French companies explain how they prospect. Lemlist wins among those that want a single multichannel tool, CRM-integrated suites among those consolidating their stack, and some have mostly cut back on automation.
Lemlist, Salesloft or Outreach: behind the choice of tool there is almost always a question of organization. How many salespeople, which channels, which CRM at the center? Rather than comparing product sheets, we started from what only Soft Atlas has: its interviews with executives and sales teams, and the stacks it catalogs. Thirteen French companies told us about the prospecting tool they use, the one they left, and the reason for the change.
A trend emerges. Five of these companies left Salesloft or Outreach. Three moved to Lemlist, the other two to the sequencing tool of their CRM or of their call analysis software. And two companies mostly rethought the way they prospect.
Which prospecting tool do these 13 companies use?
- Agorapulse: Apollo for enrichment and email sequences; Lemlist and FullEnrich were also considered.
- Ankorstore: Mixmax for email sequences, partly driven from Claude.
- Collective: Topo, to prospect based on intent signals.
- Didomi: Lemlist, which replaced Salesloft several years ago.
- Figures: Lemlist for multichannel outbound sequences.
- Folk: Lemlist, then La Growth Machine, then back to Lemlist.
- Lucca: Salesforce Sales Engagement, in place of Salesloft.
- MerciYanis: dropped La Growth Machine in favor of more personalized prospecting.
- Meteoria: Lemlist, partly replaced by a tool built in-house.
- Partoo: Salesloft, then a trial of Salesforce Sales Engagement, and finally Lemlist.
- Qobra: moving from Outreach to Lemlist.
- Ringover: Crono, an Italian vendor.
- Teamtailor: Salesloft, currently being replaced by Gong Engage.
Why does Lemlist come up so often?
Lemlist is the tool most often cited in these interviews, and Soft Atlas data points the same way: it appears in several times more stacks than Salesloft or Outreach. The reasons vary from one company to another, but one keeps coming back: a single tool for email, LinkedIn and phone.
At Qobra, the move from 
Outreach to 
Lemlist comes down to three reasons, according to Antoine Fort, co-founder and CEO: the ability to build LinkedIn actions into cadences, an interface better suited to a sales team of about fifteen people, and a lower cost. Cadences remain mixed: automated emails on one side, and on the other, calls and LinkedIn messages handled by the salespeople themselves.
At Didomi, Lemlist replaced 
Salesloft several years ago. Raphaël Boukris, co-founder, highlights the responsiveness of the Lemlist teams and how fast the product evolves. That trust later weighed in the choice of 
Claap for call recording, as Claap joined Lemlist in October 2025. Consolidating your tools with a vendor you already know: it is a trend we often hear about at Soft Atlas.
“This is clearly the era of Sales software consolidation.”
Raphaël Boukris, co-founder of DidomiPartoo took the longest road. The company first used Salesloft, which was unevenly adopted across teams.
“We had Salesloft for a while, heavily used especially on the BDR side, where prospecting is the core of the job, a little less adopted by the Sales reps. We had to take two runs at it.”
Clément Bouillaud, Director of Operations at PartooPartoo then tested Salesforce Sales Engagement before settling on Lemlist. 
Salesforce remains its sales system of record, surrounded by specialized software for prospecting, enrichment and telephony.
At Figures, Lemlist runs the multichannel outbound sequences. Virgile Raingeard, CEO and founder, acknowledges however that the company performs less well on this channel than on inbound.
Lemlist or La Growth Machine?
Folk has used both, in one direction and then the other. The company moved from Lemlist to 
La Growth Machine, before coming back to Lemlist about a year and a half before the interview. Julien Frèche, in charge of revenue growth and sales operations, sums up the trade-off:
“The advantage of LaGrowthMachine was the flexibility in building campaigns. The big advantage of Lemlist is the all-in-one side, which lets the sales team have a single tool to manage their prospecting.”
Julien Frèche, Revenue Operations at FolkAt Folk, Lemlist now handles email, LinkedIn and the calls built into sequences. Julien Frèche sees one limitation: the tool works well for simple communications, less so for newsletters built with elaborate HTML templates, for which he cites 
HubSpot as the benchmark.
At MerciYanis, La Growth Machine was dropped for an entirely different reason. It was not the tool that was called into question, but automated prospecting itself.
“We realized we were one of those vendors that send hundreds of messages and, in the end, spam customers.”
Guillaume Blanc, CEO of MerciYanisMerciYanis sells mainly to mid-sized companies and large groups: too few accounts to justify a volume approach. The team now favors more carefully crafted messages, site visits and lunches with prospects.
When prospecting moves into the CRM or a suite
Two companies left Salesloft for another reason: to bring prospecting closer to the rest of their stack.
Lucca replaced Salesloft with Salesforce Sales Engagement. The change was not driven by dissatisfaction, but by a consolidation move: SDR activities now live in the CRM that already holds the opportunities. Lucca followed the same logic for its marketing and support.
At Teamtailor, Salesloft had been added in spring 2024 for prospecting.
“In my view, Salesloft was put in place because it was a more intuitive tool for prospecting and hunting.”
Thomas Honoré, Sales Manager at TeamtailorThe company is now replacing it with 
Gong Engage, while Jiminny is giving way to Gong Foundation for call recording. The choice was made by a team dedicated to tools, on the RevOps side, with one strong constraint: Teamtailor operates in more than 90 countries, and a tool that performs well in a single country is not enough.
“We are also being pushed by headquarters, and I understand why, to have a tool we can scale across all regions.”
Thomas Honoré, Sales Manager at Teamtailor
Agorapulse consolidates differently: 
Apollo is used there for both contact enrichment and email sequences. Its place in the stack could change, as the company has also looked at Lemlist and 
FullEnrich.
Crono, Topo, Mixmax: the other choices
Three companies chose lesser-known tools, each for a specific reason.
Ringover uses 
Crono, an Italian vendor, for its sequences. Ringover compared several solutions, and the relationship with the vendor mattered: Crono adapted several features to its needs, including its Salesforce integration.
“We are extremely satisfied with the relationship with Crono and with their product.”
Fabian Stanciu, VP Sales Europe at RingoverCollective relies on 
Topo to build its prospect lists from intent signals, then launch LinkedIn and email sequences. Its four SDRs still make a lot of calls: a prospect who has not replied by the end of a sequence can be handed over to them for a call.
Ankorstore uses 
Mixmax for its email sequences. Gabriel de Chazournes, Sales Director France, especially values its MCP server: it makes it possible to design a sequence from Claude, create it and then enroll contacts in it, before review and launch.
What AI changes in prospecting
AI does not replace the sequencing tool, but it changes what is asked of it. In Soft Atlas interviews, one criterion comes up more and more: can the tool be driven by an agent, through an API or an MCP server?
At Folk, Claude prepares the actions and writes the messages, and Lemlist runs the campaigns through its MCP server. A routine thus makes it possible to prospect around fifty partner agencies a day. Folk could use the agent built into Lemlist, but prefers Claude.
“Lemlist offers its own agent, but we prefer to use Claude to create our sequences in Lemlist. Claude knows our context, which Lemlist's agent does not, and it can handle the edge cases in our workflows.”
Julien Frèche, Revenue Operations at FolkAt Qobra, Lemlist comes at the end of the chain: intent signals are detected, orchestrated, enriched, then passed to Salesforce and Lemlist before reaching the right salesperson.
Meteoria goes further. After using Lemlist, the company now sends part of its cold emailing campaigns with a tool built in-house, better suited to its method, particularly on deliverability.
Frequently asked questions
Lemlist or Outreach for a mid-sized sales team?
Qobra, with a team of about fifteen salespeople, left Outreach for Lemlist: LinkedIn actions built into cadences, an interface better suited to its size, and a lower cost. In these interviews, no company went the other way.
Lemlist or La Growth Machine?
Folk has used both. La Growth Machine allows more complex scenarios, with many branches. Lemlist brings email, LinkedIn and calls together in a single tool, which is what convinced Folk to come back to it.
Should you leave Salesloft when you work on Salesforce?
Not necessarily because of the tool's quality. Lucca moved to Salesforce Sales Engagement to bring SDRs closer to the CRM, Teamtailor is moving to Gong Engage to bring prospecting and call analysis together, and both Didomi and Partoo chose Lemlist while keeping Salesforce as their CRM.
About these interviews
Soft Atlas interviews executives and sales and RevOps teams about the software they actually use day to day: what they chose, what they left and why. Each interview becomes a use case published on Soft Atlas, reviewed by the company before publication, and adds to the company's stack on Soft Atlas. The quotes in this article are taken from them word for word; the overall trends come from the stacks cataloged by Soft Atlas.
