Yardstick Research tear-sheet / AI sales cohort
Outplay
Identity
- Founded: 2019 [ESTIMATED - based on product maturity and 5,000+ user milestone timing]
- HQ: San Jose, CA [ESTIMATED - consistent with job postings and company registration signals]
- Legal entity: Outplay, Inc. [ESTIMATED]
- Funding: Undisclosed [UNKNOWN - no public round announced]
- Headcount: ~50-150 employees [ESTIMATED]
- Recent news (last 12 months): Domain migration from outplayhq.com to outplay.ai (2025). AI SDR agent product launched with lookalike lead generation and auto/co-pilot outreach modes. Rebranded as "AI Revenue Platform." 5,000+ salespeople using the platform per homepage claim. [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/]
- Archetype: Multi-channel sales engagement with built-in dialer at SMB pricing - sequences + calling + LinkedIn touchpoints in one product at 40-60% below Outreach/Salesloft price points.
Total score: 45.8 / 100
Scoring: equal-weight mean of 6 dimensions × 100, less pricing-transparency penalty (none = 0 pts).
- Stage fit:
- Foundation (<$5M ARR): yes - Starter plan at $39/month for 1 user with 5,000 active prospects is accessible for a seed-stage team. 7-day free trial. Multi-channel (email + phone + LinkedIn) at this price point is uncommon in the cohort.
- Pilot ($5-$50M): yes - Growth plan at $89/user/month (annual) scales cleanly for 5-50 reps. Published pricing, annual commitment, unlimited sequences.
- Scale ($50-$500M): conditional - Enterprise plan ($139/user/month) includes SSO, custom roles, and a dedicated success manager. Sufficient for organizations under 200 reps; above that, Outreach and Salesloft offer deeper CRM integration and RevOps analytics.
- Optimization ($500M+): no - Outplay's SMB pricing reflects SMB product depth. Optimization-stage orgs with complex territory management, multi-CRM sync, and enterprise compliance requirements should evaluate Outreach, Salesloft, or Groove.
- One-line verdict: SMB-priced multi-channel sales engagement - dialer + sequences + LinkedIn touchpoints at 40-60% below Outreach/Salesloft list prices, with an AI SDR tier that adds autonomous prospecting for teams that cannot afford Apollo + Salesloft separately.
Headline numbers
| Metric | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier? | No permanent free tier; 7-day trial, no credit card required | [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/pricing] |
| Cheapest paid tier | $39/month (Starter, 1 user, annual) | [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/pricing] |
| Growth tier | $89/user/month (annual) | [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/pricing] |
| Enterprise tier | $139/user/month (annual) | [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/pricing] |
| AI SDR tier | $99/month (300 lookalike leads, annual) | [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/pricing] |
| G2 score | UNKNOWN | [UNKNOWN] |
| Customer count | 5,000+ salespeople per homepage | [VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/] |
Dimension scores
Equal-weight scoring - 6 dimensions, each 16.7% of the base score.
| Dimension | Score | Weighted | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personalization quality | 1/4 | 4.2 | Standard merge-field personalization in sequences; AI-assisted email drafting available but not differentiated from category baseline. No conversation-intelligence layer that grounds personalization in call or deal history. [MEASURED - D1, yardstick-data] |
| Deliverability infrastructure | 1/4 | 4.2 | 5 mailboxes per user on Starter, 5 per user on Growth, 15 per user on Enterprise. No published SPF/DKIM setup documentation or deliverability-guarantee claim. Infrastructure is lightweight for an SMB tool. [MEASURED - D1, yardstick-data] |
| Ease of data integration & accuracy | 2/4 | 8.3 | Native Salesforce and HubSpot integrations; bidirectional sync documented. Depth of custom-object sync and field mapping is lighter than enterprise-tier tools. Third-party enrichment integrations (Apollo, Clearbit) available as add-ons. [MEASURED - D1, yardstick-data] |
| Cost-per-seat efficiency | 3/4 | 12.5 | Transparent SMB pricing: $39/month Starter, $89/user/month Growth, all published. No mandatory onboarding fees. 7-day trial. For multi-channel capability at this price point, no other published-priced vendor in the cohort matches. [MEASURED - D1, yardstick-data] |
| UI heuristics | 2/4 | 8.3 | Sequence builder and multi-channel cadence management are functional. AI SDR co-pilot mode (human-in-the-loop on agent-drafted outreach) is a usable hybrid. Interface is competent but not a UX differentiator versus Salesloft or Outreach. [MEASURED - D1, yardstick-data] |
| Setup time | 2/4 | 8.3 | SaaS onboarding with no mandatory professional services. Mailbox connectivity + Salesforce/HubSpot sync typically completable in 1-3 days for basic configuration. The AI SDR lookalike lead setup requires ICP configuration that typically takes a week. [MEASURED - D1, yardstick-data] |
| Base total | 45.8 | ||
| Pricing-transparency penalty | - | 0 | None - pricing fully published at https://outplay.ai/pricing |
| Headline score | 45.8 |
Pricing detail
[VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/pricing]:
- Starter: $39/month (annual) - 1 user, 5,000 active prospects/month, 20K prospects storage, 5 mailboxes, unlimited emails
- Growth: $89/user/month (annual) - unlimited prospects, 5 email boxes per user, unlimited emails, multi-channel sequences, unlimited sequences
- Enterprise: $139/user/month (annual) - unlimited prospects, 15 email boxes per user, unlimited emails, Power Dialer, custom roles, SSO, dedicated success manager
- AI SDR: $99/month (annual) - 300 lookalike leads, unlimited AI SDR agents, auto and co-pilot modes
- Add-ons: AI SDR ICP Leads ($50/month for 500 leads), CI Transcription ($65/month for 100 hours)
- Trial: 7-day free trial, no credit card required
Integrations
[VENDOR-CLAIMED - https://outplay.ai/]: - CRM: Salesforce Sales Cloud, HubSpot CRM (bidirectional) - Enrichment: Apollo, Clearbit, ZoomInfo (add-on) - Call intelligence: CI Transcription add-on ($65/month) - LinkedIn: LinkedIn touchpoints in multi-channel sequences - Cohort integrations: salesforce-sales-cloud-einstein, salesforce-einstein-copilot, hubspot-breeze-copilot
Editorial assessment
Outplay occupies the SMB-value position in this cohort. At $89/user/month for Growth (annual), a team gets unlimited email sequences, built-in dialer, LinkedIn touchpoints, and Salesforce/HubSpot bi-directional sync for less than what Outreach charges for email sequences alone. The AI SDR tier ($99/month for 300 lookalike leads) packages autonomous prospecting at an add-on price point rather than a strategic infrastructure commitment. For a 10-person sales team with a $5K/month tooling budget, Outplay competes against Apollo + Salesloft combined on price.
The score reflects what the pricing buys. Personalization quality is basic merge-field plus AI-assisted drafting - no conversation-intelligence layer, no deal-history grounding, no signal-aggregation comparable to Gong or Common Room. Deliverability infrastructure is lightweight: 5-15 mailboxes per user is functional for SMB outbound but does not match the dedicated domain warming, DMARC management, and inbox-rotation infrastructure that Salesloft or Outreach offer. CRM integration depth covers standard objects cleanly but thins out on custom fields and complex territory configurations.
The domain migration from outplayhq.com to outplay.ai (2025) and the "AI Revenue Platform" rebrand are marketing repositioning, consistent with the category-wide drift away from "sales engagement" as a label. The underlying product is still a sequences-plus-dialer tool. The AI SDR capability (autonomous lead generation + outreach in auto or co-pilot mode) is the only substantive product expansion behind the new positioning. Whether AI SDR quality is sufficient to replace a dedicated Apollo or ZoomInfo subscription is not independently benchmarked and should be validated during trial.
Best for
- Stage: Foundation (<$5M ARR) and Pilot ($5-$50M). Conditional Scale fit up to ~150 reps. Not a fit for Optimization.
- Company profile: SMB B2B sales teams, 1-100 reps, on Salesforce or HubSpot, where budget constraints make Outreach/Salesloft pricing prohibitive. Outbound-first or hybrid outbound/inbound motions.
- Skip if: You are (a) over 150 reps with complex territory management or multi-CRM requirements, (b) a conversation-intelligence buyer (Gong is the right call), (c) requiring advanced deliverability infrastructure with warm-up tooling and DMARC management, or (d) an Optimization-stage org that needs enterprise compliance (FedRAMP, HIPAA) documentation.
Right-of-reply
Outplay received this tear-sheet seven calendar days before publication of the Yardstick Research 2026 Yardstick Report, including all measured numbers, sample outputs, and editorial assessment. Outplay was given the opportunity to flag factual errors - incorrect pricing, misquoted feature availability, outdated screenshots, factual misstatement in the editorial assessment. Outplay was not given the opportunity to request a score revision, dispute the rubric or its weights, withdraw from inclusion, negotiate ranking placement, or suggest changes to the editorial assessment beyond factual correction. Where a vendor flagged a factual correction, the correction was applied if verified and noted here; where a vendor disputed scoring, the dispute is recorded in the appendix but the score stands. Silence from the vendor during the right-of-reply window was treated as no objection.
Sources
- https://outplay.ai/
- https://outplay.ai/pricing