FreelanceMail vs ChatGPT for Cold Emails: Which Should You Use?

A Note Before We Start

I'm Zhaosheng Lin, and I built FreelanceMail, so keep that in mind as you read. I've tried to be fair: for many freelancers, ChatGPT is a perfectly good choice, and this article includes a prompt you can use with it for free.

What ChatGPT Does Well

• It's flexible. Cold emails, replies, proposals, invoices, rewrites. One tool for everything.
• You may already pay for it. If you use ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for other work, there's no extra cost.
• It can go back and forth. You can ask for a shorter version, a different tone, or a new subject line as many times as you like.

Where ChatGPT Falls Short for Cold Outreach

• It only knows what you give it. Unless you ask it to look something up and check what it found, it writes from what you paste. If you paste a company name and nothing else, you get a generic email.
• You write the prompt every time. Getting a good cold email means describing your service, the prospect, the structure, the length and the tone. Doing that well for every prospect takes time.
• Follow-ups are a separate step. You have to ask for them, and remind it that each one should add something new instead of repeating the first email.

What FreelanceMail Does

• Reads the prospect's website. Paste a URL and it reads the homepage and about page, then picks out details relevant to the service you describe.
• Writes three emails at once. A first email plus two follow-ups, each with a different angle.
• Keeps your work in one place. You can refine a sequence, compare versions, and come back to past prospects.
• Gets you to sending quickly. Copy each email, or open it straight in Gmail.

What FreelanceMail Doesn't Do

Being clear about this saves you time:

• It doesn't find leads or email addresses. You bring the prospect.
• It doesn't send email or track opens. You send from your own inbox.
• It doesn't read LinkedIn or social media profiles. Paste those details in yourself.
• Some websites can't be read, for example sites that only load content with JavaScript. The app tells you when that happens.
• It only writes cold outreach sequences. For proposals, invoices or client replies, a general assistant is the better tool.

Side-by-Side

A ChatGPT Prompt You Can Copy

If you'd rather use ChatGPT, this prompt follows the same structure we recommend in how to write cold emails that get replies. Fill in the brackets with real details.

I'm a freelance [your service] who works with [type of client].

I want to email [prospect name] at [company]. Here's what I found on their website: [2–4 specific details, e.g. a recent launch, something on their homepage, a gap you noticed].

Write a 3-email cold outreach sequence:

- Email 1: 4–6 sentences. Open with one of the specific details above, offer one concrete way I could help, and end with a low-pressure question. No flattery, no "I hope this email finds you well."

- Email 2 (day 3–4): 2–4 sentences. Add one new idea or observation. Don't repeat Email 1.

- Email 3 (day 7–8): 2–3 sentences. Acknowledge they're busy and make it easy to say no.

Plain text, friendly and direct. Don't invent facts, numbers or past results. Use [brackets] for anything I need to fill in.

The most important line is the last one. Without it, AI assistants sometimes invent results or details that you'd then be sending to a real person.

Which Should You Use?

Use ChatGPT if you send a handful of cold emails a month, you already research each prospect, and you don't mind writing a prompt like the one above each time.

Try FreelanceMail if you send cold emails regularly and the research and prompt-writing is the part you keep putting off. The free plan is enough to see whether the drafts are useful for your service.

Either way, review every email before you send it. Whatever tool wrote the first draft, the email goes out under your name.