Apollo.io vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apollo.io
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Apollo is a sales intelligence platform with tools to help users engage with prospects. Sellers and marketers can use Apollo to discover more customers in market, connect with contacts, and establish a modern go-to-market strategy. Apollo's B2B Database includes over 220M contacts and 30M companies. Teams can leverage Apollo’s Engagement Suite to scale outbound activity and sequences effectively. Finally, Apollo's Intelligence Engine supports the user's go-to-market processes…
$59
per month
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a platform for sales with a community of Sellers, Sales Leaders, and Sales Operations, who use the solution to grow sales and increase productivity. The AI CRM for Sales features data built right in, so that companies can sell faster, sell smarter and sell efficiently. Salesforce Sales Cloud is used for, and supports: Buyer Engagement Sales Engagement Enablement Sales AI Sales Analytics Team…
$25
per month
Pricing
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Editions & Modules
Basic
$59
per month per user
Professional
$99
per month per user
Organization
$1,188
per year per user
Starter
$25.00
Per User/Per Month
Professional
$80.00
Per User/Per Month
Enterprise
$165.00
Per User/Per Month
Unlimited
$330.00
Per user/Per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details20% discount for annual billing on the Basic and Professional plans.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Considered Both Products
Apollo.io
Chose Apollo.io
Salesforce.com: I used this as my sole form of outreach at a previous job of mine. In my mind, Apollo is a much easier and more automated way to reach out. Apollo actually has a Salesforce integration too, in case you'd like to use both. I like Apollo better because it is just …
Salesforce Sales Cloud

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Prospecting
Comparison of Prospecting features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
8.2
11 Ratings
8% above category average
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Advanced search8.511 Ratings00 Ratings
Identification of new leads7.411 Ratings00 Ratings
List quality8.211 Ratings00 Ratings
List upload/download8.910 Ratings00 Ratings
Ideal customer targeting8.311 Ratings00 Ratings
Load time/data access7.811 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Data Standards
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Data Standards features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
6.8
11 Ratings
10% below category average
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Contact information6.611 Ratings00 Ratings
Company information6.711 Ratings00 Ratings
Industry information7.210 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification
Comparison of Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
8.4
11 Ratings
13% above category average
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Lead qualification process8.48 Ratings00 Ratings
Smart lists and recommendations8.69 Ratings00 Ratings
Salesforce integration9.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Company/business profiles8.510 Ratings00 Ratings
Alerts and reminders8.88 Ratings00 Ratings
Data hygiene8.810 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic data refresh9.39 Ratings00 Ratings
Tags5.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Filters and segmentation8.810 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Email Features
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Email Features features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
8.8
7 Ratings
15% above category average
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Sales email templates7.77 Ratings00 Ratings
Append emails to records9.96 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
239 Ratings
0% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.6239 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings7.9230 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.4183 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.4233 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings7.5218 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings7.2190 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.5173 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings7.5204 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings7.6165 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.5
81 Ratings
0% above category average
Case management00 Ratings7.881 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings7.564 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings7.366 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
218 Ratings
2% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings7.9213 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings7.4182 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.5
221 Ratings
1% below category average
Task management00 Ratings7.5211 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings7.157 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings7.8174 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.8
234 Ratings
2% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings7.4203 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings7.8222 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.2231 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.1
225 Ratings
7% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings8.1223 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings8.1213 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings7.9158 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings8.1186 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.7
227 Ratings
4% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.8194 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.6200 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.4
143 Ratings
2% above category average
Social data00 Ratings7.5142 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings7.3139 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.8
194 Ratings
9% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings7.8190 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings7.8130 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.1
205 Ratings
5% below category average
Mobile access00 Ratings7.1205 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Small Businesses
Lead411
Lead411
Score 9.1 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Lead411
Lead411
Score 9.1 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
D&B Hoovers
D&B Hoovers
Score 8.6 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(30 ratings)
8.4
(371 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(56 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(120 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(27 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(5 ratings)
5.7
(91 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(11 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(9 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(30 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(8 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apollo.ioSalesforce Sales Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Apollo.io
Best suited for contact discovery on LinkedIn or for that matter any website, but it works best on LinkedIn. It saves tons of work, you can simply select the complete list of people you want to contact and put them directly into an email sequence. It is a little difficult to find contact info on other websites.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce Sales Cloud is, in my experience, well suited to large B2B businesses who are driving demand and lead generation, and tracking customers through the funnel. It is a system we needed for a long time and has made a huge difference. However, I think it would have been more appropriate for a smaller business / a business who sets this up earlier on. There are great advantages to having historical data. It is really useful for allowing all commercial teams to work together, including sales, new business, marketing, client success etc. However, it relies too much too often on human error. If more things were automated and simpler, perhaps with AI queries, it could be easier to use
Read full review
Pros
Apollo.io
  • Allows users to easily add new prospects to database without much manual effort at all
  • Allows you to make cold calls from different area codes that are relevant to where your prospect is located
  • Allows A/B testing for emails so you can figure out which ones are gaining the most traction
  • You can also find prospects based off of title, company, technologies, etc
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Logging notes: SF makes it easy to log notes in the timeline or static notes that live in an easy-to-see spot for longevity.
  • Logging activities: It's easy to post a call, text, email, etc.
  • API data: Once connected, SF is critical to automation, such as website activity, login activity, pages visited, etc., which saves the Customer Success side time in understanding account activity.
  • Custom fields: you can add custom fields to really personalize your experience. We use quite a few and it's brilliant.
Read full review
Cons
Apollo.io
  • Their customer service is just terrible. You get an assigned account manager but 9/10 times they wouldn't know what you wanted and/or how the product works or how to fix it. Vast majority of the time it was a canned response that made you question if they read the message, or if they read it and did not understand a word.
  • The software was relatively buggy and lacked features that were promised upon signup. They seem to have some large corporate clients and if you aren't one none of your bug submissions, feature requests, or concerns will be addressed.
  • Their growing quickly so they seem to be very understaffed which I believe caused many of the issues above.
  • The data, while good, can quickly run out if you're looking for specific types of leads. If you're looking for something generic like Managers at companies between 10-5000 people, you can pull leads all day every day. However if you're looking for a specific industry, specific title, and specific location - don't count on having an endless supply of leads (or even really enough to use month after month).
Read full review
Salesforce
  • I have hard-coded the auto-update of the phone number format and state format from some codes shared by the community, but I do not know where to do it. I cannot reset it either.
  • It is unclear what functionalities each version has. We use the enterprise version, and it seems we can only have one design of the pipeline. But different business segments would have very different sales cycles, and hence, pipeline tracking would be different. It would be nice to have this available in our version.
  • It seems I cannot create a report to pull notes logged at the account levels.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
Read full review
Usability
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce has been designed on the basis of "Clicks, not code". So anyone willing to learn the Salesforce user interface (which is quite good as far as management software platforms go) is able to become a Salesforce user or even a Salesforce administrator. You don't have to know coding language to work in the Salesforce environment. Also, Salesforce has one of the best software training resources (Trailhead) that I have ever encountered. It is free to all, easy to use, and most importantly it is interactive. No scrolling through endless text in a user manual. There are hands-on modules and related videos interlaced and through it all you earn points and badges to display your level of learning.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
Read full review
Performance
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
Read full review
Support Rating
Apollo.io
I received excellent support at any time I opened up a ticket. But I would add to it that the tool was very self-explanatory, so there wasn't much need for support. With Outreach, we have a closer relationship with our CSM because of the intricacy in things like SFDC task mapping.
Read full review
Salesforce
The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
Read full review
Online Training
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
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Alternatives Considered
Apollo.io
I have also looked into and tried Hunter.io and Lusha, and to be honest, I shouldn't compare them with Apollo. I have found Apollo to be so easy to integrate and use with all of my prospecting that I haven't really even tried out the other two. I bet I could find some useful things by using Hunter.io or Lusha as well, but there is honestly no need since I can do everything I want and more with Apollo. I would just be wasting time trying to figure out another platform when I can be focused on growing my own business with Apollo.
Read full review
Salesforce
The thing that puts Sales Cloud above the top is its simple user interface, which is easy to interact with. The visuals and automation are also quite amazing. Given its attention to data and customer relationship management, Sales Cloud is tough to beat. Of course, Microsoft Dynamics integrates nicely with other Microsoft products, and Monday is a tool everyone is familiar with, so it is hard to compete with those.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
Read full review
Scalability
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce sales cloud implementation can give you the desired outcome for your business. Its workflow, approval, sync, and file-sharing features help automate the process. The Macros feature helps business to shorten their sales cycle. Sales Cloud also allows businesses to make the right decision with its real-time business insights and analysis.
Read full review
Professional Services
Apollo.io
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apollo.io
  • Generated a lot of expectations that were not real when we needed them
  • The ROI was positive but we decided to stop using the tool
  • We loved how easy to use it was and how easy it was to interact with the Support team
  • There is room for improvement in the video tutorials - they were from old versions of the software that would not be useful for the version at hand
Read full review
Salesforce
  • All tools we've implemented with Salesforce had a pretty quick positive ROI with the exception of CPQ & Billing. That was a very large project that I would only suggest for businesses with many SKUs that tend to be packaged together.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Apollo.io Screenshots

Screenshot of Find every prospect. Uncover high-intent contacts in your market.Screenshot of Connect with every contact. Orchestrate multi-step sequences at scale.Screenshot of Optimize your sales strategy. Unlock efficiencies and opportunities across your entire workflow.Screenshot of Apollo B2B Lead Database - Access data on more than 250M people and companies.Screenshot of Apollo Engagement Suite - Automate personalized messages across your entire pipeline.Screenshot of Apollo Intelligence Engine - Improve your revenue strategy across your workflow and boost efficiencies.

Salesforce Sales Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of