Apollo.io
At a Glance
The one seat that holds a database and a sender, with a free tier honest enough to test a niche on. Read its own page's two contradictions before budgeting, and expect its database to thin out exactly where Main Street lives.
- Pricing
- Freemium, Published on its own pricing page, billed annually per seat: Free at $0 with 900 credits a year granted monthly, Basic at $49 with 30,000 credits a year, Professional at $79 with 48,000, Organization at $119 with a three-seat minimum and 72,000. Monthly billing: Free with 75 credits a month, Basic $65, Professional $99. Add-ons at $119 a month per team. A 14-day trial carries 100 credits. The unit is defined on the page: an email costs 1 credit, a phone number 8, enrichment 1 to 8, AI research 1 per run, the US dialer 2 per minute. Two conflicts on the page itself: its structured data lists Basic at $49 monthly while the card says $65, and its FAQ still describes an Unlimited plan no card sells.
- Best For
- A searcher building an owner list in a niche and writing to it from one tool, who wants a free seat to test whether the niche is reachable before paying for data
- Roadmap Stages
- 2. Define & Test Your Thesis4. Source & Screen Deals
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Both halves in one seat: a searchable company and contact database and the sequences with warmup that send to it
- Price, seat and credit unit published together, so the cost of a campaign of a given size is knowable before signing up
- A free seat with 900 credits a year and no card, enough to test a niche
- Named by searchers as the cheaper stack that replaces Grata and as more cost-effective than Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo
Cons
- A B2B professionals database, thin on owner-operators with no LinkedIn footprint, and a searcher reports it lacks comprehensive lists by NAICS code
- Credits are the real meter and a phone number costs eight, so the free seat's 75 a month buys about nine numbers
- The page disagrees with itself on Basic's monthly price and still describes a plan it no longer sells
- Sending from anything but Gmail or Microsoft is excluded from trials, and the Organization tier needs three seats
What Searchers Say
Named by searchers on Searchfunder in their own words: "I use Apollo, which I have found works just as well as LinkedIn Navigator and ZoomInfo, but is much more cost effective"; "I use Clay => Apollo => Aplify => Google Sheets to generate and enrich leads"; "Apollo is great for sourcing and enrichment and integrates natively with Clay"; and on the other side, "Have looked at rocketreach, Apollo.io, among others but they do not have comprehensive lists" for a NAICS code. It is the tool the Grata row's own critics name as the cheaper stack.