Picking the right outbound tool for your team is essential for sustainable and scalable outreach. Apollo and ZoomInfo are popular choices, offering large databases with prospect info and similar features.
To help you make an informed decision, this Apollo vs. ZoomInfo comparison will examine the differences between the platforms, focusing on aspects like:
- Major features and data accuracy 📊
- Compatibility with other tools 🧩
- User experience 🌟
- Pricing plans 💰
Once you have all the necessary information about each service, you’ll also learn about a third alternative—potentially more accurate and cost-effective than either of them.
ZoomInfo vs. Apollo.io—Breaking Down Our Comparison
To ensure we gave each platform an objective review, we conducted this comparative analysis through three crucial steps:
- Performing a hands-on test of both options to examine their user interfaces, available features, and data accuracy in practice
- Collecting user opinions from various sources, including:some text
- Our team of sales and marketing experts
- Customer surveys from popular review sites, such as G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius
- Summarizing our research and reaching conclusions on both platforms
ZoomInfo vs. Apollo—Primary Functions
Both platforms offer functionalities designed to help you find qualified prospects, automate various tasks, and streamline engagement with the most promising leads. While their features are comparable, ZoomInfo provides a wider range of options.
ZoomInfo Main Features
The platform’s functions are divided into five distinct products, each designed to improve a different aspect of your business. You can find more details in the table below:
All four products provide value, but SalesOS remains the most widely used aspect of ZoomInfo. Its main part is a B2B database that contains 170+ million email addresses and over 70 million phone numbers, allowing you to reach key decision-makers that fit your ideal customer profile.
💡 Bonus read: Want more details on how ZoomInfo works in practice? Take a look at this breakdown of ZoomInfo reviews for more first-hand accounts from real users.
Apollo Main Features
Apollo provides a similar set of options but without any features for recruiters and talent outreach. The platform’s functions include:
- Database with prospect information 🙋
- Data Health Center for enrichment and cleaning 📊
- Built-in calling and AI-generated emails for sales engagement 📞
- Automated reports that provide a holistic view of your outbound campaign 📋
According to its website, Apollo provides information on over 270 million prospects—a substantially larger contact database compared to ZoomInfo’s.
Hundreds of millions of prospect profiles sound enticing, but impressive numbers mean little without the context of data accuracy—even a billion profiles don’t bring value if they contain outdated information.
The bottom line is that ZoomInfo’s platform is more cumbersome to use, but it provides a wider range of features compared to Apollo.
Winner: It’s a tie 🏅
💡 Bonus read: For a closer look into real-world applications of Apollo, check out our guide to Apollo reviews by everyday users and learn how the platform performs in practice.
Data Accuracy
Both platforms claim to use extensive data verification procedures to ensure maximum accuracy. According to Apollo, the service performs routine checks of email addresses against the following sources:
- Public data collected via web crawlers
- Verified third-party data providers
- A network of data contributors
Apollo’s website contains no information on verification procedures for mobile number data. ZoomInfo, on the other hand, claims to test both email and phone data via the following methods:
- Email campaign tests conducted with verified partners
- Phone tests via a Philippines-based company
- In-house human editors who conduct manual verification regularly
While both platforms’ data verification sounds impressive on paper, their results are far from ideal. Many users report dissatisfaction with inaccurate data on both platforms, especially in markets outside the U.S.
It’s important to note that there’s no such thing as 100% data accuracy—some outdated information will appear even on the best sales intelligence platforms.
Still, inaccuracy shouldn’t be a chronic issue while processing almost every prospect—which is a common problem with single-source data providers. Regardless of how intricate their data tests are, maintaining accuracy on a scale of hundreds of millions of prospects within a single database is almost impossible.
Only sales intelligence platforms that rely on multiple data sources can provide genuine accuracy at scale because cross-referencing information and rooting out inaccuracies is easy. Between these two platforms, ZoomInfo has a narrow lead in terms of data accuracy because it tests both phone numbers and email addresses.
Winner: ZoomInfo 🏆
Compatibility With Other Tools
When choosing a sales intelligence platform, it’s important to find one that’s compatible with the rest of your current sales stack. The option that supports more integrations out of the box will be easier to implement, and in this case, ZoomInfo is the clear winner.
Judging by information from their respective websites, ZoomInfo supports 75 integrations, while Apollo only mentions a dozen. Note that both apps work with Zapier, allowing for data exchanges with hundreds of other platforms.
Both platforms are compatible with major CRMs and sales platforms, including:
- Salesforce
- Outreach
- HubSpot
- Marketo
- SalesLoft
Zoominfo comes out on top thanks to its support for dozens of video conferencing and dialer automation services. Apollo doesn’t integrate with the external dialers because it relies on its built-in call function, and it only supports Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet for video conferencing.
Winner: ZoomInfo 🏆
💡 Bonus read: Want to know what real-world users say about tools similar to Apollo and ZoomInfo? Check out our guides to the following platforms:
User Experience
Ease of use is a crucial factor for any business software, especially sales intelligence platforms that contain huge amounts of data and a wide variety of features.
Apollo.io makes all its features easy to reach through clearly labeled tabs that lead to each core feature.
While ZoomInfo offers a wider range of features (especially for recruiters and HR reps), they’re divided into four different products.
Although these apps use the same database, and you log into each with the same ZoomInfo account, they don't have a single, combined interface. This means you'll need to switch back and forth between SalesOS, MarketingOS, and the other two products to manage different aspects of your work.
As a result, your team will face a steeper learning curve and may need more time to adjust to the platform.
While both platforms are packaged in a modern, neat interface, Apollo is a near winner—largely thanks to its better organization of on-screen information and less clutter.
Winner: Apollo 🏆
Pricing
Apollo and ZoomInfo have radically different approaches to pricing. With ZoomInfo, you must provide some information about your team before learning the platform’s prices—including your desired features, team size, and acceptable contract length.
Regardless of the price, you can customize your ZoomInfo subscription via two factors:
- Products you want to use
- Level of support
OperationsOS is included with every subscription plan, regardless of which other features you choose. SalesOS, MarketingOS, and TalentOS are all optional—you can pick any combination of these three or none at all. Once you've selected the features you need, you can choose the level of support your team requires—Standard, Preferred, or Premium.
Only the highest tier has access to all three support channels (live chat, email, and phone).
While this system provides more flexibility, it’s also more complicated and less transparent than Apollo’s more traditional pricing plans:
Unlike ZoomInfo, Apollo offers a free account and declares its prices openly. Refer to the table below for a full breakdown:
Apollo’s payment structure is superior because the platform is transparent about its subscriptions, while ZoomInfo hides its prices and insists on a sales consultation before making an offer.
Winner: Apollo 🏆
Apollo.io vs. ZoomInfo—The Verdict
ZoomInfo has come out on top in terms of available features and integration with other tools. Still, Apollo takes the upper hand regarding user experience and pricing. Both platforms share the same crucial issue—low accuracy due to single-source data enrichment.
As a result, neither of the two services is cost-effective. Regardless of the price, there’s no guarantee you’ll find the prospect information you need. Without this data, all other sales and marketing features are useless.
That’s why you should consider a third option, which minimizes inaccuracies by collecting data from numerous sources—Clay. 🌈
Clay—Accurate Data Enrichment & AI Automation
Clay is a powerful sales intelligence and automation platform that provides data access from over 50 providers. It offers more extensive data coverage than any single-source platform without requiring you to sign up for additional services or pay multiple costly subscriptions.
The platform achieves this through a process called waterfall enrichment. When you search for a prospect’s contact info, Clay pulls data from its sources one by one—stopping when the requested information is found. As a result, you only pay for the data you find.
Want to see how Clay finds company info in mere seconds? Check out this video:
Besides accurate data collection, Clay also supports your outbound efforts with Claygent—a versatile AI assistant that performs various functions:
- Web scraping—Collects any kind of information from online sources 📥
- Email writing—Generates personalized emails for any number of prospects, approaching each individually based on collected information ✉️
- Data enrichment—Summarizes findings from online research and combines them with information pulled from databases 🗄️
You can easily integrate Clay’s various features into your existing tech stack since it’s natively compatible with over 100 other platforms and even more through Zapier.
Clay offers an unlimited free plan, along with four paid tiers that provide more monthly credits and other features:
Skyrocket Your Outreach With Clay
Getting started with Clay is easy and only takes three simple steps:
- Visit the signup page
- Provide a valid email and password
- Explore Clay’s AI automations and numerous data sources
For more ideas on harnessing Clay’s full potential, check out the platform’s Slack community. You can also access tutorials via the Learn hub, or sign up for Clay’s newsletter to regularly receive ideas and tips on improving your outbound campaigns. 💌
Picking the right outbound tool for your team is essential for sustainable and scalable outreach. Apollo and ZoomInfo are popular choices, offering large databases with prospect info and similar features.
To help you make an informed decision, this Apollo vs. ZoomInfo comparison will examine the differences between the platforms, focusing on aspects like:
- Major features and data accuracy 📊
- Compatibility with other tools 🧩
- User experience 🌟
- Pricing plans 💰
Once you have all the necessary information about each service, you’ll also learn about a third alternative—potentially more accurate and cost-effective than either of them.
ZoomInfo vs. Apollo.io—Breaking Down Our Comparison
To ensure we gave each platform an objective review, we conducted this comparative analysis through three crucial steps:
- Performing a hands-on test of both options to examine their user interfaces, available features, and data accuracy in practice
- Collecting user opinions from various sources, including:some text
- Our team of sales and marketing experts
- Customer surveys from popular review sites, such as G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius
- Summarizing our research and reaching conclusions on both platforms
ZoomInfo vs. Apollo—Primary Functions
Both platforms offer functionalities designed to help you find qualified prospects, automate various tasks, and streamline engagement with the most promising leads. While their features are comparable, ZoomInfo provides a wider range of options.
ZoomInfo Main Features
The platform’s functions are divided into five distinct products, each designed to improve a different aspect of your business. You can find more details in the table below:
All four products provide value, but SalesOS remains the most widely used aspect of ZoomInfo. Its main part is a B2B database that contains 170+ million email addresses and over 70 million phone numbers, allowing you to reach key decision-makers that fit your ideal customer profile.
💡 Bonus read: Want more details on how ZoomInfo works in practice? Take a look at this breakdown of ZoomInfo reviews for more first-hand accounts from real users.
Apollo Main Features
Apollo provides a similar set of options but without any features for recruiters and talent outreach. The platform’s functions include:
- Database with prospect information 🙋
- Data Health Center for enrichment and cleaning 📊
- Built-in calling and AI-generated emails for sales engagement 📞
- Automated reports that provide a holistic view of your outbound campaign 📋
According to its website, Apollo provides information on over 270 million prospects—a substantially larger contact database compared to ZoomInfo’s.
Hundreds of millions of prospect profiles sound enticing, but impressive numbers mean little without the context of data accuracy—even a billion profiles don’t bring value if they contain outdated information.
The bottom line is that ZoomInfo’s platform is more cumbersome to use, but it provides a wider range of features compared to Apollo.
Winner: It’s a tie 🏅
💡 Bonus read: For a closer look into real-world applications of Apollo, check out our guide to Apollo reviews by everyday users and learn how the platform performs in practice.
Data Accuracy
Both platforms claim to use extensive data verification procedures to ensure maximum accuracy. According to Apollo, the service performs routine checks of email addresses against the following sources:
- Public data collected via web crawlers
- Verified third-party data providers
- A network of data contributors
Apollo’s website contains no information on verification procedures for mobile number data. ZoomInfo, on the other hand, claims to test both email and phone data via the following methods:
- Email campaign tests conducted with verified partners
- Phone tests via a Philippines-based company
- In-house human editors who conduct manual verification regularly
While both platforms’ data verification sounds impressive on paper, their results are far from ideal. Many users report dissatisfaction with inaccurate data on both platforms, especially in markets outside the U.S.
It’s important to note that there’s no such thing as 100% data accuracy—some outdated information will appear even on the best sales intelligence platforms.
Still, inaccuracy shouldn’t be a chronic issue while processing almost every prospect—which is a common problem with single-source data providers. Regardless of how intricate their data tests are, maintaining accuracy on a scale of hundreds of millions of prospects within a single database is almost impossible.
Only sales intelligence platforms that rely on multiple data sources can provide genuine accuracy at scale because cross-referencing information and rooting out inaccuracies is easy. Between these two platforms, ZoomInfo has a narrow lead in terms of data accuracy because it tests both phone numbers and email addresses.
Winner: ZoomInfo 🏆
Compatibility With Other Tools
When choosing a sales intelligence platform, it’s important to find one that’s compatible with the rest of your current sales stack. The option that supports more integrations out of the box will be easier to implement, and in this case, ZoomInfo is the clear winner.
Judging by information from their respective websites, ZoomInfo supports 75 integrations, while Apollo only mentions a dozen. Note that both apps work with Zapier, allowing for data exchanges with hundreds of other platforms.
Both platforms are compatible with major CRMs and sales platforms, including:
- Salesforce
- Outreach
- HubSpot
- Marketo
- SalesLoft
Zoominfo comes out on top thanks to its support for dozens of video conferencing and dialer automation services. Apollo doesn’t integrate with the external dialers because it relies on its built-in call function, and it only supports Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet for video conferencing.
Winner: ZoomInfo 🏆
💡 Bonus read: Want to know what real-world users say about tools similar to Apollo and ZoomInfo? Check out our guides to the following platforms:
User Experience
Ease of use is a crucial factor for any business software, especially sales intelligence platforms that contain huge amounts of data and a wide variety of features.
Apollo.io makes all its features easy to reach through clearly labeled tabs that lead to each core feature.
While ZoomInfo offers a wider range of features (especially for recruiters and HR reps), they’re divided into four different products.
Although these apps use the same database, and you log into each with the same ZoomInfo account, they don't have a single, combined interface. This means you'll need to switch back and forth between SalesOS, MarketingOS, and the other two products to manage different aspects of your work.
As a result, your team will face a steeper learning curve and may need more time to adjust to the platform.
While both platforms are packaged in a modern, neat interface, Apollo is a near winner—largely thanks to its better organization of on-screen information and less clutter.
Winner: Apollo 🏆
Pricing
Apollo and ZoomInfo have radically different approaches to pricing. With ZoomInfo, you must provide some information about your team before learning the platform’s prices—including your desired features, team size, and acceptable contract length.
Regardless of the price, you can customize your ZoomInfo subscription via two factors:
- Products you want to use
- Level of support
OperationsOS is included with every subscription plan, regardless of which other features you choose. SalesOS, MarketingOS, and TalentOS are all optional—you can pick any combination of these three or none at all. Once you've selected the features you need, you can choose the level of support your team requires—Standard, Preferred, or Premium.
Only the highest tier has access to all three support channels (live chat, email, and phone).
While this system provides more flexibility, it’s also more complicated and less transparent than Apollo’s more traditional pricing plans:
Unlike ZoomInfo, Apollo offers a free account and declares its prices openly. Refer to the table below for a full breakdown:
Apollo’s payment structure is superior because the platform is transparent about its subscriptions, while ZoomInfo hides its prices and insists on a sales consultation before making an offer.
Winner: Apollo 🏆
Apollo.io vs. ZoomInfo—The Verdict
ZoomInfo has come out on top in terms of available features and integration with other tools. Still, Apollo takes the upper hand regarding user experience and pricing. Both platforms share the same crucial issue—low accuracy due to single-source data enrichment.
As a result, neither of the two services is cost-effective. Regardless of the price, there’s no guarantee you’ll find the prospect information you need. Without this data, all other sales and marketing features are useless.
That’s why you should consider a third option, which minimizes inaccuracies by collecting data from numerous sources—Clay. 🌈
Clay—Accurate Data Enrichment & AI Automation
Clay is a powerful sales intelligence and automation platform that provides data access from over 50 providers. It offers more extensive data coverage than any single-source platform without requiring you to sign up for additional services or pay multiple costly subscriptions.
The platform achieves this through a process called waterfall enrichment. When you search for a prospect’s contact info, Clay pulls data from its sources one by one—stopping when the requested information is found. As a result, you only pay for the data you find.
Want to see how Clay finds company info in mere seconds? Check out this video:
Besides accurate data collection, Clay also supports your outbound efforts with Claygent—a versatile AI assistant that performs various functions:
- Web scraping—Collects any kind of information from online sources 📥
- Email writing—Generates personalized emails for any number of prospects, approaching each individually based on collected information ✉️
- Data enrichment—Summarizes findings from online research and combines them with information pulled from databases 🗄️
You can easily integrate Clay’s various features into your existing tech stack since it’s natively compatible with over 100 other platforms and even more through Zapier.
Clay offers an unlimited free plan, along with four paid tiers that provide more monthly credits and other features:
Skyrocket Your Outreach With Clay
Getting started with Clay is easy and only takes three simple steps:
- Visit the signup page
- Provide a valid email and password
- Explore Clay’s AI automations and numerous data sources
For more ideas on harnessing Clay’s full potential, check out the platform’s Slack community. You can also access tutorials via the Learn hub, or sign up for Clay’s newsletter to regularly receive ideas and tips on improving your outbound campaigns. 💌
