If you are looking for a detailed Apollo.io review, it would probably mean that you need an easy-to-use prospecting software for your cold outreach.
Apollo.io is a versatile tool designed for sales and recruiting pros. Whether you’re finding potential customers, turning leads into connections, or making those connections count, it’s packed with features that show its dedication to making sales and marketing easier.
In this Apollo.io review blog, we shall discuss your return on investment by using Apollo. We will also give in-depth insights on its
- Interface
- Features
- Pricing
- Pros & Cons
- User reviews
making it easy to decide if it is an appropriate sales prospecting platform for you.
Disclaimer: This Apollo.io review is written by SmartReach.io, a direct competitor of Apollo.io. But our review is completely unbiased. Its is a superb tool. We have laid it all out for you. SmartReach provides all of the features and more.
Apollo.io review – An overview of the platform
Apollo.io is a sales engagement platform catering to the needs of businesses seeking lead generation, contact database management, and email outreach solutions.
It helps the B2B enterprises’s need for comprehensive data on business contacts, encompassing vital information such as phone numbers and email addresses.
Apollo provides an extensive database comprising 275+ million data points, complemented by tools for data enrichment and multichannel outreach. There are a few caveats which I will highlight later.
Within its system, the platform incorporates capabilities for cold emailing and cold calling, presenting itself as a prospective all-encompassing solution for both data management and outreach activities.
Apollo.io provides a range of features and tools to enhance sales performance and boost lead generation for businesses of all sizes. Its customer base includes both small and large companies.
Additionally, the platform includes features such as buyer intent data, a crucial element for enhancing targeted marketing and sales initiatives.
Apollo.io review – User Interface
Apollo’s interface is very clean and has an easy-to-navigate dashboard. On the dashboard of their app, they have listed their solutions, such as Engage, Conversations, Deals, Enrich, and Plays.
Under home, you have three options.
Control center: Here, you get an overview of the emails you have sent, the number of calls you have made, and the associated results.
Data health center: This enables you to monitor the quality and coverage of your data in a single view.
Onboarding hub: Here, the tool provides a step-by-step guide on how to complete the setup.
Apollo.io features an expansive database of over 275 million contacts, accessible through the ‘Search‘ functionality. This tool allows you to find leads by applying filters such as industry, job title, location, company size, and more.
One of the important filters that Apollo.io provides is ‘persona.’ You can create your target persona either with the help of AI assistance or manually based on your criteria.
Apollo.io provides an option to manage your contact list. You can choose the prospect’s contact details either to be included or excluded from the list.
Off-Topic Discussion: If you are looking to build a prospect list based on your target persona, then do check out ProspectDaddy – a prospect finder tool that gives business email, LinkedIn profile URLs, name, designation, company, etc. You could build a list of over 400 prospects (target audience) in less than an hour. Magic 😉
Under Engage, you will be able to perform your outreach tasks such as create sequences, run email campaigns, and making calls, AI-assisted email content, meeting scheduling and workflows.
Under Conversation, you can record, transcribe, and analyze video call meetings with automatic features. It can save time by giving insights from AI-generated meeting summaries.
Under Enrich (enrichment), Apollo.io concentrates on improving your current customer and prospect data with additional valuable information. This includes adding details such as contact information, company size, industry type, technological usage, and other pertinent business intelligence.
Under Plays, you can automate adding prospects to particular campaigns based on given criteria.
Apollo.io review – Features explained & analyzed
Apollo offers a wide range of features that are challenging to cover comprehensively. In this section, we will break down the main features of the platform and assess how they can benefit your sales team.
Lead Database
Apollo.io stands out with its database, including over 275 million contacts and 60 million companies. Apollo assists in creating lists and precise filtering with over 65 data attributes, allowing you to find ideal leads.
This extensive coverage ensures that sales teams have access to a vast pool of potential leads for targeting.
Advanced filters
You can easily filter through these data points with precision on the platform, ensuring highly targeted lead generation. It provides a variety of filters to assist you in refining your search criteria – states the Head of Sales and trekking expert from Bookatrekking specializing in Eagle Walk.
Their list of filters includes:
| List | Persona | Name |
| Job Titles | Company | Location |
| Employees | Buying Intent | Industry |
| Email Status | Scores | Keywords |
| Funding | Job Postings | Technologies |
| Revenue | Email opened | Signals |
Apollo also offers even more precise filtering options to narrow down your search.
Saved List
Apollo.io provides an option to create different lists of your prospect’s contacts, helping you to keep your data organized. This feature is essential if you are handling a huge amount of data.
Plays (similar to Workflows)
You can automate adding prospects to any campaign by setting the condition under play. This will ease your outreach process.
Buyer Intent Filter
Apollo.io’s Buying Intent Filter is designed to assist you in reaching potential clients who are actively looking for services or products in their industry.
This feature goes beyond just identifying leads; it helps you find leads that are already in the midst of the buying process. Apollo.io offers a selection of over 14,000 topics for you to choose from.
When people in a company search for topics related to your product or service, it triggers an intent signal. Apollo then ranks these companies based on their intent score. This makes it simple for you to spot and focus on the companies actively searching for a solution that your company offers.
Apollo.io’s lead database can be a powerful tool for prospecting and finding new clients, but like any platform, it has its pros and cons. Here’s a breakdown to help you decide if it’s the right fit for you:
Sales Outreach
Apollo.io goes beyond being just a lead generation database; it’s a robust platform for carrying out and overseeing outreach campaigns. It offers outreach via email, LinkedIn, and cold calling channels.
Email Sequence
With Apollo, you can create email sequences via three options: AI-generated text, select from templates, or write your script. It also provides a personalization feature, making it easy for your cold outreach.
A/B testing of email content and the subject line lets you monitor the effectiveness of your emails.
Cold Calling
In Apollo, you can use the in-app dialer to both make and receive phone calls. This feature lets you reach out to the leads you find on the platform. Plus, you can activate automatic call recording, transcriptions, and CRM logging.
LinkedIn Tasks
Apollo allows you to create LinkedIn tasks in your outreach sequence. In the LinkedIn tasks you can view profile, send connect request, send message and interact with your prospect’s posts.
Tasks Management
Apollo.io provides features for task management, helping sales teams stay organized and on track with their outreach activities.
You can create tasks like phone calls, follow-up emails, and to-do items. Each task will prompt you to take the necessary steps once certain conditions are met, like a timeframe or a specific engagement level.
In Apollo, trigger events automatically generate a task when a prospect meets specific engagement criteria.
Task priority assists you, or your team members, in planning your day effectively and concentrating on the most crucial tasks first. You can assign priorities to steps in a sequence, making it easy to organize and sort them in your daily task lists.
CRM Enrichment
CRM Enrichment in Apollo lets you update and enhance the records in your CRM.
Your contact and account information can change, like companies being acquired or opening new offices and people switching roles or moving to new cities. With CRM Enrichment, you can easily capture these changes and ensure that the data in your CRM stays synchronized with the data in Apollo.
Apollo provides CRM integration with Salesforce and Hubspot. You can connect other CRMs using Zapier. Apollo also offers integration with other sales engagement platforms like Salesloft, Outreach, Sendgrid & Marketo
Analytics
You can monitor your email performance to gather useful insights about your target audience. The more you analyze what is effective and what isn’t, the better you can test and enhance your sequences to boost engagement.
You have access to analytics features, including email tracking and reports provided by Apollo, for email messaging, deal metrics, and other insights through dashboards.
Apollo.io review – Plans & Pricing
| Feature | Free Plan | Basic Plan | Professional Plan | Organization Plan |
| Pricing | Free | Starts at $59/user/month | Starts at $99/user/month | Starts at $119/user/month |
| Email Credits | Unlimited (up to 10,000/month) | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Mobile Credits (per month) | 5 | 75 | 100 | 200 |
| Export Credits (per month) | 10 | 1,000 | 2,000 | 4,000 |
| Filters | Basic | Advanced | Advanced | Advanced + Custom Filters |
| Data Enrichment | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email Sequences | Limited (2 sequence) | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| A/B Testing | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Call Recording | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Buying Intent | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 |
| Advanced Reporting | No | Basic | Yes | Yes + Custom Reporting |
| Plays | 2 | 2 | 20 | 200 |
| Single-Sign-On | No | No | No | Yes |
| AI-Generated Words Limit | 5000/month | 5000/month | 3,00,000/month | 1,000,000/month |
Keep in mind that the best plan for you depends on your specific business needs and budget. Take a close look at your requirements and choose the plan that matches your goals the most.
Apollo.io Review: Pros & Cons
Based on recent reviews from various sites like G2, TrustRadius, etc, here are some of the latest pros and limitations of Apollo.io as of February 2024
Remember, the below-mentioned pros and cons are based on user reviews and might not apply to everyone’s experience.
Pros of using Apollo.io
Database Comprehensiveness:
- Accurate and enriched data: Apollo’s massive database covers email addresses, phone numbers, company details, social media profiles, and even technical details. This detailed information lets you personalize your outreach efforts and boost engagement.
- Saving significant time: Directly add leads to outreach sequences from the search interface.
- Users consistently highlight its comprehensiveness compared to competitors.
- Powerful search and filtering options: Find exactly the leads you need with extensive search filters based on various criteria like job title, company size, funding stage, and more.
Ease of Use and Integration:
- Apollo offers a user-friendly interface and smooth navigation within the platform.
- Apollo’s Chrome extension helps you find contact information directly on LinkedIn
- Apollo.io integrates with various sales and marketing tools like CRMs, email platforms, and calendars, streamlining workflows.
Other Positive Aspects:
- You write one email and set the schedule, and Apollo handles the rest, saving you time and effort.
- Test different email versions and subject lines to see what works best, constantly improving your campaign performance.
- Track key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and response rates to understand what’s working and what needs adjustment.
- The platform’s lead scoring system helps you prioritize outreach efforts based on engagement and potential value.
- You can create and share playbooks outlining best practices for specific prospecting scenarios.
- For larger enterprises, Apollo.io offers dedicated account management for personalized support and training.
Cons of using Apollo.io
Based on recent reviews from various sites like G2, TrustRadius, etc, here are some of the latest limitations of Apollo.io as of February, 2024
Data and Export:
- Getting personal phone numbers for contacts comes with an additional cost, and this can accumulate, particularly for businesses that concentrate on cold calling.
- Data freshness limitations: While generally accurate, some users report occasional outdated information, especially for smaller companies.
- Apollo.io imposes limits on the number of leads you can search for, export, or contact per month. This can be restrictive for high-volume prospecting.
- By using Apollo.io you automatically become part of Apollo’s Data Contributor Network. So prospect data uploaded by you is enriched and shared with the network and in return you get access to the network-enriched data. This is normally a challenge if your business is heavily regulated.
Integrations and Features:
- Overreliance on templates can lead to generic messages that feel robotic and impersonal.
- Users have reported challenges integrating Apollo.io with their existing systems, requiring additional effort and technical expertise.
- While Apollo offers basic email and sequence tracking, its broader analytics and reporting capabilities are considered weaker compared to some CRM platforms.
- While you can personalize emails, the platform’s structure might not allow for highly customized outreach strategies.
- Apollo does not provide prospect via Whatsapp and SMS.
- Its chrome extension can sometimes experience bugs or slow performance, disrupting workflows.
Pricing and Usage:
- Accessing personal phone numbers requires extra payment, adding to the overall cost, especially for businesses heavily reliant on cold calling.
- Unlimited plans have fair use policies restricting credits per account, potentially requiring additional purchases for high-volume users.
- Apollo restricts mass cold emailing, which might not be suitable for businesses relying heavily on this outreach strategy.
Additional considerations:
- Support – Some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the helpfulness and responsiveness of Apollo.io’s support team when encountering issues.
- The platform has some advanced features that might require some time to learn and master.
- If you are interested in testing its features, Apollo does not allow a trial on all its features.
Apollo.io reviews – What do users have to say?
If you are planning to take a subscription to Apollo.io for your business, then it is worth taking a look at the reviews of G2, Getapp, Trust Radius, and other review sites.
On G2, Apollo.io gets 4.8 out of 5, and that is good.
For your convenience, we are listing some of the Apollo.io reviews given by their users.
G2 Rating: 5/5
Danny M.
Account Strategist, Pharmaceutical
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
| “#2 yet #1“ Clarity in their knowledge base is somewhat lacking, but they do make up for that part with webinars, resources, and fast and attentive support which has a ‘we care’ vibe, as opposed to some others. Read More |
The customer belongs to a mid-market business, so price might not be a factor for them. They find the tool useful along with the full feature set, providing them with a great data set. With the type of service they get from Apollo.io, they might overlook the shortcomings of the software.
G2 Rating: 4/5
Gregg W.
Director IT
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
| “Great and super logical and intuitive” This is nonsense, really, and dilutes the product in my opinion. Not a well-thought-out payment structure. Also, Custom and Pro Plans state UNLIMITED CONTACTS – but then in fine print they say there is a “fair access plan” and you actually are limited, totaly. It is a complete bait and switch. Read more |
Now take a look at this review, where the user enjoys their huge lead database and email sequencing. However, the user has concerns with the pricing plan. The user belongs to a small business, so the pricing might be an issue to get quality results. Even after paying customs charges, the customer’s grievance is not addressed.
G2 rating: 3/5
James M.
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
| “Apollo is good for prospecting but has poor customer service and Chrome extension often has bugs” The updated extension had significant issues for around two months before it was fixed, and getting updates from customer service was very challenging/not transparent. Read more |
Even though the users like the features and the product offering, they experience poor customer service and issues in their extensions.
G2 rating: 1/5
Verified User in Insurance
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
| “Expect to spend half of your credits on data that is on spam lists (they won’t refund you for it)” Do NOT integrate Apollo with your CRM. They take all of the data in it, and sell it to their customers. And they will not tell you they are doing it. Read more |
Data security might be one of the big issues faced by its users. Another major issue with the platform is the accuracy of its data and the complexity of its interface.
Certain users have mentioned experiencing technical problems with the platform, including slow loading times or glitches that can make it challenging to use.
The vast database of over 275 million contacts brings along its share of inaccuracies, resulting in wasted time and effort reaching out to non-existent or irrelevant contacts.
Although the platform offers data enrichment, it may not seamlessly integrate with other tools, leading to additional manual work and data entry requirements. While powerful and sophisticated, this also implies a learning curve when getting started.
Apollo.io’s No. 1 Alternative – SmartReach.io
Although Apollo.io is a strong platform for lead generation and outreach, it’s not the sole option available. The market for these tools is dynamic and competitive. There are many tools available such as SmartReach.io, Outreach, SalesLoft, etc.
Let’s see what are the key features of SmartReach.io and how it can be a better sales engagement platform than Apollo.io.
SmartReach is a sales engagement platform that helps with your end-to-end outreach activities. You can find & outreach prospects via multiple channels, manage their responses, analyzing detailed reports to make informed decisions and close the deal faster.
Let’s check the key features that SmartReach.io provides.
Prospect Finder: SmartReach provides ProspectDaddy with contact details like email, LinkedIn URL, name, etc., of your prospects on LinkedIn.
AI Content Generation: You can leverage free AI-powered email content, where you can generate different variations of email copy and choose the one you feel is relevant.
Multichannel Outreach: SmartReach offers a multichannel feature that allows you to contact prospects through email, Linkedin, WhatsApp, SMS, and calls.
Full Email Automation: You get the option to run a completely automated and unlimited email sequence. It provides multiple features that aid email deliverability and productivity.
Full LinkedIn Automation: The SEP provides fully automated LinkedIn tasks that include profile view, send connect request, send message and send Inmail message.
Power Dailer: SmartReach PowerCaller offers calling features, where you can make calls either through the extension or through the mobile app.
Shared Inbox: A common inbox for the entire team to access and reply to campaign responses. Its helps improve transparency and collaboration across your team. It will also help your team to respond faster to your sales queries, understand reply sentiment & avoid duplication.
Meeting Scheduler: SmartReach provides its very own meeting scheduling tool. You can integrate it with your Google and Microsoft calendar, and personalized meeting links to your prospects, add round robin, and much more.
SmartReach CRM: Offers a robust CRM for sales teams to efficiently manage leads, track communications, and streamline their sales pipeline. You can optimize your CRM processes, improve interactions, increase sales effectiveness, and overall enhance relationship management.
Opportunities Pipeline: The tool also offers an opportunities pipeline, giving detailed information on your sales pipeline status. Additionally, it provides predictive analytics to estimate potential revenue.
Integrations & Workflows: SmartReach seamlessly syncs with leading CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Pipedrive and also native email finder tools. The platform ensures real-time prospect updates on both platforms.
Reports & Analytics: SmartReach provides detailed reports like team activity reports, deal grid reports, sequence performance reports, advanced tracking, hot prospect report, and many more for making data-based decisions.
SmartReach.io vs Apollo.io
Here we have listed the points by which SmartReach is better than Apollo.
Lead Generation
While Apollo.io provides a huge database of prospects, chances are there that the information can be outdated and unverified. SmartReach provides the LinkedIn prospect finder tool ProspectDaddy which can help you get CSV’s of verified prospect information like email ID, full name, company, designation, LinkedIn URL & location.
You could even move prospects to SmartReach CRM or directly to a campaign
Personalization
Apollo provides personalization with certain limitations, making the email content look automated. SmartReach provides hyper-personalization, which includes merge tags, custom columns, conditional merge tags, and Spintax.
You can send thousands of hyper-personalized emails to your prospects without any manual intervention.
Outreach Sequence
Apollo provides a sales outreach sequence using email and calls. SmartReach provides the option to create sequences using channels like email, LinkedIn, call, WhatsApp, and text message, providing wider options to reach your prospects.
CRM Integration
Apollo provides integration with Hubspot & Salesforce CRM. While SmartReach provides native integration with CRMs like Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Pipedrive.
Pricing
Apollo’s basic plan starts at $59, which is slightly expensive as compared to SmartReach’s pricing. SmartReach’s email outreach plan starts at $29 per month, and multichannel outreach at $49 per month billed monthly, providing you the option to choose as per the use case.
Conclusion: Is Apollo.io worth it??
The majority of the businesses that use Apollo.io use it mainly for its prospect discovery feature. It’s a killer tool for prospect discovery. Its commitment to data enrichment will add layers of intelligence to your user interactions.
While businesses love Apollo for discovery. They prefer using other specialized email deliverability tools like SmartReach.io for outreach and engagement.
Apollo.io’s prowess in streamlining processes from prospecting to conversion makes it a noteworthy contender in 2024. But it does have its share of limitations, especially if you are worried about sharing your prospect data with others.
Although we have tried to give you a complete Apollo.io review, it’s always recommended to research and compare different platforms based on your specific needs and budget before making a decision.
