Full Apollo.io Review and Pricing (2022 Update)

Read our Apollo.io review and see what other professionals have to say, learn about pricing, popular features, and discover all current integrations.

 

No matter what B2B industry your business is in, there’s a good chance that your sales department is looking for an edge against the competition. After all, these days there seems to be more and more competition, even in niche specialties. And unfortunately, in the era of regular personnel changes, keeping track of who is in charge of corporate divisions is rarely harder.

 

Fortunately, you and your team have options when it comes to lead generation. Most of us know about the old fashioned way: Asking people for their information so they can be contacted, usually with a lead magnet. Then, there’s the newer lead generation services that use old methods for gathering names and emails. In recent years, it’s possible to get leads on LinkedIn. Finally, new SaaS tools aim to make lead generation largely automated. One of those tools is Apollo. Let’s take a look at this versatile tool.

 

What is Apollo.io? Why can it be valuable for your business?

 

 

Apollo is a fully-integrated tool for taking sales leads, stored in a database, and following up on them. Apollo guarantees that users will get reliable lists of decision makers for a wide variety of industries, though it is geared towards B2B companies. Although originally Apollo only provided business contact information, it also provides cell phone numbers (or “direct dials”) to compensate for the recent work from home trend.

 

However, Apollo provides more than just sales leads. Rather, they have a dashboard, called the cockpit, from which sales professionals can process leads. Processing can include phone calls, emails, and even postal mail. With its wide variety of integrations, Apollo lets you send those emails and make phone calls without leaving the application. 

 

Finally, Apollo lets sales professionals easily sift through database information before taking action. Whether the information comes from LinkedIn or any of Apollo’s other sources, it’s easy to find out which leads are most likely to be profitable. This is done not only through advanced search, but also through advanced intelligence capabilities.

 

Considering the features of Apollo, why might your business consider using it? In short, Apollo provides incredibly valuable sales leads in the B2B space. It makes the task of finding the right people who may want to purchase a product or service much easier.

 

In addition, the frequency with which Apollo updates their information reduces the amount of time sales professionals spend chasing dead leads. Especially since staff turnover is at historic highs these days, eliminating obsolete information is critical.

 

Apollo.io Main features

 

As mentioned above, Apollo is a versatile tool with a lot of features. Some features are included for all subscriptions of this tool, while others are optional. In addition, users can decide which parts of the tool are valuable, and which ones are not. This gives significant flexibility in how it is used. Features are grouped in four categories: Data, Intelligence, Workflows, and Platform.

 

Data

 

 

As the Apollo website says, it is important to “find decision makers, at the point of decision.” In other words, sales professionals need to say the right thing to the right people at the right time. Contacting the wrong person, or doing so when it isn’t timely, is unlikely to succeed. This is the overall purpose of Apollo’s data functionalities. 

 

These include:

 

• Prospect searcher: This searches the database for the people who best meet your buyer persona.
• Database: Contains over 10 million businesses and 200 million decision makers. These are classified for efficient filtering.
• LinkedIn integration: Find people on LinkedIn and track personnel changes.
• Enrichment: Lets users load information into a CRM and enable data gathering on these leads.
• Job change alerts: Simply put, Apollo will let you know when a decisionmaker changes. This could be someone leaving, transferring, or getting hired.

Workflows

 

 

Under Apollo’s workflows heading, there are many different functionalities that allow sales professionals to easily run sales campaigns and follow up on leads.

 

• Sequences: Helps keep users organized while they execute sales contacts and workflows at scale.
• Dialer: A click to dial tool that makes calls while also updating your CRM.
• Task management: Helps reps make the right pitch with high-quality information on each prospect or decisionmaker.
• Rules engine: Monitors for specified events, such as a prospect opening an email. Then, the engine will prompt a sales rep to make necessary changes or perform needed actions.
• Extension: Apollo has many integrations with email applications, CRMs, and social media.

 

Intelligence

Next, Apollo has a wide range of intelligence capabilities. These are designed to help sales professionals know who to target, and when, for each product.

 

• Best-practice analytics: In a nutshell, this provides insight on decision makers. It also tells you what works with prospects based on past successes and failures. The result is better messages, targeting, and campaign execution.
• Scoring engine: Provides a “score” that sales can use to determine which sales leads are the best prospects, and when they should make that pitch.
• Cockpit: This is Apollo’s customized dashboard for sales personnel. It tells users which prospects are priority, and how they are progressing along the sales funnel. In addition, the cockpit allows for calls and emails to take place without leaving the application. Finally, these activities can happen at scale, and the cockpit is customizable for each person’s needs.

 

Platform

Apollo is not just a self-contained set of sales leads. Instead, it is a comprehensive platform with integrations for a variety of sales and marketing applications. This allows users to keep most tasks in one place, improving efficiency overall.

 

Apollo.io Integrations

Like many similar tools, Apollo has a huge variety of integrations. These include CRMs, email marketing, social media functionality, and more. Among the integrations listed are Hubspot, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook, Sendgrid, and Marketo. Apollo also has an API for ultimate flexibility.

 

The Apollo.io API is only available on custom plans that are usually paid yearly

 

In addition, there is a Zapier integration. This lets you easily connect Apollo with almost any other application or tool that’s needed. Here’s what Zapier lists for Apollo.

 

 

 

In summary, this is a short list of triggers when you link Apollo with Zapier:

 

 

Apollo.io Pricing

 

Now that we’ve talked about Apollo’s many features, let’s delve into pricing. With Apollo, the price of service is priced per user, with different tiers depending on each customer’s needs.

Free plan

If you need limited features or are starting out, there’s a free version. This has limited features, such as a cap on daily emails which must go through Gmail. In addition, you get pared-down versions of certain core features.

 

Basic

For those who need more features, there’s a basic plan priced at $49 paid monthly. Here, you can use any email provider, get full-sized CRM integrations, and customization.

 

Professional

Sales departments that need most of the bells and whistles can choose the professional plan, which costs $99 a month. This gives access to the phone dialer, call recording, and more. 

 

Custom

Finally, there’s a custom plan. Pricing is by consultation with sales, since subscribers must choose what they need. On their custom or yearly plans one can get access to the Apollo.io API and negotiate custom limits.

 

 

G2 Score

 

On the G2 website, users rated Apollo as a 4.7/5. This score is based on some 1000 reviews. Most positive reviews point out the prospect search and filtering features, ease of automation, and user friendliness. Negative reviews complain about customer service and trouble with email functionalities.

 

Here are some positive reviews:

 

 

 

 

And some negative reviews:

 

 

 

 

Capterra Score

 

On Capterra, users rate Apollo lower at a 3.9/5 stars. This score is based on 37 reviews.  As with the G2 reviews, customers loved the flexibility that Apollo provides, particularly with workflows. They also raved about the integrations that make working with Apollo a breeze.

 

“I love the flexibility of using sequences in Apollo. As a salesperson, it is important to set your touches and personalize emails that go out to your prospects.”

 

“Overall, very good and especially easy for our inbound sales team to use with sales communication.”

 

“Moreover, the ability to save the leads, and send them emails directly from this software are amazing features that very few tools of its kind generally provide.”

 

There’s no such thing as a tool that everyone loves, however. On the negative side of reviews, customer service was once again listed as a concern. Another gripe is that the application messed up one reviewer’s email application and domain authority.

 

“You have to watch your sequences and how many emails are going out daily. They add up quickly and it damaged our domain reputation which took months to get back to normal.”

 

“Their Custer service is slow to respond, and often argumentative. It also severely limits users in texting and call functionality.”

 

“Questionable business practices, lost thousands of leads.”

Main competitors

 

Naturally, Apollo.io is not the only show in town when it comes to sales lead generation and automation. Instead, there are several other alternatives that should be considered.

 

• ContactOut: ContactOut is a more accurate and feature-rich alternative to Apollo, with a focus on hiring & recruitment contact data. 
• Hubspot marketing hub: A general-purpose sales automation application that builds on Hubspot CRM.
• Lead411: Also boasts updated lead generation and cutting-edge automation.

 

The Bottom Line: Apollo.io Review

 

There’s little question that Apollo is jam packed with features. And at the same time, these features work well with each other and through a long list of integrations. In particular, customers love the fact that Apollo is flexible. If a professional needs a feature, they can use it. If not, then there’s no reason to slow down performance.

 

With that said, one of the greatest strengths of Apollo is its ability to track job changes and contact updates in near real time. Apollo’s developers work hard to ensure that professionals get alerts once a change is detected, which facilitates updates to CRM and other marketing tools.

 

Apollo’s clear weakness is customer service. Both on G2 and Capterra, reviewers complained about a slow, even argumentative, staff. It is unclear from positive reviews if this is a true drawback, though, or if the complaints result from systemic problems or poor experiences.

 

Another weakness worth noting is the data quality of Apollo. There are ways around that, for example by applying their built-in “data confidence” filter to only show contact information of which Apollo is confident it’s correct.

 

Overall, Apollo is an excellent tool for integrations and sales automation. It helps save time, minimizes the need for outside tools, and lets sales professionals customize their dashboard.