Hunter.io vs Apollo: Sales Intelligence Tool Showdown 2024

Hunter.io provides a range of data points to enrich lead information, going beyond standard contact details like email and phone number. The platform offers insights that can help identify high-potential leads and tailor outreach based on specific company needs.

• Fundings and acquisitions data: Hunter.io provides information on a company's funding rounds and acquisitions, which can be a strong indicator of growth and purchasing power. This data can help prioritize leads that are more likely to have the budget and need for your product or service.
• Job openings data: By highlighting companies with relevant job openings, Hunter.io enables users to identify leads that have specific needs or are expanding in areas related to their offering. This information can be used to personalize outreach and demonstrate how your solution can help the company achieve its goals.

These unique data points, combined with the standard contact information, make Hunter.io a powerful tool for lead enrichment and qualification. By leveraging buying signals and company-specific insights, users can focus their efforts on the most promising leads and craft compelling, targeted outreach.

Apollo offers a comprehensive set of data points for contacts and companies, with a focus on work history and company-specific details. While it may have less data from social platforms compared to some competitors, Apollo's breadth of coverage stands out, capturing a large number of contacts and companies.

Key data points available in Apollo:

• Detailed work history: Apollo provides an extensive view of a contact's work history, including current and past roles, companies, and tenure.
• Unique company insights: Apollo offers company-specific data points that are less common among other platforms, such as buying signals, tech stack information, and announcement triggers. These insights can be valuable for personalizing outreach, although the level of detail may vary.
• Contact information: Standard data points like email addresses and phone numbers are available, along with the ability to request additional contact information directly within the platform.
• Engagement and contact stage tracking: Users can view and manage a contact's engagement level and stage within the sales process, helping to prioritize and tailor outreach efforts.

While some of the unique data points offered by Apollo may not always provide the granularity needed for highly targeted personalization, the platform's extensive coverage of contacts and companies, combined with its focus on work history and company insights, makes it a powerful tool for sales intelligence and prospecting.

Hunter.io offers seamless integration with several popular CRM platforms, making it easy to sync the enriched lead data directly into your existing workflow. The integration process is straightforward, allowing users to connect their CRM accounts with just a few clicks.

• Wide range of CRM integrations: Hunter.io supports integration with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM, covering a significant portion of the most widely used CRM solutions.
• Automatic lead synchronization: Once connected, Hunter.io automatically synchronizes the leads you save within the platform to your CRM account, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.
• Emailing integrations: In addition to CRMs, Hunter.io also integrates with Gmail and Outlook, allowing users to easily access and utilize the enriched data within their email clients.

Apollo provides a range of integration options to ensure that enriched data can be seamlessly connected to the tools and platforms where it's needed most. While the number of native integrations is limited, the company offers a robust API for custom integrations.

• CRM integrations: Apollo has native bi-directional sync with HubSpot and Salesforce, allowing for easy data transfer between the platforms.
• Outreach tool integrations: Apollo integrates with Outreach and Salesloft, two popular sales engagement platforms, enabling users to leverage enriched data in their outreach campaigns.
• Other integrations: The platform also offers integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams for gathering insights from video meetings.
• API access: For tools without a native integration, Apollo provides a well-documented API that allows developers to build custom integrations and automate data syncing.

While Apollo may not have the most extensive list of native integrations, the available options cover the most common use cases, and the API provides flexibility for users with more specific needs.

Hunter.io's data is consistently updated and verified through daily web crawling, ensuring users have access to high-quality, accurate contact information for their outreach campaigns. The platform synchronizes with the entire web to maintain a comprehensive, up-to-date database of professional email addresses.

• Extensive web crawling: Hunter.io visits millions of web pages every day to find contact information for businesses of all types.
• Diverse data sources: The platform sources data from over 76M websites, creating a robust index of verified email addresses.
• Continuous updates: Regular crawling not only discovers new leads but also updates existing data, keeping the database current.
• Vast database: Hunter.io has indexed over 107M professional email addresses, providing users with a wide range of potential contacts.

Apollo prides itself on providing high-quality, accurate data to its users. The platform leverages a vast contributor network of over 1.6M+ individuals from various sources, including their own users, to ensure the data remains up-to-date and reliable.

Key aspects of Apollo's data quality:

• Extensive data contributor network: Apollo's data is sourced from a network of over 1.6M+ individuals, including users, partners, and public sources.
• Frequent updates: The platform adds 73M+ new companies and 270M+ new contacts to its database regularly, ensuring users have access to the most current information.
• Public data crawling: Apollo enables users to crawl and extract publicly available data from websites to further enrich their database.
• Third-party data providers: The platform integrates with reputable third-party data providers to supplement its own data sources.

According to Apollo's documentation, the company places a strong emphasis on data accuracy and freshness. They employ various methods to validate and update their records, such as email verification, phone validation, and manual reviews. This commitment to data quality helps users maintain high deliverability rates and ensures their outreach efforts are targeting the right individuals.

Hunter.io simplifies the process of building targeted prospect lists for outreach campaigns. Its Domain Search feature allows you to find relevant contacts at specific companies using filters to narrow down results. You can create multiple lead lists and leverage the tool's powerful filtering capabilities to find the right prospects.

Key features of Hunter.io's prospecting tool:

• Domain search: Enter a company name or website to find associated email addresses.
• Department and seniority filters: Narrow results by a contact's department (e.g. Management, IT, Finance) and seniority level (e.g. Executive, Manager).
• Multiple lead lists: Create and manage separate lists for different campaigns or target accounts.
• Data export: Easily export prospect data via API or direct CRM integrations.

Apollo's prospecting capabilities are designed to help users efficiently build targeted lists of leads for outreach. The user-friendly interface and robust functionality make it easy to create and manage multiple lists, ensuring that sales teams can focus their efforts on the most promising prospects.

Key features of Apollo's prospecting tool:

• Advanced search filters: Find ideal prospects using a wide range of criteria, including job titles, company size, location, and more.
• Saved searches: Save frequently used search criteria for quick access and list building.
• Multiple list management: Easily create and manage multiple lists of prospects for targeted outreach campaigns.
• Direct outreach: Engage with prospects directly within the Apollo platform, streamlining the sales process.
• Export functionality: Export prospect lists for use in other tools or for offline analysis.
• Alerts: Set up alerts for job changes or other triggers to prompt timely outreach.

Hunter.io offers a flexible pricing model with four tiers to accommodate various business needs and budgets. Users can choose between monthly or yearly billing, with a 30% discount available for annual subscriptions.

Key aspects of Hunter.io's pricing:

• Free tier: Includes 25 monthly searches, 50 monthly verifications, and 1 connected email account
• Paid tiers: Starter ($34/year), Growth ($104/year), and Business ($349/year) with increasing limits on searches, verifications, and features
• Unlimited seats: All plans allow for unlimited users, with the ability to upgrade or downgrade at any time
• Additional features: Paid tiers offer access to full Domain Search results, CSV exports, SMTP/IMAP accounts, email account rotation, and attachments & images in emails

Users can get started with any plan directly from the pricing page without the need to contact a sales representative.

Apollo provides flexible pricing options to cater to various business requirements, from individual users to large organizations. The pricing model is based on credits per year, with different prices for annual and monthly billing. All plans include unlimited credits for email, subject to a 10,000 credit monthly limit per account to prevent abuse.

Key aspects of Apollo's pricing:

• Free plan: Offers 100 credits per account per month for email if the email used does not have a valid and verified corporate domain.
• Basic and Professional plans: Include a 14-day trial limited to 50 lead credits per user.
• Credits: Plans offer varying amounts of Mobile Credits and Export Credits per year, with the option to purchase additional credits.
• Features: Higher-tier plans include advanced features such as AI-Assisted Email Writing, Buying Intent & Intent Filters, and Advanced API Access.
• Organization plan: Designed for larger teams, with a minimum of 3 users and custom pricing based on specific needs.