gtm.ventures · the alternatives
Three ways to do this.
One of them is ours.
You've got three real options and we're only one of them. Here's what each costs, what it takes out of your week and where it breaks. Every range has a source at the bottom of the page.
We don't win every row. Where an SDR or your own two hands beat us, the row says so.
| Hire an SDROne full-time rep, on your payroll | Do it yourselfInstantly plus Apollo plus your own time | This enginegtm.ventures, done for you | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly costWhat leaves your account, in ranges. | $4,600 to $7,100 a month in pay alone. Base runs $55,000 to $68,000 a year and earnings at target sit near $85,000.1 Payroll taxes, tooling and your own management time sit on top of that. | $150 to $700 a month, all in. Instantly outreach plans run $47 to $358 a month,2 Apollo seats $49 to $149,3 mailboxes $2.50 to $9.20 each per month,4 domains $10 to $15 each a year.4Best on this row | $4,000 to $11,000 a month equivalent, and it isn't billed monthly. Sprint is $6,000 for 45 days. Ignition, Momentum and Full Engine are $15,000, $25,000 and $33,000 for three months, paid once. Show bonus takes those to $10,500, $17,500 and $23,100. |
| Setup timeBefore a single useful reply. | Four to eight weeks to hire, then about 3.2 months to a first qualified meeting and up to 5.5 months to full capacity.5 | Three to six weeks if you already know deliverability, longer if this is your first time. Domains and mailboxes need weeks of warm-up no matter who owns them. | Sequences go live in week three or four. The warm-up still takes weeks. Nobody skips that part, and anyone who says they can is selling you a burned domain.Best on this row |
| Your hours per weekA real line item. Estimates, not measured data.6 | Three to six hours. Hiring, onboarding, weekly coaching, call reviews. Double that in the first two months. | Eight to fifteen hours while you build it, five to ten once it runs. You'll be doing DNS, warm-up, lists, verification, copy, sequences and inbox triage. | Two to four hours. You approve the copy, you sit in a fifteen minute reply review, and you take the calls. The calls are the hours you wanted in the first place.Best on this row |
| ToolingWho buys the stack. | You do, on top of the salary. An SDR turns up with skills, not software. | You buy it and you keep it. You also learn it, which is worth something the day you hire anyone to run outbound. | Included in the fee. Domains and mailboxes are opened in your name from day one and stay yours when the term ends. |
| Who writes the copy | The rep, usually off a template you sign off. Quality tracks the hire, and you won't know which you got for a month or two. | You. Which is often the better answer, because nobody writes your voice as well as you do. It's also the part that eats your evenings.Best on this row | We draft it in your voice and you approve every word before anything sends. If you hate it, it doesn't go out. |
| Who owns the replies | You, through them. The relationship starts with the rep, so there is a handoff to manage on every good conversation. | You own them outright with no handoff at all, which is the cleanest answer on this row.Best on this row | You. Replies land in your inbox, you take every conversation, and we never take one for you. |
| What you have in 90 daysNo outcome is promised in any column. | A rep who is roughly half ramped and a process that is yours only while they stay. | A stack you own, a list you built, copy you wrote, and real skill in the thing. Whatever your own hours produced. | Warmed domains and mailboxes in your name, a verified list, tested copy, sequences running under your name, a weekly report and every reply sitting in your inbox. Then you keep running it with us or take it in-house. |
| What can go wrong | They leave. Average tenure is around fourteen months and a three to five month ramp eats a third of it.5 You also carry the deliverability risk with nobody on staff who has done it before. | One rushed warm-up and the domain never recovers. Deliverability is the failure mode here, not the copy, and it's invisible until the sends stop landing. | You do not show up. This works only if you, or someone senior, hosts the conversations. If the podcast isn't for you, it's the wrong spend and we'll say so on the call instead of taking your money. |
| Choose this when | You have enough volume to keep a full-time person busy, a manager who can coach them, and you want phone calls as well as email. An SDR picks up the phone, and an engine never will. | You have the hours, or you enjoy the machinery, or cash is tight enough that your own hours cost you less than a fee. Start here. If you already run outbound well, keep running it and spend the money elsewhere. | You are closing large deals or raising real capital, you will show up for the conversations, and you want the infrastructure run by people whose whole job is deliverability. If a customer is worth less than about $10,000 to you, that's the wrong spend. |
Where the numbers come from
- SDR pay. RepVue puts the United States median base at $60,000 and median earnings at target of $85,000 as of September 2026; Built In reports average total compensation of $83,110 ($57,921 base plus $25,189 additional cash). Read 22 September 2026. repvue.com, builtin.com.
- Instantly outreach plans: Growth $47 a month, Hypergrowth $97, Light Speed $358, on monthly billing. Credits, CRM and other modules are priced separately. Read from instantly.ai/pricing on 22 September 2026.
- Apollo seats: Basic $49 and Professional $79 per user per month on annual billing, roughly $59 and $99 month to month; Organization $119 annual, $149 monthly. Read 22 September 2026 via published pricing summaries, since apollo.io/pricing renders its table client side. apollo.io/pricing.
- Mailboxes and domains. Google Workspace Business Starter lists at CA$9.20 per user per month (workspace.google.com/pricing, read 22 September 2026). Cold email resellers list mailboxes from about $2.50 to $5.00 each per month, and domain registration runs $10 to $15 a domain a year (maildeck.co, 2026).
- Ramp and tenure. The Bridge Group's sales development benchmarks put SDR ramp at roughly 3.1 to 3.2 months to first qualified meeting and up to 5.5 months to full quota capacity, with average tenure around fourteen months in the 2025 report. Summaries read 22 September 2026. forentrepreneurs.com.
- Hours per week are our estimate from running this for clients and on ourselves, not measured data from a study. Treat them as a planning range, never a promise.
If the table points at us, talk first.
Fifteen minutes. If this is the wrong spend for you, I'll say so on the call.
You hold every conversation, we run the technology and the service, nobody is promised an outcome.