Cold email is one of the top channels for sales in 2024 – if you have accurate data, you know what you’re doing, and you have the right tool for the job. With Apollo as your sales engagement tool, you can do it all, from sourcing leads, prospecting, reaching out using verified contact data, and closing the sale.
Today, we take a look at Apollo and why it might (not) be the sales intelligence tool your team needs.
About Apollo leads in short
Apollo is a full-stack sales engagement platform trusted by sales and marketing teams around the world. It’s a great choice for rapidly growing startups because it has a wealth of features in one app, such as:
- lead generation and sourcing
- lead enrichment
- lead scoring
- email and call sequences
- Chrome extension for communication with new leads in Gmail and LinkedIn
- for all of this, you can create content manually or get help from AI tools in this platform
Users praise the great search function that allows you to filter leads by job title and find their phone numbers. The CRM integrations are some of the best in the market. Launching sequences for new leads and making sales calls is fairly easy.
On the other hand, this platforms comes with its own issues. For a smaller company, the Apollo pricing might not be very flexible. Also, a large number of Apollo customers complain that the customer support is pretty bad.
Why Apollo might not be the right fit for sales and marketing teams
If you have multiple users on the Apollo platform, there is no unified dashboard that will help them collaborate in one place. On top of that, if your company has a physical office, the overlap of IP addresses could get your account penalized.
Some customers complain that the data, such as phone numbers and emails, could be more accurate and that getting started with sequences is not as fast as it could be. In fact, plenty of people complain that the platform suffers from an outdated user interface.
While it has a wealth of features for go-to-market teams, such as lead scoring and conversation intelligence, the overall sentiment is that there are just too many features and that the app is growing at a pace that is too fast for all the features to work well.
Apollo pricing
You can use Apollo entirely free as there is a free plan that gives you 10,000 email credits per month, as well as 60 mobile credits and 120 export credits. Paid plans start at $49 per user per month, with unlimited email credits – although you’ll have to do your own research to find out what “unlimited” means in your specific case.
There is a free trial available for 14 days.
The best Apollo alternatives to close more deals
Perhaps Apollo is too complex for your lead generation needs, you need deeper insights to close more deals, or you just don’t reach your ideal buyers with this tool. Here are some of the best alternatives to Apollo to engage your prospects and turn them into paying customers.
Woodpecker
All the features you ever needed for cold email outreach in one place. Woodpecker integrates with your favorite email marketing software, and before you even start your outreach, you can verify your lists. This way, reach out to the right people at the right companies – no fake emails in your database.
Use tried and tested email templates for outreach, and with our AI features, you can edit and adjust them to get real engagement from your leads. Split testing helps you determine which emails work best for your target audience.
Set condition-based campaigns and add manual tasks to the mix so that you can determine which type of action warrants a response from your team. Email inbox warmup helps you get ready with a brand new inbox so your deliverability stays on point. And if you run an agency, Woodpecker comes packed with features that help you generate leads for your clients.
Pricing starts at just $29 per month, which allows you to reach 500 contacts. Grab your free trial today and get started with Woodpecker!
Saleshandy
Cold email outreach doesn’t always have to be sales – you can use it for any cold outreach such as recruitment and account management. At Saleshandy, you get a unified inbox for all your sales team members, and sender rotation will help you stay out of the spam folder. You get split testing features, and email verification, but you have to pay extra for it.
For lower plans, the integration features are rather limited, and the follow-up feature is not included in all plans. Speaking of which, there are many plans, so choosing the right one can be overwhelming.
There is a free trial that lasts 7 days, and paid plans start at $36 per month.
Snov.io
With Snov.io, you don’t have to have an audience – you can use this tool to get access to a pool of fresh leads and reach out via email or LinkedIn. A sales CRM, Chrome plugin for outreach and a great LinkedIn integration come in handy for campaigns.
If you have an existing audience that is missing some fields, data enrichment is not very accurate. And on that note, email verification could be more precise, too. If you have a large number of email addresses for outreach, Snov.io can get pretty pricey.
There is a free trial with 50 credits, and paid plans start at $30 per month, which gives you 1,000 credits and 5,000 email recipients.
Overloop
Looking for one app that does it all? Overloop helps you send cold emails, do outreach on LinkedIn and make sales calls to your contacts. Speaking of which, you can use search to find new contacts as well as lead engagement tools to keep them warm.
Multichannel campaigns are a breeze. One thing that makes Overloop different is that you can use it for task management in your sales team and create workflows, assigning tasks such as emails and calls. It has its issues too, such as the app frequently breaking down. Scaling up is not easy and the tool is pretty expensive for what it is.
Plans start at $49 per month, and there is no free trial available.
Klenty
Klenty is a comprehensive sales engagement platform that helps you find companies to reach out to, get access to new contacts, and do outreach with cold emails. It integrates well with the most popular CRMs and it can help you automate both inbound and outbound sales processes.
It’s not perfect though – many users complain that the user interface is far from stellar and that it just feels outdated and buggy. Each salesperson has to create their own account, but they do share a unified inbox. The LinkedIn automation is allegedly not the greatest either, so you might be better off looking at Klenty alternatives.
Prices start at $50 per user per month, and you can grab a free trial for 14 days.
Wrapping up
Apollo is a truly capable tool that can help any business with its marketing and sales and unlock the growth potential of your contact database. But the problem is just that – it gives you access to a lot of features, many of which feel half-baked. Combine it with bad customer services and inflexible pricing, and you’ll see why many companies look for Apollo alternatives.
You don’t have to look far and wide – with Woodpecker, you can engage prospects and close new deals with laser-like accuracy. Connect with your prospects, personalize your emails with AI, and get more money from your database.