Apollo.io is a popular B2B sales automation solution for finding leads and managing sales outreach. However, some sales leaders may find Apollo lacking in some areas.
Sometimes, they want deeper features in a certain area, like LinkedIn automation or AI outreach. Perhaps their dream is a pricing plan that doesn’t use a credit-based system.
Whatever your specific needs, today we'll help you find the right Apollo alternative for your business. We’ll explore 10 software tools along with their pricing, key features, and advantages over Apollo.
Below are some of Apollo’s best attributes: an extensive lead database, robust outreach tools, in-depth analytics, ease of use, and customer support.
Apollo’s known for its data accuracy. And its B2B contact database contains a plethora of information about companies and the professionals who work there:
The tool’s advanced filtering allows users to easily find leads that fit their ideal customer profile. And its list management feature enables them to quickly build sales prospecting lists for highly targeted outreach sequences and to fuel various SaaS marketing strategies.
A sales engagement platform, Apollo provides sales teams with several powerful outreach automation tools that help them run multi-channel campaigns, including:
Overall, it’s a great tool for cold email automation.
Apollo doesn’t just help you find and connect with leads. It also gives you the data to improve your sales outreach. For instance, its conversation intelligence software analyzes your customer interactions to identify best practices. And its sales analytics helps you measure the effectiveness of your sequences, messaging, and outreach strategies. You can also create custom dashboards to track key outreach metrics.
Apollo seamlessly integrates with popular CRMs like HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce. The platform also comes with pre-built templates that make it easy to set up automations between the systems. Since Apollo offers data enrichment, many companies use it to fill their CRM’s contact and company records with accurate lead data. Apollo also has a powerful API that’s useful for lead enrichment and workflow automation use cases.
Apollo’s users regularly mention how easy it is to implement and use Apollo. Tools that are tricky or annoying to use don’t earn a 4.7/5 on G2. One user said they like “how easy it is to extract, validate, and save the contact or email.” The dashboards are also intuitive to navigate, allowing users to get granular insights into their sales performance without being a data whiz.
Apollo allows users to contact the support team over email or in the app via chatbot. They also have a huge knowledge base covering common questions about platform set up, billing, features, and account settings. Bec C., a Business Development Manager, sums it up nicely in her Capterra review: “support is great, and fast.“
Although Apollo is a solid tool for lead generation and outreach automation, it does come with a few downsides.
Apollo’s pricing might be too high for smaller businesses. They offer a free plan, but it’s a bit limited in functionality. Even the Basic Plan, priced at $49 per user per month, limits users to one email address, 250 daily email sends, and two sequences. That might be okay for a small business, but not a full-scale sales team. Further, many of the advanced features—like pre-built reporting and dashboards—are closed off until the Professional Plan.
Another issue is the credit system. Each plan comes with a set number of credits, the currency for accessing mobile numbers, email addresses, and data enrichment. When you run out of credits, you must buy more to continue discovering new contact data. If this sounds frustrating, you may be better off with a tool that offers plans with unlimited access to data.
Apollo’s learning curve is rather steep compared to other sales engagement platforms. With so many features to learn, it can be a bit overwhelming for the newbie. A Business Development Manager said, “I find the tool too complex to understand for new users.”
One of the causes of the difficulty is the number of steps it takes to set up a certain action. According to one user, some actions, like adding a lead to a sequence, require too many clicks. That’s annoying if you’re a power user. And if you’re new to the platform, it’s a serious headache, as every step is an opportunity to make a mistake.
Apollo has some great pre-built templates for automations, playbooks, and workflows. However, some users might find these templates limiting. They might want to create their own custom automations in the platform, such as triggers based on a particular lead behavior, but aren’t able to because they must stick to the template.
Artisan is an AI-first, all-in-one sales automation platform that helps companies scale their outbound sales team with AI BDRs. The AI sales agent—named Ava—can find, score, research, and engage high-quality leads with personalized messages based on data she scrapes from the web and social media.
She can also build personalized outreach sequences, improve email deliverability, and run background A/B tests to optimize her outreach strategy. Overall, this tool is the most hands-off of the bunch, allowing you to set lead generation on autopilot.
Artisan is not only easier to set up than Apollo (offering white-glove onboarding). It’s also more advanced in terms of AI functionality. Artisan’s AI BDR can be set on autopilot, acting almost like a real human sales rep. Once she’s up and running, Ava can handle the entire outbound sales process, from lead discovery to personalized sequence building to email follow-up, allowing your human reps to focus on meeting with qualified prospects, not sourcing new leads.
Hunter.io is an easy-to-use email finder tool that helps you discover new leads and find email addresses. It also comes with basic email outreach automation features, like email scheduling, automated follow-ups, templates, and custom attributes. A great option for small businesses needing the most essential email outreach features.
Hunter is a much easier tool to implement and use than Apollo. On G2, Hunter scores a 4.6/5 in ease of set up. Meanwhile, Apollo only scores a 3.9. But Hunter’s ease of use isn’t just because of its small feature set. The tool has an incredibly intuitive interface, and its lead email data is highly accurate. If you’re a small business or solopreneur focused on finding email data and sending basic campaigns, Hunter might be a better choice than Apollo.
ZoomInfo is an AI-powered go-to-market intelligence platform with a searchable B2B contact database, buying intent data, and website visitor tracking. On the engagement front, it provides sales automation tools for email and phone outreach.
When compared to Apollo, ZoomInfo offers more extensive B2B data, especially around buying intent signals and phone numbers. It also allows you to get slightly more granular in your database searches. These perks make ZoomInfo a stronger option for enterprise brands that need advanced data sourcing to optimize their go-to-market strategy.
RocketReach is a lead intelligence platform designed for sales reps and recruiters. Its B2B database helps you find leads and their contact information, and its AI-driven recommendations feature automatically surfaces leads related to your search. The platform also comes with tools that help you manage, automate, and track email outreach.
RocketReach is known for its user-friendly interface. The platform truly simplifies lead search and retrieval. It’s also designed to fit neatly into your current sales workflow, so beginners can integrate the tool quickly. In contrast, implementing an all-in-one platform like Apollo might mean going back to the drawing board to figure out how to make your workflow play nicely with Apollo. With a straightforward point-solution like RocketReach, that’s simply not the case.
Individual Plans
Team Plans
Clearbit, aka HubSpot Breeze Intelligence, is a data enrichment tool baked into the HubSpot ecosystem. Enhanced with advanced AI, the tool automatically updates B2B contact and company records with data points like job title, location, behavioral data, and verified contact information. This is a great option if you use, or are considering using, HubSpot as your CRM.
Breeze Intelligence outperforms Apollo in inbound lead data enrichment. Apollo is built for outbound prospecting, while Clearbit, integrated within the HubSpot ecosystem, is designed to enrich your current and new CRM records with fresh data, covering everything from their demographics to their recent page visits. Unlike Apollo, it also comes with tools for boosting inbound conversions, like web forms and web visitor tracking.
Starts at $45 per month (must have a subscription to a paid HubSpot product)
Seamless AI is a sales intelligence platform boasting an AI-powered, real-time search engine that helps you find B2B leads and validate contact information to fuel your sales outreach and marketing campaigns. Notably, the tool has access to data on over 414 million business professional mobile numbers, making it a good option for businesses doing a lot of cold calling.
Seamless’s AI-powered lead search and real-time data verification combine to make finding lead data incredibly snappy. Apollo, on the other hand, offers more advanced filters, and as a result, it’s a bit clunkier for lead discovery. Seamless’s speed and simplicity a a blessing for smaller sales teams that need fast and accurate lead data without all the bells and whistles.
Kaspr is a prospecting tool that helps salespeople retrieve the contact information of the leads they’re discovering and researching on LinkedIn. With the Chrome Extension, users can instantly enrich LinkedIn leads with accurate contact data, like business email addresses. Reps can then add the lead to the Kaspr dashboard, where they can organize leads for outreach.
Kaspr has a better Chrome Extension than Apollo. The tool lets sales reps find contact info of decision-makers while they prospect. For example, if you’re viewing a lead’s LinkedIn profile, you can reveal their email addresses and phone numbers. This on-the-go functionality is ideal for sales reps who just need a lightweight tool for discovering lead contact info.
Reply.io is an AI-powered sales engagement platform that helps sales teams run automated multi-channel outreach campaigns. Users can build sequences that facilitate outreach across email, phone, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media. Jason AI, the AI sales assistant, can generate emails, predict lead behavior, create multi-channel sequences, and reply to interested leads.
Offering tools for SMS and WhatsApp outreach, Reply.io edges out Apollo in terms of supported sequence channels. AI enthusiasts might prefer Reply because it bakes AI functionality into almost every aspect of the platform, from prospecting to outreach. It even comes with an AI SDR Agent named Jason AI, which can reply to leads and book meetings.
Lusha is an AI sales intelligence platform that helps you discover and research new B2B leads. Its standout feature, AI recommendations, suggests companies and decision-makers most likely to turn into customers. To make these suggestions, the AI analyzes various factors, including your ideal customer profile, buyer intent signals, and even real-time lead behavior.
Lusha slightly beats Apollo in ease-of-use, scoring a 9.3 on G2 as opposed to Apollo’s 9.1. This is mostly because Lusha is a smaller solution designed to help individuals and small businesses find accurate lead contact information. Meanwhile, Apollo is an all-in-one sales platform for prospecting, lead generation, and sales engagement. All those features make it slightly more difficult to operate as a beginner.
Snov.io is a sales engagement platform that helps sales reps verify lead contact information and manage multi-channel outreach campaigns. Snov.io also offers features for automating LinkedIn social selling and email deliverability. Armed with a sales CRM as well, it’s a great one-stop shop for your lead generation and outreach automation needs.
Snov.io offers a better LinkedIn automation tool. It allows you to add automated LinkedIn touches to your campaigns. Touches include post and publication likes, profile visits, personalized messages, and connection requests. Apollo offers LinkedIn automation, but it’s more focused on facilitating outreach on the platform, not fully automating it. The rep still does most of the legwork. Meanwhile, Snov can handle these LinkedIn touches on the rep’s behalf.
Apollo is a great all-in-one sales solution, offering tools for prospecting, lead gen, and outreach.
But it’s not the only software that can help you find your ideal potential customers and engage them in an automated yet personalized fashion.
Based on our research, here are Apollo’s three top contenders:
For more solutions that can help your business generate more leads and close deals faster, check out our article on the 10 best AI sales tools.
Irina is a Founder at ONSAAS, Growth Lead at Aura, and a SaaS marketing consultant. She helps companies to grow their revenue with SEO and inbound marketing. In her spare time, Irina entertains her cat Persie and collects airline miles.