Expandi vs HeyReach: per-account breadth vs per-sender agency scale (2026)

Who each tool is for

Expandi is a Dutch cloud platform, founded in 2019 and run by LeadExpress B.V., with a team its careers page puts at "50+". It sells one plan with everything switched on: "we have one base plan of 99 USD which includes all features." Its centre of gravity is breadth — eleven campaign types by its own marketing count, ten enumerated in its help centre, plus email steps and if/then branching in one builder.

HeyReach was built in 2023 around a narrower job: running a lot of LinkedIn accounts at once. Its about page calls it "the first agency-friendly LinkedIn outreach tool", and the pricing follows: you pay per sender — one connected LinkedIn account — and people are free, "HeyReach charges only per LinkedIn senders, not per users." Sender rotation, client workspaces, white-label and a public API are the headline features.

Architecture: cloud on both sides, but the login and the IP differ

Neither runs on your machine: both send from vendor servers, so campaigns continue with your laptop shut and neither uses your home IP — the trade-off covered in our guide to where your LinkedIn tool runs. Expandi lists "Cloud-based software" as a plan feature; no desktop client is described for HeyReach on its connect-an-account article or LinkedIn accounts collection as of 3 September 2026, which present a browser extension only as an optional connection helper.

Who holds your LinkedIn login is where they part company. Expandi's articles on this sit behind a login: adding a LinkedIn account and entering your LinkedIn password both returned HTTP 401 to us on 3 September 2026, so what follows is excerpt-derived and lower-confidence: you enter your LinkedIn login email and password with a "Stay logged in" checkbox, Google or Apple ID sign-in being the alternative; the two-factor article, which is readable, says that with authenticator-app verification "the PIN is entered automatically" when LinkedIn asks.

HeyReach offers two methods and recommends the one that skips the password: "This is the preferred way... you don't have to share your LinkedIn credentials. The only downside is that connection sessions last shorter." The same article requires Chrome for it and warns the cookie connection "remains valid until you log out of LinkedIn from the computer you used." The credential route survives, under the assurance that "We hash your credentials, so they are perfectly safe."

The IPs differ in kind. Expandi says "Everyone in Expandi gets their personal dedicated IP address", then names its provenance: the IP "is provided by a data center." HeyReach claims residential — "a dedicated static residential proxy (i.e. real IP address that never changes) to each of your LinkedIn accounts, and never shares that IP between two accounts" (safety doc). Both are vendor claims, not findings, and both words are the vendors' own. HeyReach's pricing FAQ adds that the "'Agency' and 'Unlimited' plans require you to bring your own proxies".

Pricing, verified 3 September 2026

Plan	Price as displayed	Unit	Trial
Expandi Business	"$99 / Per Month"; "$79 / Per Month" annual	per LinkedIn account	"7-day Free trial"
Expandi Agency	"Custom", minimum "+10 Seats"	per LinkedIn account	Not checked
HeyReach Growth	"$79" /mo per sender; "$71" quarterly; "$63" ("$756 billed yearly")	per sender; people free	14 days, no card, 3 accounts
HeyReach Agency	"$999" /mo for "25 senders"; "$899" quarterly; "$799" ("$9,590 billed yearly")	bundle of senders	30 days on request
HeyReach Unlimited	"$2,999" /mo; "$2,699" quarterly; "$2,399" yearly	"Unlimited senders"	30 days on request

Expandi's fees are not refundable: "Unless required by law, the subscription fees are nonrefundable" (terms). Whether a card is needed to start its trial is not stated on the pricing page, the FAQ or the terms as of 3 September 2026. No refund policy appears on HeyReach's pricing page, but its terms of service state that "all fees are non-refundable", subject only to its Limited Warranty, Indemnification and Modifications clauses (§7.2, as of 3 September 2026); its entry trial is explicitly card-free.

HeyReach's enrichment credits are one-time, not monthly — 100 per sender, 1,000 on Agency, 3,000 on Unlimited, top-ups sold separately. Multi-brand white-label costs "$500 per add-on"; the 50-sender Agency price did not render on the pricing page as of 3 September 2026, though that page's own structured data lists the Agency plan at 999 with "50 senders included" — contradicting the visible 25-sender card.

Feature differences that matter

	Expandi	HeyReach
Campaign breadth	Eleven by its marketing count, ten enumerated in its help centre, incl. Group, Event Invite, Inbound, Company Follow Invite, Mobile Connector	One builder: Connection Request, If Connection, Message, InMail, View Profile, Follow, Like Post
Email in the sequence	Yes — "Email" is a builder action	No sending of its own; routed via Instantly, Smartlead or EmailBison
InMail	Paid InMail plus a free Open InMail campaign	Requires Sales Navigator; "Premium... and Recruiter accounts cannot send InMails through HeyReach" — though its older sequence-steps article still says senders need "a valid Sales Navigator or Recruiter account"; the two vendor pages disagree as of 3 September 2026
Voice notes	Not found in the campaign-type list or the builder action list as of 3 September 2026	Yes, from the Unibox; not via InMail, delivered as an .m4a
Multi-account sending	Shared workspace, cross-account Global Inbox	Automatic sender rotation across accounts on one campaign
A/B testing	Randomly splits a lead list across the campaigns you select; results compared manually when the campaign ends	Add several versions and compare "which message was most successful"
Unified inbox	Global Inbox — LinkedIn conversations only	Unibox — plus replying on a teammate's behalf, tagging

Email is the row that matters most. Expandi treats it as a step in the same sequence as the LinkedIn actions and ships a native Smartlead connector. HeyReach sends no email itself — the vendor documents multichannel as running through its native Instantly, Smartlead and EmailBison integrations, so a second subscription. Expandi.s Global Inbox covers LinkedIn conversations only, so the email it sends never comes back to it.

Safety controls, in each vendor's own words

Neither vendor is exempt from LinkedIn's rules, both say so publicly, and both frame it as a condition of the category rather than a fact about one product. Expandi: "no third-party automation tool does, because LinkedIn's User Agreement prohibits automated access to the platform outright" (LinkedIn Help), and any vendor claiming otherwise "is telling you something LinkedIn has never said about anyone" (on compliance). HeyReach: "There is no approved outreach automation tool — ours included... Every tool in this space operates in the same reality." (HeyReach). See also our round-up of the safest LinkedIn automation tools.

They differ on who absorbs the consequences. Expandi's terms place it on you: "The use of Expandi is solely a risk taken by the user", and it "is not responsible or liable, in case of a banning of the user's account" (terms). No equivalent clause was found in HeyReach's terms of service as of 3 September 2026. HeyReach disclosed that on 25 March 2026 LinkedIn removed its company page and restricted its executives' profiles, adding both that "Customer accounts, campaigns, and the platform itself continued operating normally" and that it was "not singled out... LinkedIn has done this to every major tool in the space" (HeyReach).

The mechanics are near mirror images:

• Warm-up. Expandi automates it — a 14-day ramp from 5 actions a day, rising by 3 every two days to 21, then switching to your own limits (warm-up doc). HeyReach's new-account doc describes no automated equivalent as of 3 September 2026; it tells you to warm up by hand before connecting: 100 connections manually, then 5 requests a day in week one, 10 in week two, then 15 to 20.
• Ceilings. HeyReach's safety doc names two you cannot move: a freeze near LinkedIn's weekly invitation cap — "nor can you override this rule" — and one at "200 actions per day", plus "a minimum of 3 hours delay between two actions". Expandi hands you the dial: per-account daily limits with campaign limits beneath, randomised within a range you choose ("between 20 and 27 messages per day") and an optional "Safe Preset" (daily limits). Its site-wide navigation markets "Send up to 300+ connection requests weekly". The Recommended Limits article its daily-limits page defers to for per-action numbers returned HTTP 401 to us on 3 September 2026.

Neither is verifiably safer: HeyReach stops you; Expandi lets you set the pace.

Integrations, API and CRM

Expandi ships native connectors for HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce, plus Smartlead for email and Hyperise for image personalisation (Expandi integrations). Everything else runs over webhooks: on that same collection, Zapier, Google Sheets, Make and n8n are "Making a Webhook with…" recipes rather than native apps. HeyReach's integrations directory is longer but shaped for a different stack — HubSpot, Attio, Breakcold, Clay, Slack, Instantly, Smartlead, n8n, RB2B, Trigify — and Pipedrive and Salesforce were not found on it as of 3 September 2026; HeyReach routes those through Zapier, Make, n8n or its API.

The API line is the sharpest divide. HeyReach publishes a public API with Postman docs, custom webhooks and an MCP server, all on the entry plan. Expandi says it has no general-purpose public API: "Reversed webhook actions are the closest to the publicly available API we have", and that mechanism can only "add people to the campaign or pause and resume them" (reversed webhooks). It does fire outbound webhooks on every campaign action, and has its own MCP integration for Claude and ChatGPT, marked Beta.

What users say

Expandi holds 4.4 out of 5 from 31 reviews on Capterra and a 4.5 TrustScore from 234 reviews on Trustpilot. These are individual opinions, and they disagree sharply. Ahmet D., a CEO, writes "After free trial, the keep charging 99USD every month even if you do not use"; Expandi's answer to that question sits on its pricing page — "Absolutely not! We will only charge you once you decide to use Expandi after completing your evaluation." Pavels S., a CMO, says "the support can't help", while Łukasz P. calls it "Possibly the most robust LinkedIn tool on the market" and Greg K. "Best customer support in the space!" Support appears in both clusters.

HeyReach holds a 4.0 TrustScore from 51 reviews on Trustpilot and 5.0 out of 5 on Capterra — that second figure rests on two reviews, too small a sample to act on. Kazi Islam, one reviewer, writes that "their support is getting worse by the day. Sometimes, it takes 24 to 48 hours to get a response". A Capterra reviewer adds: "keeping the profiles connected consistently... requires some maintenance since sessions can expire." That is the documented cost of the cookie login HeyReach recommends; the vendor describes the same behaviour.

Neither company's G2 score appears here: both listings blocked retrieval, and we do not quote a rating we could not read.

Where ZenMode fits

Both tools here are cloud platforms: your account is driven from a vendor server, over an IP the vendor supplies — Expandi's help centre calls its own a datacenter IP, HeyReach calls its own residential. Expandi requires your LinkedIn password at setup; HeyReach offers a cookie login that needs no password, with a credential route beside it. ZenMode takes the other path — a desktop app on your own machine, signed into LinkedIn the way you already are, sending from your own IP. No password to hand over, no proxy in the chain.

The trade-off is that your computer has to be on: close the laptop and the campaign stops until you open it again. It suits solo founders, consultants and small in-house teams more than an agency running client accounts. See what ZenMode does, or read it as an Expandi alternative or a HeyReach alternative.

Verdict

• Choose Expandi if you want every LinkedIn campaign type plus email steps in one builder, you run a handful of accounts rather than dozens, and you need a native Pipedrive or Salesforce sync.
• Choose HeyReach if you run LinkedIn accounts for clients: sender rotation, isolated workspaces, free human seats, published pricing at 25 senders, white-label and a public API on every plan — with email sending elsewhere and your own proxies expected on Agency and Unlimited.
• Consider a desktop tool if the architecture is what bothers you — a third party holding your password or your session cookie, sending from an IP it supplies — and campaigns pausing when your computer sleeps is acceptable.

FAQ

Does Expandi or HeyReach need my LinkedIn password?

Expandi does, on excerpt-level evidence: its article on adding a LinkedIn account returned HTTP 401 to us on 3 September 2026, and the indexed excerpt describes entering your LinkedIn login email and password, with Google or Apple ID sign-in as an alternative; its two-factor article, which is readable, says that with authenticator-app verification "the PIN is entered automatically". HeyReach gives you a choice and recommends the passwordless one, connecting by cookie: "No PIN or password sharing is required for this method." Cookie sessions end when you log out of LinkedIn on the computer you connected from.

Which is cheaper for a single LinkedIn account?

HeyReach's entry price is "$79" per month for one sender against Expandi's "$99" per LinkedIn account, and its trial is longer and card-free — 14 days with up to 3 accounts, versus Expandi's "7-day Free trial", whose card requirement is not stated on the pricing page, the FAQ or the terms. Annual billing narrows it: Expandi charges "$79 / Per Month", HeyReach "$63" per seat.

Can either tool send email as well as LinkedIn messages?

Expandi can, from inside the sequence — "Email" is one of its builder actions and it ships a native Smartlead connector. HeyReach sends no email itself: the vendor documents its multichannel campaigns as running through Instantly, Smartlead or EmailBison, so a separate subscription.