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October 26, 2026

How to Get Leads for Your Business

The easiest way to get leads for your business is to let AI do the prospecting. An AI outbound agent finds the companies that fit, writes a personal email to each decision maker, follows up when they go quiet, and hands you the replies. You skip the list building, the template writing and the daily sending. If you sell to other businesses, Explee is built for exactly that job.

Here are the quick answers before the full guide:

  • The basic lead process has four steps: know who buys, find them, reach them, follow up.
  • Most small businesses fail at step four. One email rarely gets a reply, and nobody has time for the fifth follow-up.
  • Explee is an AI outbound agent for B2B sales. You enter your website, and it handles prospecting, writing, sending and follow-up.
  • It charges about $0.04 per email sent, with no subscription. Finding leads is free.
  • New users get $30 in free credits when they set up billing, which covers roughly 750 emails.
  • It's for selling to businesses. If your customers are individual consumers, skip it.
  • Results depend on your offer and your audience, and nobody can promise you a number.

Claim your $30 in free Explee credits and get your first leads today. A new user gets $30 in credits (about 750 emails) after setting up billing.

How to Get Leads for Your Business

Every working lead process comes down to four jobs. You can do them by hand, with software, or with an agent, but they don't change.

Know who buys

Start with the buyers you already have. Look at your last five or ten customers and write down what they share: industry, company size, the job title of the person who said yes, and the problem that pushed them to buy.

A vague target like "small businesses" gives you a vague list and weak emails. A target like "dental clinics with three or more locations that don't have online booking" gives you something you can search for and write to. The narrower the description, the easier every later step gets.

Find them

Once you know who you want, you need names, companies and working email addresses. This is where most people lose a week. They buy a list that's half outdated, or they spend evenings copying details from websites into a spreadsheet.

Good lead data comes from a few places: business directories, company websites, Google Maps listings, professional networks and public registries. Whatever tool you use, check that the emails are valid and that the person still holds the job.

Reach them

Outreach means getting in front of a person who didn't ask to hear from you. Email is still the most direct way to do that for B2B, because a decision maker can read it when they choose and forward it to a colleague.

A cold email that works is short, specific to the recipient and clear about one next step. It mentions something true about their company, explains in a sentence what you do for companies like theirs, and asks a small question. Generic blasts get ignored, and sometimes reported as spam.

Follow up

Most replies come after the first email, not to it. People are busy, the message lands at a bad time, or they mean to answer and forget. A short follow-up three or four days later, and another after that, recovers a large share of the leads you'd otherwise lose.

Follow-up is also the step people skip, because it's tedious and easy to forget when you're running a business. If you only fix one thing in your lead process, fix this one.

Why AI Is the Best Way to Get Leads Right Now

image showing explee

AI already handles research, first drafts and customer support for a lot of people. Lead generation is a natural next job to hand over, because it's repetitive, it rewards consistency, and it's hard to do well when you're also doing everything else.

Consistency

Human outreach comes in bursts. You send fifty emails in a motivated week, then nothing for a month because a client project ate your time. Leads follow the same pattern: feast, then silence.

An agent works every day at the pace you set. Prospects get a steady flow of messages, and your pipeline gets a steady flow of replies, which makes your revenue easier to predict.

Research

A good cold email depends on knowing something about the person reading it. Doing that research for 200 companies takes days. An AI agent can read a company's website, work out what it does and write the opening line from that, for every prospect on the list.

Follow-up

A person forgets to follow up. A system doesn't. An agent sends the second and third message on schedule, and when someone replies with interest, it can answer and point them to your booking link.

Cost

Hiring a sales development rep or an agency means a monthly commitment before you know whether the channel works for you. Pay-as-you-go AI outreach lets you test with a small budget and stop when you want to. You can learn whether your offer gets replies for tens of dollars instead of thousands.

Speed

Setting up a manual outbound process takes weeks: tools, domains, warm-up, lists, templates. An agent compresses that to the time it takes to paste in a website address. Meanwhile, your competitors are already in your prospects' inboxes, and every week you wait is a week they get to be the first reply.

Start your free Explee trial with $30 in credits and let the agent do the prospecting. Your $30 in free credits arrives once you set up billing, and there's no subscription to cancel.

What Is Explee?

Explee is a 24/7 AI outbound agent for B2B sales. You give it your website, and it works out who to contact, writes the emails, sends them, follows up and replies to interested leads.

It was formerly called AutoGTM. It's the same product, and existing accounts and credits carried over when the name changed.

The idea is simple. Most outbound tools give you a dashboard of settings and expect you to build the campaign yourself. Explee gives you an agent that builds and runs the campaign, then shows you the results. You set the budget, watch the numbers and decide what to change.

How Does Explee Work?

The process runs in a loop, and you only start it once.

  1. You enter your website. The agent reads it to understand what you sell and who it's for.
  2. It studies your competitors to see how the market describes similar products.
  3. It ranks buyer types by how well they fit your offer.
  4. It finds decision makers at companies in those groups.
  5. It writes a personalized email to each person.
  6. It sends the emails and follows up when there's no reply.
  7. When someone shows interest, it replies with your booking link.
  8. It tracks which segments produce leads and moves budget toward the ones that work.

That last step matters. You don't have to guess which audience is best. The agent tests several and spends more where replies come in.

The data behind it is large. Explee lists 105M+ companies, 536M+ people profiles and 200M+ places drawn from Google Maps data. Its sources include the open web, Google Maps and local registries. Because of the Google Maps and registry data, it can reach businesses that have no LinkedIn page, such as local shops, clinics, contractors and restaurants. Most prospecting tools miss those entirely.

Explee sends from its own pre-warmed mailboxes, not from your company domain. SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up for those mailboxes, and mailboxes that get blocklisted or show high bounce rates are paused. The company claims a 97% inbox rate. That's their figure, and your own rate will vary with your message and audience.

Try Explee with $30 in free credits and see your first campaign build itself. A card is needed to verify your account, and the $30 in credits covers roughly 750 emails.

Who Owns Explee?

Explee is operated by Explee LTD, a company registered in the United Kingdom under Company No. 15759064. Its registered address is International House, 50 Essex Street, London.

The company publishes terms of service, a privacy policy and a compliance FAQ on its site. That's worth checking yourself before you send anything, especially if you operate in a region with strict rules on business email.

Explee Features

Here's what you get inside the product:

  • An AI agent that learns your business from your website address
  • Competitor research, so the messaging reflects how your market talks
  • Buyer ranking, which sorts audience types by fit
  • Decision-maker search across 105M+ companies and 536M+ people profiles
  • Coverage of 200M+ places from Google Maps data, plus local registries
  • A personalized email for each recipient, followed by automatic follow-ups
  • Replies to interested leads that include your booking link
  • Automatic budget shifts toward the segments that produce leads
  • Sending from pre-warmed mailboxes with SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured
  • Pausing of mailboxes that are blocklisted or have high bounce rates
  • Support for 30 languages
  • Targeting by country, state or a known city
  • CSV upload if you'd rather use your own list
  • A free Segments Explorer tool for researching audiences
  • A public API for developers
  • A daily budget you can change at any time

Explee Pricing

image showing explee pricing

Explee is pay as you go. There's no subscription and no monthly minimum.

  • About $0.04 per email sent. Some older articles quote $0.03, which is outdated.
  • Finding leads is free. You pay only for emails that have already been sent.
  • Billing usually happens in batches of $5 or more.
  • You can change your daily budget whenever you want.
  • New users get $30 in free credits when they set up billing. That covers about 750 emails.
  • A card is required to verify the account. Your bank may show a temporary $1 hold, which is released automatically.

Explee estimates that $30 in emails yields about 2 to 6 warm leads and around one meeting. The company puts its cost per lead between $1 and $20, with a median of $9 per hot lead. A hot lead is any reply that moves the deal forward, such as someone asking for pricing. These are the company's own figures, not guarantees.

Here's the math at a larger budget. Spending $100 a month buys about 2,500 emails. At the $9 median, that works out to roughly 11 hot leads. Treat that as an estimate: a strong offer sold to a clear audience can do better, and a weak one can do worse.

The database side has separate pricing. Semantic search and custom AI enrichment are free. Deep research starts at $5 per 1,000, and emails start at $10 per 1,000.

Grab your $30 in free Explee credits and test the pay-as-you-go model risk-free. Set a small daily budget, watch the dashboard, and stop whenever you like.

Does Explee Work?

Yes, it works for the job it's built for: finding B2B prospects and emailing them at scale. Whether it works for you depends on your offer, your audience and how closely you watch the first week.

The benefits outweigh the downsides for most B2B sellers, for a few reasons. The agent does the tasks people skip, which are research, personalization and follow-up. The pricing lets you test cheaply. And the agent reallocates budget as it learns, so a bad segment doesn't keep draining your credits.

The company publishes customer results on its homepage. One campaign produced 409 hot leads at $2.62 each. Another produced 254 at $6.52, and a third produced 238 at $1.71. These are company-published, not independent, and they're the best cases a company chooses to show. Your results depend on your offer and audience, and some users report poor returns from their first $30.

The downsides are real, and I cover them in the reviews section. None of them cancel out the basic value for someone who sells to businesses and has no time to prospect by hand.

Is Explee Legit?

Yes, Explee is legit. It's run by a registered UK company, Explee LTD (Company No. 15759064), with a published address in London. It publishes terms, a privacy policy and a compliance FAQ. It sets up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on its sending mailboxes, and it pauses mailboxes that get blocklisted or bounce too much.

It's a real product with real users and a documented company behind it. The reviews are the part to read carefully. G2 shows a 5.0 rating, but from only 5 reviews, which is too small a sample to prove much. Trustpilot is mixed, at about 3.6 out of 5 from 41 reviews at the last check. Legit means the business is real and operating openly. It doesn't mean every user gets leads.

Check it out yourself with $30 in free Explee credits and judge the results on your own numbers. The offer applies to new users once billing is set up.

Is Explee Good?

Yes, Explee is good for what it does. It's a strong fit for founders, consultants and small teams who sell to businesses and want outreach running without building a sales stack.

It's good because it removes setup. There's no domain warm-up, no list buying, no template writing and no sequence building. It's good because the pricing is simple, and because one dashboard shows what you spent and what came back.

It's less good if you want full control over every word of every email, or if you work in a small market where the agent has little data. Those cases come up again in the pros and cons.

Is Explee Worth It?

For most B2B sellers with a clear offer, yes, it's worth testing, and the free credits make that cheap. Whether it's worth continuing depends on one number: what a hot lead costs you against what a customer is worth.

Take a simple case. If a new client is worth $2,000 to you and one in ten hot leads becomes a client, then at the $9 median a client costs roughly $90 in outreach. That's a strong return even if the real figure turns out three times worse. If a new customer is worth $30, the math is much tighter.

Work out your own version before you spend past the free credits. Then run the first campaign with a small daily budget and check the numbers after a week.

Explee Reviews: What Real Users Say

The public review picture is mixed, and it's better to know that going in.

On G2, Explee has a 5.0 rating from 5 reviews. The reviews are positive, but five is a small number, so I wouldn't lean on it.

On Trustpilot, the rating is about 3.6 out of 5 from 41 reviews at the last snapshot I found. These numbers move, so check the live page. Common complaints include:

  • No results from the first $30 for some users
  • Weak results in small, non-English markets
  • Email quality that felt generic in some cases
  • Billing after the free credits ran out, which surprised people who didn't set a budget

There's a pattern in those complaints. Most come from three situations: a thin market, a vague offer, or a daily budget left at the default. Autopilot is on by default, so the sensible approach is to set a small daily budget on day one and check the dashboard daily.

Users who report good results tend to sell something specific to a defined business audience, in English-speaking or large markets. The company publishes its own examples on its homepage, and they're labeled as company-published for a reason.

Test it on your own offer with $30 in free Explee credits and read the results for yourself. Start small, and let your own campaign data settle the question.

How Can I Get Leads for My Business

Start with the buyer, not the tool. Write down who your best customers are, then find more of them and contact them repeatedly. That's the whole process. The tools only change how much of it you do by hand.

If you sell to businesses, cold email is the fastest channel to test, because you can start today and see replies within days. If you sell to individuals, look at content, local search and referrals instead, since Explee won't help there.

Where to Get Leads

Leads come from a handful of places, and the right one depends on what you sell.

  • Your existing customers, through referrals and repeat work
  • Google search, if people look for what you sell
  • Google Maps and local directories, for location-based businesses
  • Professional networks, where you can find decision makers by title
  • Industry events and communities
  • Cold email to a researched list, which scales without waiting for people to find you

Explee draws on several of these sources at once, including Google Maps data and public registries, and puts the results into one outreach flow.

Best Way to Get Leads

The best way is the one you'll keep doing every week. A great channel you use for ten days loses to an average channel you run for a year.

That's the case for automation. Outreach that runs daily, follows up on schedule and adjusts itself beats outreach that depends on your mood and your calendar. For B2B, an AI outbound agent is the lowest-effort way to be consistent.

Get Leads for Free

You can get leads without spending money, but you'll pay with time. Free methods include asking customers for referrals, posting useful answers in communities where your buyers gather, optimizing your Google Business profile, and sending cold emails by hand from your own inbox.

All of these work, and all of them are slow. If you want to test AI outreach without paying anything out of pocket, the $30 in free Explee credits is the closest option. You do need to set up billing with a card to get them.

Get Leads From LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a useful place to research buyers. You can find companies, check job titles and read what a prospect posts. Many people also message prospects there directly, though response rates on cold connection requests are often low, and heavy automation can get an account restricted.

Explee takes a different route. It contacts people by email and doesn't depend on a LinkedIn page, so it can reach businesses that aren't on the platform at all. Many people combine the two: LinkedIn for relationship-building and email for volume.

How to Get Leads for Small Businesses

Small businesses have limited time and limited money, which is why they need a narrow target and a cheap test. Pick one customer type, write one clear offer, and run a small campaign before you widen anything.

If your small business sells to other businesses, a daily budget of a few dollars is enough to learn whether the offer gets replies. If you serve local customers, local search and Google Maps visibility are usually the stronger starting points, unless the local customers are businesses themselves.

How to Get Leads Without Hiring a Sales Team

A sales team costs salaries, tools and management time, and it takes months to start paying off. You can skip that stage by using software that does the repetitive work: research, writing, sending and follow-up.

An AI outbound agent covers most of what a junior rep does on the prospecting side. You still need a person to take the calls and close the deals, and that person can be you.

How to Get Leads as a Freelancer

Freelancers get stuck in feast and famine because they stop looking for work when they're busy. The fix is to keep a small, steady stream of outreach running even during busy months.

If your clients are businesses, such as design, writing, development, consulting or marketing clients, you can describe your service, enter your website and let an agent contact the right companies. A small daily budget keeps the cost low. Make sure your website says clearly what you do and who you do it for, since the agent learns from it.

How to Get Leads for a New Business

A new business has no reviews, no referrals and little search visibility, so outbound is often the quickest way to get a first batch of conversations. You decide who to contact, and you don't wait for them to find you.

Keep the first campaign narrow. One offer, one audience, one small budget. The first replies tell you whether your message lands, and that's worth more than a large list.

How to Get Leads Fast

The fastest route is cold email to a well-chosen audience, since you can have messages out within a day. Explee's homepage promises 1 to 3 hot leads in 24 hours for free, which is the company's claim and not a guarantee.

Speed also depends on your offer. A clear, specific offer gets replies quickly. A vague one gets silence no matter how fast you send.

Get your first leads faster with $30 in free Explee credits and a campaign that launches in minutes. Your credits cover roughly 750 emails after billing is set up.

Explee Alternatives

The main difference between Explee and its competitors is who does the work. Tools like Instantly, Smartlead and Apollo give you software to operate yourself. Explee runs the campaign for you.

Instantly and Smartlead are built for sending cold email at scale. You bring the list, set up your domains and mailboxes, write or generate your messages, and manage the sequences. They give you a lot of control, and they suit people who already know outbound and want to run it themselves.

Apollo combines a large contact database with sequencing tools. You search the database, build lists and set up your outreach. It's a good fit for sales teams who want to do their own prospecting inside one platform.

Explee suits people who don't want to learn any of that. You enter your website and the agent builds the audience, writes the messages and handles follow-up. You give up some manual control in exchange for a much shorter setup.

Hiring is the other option. An SDR or an agency can adapt to a conversation and handle odd situations in ways software can't. They also cost a monthly commitment and take time to ramp up. Agencies vary widely in quality, and many people have had one that delivered little and then went quiet.

I haven't listed competitor prices because plans change often. Check each provider's current pricing page and compare it against your expected monthly volume.

Explee Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Fast setup from a single website address
  • No subscription, and you pay per email sent
  • Free lead search
  • $30 in free credits for new users
  • Personalized emails and automatic follow-up
  • Coverage of businesses with no LinkedIn presence
  • Budget that shifts toward segments that work
  • 30 languages and country, state or city targeting
  • CSV upload, a free Segments Explorer and a public API

Cons:

  • B2B only, with no consumer targeting
  • Some users report no results from their first $30
  • Weaker results in small, non-English markets
  • Email quality can feel generic in some cases
  • Autopilot is on by default, so you need to set a daily budget
  • Billing begins once the free credits run out
  • Emails go from Explee's mailboxes, not your own domain
  • Review counts on G2 are small, and Trustpilot is mixed

Who Is Explee Best For and Who Should Skip It

Explee is best for:

  • Founders and small teams selling to businesses who have no time for prospecting
  • Consultants, agencies and freelancers with business clients
  • Local-service providers that sell to other local companies
  • People who've tried outbound and quit because follow-up was too tedious
  • Anyone who wants to test cold outreach cheaply before committing

You should skip Explee if:

  • You sell to individual consumers
  • You want full control over every email and every sending domain
  • Your market is very small or mostly non-English
  • You can't spare any time to review the dashboard in the first week
  • You're not comfortable with cold email as a channel

Your 7-Day Plan to Get Leads With Explee

This plan keeps your spending low and your learning high.

  • Day 1: Write down your best three customers and what they share. Check that your website states clearly what you sell and who it's for, since the agent reads it. Set up your Explee account and billing to receive the $30 in credits.
  • Day 2: Enter your website and review the buyer segments the agent proposes. Remove any that don't match who you want to sell to. Set a small daily budget.
  • Day 3: Read the first emails the agent wrote. Check the tone and make sure the offer is accurate. Look at the first sends and bounce numbers.
  • Day 4: Read the first replies. Note which segments get responses and which are silent. Reply to anything the agent hasn't already handled.
  • Day 5: Check cost per lead by segment. If one segment clearly leads, let the budget flow there.
  • Day 6: Tighten your offer based on what replies said. If people asked the same question twice, answer it on your site.
  • Day 7: Decide whether to continue, raise the budget or stop. Compare what you spent with what one customer is worth.

Start your 7-day plan today with $30 in free Explee credits and watch the first replies come in. Your credits cover about 750 emails, which is enough for a proper test.

Tips to Get Better Results

  • Sell one thing. Agents write better emails when your site has one clear offer.
  • Set a small daily budget first. Raise it only after you see replies.
  • Check the dashboard daily in week one. Autopilot is convenient, but you should watch it.
  • Use a specific target. A narrow audience produces sharper messages than a broad one.
  • Make your booking link easy. If a lead has to hunt for it, you lose them.
  • Reply fast to warm leads. A prompt, human answer from you after the agent's first one closes more deals.
  • Give your website real detail: prices or price ranges, results, who you serve. The agent uses it.
  • Test a second offer if the first one gets nothing. Silence usually means the message needs work.
  • Keep notes on which segments work. You can reuse them later.
  • Judge on cost per hot lead and cost per customer, not on the number of emails sent.

FAQs

Is Explee free?

Partly. Finding leads is free, and new users get $30 in free credits after setting up billing. Sending emails costs about $0.04 each once those credits run out.

Do I need a credit card for the free credits?

Yes. A card is needed to verify your account, and your bank may show a temporary $1 hold that's released automatically.

How many emails does $30 buy?

About 750 emails at roughly $0.04 each. Explee estimates that yields about 2 to 6 warm leads and around one meeting.

Is there a subscription?

No. Explee is pay as you go, and you're billed for emails already sent, usually in batches of $5 or more.

Can I control how much I spend?

Yes. You set a daily budget and can change it at any time. Since autopilot is on by default, set a small number on day one.

Is Explee only for B2B?

Yes. It's built to reach businesses and decision makers, and it doesn't target individual consumers.

Does Explee send from my domain?

No. It sends from its own pre-warmed mailboxes, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured. That protects your domain, but it means the emails don't come from your company address.

What is a hot lead?

Any reply that moves the deal forward, such as asking for pricing. Explee's median cost is $9 per hot lead, with a range of $1 to $20, according to the company.

Was Explee called something else?

Yes, it used to be AutoGTM. It's the same product, and accounts and credits carried over.

Can I upload my own list?

Yes. CSV upload is supported if you'd rather contact people you've already found.

Which languages does it support?

Thirty languages. You can target any country, state or known city. Results tend to be weaker in small non-English markets, according to some users.

Does Explee guarantee leads?

No. Results depend on your offer, audience and budget, and some users report getting nothing from their first $30.

Is Explee better than Instantly or Smartlead?

They do different jobs. Instantly and Smartlead are tools you run yourself, and Explee is an agent that runs the campaign for you. Pick based on whether you want control or convenience.

Is Explee a real company?

Yes. Explee LTD is registered in the UK under Company No. 15759064, with an address at International House, 50 Essex Street, London.

How fast can I get a lead?

The homepage promises 1 to 3 hot leads in 24 hours for free. That's the company's claim, and actual timing depends on your offer and audience.

Can a freelancer use Explee?

Yes, if your clients are businesses. Make sure your website explains your service clearly, since the agent builds its research from it.

What happens after the free credits run out?

You're billed per email sent at about $0.04 each, within the daily budget you set. Keep the budget small and check it regularly.

Does Explee work for local businesses?

Yes, if they sell to other businesses. Its Google Maps and registry data can reach companies with no LinkedIn page. It won't help if your customers are individual consumers.

Conclusion

Getting leads comes down to the same four jobs every time: know who buys, find them, reach them, follow up. Most businesses stall because the work is repetitive and nobody owns it. AI is good at repetitive work, and an outbound agent can run it daily without losing interest.

Explee does that for B2B sellers. It reads your website, finds decision makers, writes personal emails, follows up and moves budget toward what works. It's honest to say it isn't for everyone: it's B2B only, results vary by market and offer, and the public reviews are mixed. Set a small daily budget, watch the numbers, and judge it on your own cost per lead.

The risk is low, and waiting has a cost of its own, since someone else is probably already emailing the people you want to reach.

Claim your $30 in free Explee credits now and put your lead generation on autopilot. New users get roughly 750 emails' worth of credits after setting up billing, with no subscription.

Explee Discount Code

There's no public Explee discount code, and you don't need one. The best offer available is the $30 in free credits for new users, which covers roughly 750 emails once you set up billing. Be wary of any site that lists a code, since none has been published.

A card is required to verify the account, and your bank may show a temporary $1 hold that's released automatically. After the credits are used, pricing is about $0.04 per email with no subscription.

Get your $30 in free Explee credits here and start sending your first campaign today

Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link, so I may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you.


Notes on what I checked: I couldn't open explee.com/pricing directly, so I couldn't confirm the official price. Third-party pages I found (a news write-up, a software directory and a review site) still quote $0.03 per email, which matches your note that older material is outdated, so I used your $0.04 figure. One comparison site lists a "Starter from $49/mo" plan, which contradicts the no-subscription model and looks like an aggregator error, so I left it out. Check the live pricing page before you publish.

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