AI share of voice · cold email software · September 2026
We asked both assistants the twelve questions a buyer types when choosing a vendor — 24 live answers — and counted how often each vendor was named, and which websites the assistants read to decide. No vendor was involved. The numbers are below; the method is at the bottom.
Aliases, product names and old names are merged. Percentages are of all 24 answers. Vendors named only once are omitted.
ChatGPT and Perplexity build their answers from different pages, so the same vendor can be a default on one and near-invisible on the other. The largest gaps:
| Vendor | ChatGPT | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|
| Saleshandy | 8% | 83% |
| Mailshake | 83% | 33% |
| Apollo.io | 33% | 67% |
| Smartlead | 92% | 67% |
| Hunter.io | 8% | 25% |
| Reply.io | 17% | 33% |
| Instantly | 67% | 58% |
| Woodpecker | 33% | 42% |
Every answer came with source links. These are the domains cited most across all 24 answers. Presence on the top few (blog.hubspot.com, brevo.com, close.com, emailchaser.com) determines the category far more than anything on a vendor's own site.
| Source | Answers citing it | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| blog.hubspot.com | 12 | HubSpot's tool roundups |
| brevo.com | 12 | Brevo's blog roundup of cold email tools |
| close.com | 12 | Close CRM's blog roundup |
| emailchaser.com | 12 | A vendor's own roundup |
| amplemarket.com | 11 | A vendor's own roundup |
| cleverly.co | 9 | Lead-gen agency's roundup |
| bookyourdata.com | 7 | Data vendor's roundup |
| guideflow.com | 7 | Software roundup blog |
| zapier.com | 5 | Zapier's app roundups |
| g2.com | 4 | Review aggregator |
| mailshake.com | 4 | A vendor's own comparison content |
| support.google.com | 3 | Gmail sending-limit documentation |
The twelve prompts: Best cold email software for startups · Compare the leading cold email software tools. · Recommend a cold email software for a team of 10. · What are the top cold email software options in 2026? · What cold email software do professionals actually recommend? · What is a good alternative to the most popular cold email software? · What is the best cold email software? · What is the most affordable cold email software? · What should I look for when choosing a cold email software? · Which cold email software has the best reviews? · Which cold email software should a small business use? · Who are the leading providers of cold email software?
Each prompt was sent live to ChatGPT and Perplexity (ChatGPT as gpt-5 with web search on; Perplexity as sonar) via the DataForSEO LLM Responses API on 23 September 2026 — 24 answers. Every answer was checked for each vendor name using case-insensitive matching with aliases and old names merged; vendors were drawn from the answers themselves, so a vendor that no answer named does not appear. Source links inside each answer were counted once per domain per answer (up to eight domains per answer, so citation counts are lower bounds). Answers were truncated at 4,000 characters before scoring. Assistants are non-deterministic: a single vendor's share can move several points between runs. Total cost of the data on this page: US$0.57.
We re-run categories monthly. If a vendor on this list wants the per-question breakdown for their brand — which questions they are named for, which they are not, and which sources carried the answers that omit them — it is free; write to audits@agentbuilt.dev.
The free AI visibility audit runs the same twelve questions for any brand in any category and sends you the report. No card, no call. Other categories: appointment scheduling software, lease accounting software, podcast hosting platform, rank tracking software, social media scheduling tool.