Item: Clay
Rating: 8
Author: Gab Lubliner

Overall Satisfaction with Clay

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it as part of our fairly complicated internal routing workflows, as part of process automations for our CRM, and for many end to end enrichment motions varying from total cold top of funnel prospecting to upsell enrichments for various products motions. It is a major component of our RevOps and MarOps strategy.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Consolidates contact databases in one place
Fairly easy to use UI
General process automation

Cons

Integrations, especially with APIs, need to be built out better
Further support for additional providers for enrichment information
Some of the backend is exposed on the front end with 'do not touch' helper text - this needs to be hidden from the end user

Return on Investment

Generated 1mm ARR via cross-sell/upsell motions
Generated another 1mm in pipeline for cold outbound motions
Caused multiple API overages with both Snowflake and Salesforce because of lack of bulk API functionality

Usability

The idea of it is really good. It's an easier to use version of a lot of process automation software that already exists. It's a better data aggregator than a lot of the existing contact databases. It sort of has everything you need mostly in one place, and they're adding a lot constantly.

But it also feels like it needs work on how it's been engineered. It doesn't feel like I'm using a platform built by engineers, it feels like I'm using a platform built by marketers. It feels like it's an easy to use option, but once you get into complicated use cases, it feels like trying to force a WYSIWYG editor to do things it's not capable of.

Alternatives Considered

Airtable, Zapier, Momentum.io, 6sense and n8n

It's just different, honestly. I think it's a good 'out of the box' solution. It's got almost everything out could need in one place. But it's a little too powerful and far too expensive for the true scrappy startup compared to Airtable + integrations. And it's too narrow in terms of wider capabilities compared to something like n8n. It is good for a general user at established startups up to enterprise, and it is easier to use than many of the alternatives. We use Clay in conjunction with Zapier for functionality that Clay lacks.

Key Insights

Do you think Clay delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Clay's feature set?

Yes

Did Clay live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Clay go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Clay again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Zapier, OpenAI API Platform

Likelihood to Recommend

Good use case: Enriching already established segments with waterfall data. Also monitoring already established segments for buying and intent signals. Basically anything where the target is already identified, it helps sharpen the view.
Not the best use case: Complex automations that require any kind of heavy coding, or really anything beyond rudimentary JavaScript.

Clay Feature Ratings

Comments

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Has The Potential To Be Great

Software Version