Apollo.io vs. Salesforce Starter

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apollo.io
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Apollo is a sales platform that helps revenue teams find and engage leads, automate outreach, manage deals, and enrich data.
$59
per month per user
Salesforce Starter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Salesforce Starter (formerly Salesforce Essentials) is a small business CRM that replaces the former SalesforceIQ product. It is priced at $35 per user, on a monthly basis, or at $25 per month for if billed annually ($300) and can be tried free for 14 days on a trial.
$35
per month per user
Pricing
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Editions & Modules
Basic
$59
per month per user
Professional
$99
per month per user
Organization
$1,188
per year per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details20% discount for annual billing on the Basic and Professional plans.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Considered Both Products
Apollo.io
Chose Apollo.io
I researched what would be best for small medtech startups and Apollo.io was the top choice. The other's begin to get too pricey for advanced features. For a little over $100/month, you can get a lot done with Apollo.io. I have not used the others so I can't really compare too …
Salesforce Starter

No answer on this topic

Features
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Prospecting
Comparison of Prospecting features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
8.2
171 Ratings
6% above category average
Salesforce Starter
-
Ratings
Advanced search8.4167 Ratings00 Ratings
Identification of new leads8.3167 Ratings00 Ratings
List quality7.8169 Ratings00 Ratings
List upload/download8.5158 Ratings00 Ratings
Ideal customer targeting8.0165 Ratings00 Ratings
Load time/data access8.2167 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Data Standards
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Data Standards features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
8.1
169 Ratings
4% above category average
Salesforce Starter
-
Ratings
Contact information8.1169 Ratings00 Ratings
Company information8.2169 Ratings00 Ratings
Industry information8.0167 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification
Comparison of Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
7.8
167 Ratings
5% above category average
Salesforce Starter
-
Ratings
Lead qualification process7.7156 Ratings00 Ratings
Smart lists and recommendations7.6154 Ratings00 Ratings
Salesforce integration8.298 Ratings00 Ratings
Company/business profiles8.1161 Ratings00 Ratings
Alerts and reminders7.7142 Ratings00 Ratings
Data hygiene7.5160 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic data refresh7.5154 Ratings00 Ratings
Tags7.7131 Ratings00 Ratings
Filters and segmentation8.2157 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Email Features
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Email Features features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
7.7
150 Ratings
3% above category average
Salesforce Starter
-
Ratings
Sales email templates7.7149 Ratings00 Ratings
Append emails to records7.8138 Ratings00 Ratings
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
8.7
7 Ratings
11% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings7.67 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.67 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings9.66 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings9.45 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings9.75 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
7.7
6 Ratings
1% below category average
Lead management00 Ratings7.76 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
8.3
5 Ratings
8% above category average
Task management00 Ratings9.45 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings6.75 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings8.95 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
9.0
5 Ratings
16% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings8.85 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings9.35 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
7.3
6 Ratings
5% below category average
Custom fields00 Ratings7.66 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings7.65 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings6.35 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings7.75 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
8.9
6 Ratings
6% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.96 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.96 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
8.4
5 Ratings
12% above category average
Social engagement00 Ratings8.45 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
8.1
5 Ratings
8% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings8.35 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Apollo.io
-
Ratings
Salesforce Starter
8.4
6 Ratings
10% above category average
Mobile access00 Ratings8.46 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Small Businesses
Lead411
Lead411
Score 8.2 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Lead411
Lead411
Score 8.2 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
TechTarget Priority Engine
TechTarget Priority Engine
Score 10.0 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(162 ratings)
9.0
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(2 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(134 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apollo.ioSalesforce Starter
Likelihood to Recommend
Apollo.io
Apollo.io played big role for us in saving $$$ by bringing data mining, AI Email Writing and acting as CRM altogether...for small to medium organization they can surely rely on Apollo.io...and it is doing things mostly right with some room for improvement for sure. Sales and Marketing team saves time in getting their emails drafted based on prompts, list of contacts they can fetch in minutes of time, earlier we used to have seperate tool just to mine data, then we used to upload the CSV file to email marketing tool, then we used to draft email...for all these process we were using three different tools - Apollo.io brought everything under one umbrella.
Read full review
Salesforce
If you own a business that has complex selling processes or requires integrations with 3rd party tools/systems, you should look at Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited editions. Salesforce operates very well across pretty much every industry, but not all sales, marketing, and operational processes are created equal. If your marketing process requires a long list of sendable contacts then I would recommend adding on Pardot or Hubspot. Always start small and scale up, to avoid boxing yourself in down the road.
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Pros
Apollo.io
  • Firstly, finding the details of the potential customers that is there name, designation email and phone number since these are the most important cases most of the times I can get this data in Apollo.io
  • I can pull the bulk data of the targeted organization, or I can pull the emails based on the location and job titles
  • Apart from the email capture, the thing which helpful is that the email sequence can find emails and send emails in Apollo.io itself and also the report and the dashboard are so clean
  • Friendly UI and UX Apollo.io was the first tool which I used. Since then I'm still using Apollo.io for easy understanding
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Tracking phone calls is extremely easy when using the app on the iphone. After a phone call is complete it prompts the user to enter in call details.
  • SalesforceIQ also automatically logs emails for us. This has saved us time from entering in information manually.
  • SalesforceIQ was easy to set up and allowed us customization for fields that were relevant to our business.
Read full review
Cons
Apollo.io
  • There are certain features about prospecting that require updates. For example, if people switch organisations, it should be automatically requesting the new email or new contact data for a particular contact in order to be updated in the system
  • The lead databases that are created if their new addition should automatically be updated in the list that I created with Apollo.io
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Table views can be sorted by column. Filters can be applied, but only to one column. Multi-column filtering like Excel allows would be extremely useful and a big improvement.
  • The ability to quick copy data in a table view would also be helpful, like (ctrl ') in excel.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apollo.io
at this moment Apollo.io seems to be the perfect tool that has mastered all aspects of outbound marketing and CRM to handle and manage sales cycle.
Read full review
Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Usability
Apollo.io
Apollo.io does provide campaign setup help and made my SDRs team's life easier, with the use of lead enrichment, lead distribution, I can manage my team from a single dashboard. It also comes with CRM that helps me navigate the progress on leads and what my SDRs progress.
Read full review
Salesforce
The system is very user-friendly on a desktop but lacks mobile friendliness. The Customer relationship manager disappears after the deal is signed. We struggled to get the system in a usable format, which was not cost-effective. The CRM system on desktop was great but way more complicated than it should be.
Read full review
Support Rating
Apollo.io
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.
Read full review
Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Apollo.io
All of these platforms are good and offer valuable tools, but where Apollo.io is different is how this one platform does the job of several different ones. It is nice not having to use multiple platforms to get things done and makes integration and analytics issues occur less often. It is user friendly and constantly working to improve.
Read full review
Salesforce
more expensive but as an industry leader and go, the learning curve pays for itself in ROI in lost time in onboarding
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apollo.io
  • It provides more opportunities to gather more clients.
  • It gives more results and better results in targeting our sales.
  • It is a more effective way to provide information to a large number of potential clients about the events/ projects the company is offering.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • It made the job more efficient for staff so they can spend time doing other tasks rather than configuring and maintaining Salesforce Starter.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Apollo.io Screenshots

Screenshot of people, appearing in ApolloScreenshot of Apollo's data enrichment dashboardScreenshot of a view of unified customer dataScreenshot of Apollo's AI-assisted meetings

Salesforce Starter Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of