ZoomInfo is a solid go-to-market (GTM) platform that streamlines various outreach tasks across different channels. Still, it’s not for everyone. Five-figure annual commitments, occasional data inaccuracies, and a somewhat unintuitive interface are among the many reasons users have started exploring ZoomInfo alternatives.
If you’re among them, this guide will help you find a more suitable platform in two ways. First, we’ll shorten your research by establishing the main factors to consider when choosing an alternative, and then we’ll review four popular platforms that take the lead.
How We Chose the Best ZoomInfo Alternatives
To identify the most valuable and robust ZoomInfo alternatives and give an unbiased review of their notable features, we leveraged our extensive network of industry influencers. In the process, we’ve gathered their thoughts and learned about their experiences with different solutions.
We also examined each platform’s features, capabilities, and practical application to form a first-hand impression and see whether the advertised benefits translate to real-life results.
As you go through this guide, you’ll discover platforms that could be ideal replacements for ZoomInfo, depending on your company’s needs. To zero in on the right solution, we’ve singled out the following factors to consider based on our research:
- Data accuracy—No feature can compensate for low-quality and outdated information. While no platform can guarantee 100% accuracy at all times, your chosen option should use credible data sources and have a system in place to let you verify data 🎯
- Comprehensive enrichment—Getting someone’s email and phone number isn’t enough to launch a successful outbound strategy. Look for a platform that gives you all the data points you need to send out hyper-targeted emails 📁
- Ease of use—Data providers and enrichment tools must ensure you don’t need to bother with complex processes to find answers to all your questions. There’s not much point in using a complicated platform that involves additional automation tools 🤝
- Pricing—If a provider operates under the assumption that you can’t put a price on valuable data, they’re wrong—you surely can, and it shouldn’t be an astronomical one. Find a platform that ensures you know your prospects like the back of your hand without burning a hole in your pocket 💰
- Integrations—You might already have an established GTM/sales system, in which case your outbound automation platform should streamline it instead of making you rebuild it from scratch. To make this happen, look for a solution that seamlessly integrates with your current software and processes 🔗
ZoomInfo Alternatives—Four Platforms Reviewed
Now that you have an idea of the boxes your ZoomInfo alternative should check, it’s time to review our top picks. Specifically, we’ve selected four platforms:
- Clay
- Apollo
- LeadIQ
- Cognism
Clay
Massive platforms like ZoomInfo and many of its alternatives share the same problem—they make you pay and then cross your fingers when searching for data. Clay is here to change that.
This outbound marketing automation platform lets you get data from 50+ providers without ever leaving the app. Better yet, the process happens on autopilot thanks to Waterfall Enrichment—here’s how it works:
- Create/import your list of prospects
- Go to Enrich data > Work email (assuming you’re looking for emails)
- Clay creates a waterfall of data providers, meaning it starts querying providers one by one until it finds a match
- When a match is found, no further searches are run, and you only pay for the obtained email
Thanks to such a unique approach, Clay maximizes data accuracy and coverage while minimizing costs, so you don’t need to pay a huge fee upfront and hope for the best. To put it into perspective, while ZoomInfo covers less than 40% of data, Clay easily reaches 80%.
Besides work emails, you can find data points like phone numbers, company contact info, personal emails, tech stack, revenue, and fundraising data. You’ll get access to pretty much anything else you need to make the most out of your outbound campaigns.
Some of the many data providers encompassed by Clay include the following:
When you have the data you need, you can use Clay to import everything into your CRM and/or sequencing software in no time. The platform offers over 100 integrations, and you can use Zapier to connect it with hundreds of additional tools.
Clay offers a free plan with 100 credits, and you can upgrade to one of four paid options:
- Starter—$149/month
- Explorer—$349/month
- Pro—$800/month
- Enterprise—Custom
Within each tier, you can choose from different credit amounts, which ensures not a single dollar goes to waste.
Clay’s only limitation is that you can’t send emails directly through the platform. Still, you can export them to your chosen email sender in a single click.
Apollo
Apollo is an AI-powered prospecting and customer engagement app with a few appealing features. It has a large list of contacts—over 275 million—so it has a slight edge over ZoomInfo and its 265+ million.
Besides letting you get prospects’ basic contact information, Apollo offers dozens of additional data attributes you can use to fine-tune and personalize your emails. A particularly handy enrichment feature is the Data Health Center, which lets you tap into your total addressable market (TAM) by giving you a real-time comparison of your data and the total available information. Other noteworthy features of the platform include the following:
- AI-based lead scoring that lets you prioritize prospects effortlessly
- A built-in meeting scheduler
- Template-based sales funnel automations
- In-depth sales funnel analytics
Apollo offers a free plan you can use to test its core features and see if it’s worth upgrading to one of the three paid tiers:
- Basic—$59/month
- Professional—$99/month
- Organization—$149/month
While the platform’s features are pretty impressive, not all users believe they work as advertised. There have been complaints about phone number access, which doesn’t seem to be properly automated and involves unnecessary steps.
An even bigger concern is security. Apollo has fallen victim to two major data breaches (in 2018 and 2021), which made some users rightfully concerned about the safety of their sensitive info.
LeadIQ
With over 49 million contacts, LeadIQ isn’t as massive as ZoomInfo. The same applies to feature availability, as the platform is a bit more focused on a few core tasks instead of trying to do everything at once.
To capture leads, you can either browse the app’s database or open LeadIQ alongside the source platform (LeadIQ claims it works best with LinkedIn Sales Navigator). As you search for leads, they’ll be mirrored in LeadIQ with contact information, which you can then export to your CRM directly from the app.
Is this the most streamlined workflow? Not exactly, but it gets the job done decently.
LeadIQ’s tracking features are a bit more elaborate and effortless—you can monitor sales triggers (e.g., position or job changes) to get real-time updates and tweak your campaign accordingly. You also get the Scribe feature, which saves time by compiling personalized email drafts based on the available data.
The platform is not the most diverse solution as far as native integrations go, though you can connect it to additional tools through Zapier. It offers a few basic integrations with popular tools, such as:
LeadIQ’s pricing matches feature availability, so it’s a far more cost-effective solution than ZoomInfo. Besides the free plan, you can choose between three tiers:
- Essential—$45/month
- Pro—$89/month
- Enterprise—Custom pricing
While many users are happy with LeadIQ, some have reported data reliability issues, particularly when it comes to emails. You might encounter outdated info, and we all know how frustrating that can be.
Cognism
A general problem users encounter with many data providers is a narrow focus on US contacts without enough European data. Cognism aims to solve this problem, offering over 200 million European contacts. This includes over 70 million phone numbers, a portion of which is manually verified to ensure accuracy.
Thanks to such a massive database and comprehensive feature availability, Cognism is among the high-end platforms suitable for advanced users and teams.
On top of contact information, you get the following:
- Technographic and firmographic data combined with buyer intent signals—This lets you warm up your leads and zero in on those with the highest potential
- Data cleanup features that reduce the risk of stale information—You can get fresh data points when your prospects change jobs or locations, which you can use to make your outbound efforts more relevant and effective
Now, all these features come at a price, and Cognism isn’t particularly transparent about it. Much like ZoomInfo, the platform requires a quote for pricing information. What we do know is that some of Cognism’s best features aren’t available to everyone. For example, manually verified phone numbers are only included in the Diamond package. The less robust Platinum package does include phone numbers, but their accuracy might be lower.
Some users have complained that email data isn’t as accurate as phone numbers. While this issue isn’t exclusive to Cognism, it may result in you overpaying for data that isn’t actionable enough.
Limitations of Relying on Flawed Data Sources
ZoomInfo and many of its alternatives expose you to the same issues—they leave plenty of room for guesswork and wasted money. You often need to make a long-term commitment and pay upfront without knowing whether the platform will get you the data you need.
If it doesn’t, you can either take what you get and risk damaging your outbound performance or pay more for an additional solution.
That’s why platforms like Clay are undoubtedly superior. You can access multiple providers with a single account and get the most out of every dollar you invest. Better yet, you can use Clay to streamline and automate virtually all aspects of your outbound campaigns in no time. 🎯
Automate Outbound Campaigns From Start to Finish With Clay
Various data providers and Waterfall Enrichment are only the start of Clay’s efforts to skyrocket your campaigns’ ROI while eliminating tedious work. The platform leverages the power of AI to offer plenty of valuable features, most notably:
- Claygent—A virtual assistant that replaces manual research for company or prospect information. You can ask Claygent about a company’s competitors, investors, growth, and so much more
- AI enrichment—A handy feature that uses ChatGPT to help you qualify leads according to any criteria you need. You can also summarize your research efforts by using simple prompts to instantly uncover actionable data
- Email builder—An AI-powered writing assistant that ensures your emails are relevant and hyper-personalized. There will be no more manual copywriting and generic opening lines
- Pre-built templates—Clay offers dozens of templates to give you a headstart with various processes so that you don’t need to create them from scratch
Pair these automation features with Clay’s outstanding data enrichment capabilities, and you can see why it’s a perfect alternative to ZoomInfo. You get comprehensive and accurate data enrichment coupled with workflow automation and streamlined email personalization. As a result, a single sales rep can complete the same amount of work as an entire team.
Countless sales pros are already enjoying these benefits—see what one of them has to say about Clay:
Create Your Free Clay Account
Clay takes care of everything that happens from the moment you find a prospect until you’re ready to click “Send.” If you want to see the platform in action, you can get started in three quick steps:
- Visit the signup page
- Create your free account
- Explore Clay’s features and automations
To learn more about Clay, you can visit the platform’s Learn hub, join the ever-growing Slack community, and sign up for the handy newsletter. 💌
ZoomInfo is a solid go-to-market (GTM) platform that streamlines various outreach tasks across different channels. Still, it’s not for everyone. Five-figure annual commitments, occasional data inaccuracies, and a somewhat unintuitive interface are among the many reasons users have started exploring ZoomInfo alternatives.
If you’re among them, this guide will help you find a more suitable platform in two ways. First, we’ll shorten your research by establishing the main factors to consider when choosing an alternative, and then we’ll review four popular platforms that take the lead.
How We Chose the Best ZoomInfo Alternatives
To identify the most valuable and robust ZoomInfo alternatives and give an unbiased review of their notable features, we leveraged our extensive network of industry influencers. In the process, we’ve gathered their thoughts and learned about their experiences with different solutions.
We also examined each platform’s features, capabilities, and practical application to form a first-hand impression and see whether the advertised benefits translate to real-life results.
As you go through this guide, you’ll discover platforms that could be ideal replacements for ZoomInfo, depending on your company’s needs. To zero in on the right solution, we’ve singled out the following factors to consider based on our research:
- Data accuracy—No feature can compensate for low-quality and outdated information. While no platform can guarantee 100% accuracy at all times, your chosen option should use credible data sources and have a system in place to let you verify data 🎯
- Comprehensive enrichment—Getting someone’s email and phone number isn’t enough to launch a successful outbound strategy. Look for a platform that gives you all the data points you need to send out hyper-targeted emails 📁
- Ease of use—Data providers and enrichment tools must ensure you don’t need to bother with complex processes to find answers to all your questions. There’s not much point in using a complicated platform that involves additional automation tools 🤝
- Pricing—If a provider operates under the assumption that you can’t put a price on valuable data, they’re wrong—you surely can, and it shouldn’t be an astronomical one. Find a platform that ensures you know your prospects like the back of your hand without burning a hole in your pocket 💰
- Integrations—You might already have an established GTM/sales system, in which case your outbound automation platform should streamline it instead of making you rebuild it from scratch. To make this happen, look for a solution that seamlessly integrates with your current software and processes 🔗
ZoomInfo Alternatives—Four Platforms Reviewed
Now that you have an idea of the boxes your ZoomInfo alternative should check, it’s time to review our top picks. Specifically, we’ve selected four platforms:
- Clay
- Apollo
- LeadIQ
- Cognism
Clay
Massive platforms like ZoomInfo and many of its alternatives share the same problem—they make you pay and then cross your fingers when searching for data. Clay is here to change that.
This outbound marketing automation platform lets you get data from 50+ providers without ever leaving the app. Better yet, the process happens on autopilot thanks to Waterfall Enrichment—here’s how it works:
- Create/import your list of prospects
- Go to Enrich data > Work email (assuming you’re looking for emails)
- Clay creates a waterfall of data providers, meaning it starts querying providers one by one until it finds a match
- When a match is found, no further searches are run, and you only pay for the obtained email
Thanks to such a unique approach, Clay maximizes data accuracy and coverage while minimizing costs, so you don’t need to pay a huge fee upfront and hope for the best. To put it into perspective, while ZoomInfo covers less than 40% of data, Clay easily reaches 80%.
Besides work emails, you can find data points like phone numbers, company contact info, personal emails, tech stack, revenue, and fundraising data. You’ll get access to pretty much anything else you need to make the most out of your outbound campaigns.
Some of the many data providers encompassed by Clay include the following:
When you have the data you need, you can use Clay to import everything into your CRM and/or sequencing software in no time. The platform offers over 100 integrations, and you can use Zapier to connect it with hundreds of additional tools.
Clay offers a free plan with 100 credits, and you can upgrade to one of four paid options:
- Starter—$149/month
- Explorer—$349/month
- Pro—$800/month
- Enterprise—Custom
Within each tier, you can choose from different credit amounts, which ensures not a single dollar goes to waste.
Clay’s only limitation is that you can’t send emails directly through the platform. Still, you can export them to your chosen email sender in a single click.
Apollo
Apollo is an AI-powered prospecting and customer engagement app with a few appealing features. It has a large list of contacts—over 275 million—so it has a slight edge over ZoomInfo and its 265+ million.
Besides letting you get prospects’ basic contact information, Apollo offers dozens of additional data attributes you can use to fine-tune and personalize your emails. A particularly handy enrichment feature is the Data Health Center, which lets you tap into your total addressable market (TAM) by giving you a real-time comparison of your data and the total available information. Other noteworthy features of the platform include the following:
- AI-based lead scoring that lets you prioritize prospects effortlessly
- A built-in meeting scheduler
- Template-based sales funnel automations
- In-depth sales funnel analytics
Apollo offers a free plan you can use to test its core features and see if it’s worth upgrading to one of the three paid tiers:
- Basic—$59/month
- Professional—$99/month
- Organization—$149/month
While the platform’s features are pretty impressive, not all users believe they work as advertised. There have been complaints about phone number access, which doesn’t seem to be properly automated and involves unnecessary steps.
An even bigger concern is security. Apollo has fallen victim to two major data breaches (in 2018 and 2021), which made some users rightfully concerned about the safety of their sensitive info.
LeadIQ
With over 49 million contacts, LeadIQ isn’t as massive as ZoomInfo. The same applies to feature availability, as the platform is a bit more focused on a few core tasks instead of trying to do everything at once.
To capture leads, you can either browse the app’s database or open LeadIQ alongside the source platform (LeadIQ claims it works best with LinkedIn Sales Navigator). As you search for leads, they’ll be mirrored in LeadIQ with contact information, which you can then export to your CRM directly from the app.
Is this the most streamlined workflow? Not exactly, but it gets the job done decently.
LeadIQ’s tracking features are a bit more elaborate and effortless—you can monitor sales triggers (e.g., position or job changes) to get real-time updates and tweak your campaign accordingly. You also get the Scribe feature, which saves time by compiling personalized email drafts based on the available data.
The platform is not the most diverse solution as far as native integrations go, though you can connect it to additional tools through Zapier. It offers a few basic integrations with popular tools, such as:
LeadIQ’s pricing matches feature availability, so it’s a far more cost-effective solution than ZoomInfo. Besides the free plan, you can choose between three tiers:
- Essential—$45/month
- Pro—$89/month
- Enterprise—Custom pricing
While many users are happy with LeadIQ, some have reported data reliability issues, particularly when it comes to emails. You might encounter outdated info, and we all know how frustrating that can be.
Cognism
A general problem users encounter with many data providers is a narrow focus on US contacts without enough European data. Cognism aims to solve this problem, offering over 200 million European contacts. This includes over 70 million phone numbers, a portion of which is manually verified to ensure accuracy.
Thanks to such a massive database and comprehensive feature availability, Cognism is among the high-end platforms suitable for advanced users and teams.
On top of contact information, you get the following:
- Technographic and firmographic data combined with buyer intent signals—This lets you warm up your leads and zero in on those with the highest potential
- Data cleanup features that reduce the risk of stale information—You can get fresh data points when your prospects change jobs or locations, which you can use to make your outbound efforts more relevant and effective
Now, all these features come at a price, and Cognism isn’t particularly transparent about it. Much like ZoomInfo, the platform requires a quote for pricing information. What we do know is that some of Cognism’s best features aren’t available to everyone. For example, manually verified phone numbers are only included in the Diamond package. The less robust Platinum package does include phone numbers, but their accuracy might be lower.
Some users have complained that email data isn’t as accurate as phone numbers. While this issue isn’t exclusive to Cognism, it may result in you overpaying for data that isn’t actionable enough.
Limitations of Relying on Flawed Data Sources
ZoomInfo and many of its alternatives expose you to the same issues—they leave plenty of room for guesswork and wasted money. You often need to make a long-term commitment and pay upfront without knowing whether the platform will get you the data you need.
If it doesn’t, you can either take what you get and risk damaging your outbound performance or pay more for an additional solution.
That’s why platforms like Clay are undoubtedly superior. You can access multiple providers with a single account and get the most out of every dollar you invest. Better yet, you can use Clay to streamline and automate virtually all aspects of your outbound campaigns in no time. 🎯
Automate Outbound Campaigns From Start to Finish With Clay
Various data providers and Waterfall Enrichment are only the start of Clay’s efforts to skyrocket your campaigns’ ROI while eliminating tedious work. The platform leverages the power of AI to offer plenty of valuable features, most notably:
- Claygent—A virtual assistant that replaces manual research for company or prospect information. You can ask Claygent about a company’s competitors, investors, growth, and so much more
- AI enrichment—A handy feature that uses ChatGPT to help you qualify leads according to any criteria you need. You can also summarize your research efforts by using simple prompts to instantly uncover actionable data
- Email builder—An AI-powered writing assistant that ensures your emails are relevant and hyper-personalized. There will be no more manual copywriting and generic opening lines
- Pre-built templates—Clay offers dozens of templates to give you a headstart with various processes so that you don’t need to create them from scratch
Pair these automation features with Clay’s outstanding data enrichment capabilities, and you can see why it’s a perfect alternative to ZoomInfo. You get comprehensive and accurate data enrichment coupled with workflow automation and streamlined email personalization. As a result, a single sales rep can complete the same amount of work as an entire team.
Countless sales pros are already enjoying these benefits—see what one of them has to say about Clay:
Create Your Free Clay Account
Clay takes care of everything that happens from the moment you find a prospect until you’re ready to click “Send.” If you want to see the platform in action, you can get started in three quick steps:
- Visit the signup page
- Create your free account
- Explore Clay’s features and automations
To learn more about Clay, you can visit the platform’s Learn hub, join the ever-growing Slack community, and sign up for the handy newsletter. 💌
