How to Switch From Salesloft to lemlist in 2026: A Step-by-Step Playbook

Why teams are leaving Salesloft right now

Most teams start looking at a Salesloft alternative for three overlapping reasons: cost, uncertainty around the Clari merger, and a sending infrastructure that still needs manual upkeep. If you’re running a small outbound team, you’re often paying enterprise pricing for a platform built to manage reps at a much larger scale.

Salesloft’s pricing is quote-based, and third-party estimates place most buyers between $125 and $165 per user per month at list price. Add-ons, implementation fees, and annual increases compound that cost over a multi-year contract.

The Clari merger adds another layer of uncertainty. Salesloft and Clari completed their merger in December 2025, and the combined company is still bringing two product sets together, so some customers are wary of signing a longer renewal before pricing and packaging settle.

Common reasons teams switch:

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  Enterprise pricing for 1-3 SDR teams that don’t need 30-plus-rep features

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  Sending infrastructure (domain warm-up, inbox rotation, complaint monitoring) still managed manually

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  Merger-driven uncertainty about product direction and contract terms

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  No native multichannel outreach beyond email and calls

What you can (and can’t) export from Salesloft

Before touching your new platform, get clear on what data travels with you.

People and account records

Your People Export creates a CSV file with standard fields plus any custom fields you’ve added to person records. You’ll need the Export People permission on your role, though it comes standard for admin and user roles.

Cadences, templates, and email content

Salesloft’s Export Steps option creates a CSV of cadence structure and performance metrics. That export gives you the numbers, not the full email body copy with formatting intact, so copy your best templates into a separate document first.

Cadence step logic, including branching and A/B variants, doesn’t transfer as a portable file. Plan to rebuild that logic by hand once you’re inside lemlist.

Activity and engagement history

Both Salesloft and Outreach paginate API responses (Salesloft caps at 100 records per page), so large lists need multiple batched pulls. Without engineering support on hand, your CRM is the faster route, since Salesloft already writes activity back to Salesforce or HubSpot.

What stays locked inside Salesloft

Conversation intelligence recordings, analytics dashboards, and live automation rules don’t export at all. Archive anything worth keeping before you cancel.

Pre-migration audit checklist

Plan for 2-3 days of export runs, plus another two for cleanup and encoding fixes. Before any of that, get a clear picture of your current setup.

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  Active cadences and performance data: Identify which cadences are running, which get the best reply and meeting rates, and which are dormant.

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  CRM integration and field mappings: Document every custom field, trigger, and sync rule between Salesloft and your CRM. Missing one means lost data later.

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  Third-party tools and dependencies: List every connected tool (enrichment providers, Slack alerts, Zapier automations). lemlist replaces some of these natively; others need reconnecting.

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  Team permissions and sending infrastructure: Record which reps use which mailboxes, domains, and daily volume caps. This feeds directly into your lemlist deliverability setup.

How to migrate from Salesloft to lemlist in seven steps

Step 1. Export contacts and cadence data from Salesloft

The People page shows a list that reflects whatever filters you’ve applied, and your export follows those same rules, which makes pulling a defined segment easy. Export cadence step data separately via Export Steps, and copy your best email copy into a shared doc.

Step 2. Set up your lemlist workspace and connect your CRM

Create your account, invite your team, and connect HubSpot or Salesforce. lemlist’s CRM integrations sync contacts, deal stages, and activity logs in both directions, so take time to map custom fields correctly.

Step 3. Configure sending domains and start warming up with lemwarm

This step takes the longest, and it matters most. Add sending domains, set up DNS authentication, and activate lemwarm, which builds sender reputation by exchanging real emails with real inboxes at a controlled pace.

Deliverability Hub monitors health per mailbox and domain, surfacing issues before they hit performance. Budget about one month (2–3 weeks of ramp-up, then 2 weeks of stabilization) of warm-up before sending at full volume.

Step 4. Rebuild your top-performing sequences as lemlist campaigns

Start with cadences that generated the most meetings, not the highest send volume. A single lemlist campaign can combine email with LinkedIn visits, connection requests, SMS, WhatsApp, and call steps, which is the biggest functional jump from Salesloft’s email-and-phone model.

If rebuilding feels tedious, lemAgent can generate a full multichannel campaign from a prompt describing your goal and ICP (ideal customer profile). You review and edit the output; it handles the scaffolding.

Step 5. Import contacts and enrich them with verified data

Upload your Salesloft CSV exports, then run waterfall enrichment, which queries multiple data providers in sequence to verify emails and find phone numbers. This matters most where Salesloft’s data has gone stale over time.

lemlist’s built-in lead database, with over 600 million contacts, can fill gaps directly, so you’re not relying on a separate vendor.

Step 6. Run Salesloft and lemlist in parallel

This step gets rushed most often, and it’s the one that prevents pipeline damage. Moving prospects mid-sequence causes duplicate emails, broken personalization, and lost engagement data.

Let active Salesloft cadences finish on their own, and route all new prospects to lemlist instead. Budget for a 30-day overlap, and treat dual licensing during that window as the cost of a clean transition.

Step 7. Cut over and decommission Salesloft

Once active cadences have finished and lemlist performance checks out (deliverability, CRM sync, reply rates), pause Salesloft sending, cancel the contract, and archive your exported data. Confirm every rep has launched at least one lemlist campaign before removing their access.

Five migration risks and how to prevent each one

Switching sales engagement platforms is expensive even when the price per seat drops. You lose rep productivity during the transition and rebuild sequences and integrations by hand, so the risks below are worth planning around rather than discovering mid-switch.

Salesloft vs lemlist feature map for migrating teams

If you’re wondering where a specific Salesloft feature lives inside lemlist, this table maps the equivalents.

lemlist’s pricing starts at $32 per user per month for Email Starter and climbs to $87 for Multichannel Expert, billed yearly. Compare that to Salesloft, where most buyers land between $125 and $165 per user per month depending on tier, seat count, and contract length.

Week-by-week migration timeline

Treat the switch as a six-week project rather than a weekend swap.

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  Week 1: Audit the current Salesloft setup, export all data, document CRM mappings and dependencies

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  Week 2: Set up the lemlist workspace, connect your CRM, configure sending domains, activate lemwarm

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  Week 3: Rebuild top cadences as lemlist multichannel campaigns, import and enrich contacts

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  Week 4: Begin the parallel run, monitor deliverability and CRM sync with a small batch

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  Weeks 5-6: Validate performance, train remaining reps, finalize cutover, decommission Salesloft

Your first multichannel campaign after migration

Once the migration logistics settle, the real payoff starts. You can now build campaigns across channels Salesloft never offered natively, all inside a single sequence.

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  Day 1: Personalized email with an AI-generated icebreaker (Smart messaging pulls context from LinkedIn and company websites)

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  Day 2: LinkedIn profile visit + connection request

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  Day 4: Follow-up email referencing LinkedIn engagement

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  Day 6: Call step triggered by an email open

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  Day 7: SMS follow-up if the call goes unanswered

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  Day 10: WhatsApp message for no-show recovery or meeting confirmation

lemAgent can generate this entire flow from a single prompt describing your ICP, your goal, and your preferred channels. From there, you review the draft, adjust the copy, and launch.

Over to you

Migrating from Salesloft to lemlist takes preparation, but what you get on the other side is one platform covering multichannel outreach, built-in lead data, deliverability management, and AI-driven personalization, without quote-based pricing or tool sprawl. Follow the seven steps above, respect the warm-up timeline, and run both platforms in parallel until lemlist proves itself.