Nearside

Nearside vs Whali

Whali is the closest thing to us: a cold email tool for students, with the same three plan names and the same weekly email allowance. So the comparison is like for like, including the rows where they win.

Plan for plan

Starter

100 emails a week
£21.99/mo
Nearside
£25
Whali

£3.01 a month less · 12% cheaper

Researched: all 100 vs 50 of 100

Pro

250 emails a week
£29.99/mo
Nearside
£35
Whali

£5.01 a month less · 14% cheaper

Researched: all 250 vs 100 of 250

Max

500 emails a week
£39.99/mo
Nearside
£49
Whali

£9.01 a month less · 18% cheaper

Researched: all 500 vs 200 of 500

And a free plan that is not a trial. 25 researched emails a week, a company search a day, no card, no expiry. Whali's free option lasts three days.

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Feature by feature

A tick marks where one of us is genuinely better. 2 of them are theirs, and we have left them in.

NearsideWhali
Price, plan for plan£21.99 / £29.99 / £39.99 a month£25 / £35 / £49 a month
Emails a week100 / 250 / 500 by plan100 / 250 / 500 by plan
How many get researchedEvery company with a website we can read, on every plan, no separate capCapped separately: 50, 100 or 200 enriched leads a week by plan
Free planYes. 25 emails a week, no card, no expiryNo. A three day trial, plus a demo you can preview
Which companies you getSmall firms near your postcode, searched live and filtered by Companies House industry code and active statusA database of 275M+ professional contacts across 25+ countries
Person level data on who you emailLimited. A named person only when the firm publishes one on its own siteYes. Career history, education and recent posts
Open and click trackingNo, by choice. Replies and sends onlyYes, on all plans
AI written emailsStarter, Pro and Max. Free uses our own researched writerAdvertised across plans, advanced personalisation from Pro
CV attachedPro and Max, on the first email to each companyNot on Starter. One document on Pro, ten on Max
You read every email firstYes. Nothing sends unapprovedPreviewable

Whali's figures are taken from their own published pricing page and checked in July 2026. If anything above is out of date, please tell us and we will correct it.

The two rows that decide it

Whali's Starter gives you 100 emails a week and researches 50 of them. The other fifty are still emails, they just have less behind them. Every company we draft for that has a website gets read: what it actually sells, and its Companies House record where we can match it. That happens on every plan, including the free one.

The second is where the companies come from. A profile database tells you about people at firms big enough to be in a database. We search for the firm itself, live, and filter to small businesses near your postcode. It matters because of who ends up reading you: at a company of fifteen, the person opening your email can simply decide to have you, and there is no scheme with fixed dates to fit you into. At a company of fifteen thousand, they forward you to a portal.

Where they are honestly better

Whali knows who you are writing to, from a database of hundreds of millions of profiles, and can tell you a person's career history. We find a named individual only when a firm publishes one on its own website, which is common in professional services and rare in trades. Their AI writes every draft, and so does ours from Starter upwards, with Pro and Max on a better model again; only our free plan uses our own researched writer instead. If your plan is to reach a named person at a large firm, that is their tool, not ours.

The open tracking row is a choice rather than a gap. An open is measured by a hidden image, which Apple Mail has loaded automatically since 2021 before anyone has read a word, so much of any open rate is software rather than people. Click tracking rewrites your links through our domain, which is exactly what spam filters look for, and everything here depends on one personal email reaching a small firm. We would rather protect that and report the number that decides anything, which is who replied.

Which should you use

If you want to reach a named analyst at a large firm and know whether they opened it, a profile database is the right tool and we are not it. If you want real weeks at a good small firm near you, the kind that has never posted an internship in its life, that is what we built.

The other routes

Whali is the only other tool built for this exact job. The rest of what a student gets recommended is built for someone else.

Sales tools

Apollo, Instantly, Lemlist

Built for sales teams prospecting corporate buyers, priced per seat, and you write the template.

Auto apply bots

LazyApply, Simplify, Jobright

Fire your CV at advertised roles at volume. They cannot reach a firm that never posted one.

Job boards

Indeed, LinkedIn, Handshake

Free, and everyone is there. Only the firms that chose to advertise, with the queue that follows.

Those tools are described rather than quoted: they price per seat, they change often, and we have not verified their figures the way we have Whali's. Nothing here is a criticism of them. They are built for a different job.

Common questions

Is Nearside cheaper than Whali?
Yes, at every tier, for the same number of emails a week. Starter is £21.99 against £25, Pro is £29.99 against £35, and Max is £39.99 against £49. Nearside also has a free plan of 25 emails a week; Whali has a three day trial.
What does Whali do better than Nearside?
Whali has person level data from a database of 275M+ professional profiles and tracks opens and clicks. Nearside finds a named person only when a firm publishes one on its own website.
Is there a free alternative to Whali?
Nearside has a free plan with no card: one company search a day, up to 10 companies a search, and 25 researched emails a week that you send from your own inbox.

Let Nearside write these for you

Nearside finds real local companies worth working for, researches each one, and drafts a personal email you can review before it sends, from your own inbox.

Free to explore · no card to sign up