Apollo vs Salesforge: Cold Outreach Tool Showdown (2024)

Apollo's Sequences feature offers a straightforward way to create sales engagement campaigns, focusing on a linear series of steps to reach out to leads. While it may lack some advanced branching and conditional capabilities, it covers the essential actions for effective outreach.

• Automatic email delivery: Set up email sequences to be sent out automatically at predefined intervals.
• Manual email tasks: Create tasks to manually edit and send emails, allowing for more personalized touch points.
• LinkedIn integration: Engage with leads on LinkedIn by sending connection requests and direct messages as part of the sequence.
• Phone and custom actions: Include phone calls and other custom actions to diversify the outreach approach.

Reddit users have expressed mixed opinions about Apollo's sequence creation capabilities:

😐 "Apollo has its own email sequence function and they've recently added email warm up too." - r/Emailmarketing

👎 "when you actually schedule emails to be sent out it doesn't work" - r/LeadGeneration

Salesforge is a powerful sales engagement platform that enables users to create and manage highly personalized email campaigns at scale. With its intuitive sequence builder, users can easily set up multi-step campaigns tailored to their specific needs and target audience.

Key features of Salesforge's sequence builder:

• AI-driven personalization: Salesforge leverages advanced AI capabilities to personalize emails, ensuring higher engagement and conversion rates.
• Multi-language support: Users can create campaigns in multiple languages, expanding their reach to global audiences.
• Email validation and warm-up: Built-in email validation and AI-powered warm-up features help maintain high deliverability and low bounce rates.
• Centralized mailbox management: Salesforge allows users to manage multiple mailboxes from a single interface, streamlining campaign management.
• Customizable sequences: The sequence builder offers flexibility in creating custom workflows, adapting to various sales processes and strategies.

Apollo's Sequences feature allows users to connect multiple mailboxes for their email outreach campaigns. However, the platform does not provide built-in email warming services to improve deliverability, so users may need to rely on additional tools to maintain a good sender reputation.

• Multiple mailboxes: Apollo supports linking multiple email aliases or mailboxes to a single account, allowing users to distribute their email volume across different addresses.
• Deliverability monitoring: The platform provides a deliverability score for each connected mailbox, helping users track their sender reputation and identify potential issues.
• Customizable sending limits: Users can set daily and hourly sending limits for each mailbox to avoid triggering spam filters due to high email volume.
• No native email warming: Unlike some other sales engagement platforms, Apollo does not offer built-in email warming features to gradually increase sending volume and establish a positive sender reputation.

Reddit users report mixed experiences with Apollo's email sequencing and deliverability:

😐 "Allowing link tracking adds some inherent risk when sending emails" - r/Emailmarketing

😐 "just kicked off my first email sequence this week with mediocre results" - r/sales

To optimize deliverability when using Apollo Sequences, users should carefully plan their email content, personalization, and sending volume while considering the use of external email warming tools to maintain a strong sender reputation.

Salesforge offers features to improve email deliverability and avoid spam filters when sending sequences and campaigns. The platform supports multiple mailboxes and provides email warming capabilities to establish a positive sending reputation.

• Multiple mailboxes: Manage and send from multiple email accounts within Salesforge.
• Email warming: Automatically warm up new email accounts to improve deliverability. The screenshot shows mailboxes in various stages of warming up before reaching the sending limit.
• Sending limits: Set and control the maximum number of emails each mailbox can send to stay within acceptable volumes and avoid triggering spam filters.

👍 "bought a bunch of domains and mailboxes recently via Salesforge and I sequence in the same platform for my clients as an agency." - r/Entrepreneur

Apollo offers extensive personalization options for email sequences, leveraging its robust database of enriched lead data. By using dynamic variables and an AI assistant, users can create highly targeted and personalized outreach at scale.

• Dynamic variables: Easily insert any field from Apollo's enrichment database into emails using {{ }} placeholders. Fields are normalized for natural language, such as {{first_name}}, {{company}}, and {{location_city}}.
• Conditional logic: Show different message variations based on if/else conditions using lead data. For example, mention a recipient's title if available, or show a different message otherwise.
• Preview and test: Select an existing contact or send a test email to yourself to preview how dynamic variables will render for each recipient.
• AI-powered openers: Generate personalized opening lines based on key details like the recipient's name, company, role, and work history. Review and edit the opener before inserting it into the email.
• Other personalization options: Include meeting invites, Vidyard video recordings, images, and other content to further tailor each email to the individual recipient.

Salesforge provides robust personalization options to tailor your email sequences to each lead. With a combination of custom variables and AI-powered content generation, you can create highly targeted and engaging emails that resonate with your prospects.

• Custom variables: Easily insert custom variables like {first name}, {company}, or {industry} to dynamically populate lead-specific information in your emails.
• AI-generated content: Leverage Salesforge's AI capabilities to generate personalized email content based on the context of your message and the lead's profile.
• Fallback templates: Set up fallback templates that are automatically used if the AI fails to generate suitable content or if the lead is missing key information like a LinkedIn URL.
• Preview emails: Send test emails to yourself to preview how the personalized content will appear to your leads before launching the sequence.

Apollo's AI assistant is a powerful tool for creating highly personalized emails at scale. By providing information about your company, product, and target persona, the AI can generate customized email content, including one-liners, openers, subject lines, and entire emails.

Key features of Apollo's AI email generation:

• Persona-based customization: Tailor emails to specific buyer personas by inputting relevant information.
• Granular control: Choose to generate specific elements like subject lines or let the AI write the entire email.
• Personalization at scale: Create unique, targeted emails for each lead without manual effort.
• Additional AI capabilities: Automatically record, transcribe, and analyze video call meetings for valuable insights.

With Apollo's AI assistant, sales teams can create compelling, personalized outreach at scale, saving time while improving engagement rates. The ability to steer the AI's output ensures that generated emails align with your brand voice and messaging.

Salesforge's AI-powered email generation feature allows users to create personalized emails at scale, saving time and effort in their sales outreach. By leveraging AI, Salesforge can write entire emails based on the user's chosen tonality, ensuring that each message is tailored to the recipient's preferences.

Key aspects of Salesforge's AI email generation:

• Tonality options: Users can select from a variety of tones, such as playful, hilarious, formal, or appreciative, to match their desired communication style.
• Fallback template: To use the AI email generation feature, users must set a fallback template that the AI can use as a starting point for its personalized messages.
• Preview generation: The AI generates previews for the first 5 contacts in a sequence, with the rest being generated once the sequence is started.
• Personalization credits: Users start with 10 personalization credits, which are consumed when generating new previews. Regenerating emails, however, is free.

By combining AI-powered email generation with Salesforge's other features, users can create highly personalized and effective sales sequences that drive better engagement and conversion rates.

Apollo's native enrichment capabilities provide users with a wealth of information on their leads, enabling more targeted and personalized outreach. By leveraging data from various sources, Apollo offers insights that help sales teams better understand their prospects and tailor their messaging accordingly.

Key features of Apollo's native enrichment:

• Comprehensive contact details: Access information like phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profiles.
• Job history and work experience: Gain a deeper understanding of a prospect's professional background.
• Signals and communication advice: Receive guidance on the best ways to engage with a prospect based on their behavior and preferences.
• Company-level data: Obtain valuable context about a prospect's organization, such as industry, size, and revenue.
• Seamless integration: Easily incorporate enriched data into email templates and sequences for personalization at scale.

Salesforge does not offer built-in lead enrichment capabilities, instead relying on integrations with third-party tools to provide additional data and insights on leads. This approach allows users to leverage their preferred enrichment services while still benefiting from Salesforge's core sales engagement features.

• Apollo.io integration: Salesforge integrates with Apollo.io, a popular B2B contact database and sales intelligence platform, to enable contact list building, scraping, and enrichment.
• Findymail and Builtwith: Users can also utilize Findymail for email scraping and enrichment from LinkedIn, as well as Builtwith for contact mining.
• Launch Gravity and Evaboot: Salesforge supports integrations with Launch Gravity and Evaboot for additional contact generation capabilities.

Apollo's Sequences feature includes powerful social automation capabilities, particularly for LinkedIn, allowing users to create tasks that automate various social interactions without requiring manual effort. This functionality enables sales teams to efficiently engage with prospects and build relationships on the platform.

Key aspects of Apollo's social automation:

• LinkedIn tasks: Create tasks to send connection requests, personalized messages, view profiles, and interact with posts
• Automated execution: Tasks are performed automatically by Apollo, saving time and effort
• Personalization: Tailor connection requests and messages to each contact for a positive first impression
• Information gathering: View profiles to collect key insights for more effective engagement
• Engagement boosting: Interact with recent posts to increase visibility and foster relationships

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Salesforge's Sequences feature includes social automation capabilities that enable users to source contact information for their outreach campaigns. The platform offers flexibility in choosing the source of information, allowing users to pull data from LinkedIn profiles, websites, or a combination of both.

• LinkedIn profile: Salesforge can extract contact information directly from LinkedIn profiles, making it easy to target specific individuals or roles within an organization.
• Website: The platform can also scrape contact information from company websites, enabling users to build targeted lists based on specific criteria.
• LinkedIn + website: For the most comprehensive approach, Salesforge allows users to combine data from both LinkedIn profiles and websites, ensuring a more complete picture of each prospect.

By providing these options, Salesforge simplifies the process of building targeted lists for outreach campaigns, saving users time and effort in manual data collection.

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Apollo provides a range of pricing options to accommodate different user requirements, from individual users to large organizations. The pricing model is based on credits, which are used for various actions within the platform, such as mobile and export credits.

• Free plan: Apollo offers a free plan with limited features, including 100 mobile credits and 120 export credits per year.
• Paid plans: Paid plans start at $49 per user per month (billed annually) for the Basic plan, which includes 900 mobile credits and 12,000 export credits per year. The Professional plan, at $79 per user per month (billed annually), offers 1,200 mobile credits and 24,000 export credits per year. The Organization plan, starting at $119 per user per month (minimum 3 users, billed annually), provides 2,400 mobile credits and 48,000 export credits per year.
• 14-day trial: Apollo offers a 14-day trial for the Basic and Professional plans, limited to 50 lead credits per user.
• Unlimited email credits: All plans include unlimited email credits, with a 10,000 credit limit per account per month to prevent abuse. However, the free plan has a limit of 100 email credits per account per month if the email used does not have a valid and verified corporate domain.
• Feature differences: Higher-tier plans include additional features such as advanced reporting, AI-assisted email writing, and advanced security configurations.

To get started with a paid plan, users can simply select the desired plan and begin their 14-day trial. For the Organization plan and larger deployments, users may need to contact Apollo's sales team for a customized solution.

SalesForge provides transparent pricing information on their website, with two main plans: Growth at $96/month and Pro at $48/month, both billed monthly. They also offer annual billing and a 2-month free trial for those who choose the annual option.

Key pricing details:

• 7-day free trial: Available for the Growth plan, but with limited features.
• Monthly and annual billing: Users can choose between monthly and annual billing for both plans, with a discount for annual commitments.
• Plan differences: The Growth plan includes higher limits on active contacts, emails per month, and email personalization credits compared to the Pro plan. Some advanced features like A/B testing and ESP matching are only available on the Growth plan.
• No hidden fees: SalesForge does not mention any additional per-seat costs or usage-based fees beyond the monthly subscription price.
• Self-service: Users can sign up and get started directly from the pricing page without needing to contact sales.