11x alternatives
By the driftwood team · July 2026
Updated July 2026. Pricing and features get a monthly fact-check.
The disclosure, first. We build driftwood
(
driftwood.sh), and it is one of the six
alternatives below. Judge the page accordingly. To make it worth your time
anyway, every entry says who should pick that tool, and the last section
covers when 11x is the right choice, including over us.
People searching for 11x alternatives usually mean one of three things:
the price and the annual contract are out of reach, the 2025 press
coverage shook their confidence in the company, or they want more control
over what an agent sends in their name than a fully autonomous digital
worker allows. Those are different problems with different answers, so
this page starts with what 11x actually is and where it genuinely wins.
For the broader AI SDR category, we keep
a separate ranked comparison.
What 11x is, and what it is genuinely good at
11x sells digital workers for go-to-market teams. The flagship is Alice, an
AI SDR that runs outbound end to end: sourcing prospects, researching
them across what 11x says is more than 50 data sources, writing and
sending multi-channel sequences spanning email, phone, social, and SMS,
handling follow-up, and booking meetings. The second worker is Julian, an AI phone
agent built up around 11x's acquisition of the voice startup Opkit, which
handles calls for speed-to-lead, qualification, and re-engagement. The
company has raised more than $70 million from Benchmark and Andreessen
Horowitz, and the positioning leans mid-market and enterprise.
There is no public pricing page as of July 2026; numbers come on a sales
call. Third-party procurement data puts a single digital worker at roughly
$5,000 a month on an annual contract, with reported first-year totals
commonly between $50,000 and $60,000 once implementation fees are
included, and Vendr reports a median contract value of about $55,050 a
year with a range from about $38,000 to about $90,000. Contracts have
historically run 12 months, sometimes with a break clause at three months.
All of that is reported rather than published, so treat it as directional.
What it is genuinely good at: it is the fullest expression of the replace
SDR headcount bet. One platform covers sourcing, research, multi-channel
sequencing, and, unusually for the category, the phone, since Julian lives
in the same product as Alice. For a larger sales org that wants outbound
volume without growing the SDR team, and has the budget and the
integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot) to feed it, that scope in one vendor is
the real draw.
Where 11x falls short, and for whom
The price and the contract
No public pricing, a sales process, reported entry around $5,000 a month,
an annual commitment, and implementation fees on top. That is by design;
the product is aimed at organizations replacing headcount, and for them
the math can work. For a founder or a seed-stage team, the entry cost
alone rules it out before any product question comes up.
The 2025 reporting is part of the record
In March 2025, TechCrunch reported that some companies whose logos
appeared on 11x's site said they were not customers, that former
employees described losing 70 to 80 percent of early customers, and that
reported annual recurring revenue included the full value of 12-month
contracts even when customers left at three-month break clauses. 11x
disputed the characterization, said its retention at the time was 79
percent, and said inaccurate customer mentions were removed when
flagged; its investors publicly backed the company. In May 2025 the
founder stepped down as CEO, moving to non-executive chairman, and the
CTO took over. None of that settles what the product does today. It does
mean you should reference-check current customers rather than trusting
logos, which is fair diligence for any vendor on this page.
Autonomy means giving up the pen
Alice's pitch is running with little day-to-day steering. That is
also the trade: messages go out at volume, in your company's name,
without a human approving each one. The complaints from churned
customers in the 2025 reporting included output that read as generic and
results that fell short of the sales pitch. If per-message quality
control matters to you, a fully autonomous agent is the wrong shape,
whoever builds it.
Volume is still the strategy
An autonomous SDR is a bet that the way to more meetings is more
touches with less human time on each. For founders selling into a small
market, that bet fails the same way it does with cheap sending tools:
burning through your addressable market with templated outreach at a
sub-1% reply rate is not recoverable. If your problem is that replies
are low, an agent that scales sends will not fix it.
Six real alternatives
1
11x automates the sending of messages; driftwood changes what a
message carries. It is a GTM agent built around
demo-led outbound: every message
includes a working demo of your product, built for the specific
prospect receiving it. A human approves every send, and sending
happens from your own LinkedIn or email account, not a bot inbox. On
the same lead list, replies went from under 1% to over 14% in week
one at Autosana (YC S25).
The honest fit: driftwood is early, and it trades volume for depth.
If you are an enterprise org replacing a ten-person SDR team, it is
not that; that is what 11x is selling.
Best for: founders and lean
teams selling a product that demos well, who want a human hand on
every send.
2
Artisan is the closest direct swap: Ava is an autonomous AI BDR
covering the outbound cycle from lead discovery through follow-up,
the same category bet as Alice. The practical difference is the
front door. Since the Ava 2.0 relaunch, Artisan is self-serve with
entry pricing from $250 a month as of July 2026, so you can try the
autonomous model without a sales cycle or an annual contract.
Best for: teams that want an
autonomous outbound agent without 11x's price point or
commitment.
3
Amplemarket is an all-in-one sales platform: contact data,
engagement, deliverability tooling, and an AI copilot called Duo
threaded through the workflow. Against 11x the difference is where
the humans sit: your reps run the motion and the AI gives them
leverage, rather than an agent running it alone. For teams that
concluded full autonomy was the problem, this is the middle path.
Best for: sales teams that
want AI leverage for their reps, not a replacement for them.
4
Unify makes signals decide the targeting: deanonymized website
visitors, job changes, and other buying signals trigger plays that
determine who gets contacted and what they hear. Where an autonomous
SDR works a static list at volume, Unify concentrates effort on
accounts showing intent right now. Teams that want to build this
kind of system by hand tend to reach for Clay instead; we compared
Clay alternatives separately.
Best for: teams with real
intent signals, especially product-led companies, that care more about
who gets contacted than how many.
5
Apollo is the pragmatic per-seat answer: a large B2B database with
sequencing, a dialer, and light CRM bundled together, with a free
tier and paid plans from $49 per user per month billed annually as
of July 2026. Nothing about it is autonomous; your team runs the
motion. Against a reported $50,000-plus first year with 11x, a few
Apollo seats plus a rep's time is the budget it competes on.
Best for: teams with people
to run outbound that want data and sending in one affordable
place.
6
Clay is the build-it-yourself path: a data workbench with waterfall
enrichment across more than a hundred providers, AI research
columns, and workflows that feed whatever sequencer or CRM you run.
Instead of renting a digital worker, a RevOps or GTM engineer
assembles your own motion with full control over every step. It
takes real operator time, and pricing starts at $185 a month as of
July 2026 after a free tier.
Best for: teams with a
RevOps or GTM engineering owner who would rather build the machine
than rent one.
When 11x is the right choice
11x is the right choice when you are genuinely buying what it sells: a
mid-market or enterprise org that wants to add outbound capacity without
adding headcount, has the budget for a five-figure annual contract, and
wants email, social, and phone handled in one platform, which Julian makes
rarer than it sounds. The 2025 history does not erase the fact that the
product survived it with new leadership and its investors still behind
it; it just means you should do the diligence you should do anyway, ask
for current references, and negotiate the break clause. The honest
dividing line: buy 11x to replace capacity you would otherwise hire. If
replies, not capacity, are your constraint, more autonomous volume will
not fix it, and that is the problem the rest of this list exists for.
FAQ
What does 11x cost in 2026?
11x does not publish pricing as of July 2026; you get numbers on a sales
call. Third-party procurement data puts a single digital worker at
roughly $5,000 a month on an annual contract, with reported first-year
totals commonly between $50,000 and $60,000 once implementation fees are
included, and Vendr reports a median contract value of about $55,050 a
year. Treat all of that as reported rather than official, and confirm
with 11x directly.
What happened with 11x in 2025?
In March 2025 TechCrunch reported that some companies whose logos
appeared on 11x's site said they were not customers, that former
employees described early customer churn of 70 to 80 percent, and that
reported annual recurring revenue included the full value of contracts
with three-month break clauses. 11x disputed the characterization and
said its retention at the time was 79 percent, and its investors
publicly backed the company. In May 2025 the founder stepped down as
CEO and the CTO took over.
Is there a self-serve or cheaper alternative to 11x?
Yes. Artisan's Ava is the same autonomous model self-serve from $250 a
month as of July 2026, and Apollo starts at $49 per user per month
billed annually with a free tier. If your motion is plain high-volume
cold email rather than an autonomous agent, Instantly starts at $47 a
month; we compared
Instantly alternatives separately.
Will an autonomous AI SDR fix a low reply rate?
Usually not. Autonomous agents scale the number of sends; if your
messages are being ignored, more of them will not change that. The case
for changing what the message carries is laid out in
demo-led outbound, and the result at
one company is written up in
the Autosana story.
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