Artisan

TL;DR: If you run a startup sales team that wants software to do the outbound and book the meetings, Artisan (artisan.co) fits, and you can try it free first. Artisan sells Ava, an AI "BDR" (business development rep, the person who finds new buyers) that finds leads, writes and sends the outreach, answers replies and books meetings for your reps. Startups get clear prices: a free plan, then Intern at $250 a month and Employee at $600 on yearly billing ($280 and $660 on monthly billing). New accounts also get a free 30-day trial of 10,000 credits (Artisan's usage units) with no card. Larger teams get a quote after a demo. Ava works on its own by default, with settings to approve messages before they send. App Score: 7.7/10.

Outbound sales means contacting possible buyers who have not asked to hear from you. Artisan's product, Ava, does that job in software. A lead is one person you contact. Ava finds leads, writes the messages, sends them in your reps' names from your own domains, handles replies and books the meeting. Ava draws on Artisan's own contact database.

Key features of Artisan

• Lead finding: Ava finds leads from Artisan's contact database or a CSV file you upload. The Free plan can look up leads, build lists and enrich them, but cannot run campaigns.
• Research and writing: Ava researches each person on the web and writes each message. It uses more than 10 intent signals, which are events that hint a company may be ready to buy, such as a job change or a funding round.
• Replies and meeting booking: Ava answers replies, handles objections and books meetings on your reps' calendars. Both come with the business plans and from the Intern plan up on the startup plans.
• Approval controls: You can approve messages before sending, lock the tone and calls to action, set banned phrases, set budget caps and set when a person steps in. Ava is autonomous by default, so approval is a setting you turn on.
• Deliverability: deliverability means how many of your emails reach the inbox instead of spam. From Intern, Artisan includes deliverability monitoring (health, spam rates and inbox placement). It also has a bounce test, a daily cap per mailbox (50 emails or lower advised), send windows and a do-not-contact list.
• CRM sync: two-way sync with Salesforce and HubSpot on business plans. On the startup plans HubSpot and Slack start on Intern, webhooks (a way to feed data from another tool into Artisan) on Employee, and Salesforce on Enterprise. A CRM is the database where you track deals.

Who Artisan fits

If you run a startup sales team and want replies and meeting booking handled by the software, start on the Free plan or the 30-day trial. Then look at Intern ($250 a month on yearly billing, or $280 monthly, for about 500 people contacted a month) or Employee ($600 yearly, or $660 monthly, for about 1,250). If you are a solo founder with a small budget, note that the Free plan only looks up and lists leads, and sending starts on Intern. If your team uses HubSpot, it syncs from Intern. On the startup plans, Salesforce is on Enterprise only, so check the plan first. If you run a larger team that wants a managed rollout, the business plans come with a customer success manager and are quoted after a demo. See Unify and AiSDR for other ways to buy.

Artisan pricing

Artisan sells in two ways: Startups, with clear prices and a free start, and Businesses and Enterprises, with quotes. Prices are in US dollars as of 19 October 2026.

Startups: clear prices

Intern adds campaigns, replies and meeting booking, intent signals, deliverability monitoring, and domain and mailbox set-up. Employee adds advanced campaign types, webhooks and priority support. Enterprise adds Salesforce, SSO, audit logs, advanced security controls and a dedicated customer success manager.

Yearly prices charge the credits upfront and save 10%. Intern and Employee each let you add credits for a higher price. On yearly plans, unused credits do not roll over. On monthly plans they carry over until the end of the next billing period.

Credits power Ava's work: 2 for an email lookup, 10 for a phone lookup, 4 to identify a website visitor and 2 for an autonomous reply. A full campaign costs about 20 credits per person contacted, so 10,000 credits on Intern cover about 500 people, roughly $0.50 a person on yearly billing, before dialer seats and sending set-up.

Ava does not make calls. A human power dialer, which places calls for your reps one after another, is a per-seat add-on at $67 a month on yearly billing and $75 monthly. Mailboxes and phone numbers are billed separately; ask Artisan for their prices.

Each new account gets a 30-day free trial of 10,000 credits. It includes all features, needs no card and is limited to one per company.

Businesses and Enterprises: quoted

Business plans are priced by quote after a demo. Artisan sizes them to your lead volume, mailboxes and dialer seats and scopes the plan with you in a 30-minute demo.

Team covers about 2,500 people contacted a month and includes every campaign type, autonomous replies and meeting booking, Salesforce and HubSpot sync, a customer success manager in a shared Slack channel and a dialer add-on per seat. Scale covers about 6,000 and adds a dedicated customer success manager, CRM set-up and priority support. Enterprise is custom and adds a forward-deployed strategist, full onboarding, dedicated strategic support, advanced security controls and audit logs.

On business plans, ask the sales team how it counts a person who gets several messages.

Track record

In April 2025 Artisan raised a $25M Series A led by Glade Brook Capital (TechCrunch). In May 2026 Artisan launched Ava 2.0, a rebuild of its product.

Artisan alternatives

Plans and prices are as of 19 October 2026.

• Unify: a free plan, then $20 or $60 per seat a month. Unify sorts replies by intent and queues them as tasks, and meeting booking is not listed. If you want a per-seat price and a chat interface that builds lists, compare it with Artisan.
• AiSDR: $1.50 per person prospected, with no sales call needed. It handles replies within 5 to 10 minutes, or in co-pilot mode. If you want pay as you go, compare it with Artisan.
• Amplemarket: a Startup plan at $600 a month on an annual term, with a free trial on all plans. If you want contact data, buying signals and a dialer in one login, compare it with Artisan.

Pros and good to know

Pros

• A free plan, plus a 30-day trial of 10,000 credits with no card
• Replies and meeting booking are included from Intern and on business plans
• Approval, tone, banned-phrase, budget and escalation controls are included
• Deliverability monitoring and domain and mailbox set-up from Intern

Good to know

• Business plans (Team, Scale, Enterprise) are priced by quote after a demo.
• Cost runs on credits, about 20 per person in a full campaign. Unused credits do not roll over on yearly plans. Mailboxes and phone numbers are billed separately.
• Ava works on its own by default. Approval, tone and banned-phrase controls are settings you turn on.
• Messages go out from your own domains, so the sending reputation of those domains is yours to protect.
• Ask Artisan for its SOC 2 report if your buyer needs one. Artisan has a pentest report (a security test by outside experts) and 20 security policies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bottom line

Artisan fits a startup sales team that wants replies and meeting booking handled in software and is happy to start on a free plan or a 30-day trial. It also fits larger teams that want a managed rollout and a quote. Before you buy, check four things: which plan includes your CRM, what the deliverability monitoring covers, whether your buyer needs the SOC 2 report, and how message quality looks on your own list.