AI SDR for small teams and solo founders: what a small outbound setup really costs

A small outbound setup with Sellinger starts at $39 a month for the email agent or $198 a month for one LinkedIn agent, and $249 a month for LinkedIn plus 4,000 emails in the Outbound bundle. The larger cost is your own time: picking the audience, writing the offer and reading the conversations the agent flags. Plan one to two hours a week once it runs.

Most AI SDR vendors price for teams with a sales department. Their plans start in the hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. If you are a founder, a two person agency or a small sales team, the question is different: what is the least you need to spend to get a fair test? This post lays out the costs, the time and a first month plan.

What does the software cost?

All figures are Sellinger's list prices, checked on 19 October 2026, in US dollars per month.

A few notes. The Outbound bundle saves $98 a month against buying the same LinkedIn and email separately. Intent signals are included with every bundle. Every messaging module and bundle starts with a 30 day free trial and needs no card.

For a first test, most small teams choose one of two paths. If your buyers are easy to find on LinkedIn and you have no verified emails, take the LinkedIn agent. If you hold a clean list of verified addresses, the email agent is the cheapest start. The post on which channel first helps you choose.

What else does it cost?

The honest answer is more than the subscription.

A list. Someone has to decide who to write to. Sellinger can search a database of 700M+ contacts, find verified emails and phone numbers, and import your own CSV. A lookup is $0.01. Your time on choosing the audience is the real cost, and on our own account the audience mattered more than anything else: a signal based list replied at 54.6% against 21.7% for a Sales Navigator search (case study).

Mailboxes and domains for email. Cold email needs a mailbox you can send from, ideally a separate domain you can afford to damage. The cost depends on your provider. We cover the rules in Google and Yahoo bulk sender rules.

A LinkedIn account. The agent works from your own LinkedIn profile, or a team member's, through a hosted login. Sellinger does not store your password.

Your time. This is the number most people leave out, so here is our estimate, labelled as one. In the first two weeks plan a few hours to set up: the audience, the offer, the first message and the rules. After that, plan one to two hours a week to read flagged conversations, approve messages in approval mode if you use it, and join the meetings the agent books. If you let it run unreviewed, you save that time and carry the risk. The platform says setup is usually within a day.

How does that compare with hiring?

A US human SDR costs about $114,000 a year before tools and management by our estimate in the ROI post, built on the Bridge Group median pay and BLS benefit data. The same post shows the arithmetic and labels every estimate. For a solo founder the comparison is not really with a hire. It is with doing nothing, or with doing it by hand at night. An agent that costs $198 a month is cheaper than most of the alternatives, including your hours.

What can a small setup realistically do?

We can speak for our own account and for founder led campaigns we have documented. Our own agents prospect on LinkedIn from up to 43 profiles, and the headline is over 1,500 calls booked in 12 months on an average of 7.5 LinkedIn accounts. A small setup is one account, so scale expectations to one account. ShortVibe, a founder led study, is in the case studies.

Keep the numbers in proportion. LinkedIn caps what one account can do: our defaults are 20 invitations a day and 150 a week per account. One account at those limits sends at most about 600 invitations a month (150 a week). That is plenty for a focused list of a few hundred ideal buyers, and not enough for a mass campaign. Small and specific is the shape.

What does a good first month look like?

1. Days 1 to 2. Describe your ideal buyer in one paragraph. Use the free sales plan tool to draft the audience from your website.
2. Days 2 to 3. Build a list of 200 people, not 2,000. Pick a signal if you can: people who engaged with a post on your topic.
3. Day 3. Write the offer in two sentences and the goal, for example a 15 minute call. Keep approval mode on.
4. Week 1. Start the trial. Read every message before it sends. Fix the rules, not the single message.
5. Weeks 2 to 3. Let it run with approval on for first messages only. Read every reply the agent flags.
6. Week 4. Count replies, positive replies and meetings held. If the numbers are low, change the audience before the copy.

What does month one cost, in a made up example?

This example is invented to show the arithmetic. Replace each input with your own. A solo founder takes the Outbound bundle, builds a list of 200 people and reviews threads for one hour a week after setup.

With an hourly value of $60, the first month costs your time only, about $540 to $780 in hours, because the trial is free. From month two the cost is $249 plus $240 to $480 of time. The software is about half of the real cost, and the time is what you can reduce by writing clear rules once.

How many accounts should a small team start with?

One. A single LinkedIn account at the default caps of 20 invitations a day and 150 a week is enough to test an audience of a few hundred people. Adding a second agent is $198 more at the one to two agent price, and it only helps once the first account has shown that the audience replies. A second account on a weak audience just reaches more people who do not care.

For email, start with one mailbox on a separate domain. The default is 50 sends a day per mailbox, with an optional warm up that starts at 5 a day and doubles every 3 days up to the limit. That already covers a first list of 200 within a week or two.

What should you do if the first month shows nothing?

Check in this order, and change one thing at a time.

1. Is anything being sent? Look at the limits and the active hours. A schedule that is too narrow, or a connection that needs to be renewed, looks like silence.
2. Is the list right? Read ten of the profiles yourself. If you would not call them buyers, the agent will not either.
3. Is the offer clear in two sentences? If a colleague cannot say what you sell after reading the first message, rewrite it.
4. Is the goal too big? Asking for a call from a stranger is a larger step than asking a question about their work.

Changing the audience first is the same advice as in the first month plan: on our own account the audience had more effect than the copy.

When is it not the right fit?

• When you cannot yet say who the buyer is. Talk to ten customers first.
• When each deal needs a long, personal first conversation by a senior person.
• When your volume would be a few messages a week. Do it by hand.

For the buying questions, see the AI SDR buyer's checklist, and for the full price table the pricing page.