Apollo.io is a budget tool promising to “reach every buyer on earth”. So why do prospects check out Apollo competitors? Well, there are a couple of reasons—
Apollo.io’s pricing is based on credits which doesn’t always allow users to gather enough contact or companies they want. Top-ups can be expensive which drives a scarcity mindset among the sales teams.
Built-in email sequencing and automation are definitely Apollo.io’s strengths. It works for companies with smaller budgets and tech stacks.
But the email-centric contact database with limited mobile credits in its packages may not suit dial-heavy users.
Some prospects look for Apollo.io alternatives because they are concerned about data compliance and Apollo’s Terms of Service that affect the data in their CRM. By using Apollo, customers agree to give Apollo an irrevocable license to use their data.
It means Apollo can sell their services which include user-submitted data, even after you stop using Apollo's software.
In this article, we'll see how Apollo.io compares to other sales intelligence solutions on the market.
Cognism is an excellent Apollo alternative if you're looking for more mobile numbers. Cognism offers a high-quality contact database with human-verified mobile numbers, B2B emails, and direct dials in EMEA, NAM, and APAC markets.
Cognism’s email database is notified, and our phone numbers are checked against DNC lists. It means our database is fully GDPR compliant, so you’re not risking legal implications when prospecting in Europe.
*Subject to fair use
💡 Visit Cognism vs Apollo.io direct comparison page or the alternatives hub for other comparisons.
We interviewed Marc Parsons, SDR Team Lead, about Apollo competitors:
We also interviewed Jake Hampson, Founder of Sales on Demand, about his experience with Apollo alternatives:
2. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a well-known platform with a company profile database and contact data built by acquiring smaller competitors. ZoomInfo competes with Apollo in the US market.
But it segments its database for specific functions and is said to charge differently for data in different regions. One G2 user commented that paying for the different regions was hard to justify for an international company.
💡 Visit Cognism vs ZoomInfo page or see the list of ZoomInfo alternatives.
Lusha is one of Apollo.io’s alternatives with monthly subscription plans. It’s affordable and has a self-service set-up until you want to negotiate an enterprise package. Its advanced features are available on a custom plan, and users say its integrations could be improved.
Check out Seamless AI if you’re looking for Apollo competitors that use AI to find prospects' details on the web, verify emails, and dial prospects directly in real-time. It’s a tool you can use to build lead lists at scale for sales, marketing, and recruitment.
But an independent comparison of Apollo.io competitors revealed a high bounce rate even on data marked as high confidence and missing company data.
Learn more about the best intent data providers.
Clearbit is a data enrichment and market intelligence tool that sources data across public and private sources, including social profiles, company websites, legal filings, or crowdsourcing.
Despite Pavilion members' survey showing the need to improve data quality (e.g., revenue, headcount for private companies, phone number accuracy), it’s still a good alternative to Apollo.io for mid-market and small businesses.
Rocket Reach provides detailed business data and employee contact information for lead generation and outreach purposes. It has a browser extension to discover leads on Google, AngelList, Crunchbase, and Linkedln. It is one of the alternatives to Apollo.io email finder.
This tool is sometimes considered an Apollo.io competitor because it allows you to find prospects and companies that match your ideal customer profile. You can use the InMail feature to contact them, but it’s best to enrich Sales Nav lists with actionable contact data like emails or cell phone numbers.
Hunter could be a good Apollo.io alternative if you're mainly outreaching by email. This email finder tool helps you discover email addresses using a company name or domain. It indexes emails disclosed in public sources by crawling the web. It means Hunter collects personal data as well.
LeadIQ is another Apollo alternative that gets information from public and private sources such as social media platforms and job boards. It verifies emails in real time but has a limited offer on mobile numbers (max. 120 on enterprise plan).
If you’re looking for an alternative to Apollo with accurate mobile phone numbers in NAM, EMEA, and APAC, Cognism offers phone-verified mobile contact data and global coverage. It is also fully GDPR-compliant, has broad DNC coverage, and a notified email database to let you prospect confidently.
Apollo pricing is considered affordable because of free and paid plans starting at $39 per user per month. These plans are relatively cheap but include a very limited number of credits. Add-on credits cost extra. GTM leaders who considered Apollo and its competitors’ pricing said that mobile numbers and emails in Apollo’s database needed improving despite lower cost.
Apollo pricing changes frequently, so it’s uncertain which one they will adopt. For example, In February 2023, the vendor reduced the number of mobile and email credits it included in each package. In November 2023, it removed mobiles from free and basic packages.
When it comes to prospecting, Apollo doesn’t mention do-no-call list cleaning and/or notifying their database in their help centre. This means it's hard to establish if Apollo is fully GDPR compliant. Failing to ensure compliance may lead to serious legal implications for your business.
In 2018 Apollo data was compromised, exposing email addresses and data points in their database. Next, in 2021 records of French users were stolen and put for sale online. The two Apollo.io data breaches understandably could undermine customers’ trust in the provider.
Consider providers that combine accurate and compliant B2B data in the market where you want to generate leads with access to intent data. One of Apollo’s competitors you can consider is Cognism, thanks to its partnership with Bombora’s consent-based intent data provider.