Expandi vs Waalaxy: what the biggest price gap in LinkedIn automation actually buys (2026)
By the ZenMode team · Pricing and features verified September 3, 2026 · Updated
Quick answer
Waalaxy starts at €19 per user per month for 300 LinkedIn invitations; Expandi sells a single plan at $99 per LinkedIn account per month with every feature included. Both are cloud platforms that keep campaigns running while your computer is off — since 1 July 2026 Waalaxy is no longer a Chrome extension — so with either one the account lives on the vendor's infrastructure rather than yours. Expandi says each account gets a dedicated country-based IP that 'is provided by a data center'; Waalaxy documented fixed VPN IPs for its pre-migration Cloud and has published nothing equivalent for the app it moved to in July 2026. Take Waalaxy for prebuilt sequences and built-in email enrichment at a low entry price, and Expandi for campaign-type breadth, conditional sequences and native CRM sync.
This is the widest price gap of any pair on this site: Waalaxy's entry plan is €19 a seat, Expandi's only plan $99 an account. The useful question is what the extra spend buys — and where it buys nothing.
Who each tool is for
Expandi is for people running LinkedIn outreach as a job, and for agencies running it on other people's accounts. There is one feature tier: asked whether it offers multiple plans, its FAQ answers "No… so have one base plan of 99 USD which includes all features" (Expandi FAQ). Volume goes through a custom-priced Agency plan from ten seats up, with white labelling (Expandi for agencies).
Waalaxy is for individual sellers, founders and small teams who want to be sending this week. It is French — SAS Waapi, Montpellier, with the website hosted by OVH (legal notices); its about page says "6 years later, we're over 60" (about Waalaxy). Its pitch is speed: the homepage leads on "99+ ready-to-use outreach sequences" (waalaxy.com), and the cheapest plan already includes unlimited campaigns, CRM sync and team collaboration.
Pricing, verified September 3, 2026
| Plan | Price as displayed | Unit | Included quota |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waalaxy Pro | €19 /user/month | per seat | 300 invites/month, 25 email credits/month |
| Waalaxy Advanced | €49 /user/month | per seat | 800 invites/month, 25 email credits/month, API access |
| Waalaxy Business | €69 /user/month | per seat | 800 invites/month, 500 email finder credits, cold email |
| Expandi Business | $99 /Per Month ($79 annual) | per LinkedIn account | all features; no invitation quota on the pricing page, 3 Sep 2026 |
| Expandi Agency | Custom, +10 Seats | per LinkedIn account | white label, dedicated CSM (agency) |
Sources: Waalaxy pricing, Expandi pricing, 2026-09-03.
Three traps live in that table. Waalaxy's cheapest plan is quota-limited where Expandi's is not — Pro allows 300 invitations a month, and doubling that means Advanced at €49, where the gap narrows sharply. The features you are shopping for sit on the upper plans: API access and the Make, Zapier and n8n modules are Advanced-only, cold email and multichannel campaigns Business-only (Waalaxy pricing), while Expandi bundles everything into its one price. And Expandi's trial is shorter and the money does not come back — a "7-day Free trial" (Expandi pricing) against Waalaxy's "14-day free trial" (Waalaxy pricing), with terms stating "the subscription fees are nonrefundable" (Expandi terms). Expandi's counter, on the same page: "We will only charge you once you decide to use Expandi after completing your evaluation" (pricing FAQ).
Expandi's annual switch is "get 2 months free", i.e. $79 (Expandi pricing). Waalaxy offers quarterly (−20%) and yearly (−50%) billing across all plans and publishes no annual total (Waalaxy pricing); no price for its LinkedIn Inbox add-on appears there or on its Inbox article, 3 September 2026. And if you are planning around a free tier: the live pricing page lists no free plan, while a vendor blog post updated 17 June 2026 describes a freemium tier of "3 actions per day and per type" (Waalaxy subscriptions). The two are unreconciled.
Architecture: where each runs, and who holds the login
As of 1 July 2026 Waalaxy is a fully cloud-based web app. Its help centre states it "no longer relies on a browser extension", that the extension "has been removed from the Chrome Web Store", and that "Your campaigns run in the background regardless of what's happening in your browser" (Waalaxy is now fully cloud-based). Any review calling it an extension you leave open describes the older product.
Expandi has always been cloud software, so both now answer the usual deciding question — does it need my machine on — the same way. The difference is what each documents about the connection itself. Where a tool runs shapes what it can hide.
| Expandi | Waalaxy | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Cloud SaaS | Cloud SaaS (since 1 July 2026) |
| LinkedIn password | An "Enter LinkedIn Password" help article exists; HTTP 401 on 3 September 2026, snippet only (article) | Not found on the migration article or data policy, 3 Sep 2026 |
| IP / proxy | Dedicated country-based IP, "provided by a data center"; custom proxy optional (IP & proxy) | Fixed VPN IPs, "a maximum of 5 users per IP", for the pre-migration Cloud (Waalaxy Cloud); nothing equivalent for the July 2026 app |
Expandi's help centre carries an "Enter LinkedIn Password" article; it returned HTTP 401 on 3 September 2026, so the email-and-password sign-in it describes is readable only in a search snippet — indicative, not verified (article). On IPs the page is public and specific: each account gets a dedicated IP for a country you pick, and "The dedicated IP address of a selected country… is provided by a data center" (IP & proxy) — datacenter, not residential, in the vendor's own wording.
Waalaxy's answer is dated rather than missing. Its migration article says a LinkedIn connection is required but not how it is authenticated, and its data policy does not mention storing LinkedIn credentials — the password question is unanswered on both, as of 3 September 2026. On IPs it has published a figure, but for the product it replaced: "Each user is assigned a fixed IP. There is a maximum of 5 users per IP… The IPs we use are VPN IPs" (Waalaxy Cloud, updated 7 November 2025), with nothing equivalent for the app it moved to on 1 July 2026. Its statement is about an architecture it has retired, not about the one it sells today.
What the price gap buys
| Capability | Expandi | Waalaxy |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign types | Eleven by Expandi's marketing count, ten enumerated in its help centre: events, groups, profile viewers, company followers, mobile connector and more (campaign types) | Connection requests, messages, follow-ups, multichannel email on Business (pricing) |
| Conditional "if-then" sequences | Yes, no-code block builder (smart campaigns) | Not checked; the homepage sells "99+ ready-to-use outreach sequences" instead (waalaxy.com) |
| InMail | Free open-profile and paid InMail (campaign types) | Not found on the homepage, pricing or sales use case, 3 Sep 2026 |
| Voice notes | No voice-note action appears in Expandi's documented campaign builder actions (campaign types) | Yes — voicemails, from desktop as well as mobile (Waalaxy inbox) |
| Email enrichment | Via the Smartlead integration (integrations) | Built in, via Dropcontact (waalaxy.com) |
| Native CRM | HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce (integrations) | HubSpot and Pipedrive two-way, Salesforce inbound (integrations) |
| Public API | No documented general-purpose public API — "Reversed webhook actions are the closest to the publicly available API we have" (reversed webhooks) | Yes, bearer-token (API docs), listed under Advanced (pricing) |
| Unified inbox | Global Inbox, LinkedIn conversations only (multi-account inbox) | Inbox with tags, reminders, scheduled sends, multi-account (inbox) |
| Sales Navigator | Lead lists from Sales Navigator URLs (campaign types) | Extraction from Sales Navigator (sales) |
| Team / agency | Roles, permissions, white label on Agency (agency) | Roles, permissions, team dashboards (waalaxy.com) |
The money buys surface area. Expandi markets eleven campaign types, and its help centre enumerates ten — event invitations, group messaging, outreach to profile viewers, company-follow invitations, and a mobile connector campaign sending "between 50 and 100 additional connection requests per week" without a note (campaign types); paid InMail is a Builder action rather than a campaign of its own. It also builds "automatic 'if-then' sequences based on the lead's unique behavior" (smart campaigns); its homepage and smart campaigns page disagree on how many actions that builder offers, so treat any count with suspicion.
What the money does not buy is voice. Waalaxy's Inbox article lists "voicemails, GIFs, emojis, PJs and images" as personalisation elements and notes recording works from desktop as well as mobile, where LinkedIn restricts voice messages to its mobile app (Waalaxy inbox). No voice-note action appears in Expandi's documented campaign builder actions (campaign types), and no voice feature was found on expandi.io or help.expandi.io as of 3 September 2026 — no evidence of support rather than a documented no.
Safety controls each vendor offers
LinkedIn's User Agreement prohibits automation tools generally, and both vendors sit inside that prohibition (LinkedIn Help). Expandi says so itself — "LinkedIn's User Agreement prohibits automated access to the platform outright" (Expandi on compliance) — and its terms add that "The use of Expandi is solely a risk taken by the user" (Expandi terms). Waalaxy's live terms of use get there more generally: you acknowledge "the publisher of a web site… may expressly forbid the use of such a solution" (§13), and §13(c) reads "you release and indemnify Waapi against all consequences that may arise from the use of Waalaxy that does not comply with the requirements of the present terms and conditions" — scoped to non-compliant use, not a blanket indemnity. LinkedIn is named in neither clause, and the footer still links to a terms-conditions page that returned HTTP 404 on 3 September 2026.
Expandi manages risk with a gradual warm-up — 5 actions a day, rising by 3 every two days to 21 over 14 days — plus randomised volume: "you can choose to send between 20 and 27 messages per day, and the platform will automatically vary the exact number within that range" (warm-up, daily limits). Expandi publishes ranges and weekly figures rather than per-action daily caps: that second article gives a range and a "Safe Preset", then defers to a "Recommended Limits" article that returned HTTP 401 on 3 September 2026 (daily limits).
Waalaxy says it randomises volume, spaces actions by "two to three minutes", and can pause itself for "48 hours" if manual activity exceeds quota, with daily ceilings of 80–100 connection requests, 120–150 messages and 80–100 profile visits (security article). The caveat is larger: that article was published in 2022 and last modified in October 2025, so it describes the browser extension removed in July 2026, detection-avoidance claim included. No cloud-era equivalent was found on the pages reviewed — pricing, homepage, migration article, data policy, terms of use — as of 3 September 2026, one reason a tool's place in the safety ranking can move without its marketing changing.
Integrations
Both name the same three CRMs, plumbed differently. Expandi's HubSpot, Pipedrive and Salesforce integrations are native and every campaign action can fire a webhook, but Zapier, Google Sheets, Make and n8n are webhook-mediated, not native apps (integrations), and there is no documented general-purpose public API: "Reversed webhook actions are the closest to the publicly available API we have" (reversed webhooks) — and that only adds people to a campaign or pauses them.
Waalaxy runs the trade in reverse: HubSpot and Pipedrive two-way native, Salesforce inbound, and a documented public API with bearer-token auth (docs.waalaxy.com/api), gated to Advanced. Its Make surface is thin — the Make listing exposes two modules — and the homepage's "2,000+ integrations" is reachable via Zapier and Make, not natively (integrations page). Webhooks are not documented in Waalaxy's public API docs as of 3 September 2026.
What users say
| Platform | Expandi | Waalaxy |
|---|---|---|
| Capterra | 4.4 / 5, 31 reviews | 4.4 / 5, 253 reviews |
| Trustpilot | 4.5 / 5, 234 reviews | 4.7 / 5, 1,289 reviews |
Both checked 2026-09-03.
These are anecdotal — individual opinions from the minority of low-star reviews on platforms whose aggregates are strongly positive. On Expandi: "The campaign just gets stuck and does not work, the support can't help", and on billing, "After free trial, the keep charging 99USD every month even if you do not use" (both Capterra). The counterweight: support is also praised in its good reviews — "15 stars! Best customer support in the space!" (Capterra) — so the fair reading is inconsistent, not bad.
On Waalaxy, one reviewer questions the value directly — "Don't really offer anything that cheaper options don't already have" — and another says of the email side, "the text formatting is not supported and it is not possible to include variables" (both Capterra). Against that: it holds the higher Trustpilot score across roughly five times the review volume, and a repeated complaint about having one CRM integration is out of date now three are listed (integrations).
Where ZenMode fits
Both tools here are cloud platforms, so both hold your LinkedIn session on their infrastructure and drive it from there rather than from your machine. ZenMode takes the other route — a desktop app that runs on your own machine, from your own home or office IP, with the same browser fingerprint you use when you log in by hand.
The honest trade-off is that the computer has to be on. Campaigns run when your machine runs, which rules ZenMode out if you want sends continuing overnight or while you travel, and rules it in if you would rather your account never be driven from somewhere you have never been. That suits solo operators and small teams more than an agency running fifteen accounts. The feature list covers what it does, and there are write-ups of ZenMode as an Expandi alternative and ZenMode as a Waalaxy alternative.
The verdict
- Choose Expandi if you need campaign types beyond connect-and-follow-up — events, groups, profile viewers, company followers — plus conditional sequences and native CRM sync, and $99 an account is a rounding error against the revenue it works on.
- Choose Waalaxy if you want prebuilt sequences, Dropcontact enrichment and a documented public API without a $99 floor, and can live inside 300 invitations a month at €19.
- Consider a desktop tool if what you are least willing to hand over is the LinkedIn session itself, and you would rather send from your own IP with the computer on than a vendor's cloud with it off.
FAQ
Is Waalaxy still a Chrome extension?
No. A help centre article dated 1 July 2026 says Waalaxy "no longer relies on a browser extension" and that it "has been removed from the Chrome Web Store"; campaigns run whether or not your browser is open. Waalaxy's homepage still shows a Chrome Store rating badge for the extension it removed.
Which is actually cheaper, Expandi or Waalaxy?
Waalaxy, at every published tier: €19, €49 and €69 per user per month (Waalaxy pricing) against Expandi's flat $99 per LinkedIn account, or $79 annually (Expandi pricing). The gap narrows as you climb: the €19 plan caps you at 300 invitations a month and puts API access, the Zapier/Make/n8n modules and cold email on dearer plans, while Expandi's one plan includes everything.
Does either tool send LinkedIn voice notes?
Waalaxy documents them: its Inbox article lists voicemails among the personalisation elements you can insert, and notes recording works from desktop as well as mobile, where LinkedIn itself restricts voice messages to mobile. No voice-note action appears in Expandi's documented campaign builder actions (campaign types), and no voice feature was found on expandi.io or help.expandi.io as of 3 September 2026. Read that as no evidence of support, not a confirmed absence.
Do Expandi or Waalaxy give each account its own IP address?
Expandi says every account gets a dedicated IP tied to a country you choose, and that the IP "is provided by a data center" rather than being residential; you can supply your own proxy instead (IP & proxy). Waalaxy published an IP statement for its pre-migration Cloud — a fixed IP per user, "a maximum of 5 users per IP", on "VPN IPs" (Waalaxy Cloud) — and nothing equivalent for the cloud app it moved to on 1 July 2026. Whether it requires or stores your LinkedIn password is not answered on that article or on its data policy, checked 3 September 2026.