Your sales rep has had a Lemlist subscription for three years. You, a recruiter at the same agency, prospect candidates and clients by hand on LinkedIn… because Lemlist was built to sell, not to recruit. So you export your candidate lists to a spreadsheet, re-import them into a prospecting tool, then re-import the replies into your ATS by hand. Three tools, three databases, and a single candidate pool that ends up out of date everywhere.
This article compares Lemlist, Waalaxy, Apollo and La Growth Machine on what they genuinely do well, and on what they're missing for a recruitment agency: namely a native connection to a candidate pool and to a CRM built for recruitment.
Key takeaways
- Lemlist excels at email deliverability and personalization, Waalaxy at simple solo LinkedIn use, Apollo at the size of its B2B database, La Growth Machine at multichannel behavioral orchestration.
- None of the four was built for recruitment: they prospect in a silo, with no native link to a candidate pool or an ATS.
- Switching between tools, or from a sales tool to your ATS, means exporting then re-importing lists by hand.
- The outreach built into Marvin Desk starts directly from a candidate or client record already in your CRM: no export, no re-import.
- The right choice depends on your use case: generalist sales prospecting (Lemlist, Apollo, La Growth Machine) or recruitment prospecting connected to your candidate pool (Marvin Desk).
What is an outreach tool in recruitment?
An outreach tool is software that automates sending prospecting messages (LinkedIn, email, sometimes calls) through a sequence scheduled in advance, with conditional follow-ups based on the reply received.
In recruitment, outreach serves two audiences at once: candidates to re-engage and client decision-makers to grow the business, which means the tool needs to speak to a candidate pool, not just a list of sales prospects.
That is exactly the point our complete method for multichannel LinkedIn prospecting covers in depth: how to structure a sequence without getting restricted by LinkedIn.
Here, the angle is different: comparing the tools on the market with each other, then with an outreach built natively for recruitment.
Lemlist: what it does well (and why it's not enough for a recruitment agency or an IT staffing firm)
Lemlist is first and foremost a cold email tool. Its strength is deliverability: Lemwarm automatically warms up the mailbox to protect the sending reputation, and personalization goes as far as inserting images and individualized videos per prospect. LinkedIn and calling exist as secondary native channels, but the tool stays built around email.
What Lemlist does better than us (Marvin): email deliverability and the sophistication of variable, image and video personalization remain more advanced than what the outreach built into Marvin Desk offers, which prioritizes multichannel simplicity over pure email firepower. For an agency whose prospecting runs mostly on cold email, Lemlist remains a solid execution tool.
Its limit for a recruitment agency: Lemlist doesn't know your candidate pool. A list of prospects gets imported there, worked there, then has to be exported back to the ATS for the data to exist anywhere else.
Waalaxy: what it does well (and why it's not enough for a recruitment agency or an IT staffing firm)
Waalaxy is a paid, LinkedIn-centric Chrome extension, built for solo use: automated invitations, follow-up messages, and an email finder on top to track down a prospect's address. It's the simplest of the four tools to pick up, with no particular technical skill required.
What Waalaxy does better than us: onboarding is immediate and the learning cost is low, which makes it a good choice for an independent recruiter who wants to test LinkedIn prospecting without setting up an entire CRM.
Its limit for an agency: few integrations beyond LinkedIn and email, sending volumes that depend on the plan chosen, and above all no notion of a candidate pool. Waalaxy prospects contacts, not qualified candidates already on file.
Apollo: what it does well (and why it's not enough for a recruitment agency or an IT staffing firm)
Apollo.io is a generalist B2B contact database, with around 275 million profiles claimed by Apollo itself, filterable by industry, company size, job title or technology used. Sequences combine email, LinkedIn (manual profile search) and a basic phone dialer, with native sales CRM integrations into Salesforce and HubSpot.
What Apollo does better than us: the volume and granularity of its generalist B2B contact database, along with its integrations with mainstream sales CRMs, far exceed what a recruitment CRM like Desk offers, which was never meant to replace a pure sales prospecting database.
Its limit for a recruitment agency: Apollo was built for generalist B2B sales. Searching for candidate profiles stays manual there, with no candidate pool logic or application tracking, and the tool makes no difference between a sales contact and a candidate to re-engage.
La Growth Machine: what it does well (and why it's not enough for a recruitment agency or an IT staffing firm)
La Growth Machine orchestrates 4 channels within a single sequence: LinkedIn, email, calls and X (Twitter), with more advanced behavioral logic than its competitors (detecting an out-of-office reply, automatic switch to another channel). The tool targets structured sales teams that want to industrialize sophisticated multichannel prospecting.
What La Growth Machine does better than us: the depth of its behavioral orchestration and the number of channels covered (up to X/Twitter) go beyond what a recruitment agency needs day to day, and can appeal to an agency that also prospects heavily cold on pure sales targets.
Its limit for an agency: advanced sequence personalization stays reserved for the most complete plans, and again, there is no native connection to a candidate pool or a recruitment ATS.
The comparison, in one table
| Tool | Channels | Strength | Limit for a recruitment agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lemlist | Email (dominant), LinkedIn and calls secondary | Email deliverability (Lemwarm) and deep personalization (image, video) | No native connection to a candidate pool |
| Waalaxy | LinkedIn, email on top | Lightweight extension, fast onboarding for solo use | Few integrations, volumes tied to the plan, no recruitment CRM |
| Apollo | Email, LinkedIn (manual search), calls | Massive B2B contact database and sales CRM integrations | Built for generalist sales, manual candidate search, no candidate pool |
| La Growth Machine | LinkedIn, email, calls, X (Twitter) | Advanced behavioral orchestration, automatic channel switching | Advanced personalization reserved for top plans, no recruitment data |
This table sums it up: each of these four tools does well what it was built for, outside of recruitment. None of them natively links a prospecting sequence to a candidate pool or a recruitment pipeline: the data still has to be re-imported by hand.
The outreach built into Marvin Desk: the same sequence, without re-importing your candidate pool
At Marvin, outreach is not a separate application: it's a module of Desk, our candidate and client CRM. A sequence starts directly from a record already present in Desk, candidate or client, with no list export and no re-entry.
Scout's semantic sourcing then feeds the pool with qualified profiles, which flow straight into a prospecting sequence without switching tools.
The multichannel sequences built into Desk cover LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp and SMS, with a drag-and-drop editor (conditions, delays, branches based on the reply) and sending quotas calibrated automatically on the LinkedIn account to avoid restrictions.
An AI copilot assists without ever replacing the recruiter's own personalization: it summarizes a candidate record, suggests a message draft, but you're the one who approves it before sending.
The difference doesn't lie in the sequence mechanics, comparable from one tool to the next, but in the data: every reply gets logged directly in the candidate's or client's history, visible to the whole team, without ever leaving your recruitment CRM.
So, which outreach tool should you pick?
If your prospecting is purely commercial, cold, on generalist B2B targets with no link to a candidate pool, Lemlist, Apollo or La Growth Machine remain solid execution tools, each with its own specialty (email, contact database, behavioral orchestration). Waalaxy suits an independent recruiter who wants to test LinkedIn prospecting without setting up an entire CRM.
If you're a recruitment agency managing both a candidate pool to re-engage and a client portfolio to grow, the question stops being "which tool sends the most messages" and becomes "which tool starts from the same data as my ATS". That's exactly what the outreach built into Desk does.
Want to see the difference on your own candidate pool, with your current process? 30 minutes are enough, with no commitment: book a demo.
FAQ
Lemlist, Waalaxy or Apollo: which one should a recruitment agency choose?
It depends on the priority channel: Lemlist for email-first prospecting, Waalaxy for a simple, solo LinkedIn use case, Apollo for access to a large B2B contact database. None of the three was built specifically for recruitment, so none of them natively connects to a candidate pool.
Is there an alternative to Lemlist built for recruitment?
Yes: an outreach built directly into a recruitment ATS or CRM, like the Outreach module of Desk at Marvin. The sequence then starts directly from a candidate or client record already in the base, with no export or list re-import between two tools.
Can you use Waalaxy to prospect candidates and not just clients?
Technically yes, Waalaxy can target any LinkedIn profile. But the tool makes no distinction between a candidate and a sales prospect: there is no notion of a candidate pool, a candidate record or application tracking on Waalaxy's side.
What is the difference between La Growth Machine and the outreach built into Desk?
La Growth Machine orchestrates more channels (including X/Twitter) with more advanced behavioral logic, built for structured sales teams. The outreach built into Desk covers fewer channels but starts directly from the candidate pool and the client CRM, with no data re-import.
Is Apollo.io a good fit for a recruitment agency?
Apollo is mostly relevant for generalist B2B sales prospecting, thanks to the volume of its contact database. For recruitment, searching for candidate profiles stays manual, with no candidate pool logic or application tracking.
Do you need to switch ATS to get a built-in outreach?
Not necessarily switch ATS as such, but choosing an ATS that natively includes outreach avoids having to sync a separate prospecting tool with your recruitment pipeline. That's the principle behind Desk at Marvin: a single platform for the candidate pool, the CRM and the prospecting sequences.
