Expandi: The Best Alternative to WeConnect

Using the right LinkedIn tool for automating your outreach could mean the difference between 10xing your leads or having your account suspended.

As you might know, LinkedIn has recently started cracking down on some of the most used LinkedIn automation tools like Dux-Soup, and more.

So, to avoid having your LinkedIn account suspended, it’s essential you’re using the right tool and following the best outreach practices.

To help you make sure you’re doing it right, in this guide, we’re going to take a look at LinkedIn chrome-based automation solutions first, then cloud-based tools, and finally, what makes Expandi stand out from the rest.

With chrome extensions, LinkedIn first detects the non-human automation (e.g. mass sending out requests), first give you a warning, and then permanently shut down your account.

Oh… Before I forget, did you know that we share our best templates, tips, tricks and growth hacks in our community?
Here is the link to enter; The LinkedIn Outreach Family, everyone can join us and share their growth hacks!

So let’s continue, if you’re sending out a thousand messages and connections in an hour, something which is impossible for a human to do, LinkedIn will automatically detect that sort of activity.

Another reason is that chrome extensions don’t give you a dedicated IP address.

This simply means that your location will change every time you use the tool.

You’re using LinkedIn at 10AM in the Netherlands, then at 5PM in the United States and 7PM in Berlin? Something doesn’t add up.

Here’s a brief overview of some of the biggest chrome-based LinkedIn automation tools:

Dux-Soup

Dux-Soup is one of the biggest names on the market, but it comes with one glaring issue – it’s chrome-based.

Why does this matter?

Because:

• There’s always the chance of getting banned.
• The tool lives in your browser and turns off when you close your PC.
• It doesn’t have a smart inbox and you have to reply to prospects from LinkedIn each time.

See a more detailed breakdown of how Dux-Soup compares to Expandi with its features here: Expandi: The Best Alternative To Dux-Soup

Compared to that, cloud-based LinkedIn tools are much safer, work 24/7, and offer plenty of other advanced features.

Let’s take a look:

GrowthLead

Finally, GrowthLead is NOT a chrome extension but compared to Expandi – it falls behind in terms of its features.

With Expandi, you can do much more, and enjoy unique LinkedIn features, such as:

• Dedicated smart inbox and chat.
• 24/7 customer support and value-packed onboarding tutorials and how-tos.
• Being able to work with your colleagues and exclude certain prospects from your campaign, if you already reached them with another account.
• And more.

For the most part, cloud-based LinkedIn tools are going to be generally better than chrome-based ones.

And when comparing cloud-based tools, it’s important to look at safety, the features, and usability.

But why are we talking about cloud-based tools in the first place and what difference does it make, exactly?

Let’s take a look –

Why This Matters

LinkedIn doesn’t want you to steal data from other people (scraping) and spamming on people’s newsfeed/inbox (outreach automation).

And that’s why they’ve taken a stricter approach to marketing tools.

The tools that are still working are cloud-based – meaning, they’re not running from your computer (browser), and they use a set of rotating IP-addresses, to avoid LinkedIn detection.

But even within the cloud-based LinkedIn tools, there’s a lot of choice.

So, today, we’re going to be taking a look at WeConnect and discuss how Expandi compares.

Here’s what you need to know –

Safety

Safety is always the number one concern when using a LinkedIn automation tool of any kind.

Now, both Expandi and WeConnect are cloud-based tools here, but Expandi comes with a few tweaks which were designed with safety as the number one priority.

After all, you can’t enjoy an automation tool to the fullest when you have to be careful about not getting banned, right?

Here’s how Expandi responds to some of the common issues many LinkedIn tools face.

Action Limits

Action limits essentially mean how many ‘actions‘ (e.g. connection request, message, etc.) you commit to per day.

Generally, LinkedIn allows 250 actions per day, and as long as you stay below that limit – you should be fine.

However, LinkedIn also notices suspicious activity such as going from 10 actions per day to 200 actions…

To prevent sending any suspicious activity, Expandi comes with a built-in safety limit for connection requests, follow-ups, and a random delay interval for sending out messages.

This was all designed to mimic human behavior and not get your LinkedIn account flagged.

Pending Connection Invites

When sending out a lot of connection requests daily, it’s easy to have them build up.

Because the maximum pending connections you can send out is 3000 invites, it’s a good idea to start withdrawing some of the ignored/unanswered requests after a while.

Typically, less than 1000 pending invites is a good place to be at, but it’s always better to play it safe…

With Expandi, you can set a limit on the pending connection requests and automatically withdraw them as well with ease.

These actions are also scheduled with random intervals to mimic human behavior.

Time-Zones

LinkedIn also monitors your time-zone and tracks the time of your account’s activity.

If you’re constantly sending out mass invites during midnight – this might raise a few flags and scream automation (or that you’re a workaholic).

With Expandi, you can send scheduled messages within specific working hours.

You even have the option to exclude holidays and weekends from your sending schedule.

Expandi uses a dedicated IP address from your own country – so your profile activity doesn’t seem suspicious.

ReCaptcha Problems

This has been more of a specific problem with WeConnect.

A lot of people keep getting flagged and receive a reCaptcha problem when using the tool for an extended amount of time.

This tends to occur when the tool is trying to verify connection with LinkedIn and can either mess up or delay a campaign, if the tool has to verify connection with the server each time.

You can be halfway through an outreach campaign only for the tool to require to restart.

These loops can make it difficult for a full campaign cycle to finish and you may have to wait as long as up to 24 hours to go through the loop.

To avoid getting flagged, Expandi assigns a new dedicated and country-based proxy IP address to each profile, and our algorithms were designed to mimic human behavior.

This is how we can proudly say that Expandi is indeed the safest cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool on the market and that we take safety seriously.

Transparent Customer Support

Need help setting up your account or wondering how to use the tool?

We have your back.

When it comes to personal support, we want to make sure you’re getting the support that you need.

Our customer support is here to help and we mean that.

We guarantee you’ll be talking to a real person behind the screen who knows Expandi inside-out and is committed to making your tour of the product as smooth as possible.

You’re doing business with real people, instead of avatars and stock images.

You can typically expect an average time of under ~2o minutes for your tickets, and a separate real-time support for agencies.

Expandi uses a dedicated IP address from your own country – so your profile activity doesn’t seem suspicious.

In our mission to be transparent, we’re constantly sharing value and action-packed guides on the Expandi blog – including guides on how to set up and optimize your Expandi/LinkedIn profile, case studies, and the exact campaigns and templates we used with success before.

Advanced Features With a Simple Interface

When it comes to advanced features, Expandi simply offers more options to improve your LinkedIn outreach than other LinkedIn automation tools.

Expandi was designed for people running multiple accounts and agencies.

So, right away, the easy-to-use dashboard allows you to switch to-and-from accounts with ease.

This way, you don’t have to log in and out of LinkedIn every time you want to reply to someone from a different account.

Other unique features Expandi comes with includes –

• Post Engagement Search – Find a post with a decent engagement rate, scrape everyone who commented or liked it and re-target them with your campaign. See how this works here: The Best LinkedIn Content Retargeting Growth Hack to Start Generating Leads
• Dynamic Personalization – With Expandi, you can place a custom [DYNAMIC PLACEHOLDER] tag within your template, based on your specific custom variable. This way, the text will come out different each time, depending who it is addressed to. Learn more about how you can customize your campaign around this personalization feature here: LinkedIn Personalization Growth Hack Beyond First Name and Last Name
• Running Multiple Campaigns At the Same Time – Expandi gives you the option to run several LinkedIn outreach campaigns, per profile at the same time. This comes in handy to test A/B test your campaigns and see what works best.

And that’s not all…

Here’s how we make sure Expandi stands out from other LinkedIn tools.

• Better Targeting – We support all types of searches: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Recruiter Lite, and also typical LinkedIn post searches. As a cherry on top, you can also upload your own CSV. list of leads.
• Better Campaign Insights – Get key insights and up-to-date metrics at a glance from our custom dashboard. See who accepted your requests, how many people replied to your initial message, to your follow-ups, and more at a glance.
• Mini White-Label Service for Agencies – Do you run more than 10 accounts? If so, we can provide you with a mini white label with a c-name url. You can then give your customers access to campaign statistics and inbox management based on your corporate identity.

Want to set up your own mini white-label service with Expandi or have any other questions? Feel free to get in touch any time at: [email protected] or contact our customer support here.

Summary

To recap, there are 2 types of LinkedIn outreach automation tools:

• Chrome-Based – Which are typically browser-based, unsafe, and come with a lot of other issues.
• Cloud-Based – This is safer than the above, but there’s still a lot of choice here.

With safety and advanced features in mind, Expandi comes out on top of other LinkedIn tools.

Expandi is cloud-based, runs 24/7, and takes care of important LinkedIn details such as: action limits, pending connection invites, time-zones, and more – all with a transparent customer support.

In terms of features, you can expect some unique ones like: post engagement search, dynamic personalization, being able to run multiple campaigns at the same time, and more.

Finally, even with standard LinkedIn outreach automation features, Expandi was designed to deliver better targeting, campaign insights, and even a special white-label service for agencies.

Now, are you ready to take your LinkedIn automation to the next level and start generating 10x more leads?

Let me know if you’re ready and follow me on Twitter and I’ll be sure to grant you a FREE 7 day Expandi trial.

PS. Don’t forget to join The LinkedIn Outreach Family on Facebook, it’s a closed community were we share our best templates, growth hacks and many more! We can’t wait to see you there!

Need more help with preparing a killer LinkedIn outreach campaign?

Be sure to also read:

• 5 Essential Steps to Prepare Before Launching an Automated LinkedIn Outreach Campaign
• The best Growth Hack to generate more leads on LinkedIn
• Guide “The Top 3 LinkedIn Outreach Strategies“