Before we even get started, let me tell you who this article is for
This article is for sales people or small business owners on a budget. Our aim with this article is to tell you if Apollo is worth investing the money and if it’ll actually help you get more leads. If you’re a bigger company with a budget of trillions of dollars for sales tools, then this article won’t be relevant for you.
For small businesses like ours, I know money matters a lot. In fact, 64% of salespeople say the price is the biggest problem when trying new sales tools. You have a tight budget, and you need to spend every dollar wisely to get more sales.
I recently looked at Apollo.io, a popular tool for reaching out to potential customers.
Here's what you'll discover in this blog post:
In a world where salespeople spend 13 hours a week sending messages to people who might buy from them, and only 2% of those messages get a reply, you need all the help you can get. Using tools like Apollo.io can increase the chances of getting a response by 2x
By the time you finish reading this blog, you'll not only know what it is but also have a clear answer to the burning question -
Before we dive into this Apollo.io review, let’s check out what it is and what it can offer you. As when searching for reviews, many entrepreneurs wonder, "What is Apollo.io?"
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Apollo.io is a cloud-based sales automation tool. It serves as a tool for lead generation, contact database management, and email outreach.
With Apollo, you can find the right decision makers to talk to based on filters like industry, geography, job title, company headcount and many more.
For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency selling to mid-sized companies in the UK, you can use Apollo to identify your dream clients like this.
In this example, you’re able to get a list of all the marketing directors in the UK who work at mid-sized companies (500-1000 employees) at the click of a few buttons. Pretty cool, right?
What’s more is that you can access their professional email addresses and phone numbers so that you can reach out to them to pitch your product/service.
In addition to that, Apollo allows you to send automated emails and follow-ups on email, LinkedIn and cold calls with its “Sequences” feature.
Now let’s see who Apollo.io is typically used by.
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Since it offers a variety of features and tools to help businesses of all sizes improve their sales performance and generate more leads, their customer base contains small as well as big companies.
But, the platform may not be the best fit for all businesses. Especially those with limited budgets or smaller sales teams that do not need such a comprehensive platform.
The platform is particularly well-suited for B2B sales organizations. The companies looking to target-
The tool also works great for sales teams looking for a data-driven approach to sales. It comes with detailed reporting and analytics capabilities.
Sign-up and Onboarding Process
This step involves -
Signing up for Apollo is very easy and you can get started within a couple of minutes!
Moving on from understanding who Apollo.io is for, let's narrow down your choice by selecting the plan that best suits your use case.
When considering Apollo.io for your business needs, it's crucial to match your specific requirements with the available plans.
Based on the features provided in each plan, here's a breakdown of who might benefit most from each plan and the key differences between them:
If you're just beginning your journey and need basic tools for email outreach and lead generation, consider the Free Plan.
Best for: Solopreneurs, freelancers, or startups on a tight budget who are just starting with outbound campaigns or prospecting, and want a basic set of tools without investing money.
Key features:
For small businesses looking to do high-volume outreach without doing a lot of manual work, streamline their outreach and manage records more efficiently, the Basic Plan offers an excellent solution.
Best for: Small businesses or sales teams who have slightly more demanding outreach needs.
Key differences from Free:
As your business grows, the need for more advanced features becomes apparent.
Best for: Medium-sized businesses or sales teams with intensive outreach campaigns, needing detailed reporting and customization options.
Key differences from Basic:
In summary: Choosing the Best Plan for Your Business Type
Remember, the right plan depends on your unique business requirements and budget. Carefully assess your needs and select the plan that aligns best with your goals.
With a clear picture of your business type, let's explore the Apollo.io pricing plans that align with your goals.
Let's delve into its cost structure in the next section of the Apollo.io review. We'll also dissect its value proposition.
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The pricing of the plans are:
Email credits are when you save a contact to the tool. Utilize Apollo credits to enhance your business's email and mobile outreach.
Export credits are charged for verified emails that are exported to outside the tool.
Apollo.io's free trial lets you test its benefits before committing. Also, the mentioned Apollo.io pricing is to be billed monthly for an yearly plan.
Their Professional plan is the most bought. Find out your specific needs and choose accordingly.
All plans offer email, mobile, and export credits for you to use for your sales outreach.
You can even customize a plan to fulfill your business’s needs with add-on credits.
With every plan offering various features, it is also important to note down the drawbacks of Apollo.io’s pricing.
Many users have complained not only about its pricing but also its billing practices.
It's a real letdown that Apollo.io has recurrent billing problems, seriously hurting the overall user experience.
Now, we’ll be moving from cost to capabilities, let's explore the features of Apollo.io that can benefit your sales team.
In this section, we will break down the key features of the platform and review how they can help your sales team. Also, throughout this Apollo.io review, we'll examine real-world feedback and opinions from users.
Let’s begin our review with the features it is best known for. This part of the Apollo.io review focuses on its data coverage and accuracy.
One of the key features of Apollo.io is its database of more than 200 million contacts and 60 million companies.
The database includes information on individual professionals and companies. They are across a variety of industries and regions.
This broad coverage ensures that sales teams can access a large pool of potential leads to target.
The platform's data enrichment capabilities can help sales teams. It enhances your existing lead and contact lists with extra information such as Twitter profile, LinkedIn profile, detailed company information and more.
You can also use the platform's advanced search and filtering capabilities to identify leads that you might have missed out on otherwise.
Another one of the great features is its lead generation capabilities. It offers a wide range of filters to help you refine your search criteria.
Let’s look at a few examples:
If you use such hyper targeted filters for example if a company is cutting costs, then you can use this information in your cold email and cold calls to craft a persuasive pitch for your product/service.
Apollo allows you to target prospects using advanced filters like
You can use advanced filtering criteria such as:
You can also save search criteria for future use, making it easy to quickly access and target relevant leads and accounts.
It is then easy to identify and prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert into paying customers.
Searches on the tool return real-time results. It allows you to immediately see the impact of your search criteria and make adjustments as needed.
The platform provides a wealth of data that can be used to target high-quality leads and build customized outreach sequences.
The solution to streamline your sales outreach is Customizable Sequences.
Apollo.io's sales engagement capabilities allow users to create customized outreach sequences. It includes-
The sequences can be tailored to specific leads or customer segments which results in delivering more personalized outreach across multiple channels.
Prospecting on multiple channels can improve your response rates significantly.
Just a word of caution, although Apollo.io has advanced sales automation capabilities, a number of users have reported issues with their emails landing in spam
Moving forward in this Apollo.io review, we'll discuss its compatibility with various CRM systems.
Is Apollo.io a CRM? Well yes and no. It has some CRM-like capabilities such as Deal management but if you're a serious sales team, you’re better off using Apollo’s integrations with popular CRMs and email tools.
It only integrates with popular CRM systems such as Salesforce, Hubspot and other lead gen channels such as LinkedIn and Gmail. It is not a proper CRM by itself.
One of the key benefits of the tool's CRM integrations is the ability to sync data between Apollo.io and your CRM platform.
The integration enables sales teams to
It ensures that your prospect and contact information in CRM is always up-to-date and accurate via Apollo.io’s enrichment feature.
And It eliminates the need for manual data entry.
It is also valuable for sales managers, who can use this information to track team performance and identify areas for improvement.
It's worth noting that while it offers integrations with some leading CRM platforms, some users have reported issues with the accuracy and completeness of data syncing.
Also, others have reported difficulty with the setup and configuration of the integrations.
The tool's CRM integrations offer many benefits. But it's good to check the accuracy and completeness of data syncing.
In short, avoid relying too much on these integrations.
You may need to invest some time and resources in setup and configuration to get the most out of these integrations.
Let's continue our Apollo.io review by exploring its customizability and Multi-channel features.
Apollo.io offers multi-channel capabilities. It enables users to connect with their prospects across many channels.
Email- With this platform, you can create and send personalized emails at scale. You can use templates or build custom emails from scratch. Apollo.io can be your ally in effective cold email marketing campaigns. But they do limit mass cold-emailing and have significant restrictions on exporting a lot of lead data.
Phone- It offers a built-in dialer that enables you to make calls from the platform. Although they do charge you extra for those phone numbers. So, if you’re building a cold-calling team, you might wanna look out for that.
Social Media- It enables you to connect with prospects on social media platforms like LinkedIn, although the capabilities are very limited.
The platform's analytics and reporting tools can help your sales teams -
This feature integrates itself with almost every feature Apollo.io offers.
You can also set up alerts for when an email is opened or clicked, allowing for timely follow-up.
You can also set up call reminders and follow-up tasks.
Now, let's move from discussing Apollo.io's features to examining real-world reviews. We'll see how these features play out in users' experiences.
If you're considering it for your sales enablement needs and want to gather insights, it's worth checking out what users are saying about the platform in Apollo.io reviews on G2 and GetApp.
Apollo.io ranks among the highest in the Sales Engagement Category. It has many positive and encouraging reviews.
It has been given 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2, which is a great sign!
We have observed that the tool has been able to help many businesses. It is also rated highly for its rich database and many other useful features.
Along with the encouragement came the negative feedback too (mainly about emails landing in spam, limited export credits and limited LinkedIn outreach capabilities). While this Apollo.io review highlights its strengths, it's also crucial to consider potential drawbacks.
Let’s dive into the other recurring issues with Apollo.io
While there are many positive reviews for Apollo.io, it has also received some dissatisfied users’ experiences.
A lot of you might even be asking “Is Apollo.io legit?” Let’s find out below.
Users have been experiencing Gmail bans or their emails bouncing. This happens because the emails provided by Apollo.io aren’t actually the right emails.
But that’s not only Apollo.io’s fault. Email outreach is often plagued by a couple of issues:
LinkedIn on the other hand is a great outreach channel since LinkedIn messages don’t land in spam and the LinkedIn profile url is very rarely incorrect for any person. What’s more is that LinkedIn outreach has been proven to get 2-3x the response rate compared to email outreach
One of the other biggest complaints about the platform is the accuracy of its data and complexity of the platform.
Some users have also reported technical issues with the platform, such as slow loading times or glitches that make it difficult to use.
And there are also a few instances of the customer support’s inability to solve complaints from the users.
We created a handy Pros and Cons list here. If you don’t have the time to read through the rest of the blog, please just look at the pros and cons list and make a decision.
With a database of over 200 million comes many inaccuracies. And it leads to wasted time and effort trying to reach out to non-existent or irrelevant contacts.
And while there is data enrichment, the platform might not be as smooth integrating with other tools. So, more manual work and data entry.
It is a powerful and sophisticated platform. But this also means that there is a learning curve involved in getting started.
You might need to invest time and resources in training to use the platform's features.
So you might want to look at an alternative to Apollo.io.
If you’re interested, we've got one option for you. To provide a balanced Apollo.io review, we'll now discuss how it stacks up against its top competitor, Salesrobot.
In sales outreach, having a powerful and reliable tool can make all the difference in achieving remarkable results.
That's why it's crucial to consider a sales outreach tool that goes above and beyond expectations. Imagine a tool that not only enhances your outreach efforts but also provides a comprehensive set of features right from the start.
Salesrobot offers a free trial that provides access to all its features, allowing you to fully explore its capabilities before making a commitment.
This means you can test its LinkedIn outreach capabilities and personalization features, tailoring your outreach to each prospect's unique needs and preferences.
Unlike other tools, Salesrobot doesn't impose credit limitations (you can fetch as many prospects as you like from LinkedIn Sales Navigator or even Apollo.io) giving you the freedom to reach out to as many prospects as necessary to drive your business forward.
While Salesrobot might be priced slightly higher than Apollo.io, it excels in LinkedIn outreach capabilities, filling a crucial gap left by Apollo.io. Especially for B2B sales teams focused on Linkedin, Salesrobot stands as the superior alternative, offering advanced features that can enhance your LinkedIn outreach.
Salesrobot is a sales outreach platform that aims to help your businesses do effective cold outreach over LinkedIn and Email.
You can take advantage of many features and benefits of Salesrobot that will make it a better choice for your business:
You can run elaborate LinkedIn sales campaigns with the ease of a few clicks. Plus you can customize it with your business’s needs.
It also bypasses LinkedIn daily limits with Email and InMail targeting.
It will help your sales team to target the pain-points of your prospects and offer your product using its Chat feature to understand your target persona.
And if you encounter any challenges while using Salesrobot, our expert customer support team is readily available to provide prompt solutions.
So, how much do you have to pay for all that and more? Let’s find out.
The best part is that you get everything under these three plans!
And they are as follows:
And you get a 50% annual payment discount, if you pay upfront.
These plans empower your B2B business with efficient LinkedIn outreach and engagement strategies, ensuring remarkable results.
As we approach the conclusion of this Apollo.io review, we'll weigh its overall value for small businesses.
Is Apollo.io worth the investment?
It depends on your business's specific needs and budget.
The platform is a popular choice among sales teams and marketers due to its -
And as with any platform, there are also some potential drawbacks to consider too.
There may be challenges with integrating the platform with other systems.
Also, the platform's tracking system offers many valuable features. But some users have reported inaccuracies or limitations in the tracking data.
To sum up our Apollo.io review, It is a valuable tool for businesses looking to improve their cold email and cold call outreach but if you’re B2B salesperson or business owner with an audience on LinkedIn, then Salesrobot will be a better alternative to go for.
Thoughts, Notes & Tutorials
