2
Additional phone numbers come with the plan (five on Power, eight on Parallel) along with spam remediation, which matters because parallel dialing at volume is precisely the behaviour carriers flag. Dialing limits are standard on Power and higher on Parallel.
- 3
During each connected conversation, Trellus provides adaptive real-time guidance: prompts for handling the objection that just came up, reminders on script adherence, and pacing cues. This is the core differentiator, because it changes the call in progress rather than producing a report about it afterwards.
- 4
Around the calls, unlimited AI practice conversations let reps rehearse against a synthetic prospect, calls are recorded and automatically scored to expose the gap between top and bottom performers, and on the Business plan team analytics, conversational intelligence, custom reporting, and a live sales floor give managers the cross-rep view. Voice agents for inbound handling and appointment setting sit alongside as an additional capability.
Feature breakdown
27 features in 5 modulesDialing
The mechanism that gets a rep enough conversations to be worth coaching.- Power dialing inside your existing platform
- The extension turns Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Apollo, Salesforce, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Amplemarket, Clay, or a Google Sheet into a power dialer without migrating data or changing workflow.
- Parallel dialing on up to five lines
- The Parallel plan dials multiple numbers simultaneously and connects the rep to whoever answers, multiplying conversations per hour.
- Automated voicemail drop
- Pre-recorded voicemails are dropped without the rep listening through the greeting, which is where most dialing time is quietly lost.
- Additional phone numbers
- Five additional numbers on Power and eight on Parallel, included in the plan rather than billed separately.
- Spam remediation
- Number reputation management, which is not optional at parallel-dialing volume because carriers flag exactly this behaviour and a flagged number stops connecting.
- Tiered dialing limits
- Standard limits on Power, high limits on Parallel, custom limits on Business.
Real-time coaching
The reason this is conversation intelligence rather than a dialer.- Adaptive live guidance
- Prompts surface during the conversation to help with objection handling and script adherence, changing the call in progress rather than reporting on it afterwards.
- Objection handling prompts
- Contextual suggestions when a recognizable objection appears, which is the moment a new rep most reliably freezes.
- Script adherence cues
- Live signals on whether the rep is following the agreed structure, so drift is corrected during the call rather than a week later.
- Customizable real-time coaching
- The Business plan allows the live guidance to be tailored to your own playbook and messaging rather than using defaults.
- Pacing and delivery cues
- Guidance on how the rep is speaking, not only what they are saying, which is the half of cold calling that training decks usually skip.
Practice and ramp
Rehearsal against a synthetic prospect, included on the Parallel plan.- Unlimited AI practice calls
- Reps rehearse against an AI prospect as often as they want on the Parallel plan, which is a real onboarding tool rather than a novelty.
- Scenario practice
- Rehearse specific situations such as a gatekeeper, a hostile pickup, or a particular objection, before burning real prospects on the learning curve.
- Voice agents for inbound and appointment setting
- AI voice agents handle inbound calls, FAQs, and appointment setting around the clock, which is a different product line running on the same voice stack.
- Ramp acceleration for new hires
- Practice plus live guidance means a new SDR's first real dials are not their first dials, which is the entire argument for the product on a growing team.
Recording, scoring, and team analytics
The Business plan, which is quoted rather than published.- Call recording and transcription
- Conversations are captured and transcribed so the coaching data has a source, and so managers can review specific calls.
- Automatic call scoring
- Calls are scored to identify performance metrics and, in the vendor's framing, to close the gap between bottom and top performers.
- Team-based analytics
- Cross-rep performance views on the Business plan, which is where a manager works rather than a rep.
- Conversational intelligence
- Analysis across the team's conversations, reserved for the Business plan and priced on quote.
- Custom reporting
- Reports shaped to how your team measures activity and outcomes, on Business.
- Sales floor
- A virtual room where the team can listen to live calls together and share insight in the moment, which reproduces the one genuinely useful thing about an open-plan sales floor.
- Customizable AI research
- Business adds AI research on prospects tailored to your criteria ahead of the dial.
Platform, integrations, and buying
An overlay, bought with a card.- Chrome extension delivery
- There is no separate application to adopt; the product appears inside the tool the rep already uses, which is why adoption friction is close to zero.
- Broad platform coverage
- Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, Amplemarket, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Clay, Orum, and Google Sheets, with the list actively expanding.
- Superhuman for LinkedIn
- A bundled LinkedIn tool consolidating LinkedIn and Sales Navigator messages with snoozing and snippets, included on the individual plans.
- Stripe self-serve checkout
- Power and Parallel are bought directly through Stripe with no sales conversation, and the vendor explicitly steers most buyers to self-serve rather than to a demo.
- SOC 2 Type II
- The company publishes SOC 2 Type II compliance, which is a reasonable posture for a seven-person vendor handling call recordings.
Use cases
4 documentedSDR team of six on Outreach
Reps make 60 dials a day, connect with four people, and the manager has no idea what happens on those four conversations until the pipeline does not materialize.
Trellus turns Outreach into a parallel dialer so connect volume rises, live guidance helps reps survive the objections they currently fumble, and the Business plan's team analytics show which rep needs which specific intervention.
New SDR in week one
The onboarding plan is a call script, a shadowing session, and then a list of real prospects who will be wasted on the learning curve.
Unlimited AI practice calls let the rep rehearse gatekeepers and objections dozens of times before dialing a real prospect, and live guidance carries them through the first weeks of real conversations.
Founder doing their own outbound
One person, a list in Google Sheets or Clay, no budget for a dialer platform, and no manager to coach them.
The Parallel plan at $34.99 a month, bought through Stripe in a few minutes, adds multi-line dialing and live coaching directly on top of the spreadsheet they already work from.
Sales manager who misses the open-plan floor
The team is remote, nobody overhears anyone else's calls, and the informal learning that used to happen in a bullpen has disappeared entirely.
The sales floor feature lets the team listen to live calls together and react in the moment, restoring the ambient coaching that remote work removed.
Pricing
from $34.99 per user per month (promotional rate on Power and Parallel)Per-user monthly subscription on two published individual plans bought through Stripe, plus a quoted Business plan for team analytics and conversational intelligence.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Power | $34.99 per user per month (list price $99.99) |
Single-line dialing with live coaching. The gap between the $99.99 list price and the $34.99 offer is large enough that you should confirm what you will actually be renewed at. |
| Parallel | $34.99 per user per month (list price $149.99) |
At the promotional rate this costs the same as Power, so there is no reason to buy Power. Check whether that parity survives renewal. |
| Business | Custom quote |
The manager-facing tier, and the only one that is not self-serve. If team conversational intelligence is your requirement, budget for a sales conversation. |
Billing notes
- Individual plans are billed monthly and purchased through Stripe checkout with no sales contact, which is the cleanest self-serve motion in this category.
- Both individual plans are currently offered at $34.99 against list prices of $99.99 and $149.99, so the discount is very large and the renewal rate should be confirmed in writing before you standardize on it.
- At the promotional rate Power and Parallel cost the same, making Power effectively obsolete; buy Parallel unless the pricing has changed by the time you read this.
- The Business plan, which carries team analytics and conversational intelligence, is quoted rather than published, so team-level buying is not self-serve.
- Additional phone numbers and spam remediation are included in the plans rather than billed as telephony add-ons, which is unusual and materially reduces the total cost against a standalone dialer.
- The vendor explicitly recommends self-serve plans over booking a demo, citing limited team availability, which is a candid signal about the size of the company.
Value assessment: For an individual rep, $34.99 a month for parallel dialing, included phone numbers with spam remediation, live in-call coaching, unlimited AI practice, and a LinkedIn inbox tool is remarkable value. Standalone parallel dialers routinely cost several times that, and the coaching layer is thrown in. For a team, the calculation is murkier, because the analytics and conversational intelligence that a manager actually needs live on a quoted plan, so the published price does not tell you what a five-person team will pay. Judged narrowly as an individual productivity purchase, this is among the best value in the whole category. Judged as a team conversation intelligence platform, you cannot judge it from the price list at all.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Real-time coaching during the call is a capability almost nobody else in this category offers, and it changes outcomes rather than documenting them.
- Delivered as a Chrome extension inside the tools reps already use, so adoption requires no migration, no new login, and no change to the existing workflow.
- Parallel dialing on five lines plus included phone numbers and spam remediation replaces a separate dialer subscription, which is where most of the cost saving comes from.
- Unlimited AI practice calls are a genuinely useful ramp tool that no meeting-focused conversation intelligence vendor provides.
- Self-serve Stripe checkout on the individual plans, with the vendor actively discouraging unnecessary demos, which is a refreshingly honest go-to-market posture.
- Very broad platform coverage across Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, Amplemarket, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Clay, and Google Sheets.
- SOC 2 Type II published, which is a reasonable posture for a seven-person company handling recorded conversations.
Limitations
- The team layer is not self-serve: conversational intelligence, team analytics, and custom reporting all sit on a quoted Business plan, so a manager cannot buy the manager features with a card.
- The published prices are steep promotional discounts off $99.99 and $149.99 list, and there is no published commitment about what renewal costs.
- Scope is the dial. If your selling happens in scheduled meetings, most of what you are paying for is irrelevant, and a meeting-focused product will serve you far better.
- No structured scorecard engine with named methodology templates, so this does not replace Avoma or Demodesk for qualification scoring.
- Seven employees and pre-seed funding means limited support capacity, which the vendor itself acknowledges by steering buyers away from demos.
- Parallel dialing at volume creates real two-party consent and telemarketing compliance exposure that the tool enables but does not manage for you.
- Chrome extension delivery means the product's fate is tied to the DOM of platforms it does not control, and a redesign upstream can break the integration.
Head-to-head comparisons
3 alternativesTrellus vs Rafiki
from $19 per seat per month (Starter, billed annually)Rafiki analyzes scheduled meetings and dialer calls afterwards, scoring them against MEDDIC or BANT, capturing CRM fields, and forecasting, for $49 a seat. Trellus coaches the cold call while it is happening and multiplies dial volume for $34.99. An SDR team should buy Trellus, an AE team should buy Rafiki, and a full sales organization running both motions can afford both for less than one enterprise seat.
Full Trellus vs Rafiki comparisonTrellus vs Grain
from $0 (Free, capped at 20 meetings), then about $15 per seat per month on Starter billed annuallyGrain builds a library of recorded meetings with coaching playlists, talk-ratio comparison, and CRM sync for about $29 a seat with free viewer licences. Trellus operates one layer earlier, in the dialer, with live guidance and AI practice. They do not compete so much as sit either side of the same funnel: Trellus improves the conversations that get booked, Grain improves the meetings that follow.
Full Trellus vs Grain comparisonTrellus vs Fireflies.ai
from $0 (Free), then $10 per user per month billed annually (Pro; $18 monthly)Fireflies is a broad, cheap capture platform that records and transcribes everything across a whole company with a light conversation intelligence layer. Trellus is narrow and deep on one motion, cold calling, and does nothing outside it. Buy Fireflies to build a company-wide record of conversations; buy Trellus to make an outbound team's dials actually connect and convert.
Full Trellus vs Fireflies.ai comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Fifteen minutes. Install the Chrome extension, sign in, connect it to the platform you dial from, and start. There is no data migration because Trellus is an overlay rather than a system of record.
- Learning curve
- Very low for the dialer, moderate for the coaching. Reps take a few days to stop finding live prompts distracting and start using them, and the practice calls need a manager to define which scenarios matter or they go unused.
- Onboarding
- Self-serve on the individual plans through Stripe, with the vendor explicitly recommending that route over booking a demo. Business-plan onboarding involves the sales team, since the plan itself is quoted.
- Migration notes
- Nothing to migrate, which is the whole design premise. The one integration decision that matters is which platform the extension attaches to if your team dials from more than one, and the one operational decision is phone number management: if you are moving from an existing dialer, plan the transition of numbers and reputation rather than assuming spam remediation fixes an already-flagged number instantly.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Chrome extensionWeb appOverlay on Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo, Amplemarket, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Clay, and Google Sheets
- API
- Not published as a self-serve developer API; integration happens through the extension's platform coverage rather than through a documented API, with custom work available on the Business plan.
- Compliance
- SOC 2 Type II
- Data residency
- US-hosted; no regional hosting option is advertised.
- SSO
- Not published on the individual plans; discuss with the vendor as part of a Business quote.
- Security notes
- SOC 2 Type II is published. Because Trellus records outbound phone calls at volume, the recording consent question is more acute here than for meeting-based tools: two-party consent states require disclosure on the call itself, and telemarketing rules apply independently of recording law. The tool provides recording and dialing capability but does not manage jurisdictional compliance for you, so a documented calling policy is a prerequisite rather than an optional extra.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportIn-app chatSales contact for Business plan buyers
- Documentation
- Product documentation and a substantial comparison blog covering dialer alternatives and platform-specific setup.
- Community
- None of significance; the company is small and support is direct, and it openly notes limited availability for demos.
Company
- Founded
- 2020
- Headquarters
- New York, New York, United States
- Ownership
- Venture-backed (Y Combinator, pre-seed)
- Founders
- Craig Bonnoit, Ajinkya Nene
- Employees
- About 7 (reported)
- Funding
- Y Combinator Winter 2022 batch plus a pre-seed round; totals are not publicly disclosed in detail.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Y Combinator | Standard YC investment | 2022 | Winter 2022 batch, after which the company pivoted toward sales coaching and dialing. |
| Pre-seed | Not disclosed | 2022 | Early institutional funding following the YC batch; the company remains small at roughly seven employees. |
Timeline
- 2020Founded by Craig Bonnoit and Ajinkya Nene, both former MIT researchers, initially working on conversational analysis rather than sales tooling.
- 2022Joins Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch and pivots to real-time sales coaching delivered as a browser extension.
- 2023Launches embedded power and parallel dialing inside Salesloft, Outreach, and HubSpot, positioning as a far cheaper alternative to standalone parallel dialers.
- 2024Expands platform coverage to Apollo, Salesforce, Zoho, VanillaSoft, Clay, Amplemarket, and Google Sheets, and adds AI practice calls and the sales floor.
- 2026Adds AI voice agents for inbound handling and appointment setting alongside the coaching and dialing product, with team conversational intelligence on the quoted Business plan.
Integrations
- Salesloft
- Outreach
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Apollo
- Amplemarket
- Zoho
- VanillaSoft
- Clay
- Orum
- Google Sheets
- LinkedIn and Sales Navigator via the bundled inbox tool
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Trellus?
Trellus is an AI dialer and real-time sales coaching tool delivered as a Chrome extension. It embeds inside sales engagement platforms such as Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, and Apollo, turning them into power or parallel dialers, and provides live guidance during the call, unlimited AI practice conversations, call recording and scoring, and team conversational intelligence on its Business plan.
How much does Trellus cost?
The Power and Parallel individual plans are both currently offered at $34.99 per user per month against list prices of $99.99 and $149.99, bought through self-serve Stripe checkout with no sales conversation. The Business plan, which carries team analytics, conversational intelligence, custom reporting, and customizable real-time coaching, is quoted rather than published.
Can a team buy Trellus without talking to sales?
Individual seats, yes: Power and Parallel are Stripe checkout purchases and the vendor actively recommends that route over booking a demo. The manager-facing features, meaning team analytics and conversational intelligence, sit on the quoted Business plan, so a team buying the full coaching stack will end up in a conversation. That is the main caveat for anyone shopping strictly for self-serve.
How is Trellus different from a conversation intelligence tool like Grain or Avoma?
Timing and motion. Grain, Avoma, and their peers record scheduled meetings and analyze them afterwards for coaching and pipeline signal. Trellus works on outbound phone calls and coaches during the conversation, with dialing throughput as the other half of the product. If your revenue comes from booked demos, buy a meeting-based tool. If it comes from cold calls, Trellus addresses the part of the funnel those tools never see.
What is parallel dialing and do I need it?
Parallel dialing calls several numbers at once and connects the rep to whoever picks up, which sharply raises conversations per hour. You need it if connect rates are low and dial volume is your constraint, which describes most cold outbound. You do not need it if your calls are scheduled or inbound. Note that parallel dialing is exactly the behaviour carriers flag as spam, which is why included spam remediation and extra numbers matter.
Does Trellus record and score calls?
Yes. Calls are recorded and transcribed, and automatic scoring identifies performance metrics with the stated aim of closing the gap between top and bottom performers. What it does not provide is a weighted scorecard engine with named methodology templates such as MEDDICC or SPICED tracked over time, which is where Avoma, Demodesk, or Rafiki are the right tools.
How does Trellus handle recording consent and two-party consent law?
It gives you the capability, not the compliance. Recording outbound calls at volume across US states means encountering two-party consent jurisdictions where you must disclose recording on the call itself, and telemarketing rules apply separately from recording law. Trellus publishes SOC 2 Type II for its own handling of the data, but a documented calling and disclosure policy is your responsibility and should exist before you turn on a parallel dialer.
What are the AI practice calls?
Unlimited rehearsal conversations against an AI prospect, included on the Parallel plan. A rep can practise gatekeepers, hostile pickups, or a specific objection as many times as they want before dialing real prospects. For a team hiring SDRs, this is a genuine ramp accelerator and is not something meeting-focused conversation intelligence vendors offer at all.
What happens if the platform I dial from changes its interface?
That is the structural risk of an extension-based overlay. Trellus works by embedding into platforms it does not control, so an upstream redesign can break the integration until Trellus ships a fix. In practice the company supports a long list of platforms and has done so for years, but it is a dependency worth understanding before you make it the backbone of your outbound motion.
Who founded Trellus and how stable is the company?
Trellus was founded in 2020 by Craig Bonnoit and Ajinkya Nene, both former MIT researchers, and went through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. It is a New York company of roughly seven people on pre-seed funding. That is small, and the vendor itself notes limited availability for demos. Weigh that against a monthly, cancellable subscription with no data migration, which makes the switching cost of being wrong close to zero.
Editorial verdict
Trellus is the only product in this category that coaches the call while the call is still happening, and for an outbound team that is a different proposition from every scorecard and dashboard reviewed here. Delivered as an extension inside the tools reps already use, with parallel dialing, included numbers and spam remediation, unlimited AI practice, and live guidance at $34.99 a month on Stripe checkout, it is close to unbeatable as an individual purchase, and the switching cost of being wrong is one cancelled monthly subscription. Two honest caveats. The published price is a heavy discount off a much higher list, so confirm the renewal rate. And the manager-facing features, team analytics and conversational intelligence, live on a quoted plan, so a team standardizing on Trellus will have the sales conversation after all. Buy it for the reps immediately; negotiate the team layer with your eyes open.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.