Vocus.io
Conditional Gmail sequences for five dollars a month
Vocus.io is a Gmail sales engagement extension that adds per-recipient open and click tracking, conditional automated follow-ups that stop on reply or engagement, mail merge campaigns, shared templates and snippets, send-later scheduling, meeting scheduling, and Salesforce and Pipedrive sync, priced from $5 per user per month with plan limits expressed as snippet, follow-up, and connected-inbox counts.
Overview
Vocus.io is the cheapest way to put a real sequence engine into Gmail. Five dollars a month buys tracking with per-recipient detail, mail merge, shared templates, send later, and automated follow-ups with conditional logic that fires only if the prospect has not responded or has not engaged. That last part is what separates it from the tracking utilities that dominate this price band: most tools under ten dollars offer reminders, and Vocus.io offers branching.
The plan structure is unusual and worth understanding before you buy, because it does not meter what you would expect. Basic at $5 allows 50 snippets, 50 follow-ups, and 5 connected inboxes. Starter at $10 doubles snippets and follow-ups to 100 each. Professional at $20 gives 200 snippets, 500 follow-ups, and 10 inboxes. Growth at $80 raises snippets to 800 and adds external SMTP support, which is the only tier where sending escapes the Gmail account entirely. Mail merge contact allowances are not published per tier, which is a real transparency gap.
Everything below Growth sends through your own Gmail or Google Workspace mailbox, so your provider's daily limit is the ceiling and there is no inbox rotation, warm-up, or domain pooling. Five connected inboxes on the entry plan is more headroom than most Gmail extensions allow, but connecting five mailboxes is not the same as rotating a campaign across them for deliverability, and nobody should confuse the two.
The honest caveat is maturity. Vocus.io is a small, long-running product that has not been substantially redesigned in years. Reviewers in 2026 consistently praise the price and the sequence logic and just as consistently report a dated interface and occasional conflicts with Gmail that require disabling the extension. There is a thirty-day trial with no card required, which is unusually generous and is exactly how you should evaluate a product with that reputation: use it hard for a month before committing anything.
Best for
Solo founders, individual reps, and very small teams who want conditional follow-up sequences and per-recipient tracking in Gmail at the lowest price anyone charges, and who can live with rough edges in exchange.
Not the right fit for
- Anyone on Outlook or any non-Gmail client; this is a Chrome extension for Gmail and Google Workspace and nothing else.
- Teams that need reliability above all; 2026 reviewers report the extension occasionally interfering with Gmail badly enough to require temporarily disabling it, which is not acceptable in a mailbox reps depend on.
- Multichannel outbound; email is the only channel with no LinkedIn steps, no SMS, no dialer, and no call tasks anywhere.
- High-volume cold email; sending is through your own Gmail account below the $80 Growth tier, with no rotation, no warm-up, and no secondary domains.
- Buyers who need published limits before committing; mail merge contact allowances are not stated per tier on the pricing page, and a plan whose constraints you cannot read is a plan you cannot budget.
How it works
- 1
You install the Chrome extension into Gmail and authorise the mailbox. Controls appear in the compose window; there is no separate application to log into.
- 2
Every send can be tracked, and tracking is reported per recipient rather than as a single aggregate flag, so a thread with several people on it tells you which of them opened it and which clicked.
- 3
Follow-ups are the core feature. You attach a conditional sequence to a message: send step two only if there has been no reply, or only if there has been no open, at an interval you choose. The chain cancels itself the moment the condition is satisfied.
- 4
Mail merge personalises a batch send from a contact list, and slash commands insert snippets inline while you are typing rather than making you open a template picker.
- 5
Sending runs through your own Gmail account on every plan except Growth, which adds external SMTP support. That single distinction is what determines whether your volume ceiling is Google's daily limit or your own SMTP provider's.
- 6
Salesforce and Pipedrive are the named CRM integrations, logging activity from the inbox into the record. Shared templates and team collaboration cover the small-team case, and connected inboxes let one person manage several mailboxes from one subscription.
Feature breakdown
20 features in 4 modulesTracking
Per-recipient detail at a price where most competitors give you a single flag.- Per-recipient open tracking
- On a thread with several recipients you see which individual opened it rather than a single aggregate indicator, which is the detail that actually informs who to call.
- Link click tracking
- Click detail per recipient on links inside the message, distinguishing genuine interest from a reflexive open.
- Campaign-level reporting
- Aggregate open and click performance across a mail merge campaign so you can compare messaging.
- Engagement as a sequence condition
- Tracking is not just a notification; it feeds the follow-up logic, so a step can be conditioned on whether the previous message was opened.
Conditional follow-ups
The feature that justifies the product, and the one nobody else offers at this price.- Automated follow-up chains
- Multi-step sequences attached to a message and executed on a schedule you set, straight from the compose window.
- Only-if-no-reply logic
- Steps fire only when the condition is unmet, so a prospect who responds is removed from the chain immediately and does not receive a follow-up asking why they have not responded.
- Engagement-based branching
- Conditions on opens and clicks as well as replies, which is genuine branching rather than a simple stop rule.
- Follow-up allowances by tier
- 50 on Basic, 100 on Starter, 500 on Professional. This is the meter that matters most and it is the reason to look past the $5 plan if you send at any real rate.
- Snooze and reminders
- Bring a thread back into the inbox at a chosen time when a full sequence is more than the situation needs.
Composition and campaigns
Mail merge and snippets, with slash commands as a genuinely nice touch.- Mail merge
- Personalised batch sends from a contact list with merge variables, executed from your own address so each message arrives as an individual email.
- Slash commands for snippets
- Type a slash and insert a saved block inline rather than opening a template menu, which is faster than the equivalent in most competitors.
- Snippet allowances by tier
- 50 on Basic, 100 on Starter, 200 on Professional, and 800 on Growth, which is how the plans are principally differentiated.
- Shared team templates
- Template libraries shared across team members so messaging stays consistent without a manager policing it.
- Send later
- Schedule a message for a future time so overnight work arrives in the prospect's business hours.
- Meeting scheduling
- Booking capability from inside the mailbox so a positive reply converts to a calendar entry without a scheduling thread.
Inboxes, teams, and integrations
More multi-mailbox headroom than the price suggests, with a short integration list.- Five connected inboxes on the entry plan
- Manage several mailboxes from one subscription from $5, rising to 10 on Professional. This is convenience for someone running multiple addresses, not deliverability rotation for a campaign.
- External SMTP on Growth
- The $80 tier is the only one where sending can leave the Gmail account, which is the single most consequential difference in the price list.
- Salesforce integration
- Activity logging from the inbox into Salesforce records, the deepest CRM connection the product offers.
- Pipedrive integration
- The second named CRM connector, covering the small-business end of the market.
- Team collaboration
- Shared templates and team-level configuration for small groups, without any manager reporting layer.
Use cases
4 documentedFounder testing outbound for the first time
A hundred prospects, no budget, and no idea whether a three-step sequence will work before committing to a real platform.
Basic at $5 a month, $60 a year, provides conditional follow-ups, per-recipient tracking, and mail merge. The 30-day no-card trial means the first month costs nothing, which is the cheapest way anywhere to find out whether your messaging lands.
Consultant managing several email addresses
A personal address, a company address, and two client-facing aliases, each needing tracking and follow-ups, and most tools charge per mailbox.
Five connected inboxes on the $5 Basic plan cover all of them under a single subscription, which no other tool in this price band offers.
Two-person team running steady outreach
Fifty follow-ups a month runs out in the first week, and campaign volume keeps growing.
Professional at $20 a seat raises follow-ups to 500 and snippets to 200 with 10 inboxes. Two seats is $480 a year, still well under what a single Streak or Yesware Premium seat costs, and the trade being made is reliability and polish.
Salesforce user who cannot justify Yesware Enterprise
Activity needs to reach Salesforce, but $65 a seat for inbox logging is impossible to get approved.
Vocus.io logs activity to Salesforce from a $20 plan. The integration is shallower than Yesware's sidebar and bidirectional sync, but for a team that just needs emails against records at a defensible price, it closes the gap.
Pricing
from $5 per user per monthPer-user subscription in four tiers, metered by snippet count, follow-up count, and connected inbox count rather than by seats or sending volume.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $5 per user per month |
Fifty follow-ups a month is the binding limit; anyone running real outreach exhausts it inside a fortnight. |
| Starter | $10 per user per month |
A doubling of both meters for double the price, which is linear and not especially generous. |
| Professional | $20 per user per month |
The jump from 100 to 500 follow-ups is the real value step in the range and the tier most working users belong on. |
| Growth | $80 per user per month |
External SMTP is the only way sending leaves your Gmail account, which is why this tier exists and why it costs four times Professional. |
Billing notes
- The plan meters are snippets, follow-ups, and connected inboxes. They are not sending volume, tracked-email count, or contact count, which is an unusual choice and easy to misread.
- Mail merge contact allowances are not published per tier, which is a genuine transparency gap; ask before committing if campaign size matters to you.
- Follow-up counts are the real constraint. At 50 a month, Basic is a trial plan in practice; Professional's 500 is the first allowance that supports steady outreach.
- Growth at $80 is described as available on request for higher limits and is the only tier with external SMTP, so every cheaper plan sends through your own Gmail account with Google's daily limits as the ceiling.
- The 30-day no-card trial is unusually long and is the right way to evaluate a product with a reputation for occasional Gmail conflicts.
Value assessment: On sticker price nothing competes: $5 a month for conditional sequences and per-recipient tracking is roughly a third of what Right Inbox charges and a tenth of Streak. The qualifications are substantial. The follow-up meter makes Basic a trial rather than a plan, so the working price is $20. There is no reporting, one channel, no Outlook, and a product that reviewers describe as dated and occasionally unstable. For a solo user who needs branching follow-ups and nothing else, this is the cheapest way to get them and the 30-day trial removes the risk of finding out. For a team of three or more, Right Inbox's flat $16.95 unlimited-member plan is both cheaper in total and better maintained, and that comparison is the one most buyers should actually run.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Conditional follow-up logic based on replies, opens, and clicks at a price where competitors offer only reminders.
- Per-recipient tracking rather than a single aggregate open flag, which is a meaningfully better signal on multi-recipient threads.
- Five connected inboxes on the $5 entry plan, more multi-mailbox headroom than any comparable tool at this price.
- Slash commands for snippet insertion are faster in daily use than the template pickers most competitors ship.
- A 30-day free trial with no credit card, which is three times longer than the category norm.
- Salesforce and Pipedrive integration available from a $20 plan, where Yesware charges $65 for its equivalent.
- External SMTP support on the top tier, which is a genuine escape from the Gmail sending ceiling that most inbox tools never offer.
Limitations
- Reviewers in 2026 report the extension occasionally interfering with Gmail badly enough that it has to be temporarily disabled, which is the most serious mark against it.
- The interface is dated and the product has seen little visible modernisation, with no AI layer of any kind.
- Mail merge contact limits are not published per tier, so you cannot fully budget a plan from the pricing page.
- The 50-follow-up allowance on Basic makes the headline $5 price misleading for anyone doing real work.
- Gmail only. No Outlook add-in exists, so a mixed-client team is excluded outright.
- Email is the only channel, with no LinkedIn, SMS, dialer, or call tasks.
- No reporting layer for a manager: no rep comparison, no funnel analysis, no sequence conversion breakdown.
- The integration list is short, essentially Salesforce and Pipedrive, with nothing comparable for HubSpot.
Head-to-head comparisons
5 alternativesVocus.io vs Right Inbox
from $7.95 per user per month billed annually ($9.95 monthly)Right Inbox costs more per seat at $7.95 but has no follow-up meter, is better maintained, supports three browsers, and its Team plan covers unlimited members for $16.95 total. Vocus.io wins on conditional branching and on connected-inbox count. Take Vocus.io if branching logic is essential and you are one person; take Right Inbox for anything involving a team or a need for stability.
Full Vocus.io vs Right Inbox comparisonVocus.io vs Mailsuite
from Free, then 2.99 euros per user per monthMailsuite is cheaper still at under three euros, has enormously more sending headroom, adds document tracking, watermarking, and eSignature, and supports Outlook. It has no sequence engine at all. Vocus.io has the sequences and nothing else. Choose by whether your problem is follow-up discipline or tracking and document delivery.
Full Vocus.io vs Mailsuite comparisonVocus.io vs Yesware
from $0 (Free Forever), then $15 per user per month billed annuallyYesware costs three times as much on its $15 Pro plan and buys stability, Outlook support, attachment tracking, and a company with 6,000 customers behind it, with real Salesforce sync at $65. Vocus.io does conditional sequences for $5 and logs to Salesforce from $20. Yesware if the tool must work every day without thought; Vocus.io if the budget is the binding constraint.
Full Vocus.io vs Yesware comparisonVocus.io vs Growbots
from Free, then from about $29 per month plus prospect credits from around $0.13 eachGrowbots includes a prospect database, unlimited email accounts, and a deliverability dashboard from a free tier, which is a fundamentally different offer: infrastructure plus data rather than an inbox extension. Vocus.io is for someone who already has their list and lives in Gmail. Growbots for building and running campaigns at scale, Vocus.io for following up properly on mail you were sending anyway.
Full Vocus.io vs Growbots comparisonVocus.io vs Mixmax
from $29/user/mo (single copilot, billed annually)Mixmax is the professional-grade Gmail engagement platform with real multichannel sequence rules, workflow automation, Salesforce depth, and reporting, at many times the price. Vocus.io is the budget approximation of its core idea. Mixmax for a revenue team that needs the automation and the analytics; Vocus.io for an individual who needs conditional follow-ups and cannot justify a platform.
Full Vocus.io vs Mixmax comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Minutes to install and authorise. Building a first conditional sequence takes another half hour, mostly spent understanding how the conditions interact.
- Learning curve
- Low on the mechanics and moderate on the plan limits, which are the part people get wrong. The interface is dated rather than complicated, and the sequence builder is straightforward once you accept that conditions are the point.
- Onboarding
- Entirely self-serve with a 30-day trial and no credit card. The Growth tier is described as available on request, so the top of the range involves contact; everything below it is a straightforward signup.
- Migration notes
- Nothing to migrate on the sending side, since you keep your Gmail account. Templates and snippets transfer by copy and paste. Sequences from another platform must be rebuilt. Given the stability reports, run it alongside your existing setup during the 30-day trial rather than cutting over on day one.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Gmail and Google Workspace via Chrome extension
- API
- No general developer API is prominently marketed; integration is through the Salesforce and Pipedrive connectors and, on the Growth tier, external SMTP.
- Compliance
- GDPRGoogle Workspace security review for Gmail API access
- SSO
- Authentication is through Google sign-in; no separate SAML offering is advertised.
- Security notes
- Authentication is by Google OAuth so the extension never holds your mail password. Because it reads and writes the mailbox, the Gmail scopes requested should be reviewed with a Workspace administrator before a team rollout, particularly given reports of the extension conflicting with Gmail itself.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Email supportIn-app help
- Documentation
- A knowledge base covering installation, follow-up configuration, mail merge, and the Salesforce and Pipedrive connectors.
- Community
- No official forum and little public community presence.
Company
- Founded
- 2016
- Headquarters
- United States
- Ownership
- Privately held, independently operated
- Employees
- Very small; not publicly disclosed
- Funding
- No venture funding reported; the product appears to be self-funded and operated by a very small team.
Timeline
- 2016Launches as a Gmail extension for tracking and automated follow-ups aimed at individual salespeople rather than teams.
- 2018Adds mail merge, shared templates, and team collaboration, plus Salesforce and Pipedrive activity logging.
- 2020Introduces slash commands for snippet insertion and multi-inbox management under a single subscription.
- 2022Adds external SMTP support on the top tier, allowing sending to leave the Gmail account entirely.
- 2026Continues to operate on a four-tier structure from $5 to $80 with a 30-day trial, praised on price and criticised on polish and stability.
Integrations
- Gmail and Google Workspace
- Salesforce
- Pipedrive
- Google Calendar
- External SMTP (Growth tier)
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Vocus.io?
Vocus.io is a Gmail extension that adds sales engagement features to the mailbox: per-recipient open and click tracking, conditional automated follow-ups, mail merge campaigns, shared templates and snippets with slash-command insertion, send later, meeting scheduling, and Salesforce and Pipedrive activity logging.
How much does Vocus.io cost?
Basic is $5 per user per month, Starter is $10, Professional is $20, and Growth is $80 and available on request. There is no free plan but there is a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. Plans are metered by snippets, follow-ups, and connected inboxes rather than by sending volume.
What do the plan limits actually restrict?
Snippet count, follow-up count, and connected inbox count. Basic gives 50 snippets, 50 follow-ups, and 5 inboxes; Starter 100, 100, and 5; Professional 200, 500, and 10; Growth 800 snippets plus external SMTP. The follow-up allowance is the meter that binds in practice, and 50 a month means Basic is really a trial plan.
How are the sequences conditional?
Follow-up steps fire only when their condition is unmet: only if there has been no reply, or only if the previous message was not opened or clicked. The chain cancels itself as soon as the condition is satisfied. That branching is what distinguishes Vocus.io from the reminder-based tools that occupy the same price band.
Does Vocus.io work with Outlook?
No. It is a Chrome extension for Gmail and Google Workspace only. There is no Outlook add-in at any tier, so a team on Microsoft 365 cannot use it.
How many emails can I send?
On every tier except Growth, as many as your own Gmail account allows, because sending goes through your mailbox. Google Workspace typically permits up to 2,000 external recipients a day and far fewer on new accounts. Growth at $80 adds external SMTP support, which is the only way to escape that ceiling. There is no inbox rotation, warm-up, or secondary-domain pooling anywhere in the product.
Is Vocus.io reliable?
This is the honest weak point. Reviewers in 2026 praise the price and the sequence logic but report a dated interface and occasional conflicts with Gmail severe enough to require temporarily disabling the extension. The 30-day no-card trial is unusually long and should be used as a genuine stress test before you rely on it for anything important.
Which CRMs does it integrate with?
Salesforce and Pipedrive are the named connectors, logging inbox activity into records. There is no equivalent HubSpot integration and no general developer API is marketed. This is activity logging rather than the bidirectional field-mapped sync a CRM administrator would recognise.
Does it do LinkedIn, SMS, or calling?
None of them. Email is the only channel Vocus.io touches. There are no LinkedIn steps, no SMS, no dialer, and no call tasks in a sequence. If your outbound is multichannel, this is not a candidate at any price.
Where does Vocus.io sit between a cold email tool and an enterprise platform?
At the very light end, with one feature borrowed from further up the range. It has none of the deliverability infrastructure of a cold email tool below the $80 tier and none of the reporting, governance, or multichannel orchestration of an engagement platform. What it has is conditional sequence logic normally found in tools costing ten times more, delivered inside Gmail for five dollars.
Editorial verdict
Vocus.io is the cheapest place to get conditional follow-up sequences, and for a solo founder testing whether outbound works at all, the combination of a 30-day no-card trial and a $5 entry price makes it almost free to find out. Per-recipient tracking and five connected inboxes on that plan are genuinely better than the price suggests. But be realistic about what you are signing up for: 50 follow-ups a month makes Basic a trial, the working price is $20, the interface is dated, the integration list is two CRMs long, and reviewers keep reporting that it occasionally breaks Gmail. For one person who needs branching logic on a budget, take the trial and judge for yourself. For a team of three or more, Right Inbox's unlimited-member plan at $16.95 total is cheaper, better maintained, and the comparison you should actually run.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.