Apollo.io vs. Cognism

When prospecting startups using specific technologies (e.g., Segment, HubSpot, or AWS), Apollo’s technographic filters allowed us to rapidly build precise lead lists, which we enriched and exported to our CRM in minutes. This level of targeting is ideal for partners, integrations, or reseller programs. Phone number accuracy can be inconsistent, especially for direct dials. If your team’s primary outreach method is cold calling, Apollo may require supplementation with other phone data providers, such as ZoomInfo or Cognism.

Incentivized

In terms of giving "upfront" info about the data, Cognism is well suited. I've used Lusha and LeadIQ in the past, and they don't give insights on DNC as Cognism does. They also don't give a headsup on whether the phone number is direct, mobile, or office and the only way to find that out is through calling those phone numbers directly.

Incentivized

• Consolidates tool and packs in a lot of functionality
• Keeps up with the industry trends for prospecting and data enrichment
• Offers the basics you need to get going
• Account mapping to Salesforce - reps can prospect in Apollo and can easily toggle on views to only see their own accounts.

Incentivized

• They give us a headsup if the phone number is direct, mobile, or HQ
• They advise us if the email is verified - that reduces our bounce rate.
• They also advise us if our prospect's number is in the DNC list

Incentivized

• Their reliability has been an issue for our team. The product has been down multiple times since I've been a user.
• Some times prospects titles/roles are out of date, so keeping up with those a bit more would be helpful during sourcing
• I've received a lot of spam calls that are completely irrelevant to me, but it comes down to an issue on their side with using so many numbers from different area codes. This was a major pain in the beginning, but has subsided a bit.

Incentivized

• Data are not 100% accurate, which is normal for every data enrichment tool. But at least we could flag it to them so they could improve it.
• Sometimes, I'm having problems exporting info into SFDC.
• Wish I could also export the contacts directly to Outreach.

Incentivized

Generally quite a reliable tool with decent data quality/availability. Pricing works well for our team and our use case

Incentivized

It has all the tools and filters you need, but it can look a bit busy and cluttered on the screen sometimes. I would suggest having "rooms". When you go into a certain part it's just the filters you need. Once you set the filters they dissapear and you can see your results, with the option to open up the sidebar if you need to.

Incentivized

The team wants to solve probelms, but we are finding that they don't know how to solve the more technical issues quickly. I suspect that they don't have a mature process for escalations, and they don't have a usable knowledge base article repository. They seems to push emails around to let us know that people are working on the issues to find solutions, but this takes weeks and oftentimes still leaves us without a resolution.

Incentivized

We're awaiting Apollo.io's promise to fix the bugs, we've been waiting for almost 3 months now and the patience is getting near the end... We tried Clay and it seems super promising, though it's more expensive than Apollo.io, we will definitively consider it if Apollo.io doesn't fix their bugs soon.

Incentivized

Data quality for phone numbers in APAC

Incentivized

• The ROI on saving time prospecting is good, but the ROI of having to work around their buggy platform is terrible.
• Unfortunately the fact that you need to significantly invest in the platform in order to make it work well makes the ROI a lot harder. Because the system you set up with determine who is/isn't prospected going forward, if you have a lot of companies/clients that you have prospected or work with, you have to do a lot of work to make sure they're set up appropriately and not being reached out to again.
• Their price per lead used to be good, but it seems they're raising their prices as they grow so I'm not sure they're even worth going to for leads anymore.

Incentivized

• We were able to reach prospective customers through phone or email
• We save time not dialing office numbers, because Cognism gives us a heads up on that
• We don't annoy prospects who don't want unsolicited phone calls, since Cognism advise us if the number is in DNC

Incentivized