Apollo.io review: Features, pricing, and real feedback

Looking for an honest Apollo review and comparison? 

We’ll deliver all the information you need to make an informed decision about whether to stick to Apollo or opt for an alternative. 

No fluff. No sales pitch. Just the facts.

Apollo.io Review: What You Get (and What You Don’t)

Apollo is a feature-packed sales prospecting tool with millions of verified contacts, mostly for B2B sales. If you’re looking for a single tool to find leads, run sequences, and manage outreach—Apollo can do it all. But be ready for limitations in usability, data freshness, and surprise credit burns.

Here’s a quickfire rundown of what’s included (and what’s not) followed by an in-depth feature-by-feature breakdown. 

Lead Database and Prospecting

Let’s start with official numbers and then move to reality.

Apollo claims over 210 million contacts, 35 million companies, and 144 million total direct dials and mobile numbers. The B2B database is decently broad, especially for US-focused prospecting. You can slice and dice it with approximately 200 search filters and 65 lead data points.

Paid plans also allow you to track buyer intent data and pull technographic data.

All that sounds pretty cool, but we feel obligated to run a few tests and see how many decision-makers Apollo can find when triggered with different ICPs.

Test #1: Content Marketing Manager, Europe, USA

Let’s begin with a simple prospect profile like a content marketing manager, and no additional filters for company size, B2B/B2C, headcount, etc. As a point of comparison, LinkedIn offers 2 million contacts.

Apollo found only 866 contacts across all of Europe, and 1,134 records in the US with verified emails. Not that many. But let’s see what Apollo has for different titles.

Test #2: Solution Architect, Europe, USA

This attempt yields better results, with 31.9K of prospects in Europe, and 66K in the US.

OK, not too bad. Now let’s run some more tests across different roles with simple filters like industry and company size to assess the breadth and relevance of Apollo’s dataset. 

Here are the results:

Procurement Officer, Industrial Engineering: 

• Europe: 297

• USA: 114

Corporate Counsel, company size of 200–1,000 people: 

• Europe: 546

• USA: 2,100

Real Estate Broker: 

• Europe, Germany: 359

• Texas, US: 6,800

Admissions Director: 

• Europe: 1,100

• USA: 21,600

It all looks very promising for the US market. The European market? Not so much. Another plus was that prospecting in Apollo was intuitive, despite the fact that the entire contact database reloads every time you remove one filter, which is quite annoying and consumes sales reps’ work time.

There was also other functionality allowed for a super targeted lead list:

• Filter by keywords

• SIC and NAICS (business identification numbers) filters

• B2B/B2C filtering

• Auto-assigned lead scores based on your prospecting criteria

Email Sequences and Outreach Automation

Apollo has a built-in email sequencer that works great if you want to build outreach campaigns quickly.

The sequencer allows you to do the following: 

• Create cold emails

• Auto-schedule messages

• Use pre-made templates (AI-generated and, frankly, pretty robotic)

• A/B-test your emails and subject lines

• Generate outreach metrics

You can also automate tasks for LinkedIn outreach—connection requests, direct message delivery, profile visits, and post interactions. These are launched directly in the Apollo app or on LinkedIn via Apollo’s Chrome extension. However, they aren’t plug ‘n’ play tools. You’ll have to put in some manual work.

Lastly, Apollo offers a built-in dialer for both US and international calls, allowing sales teams to run multichannel cold outreach from within one platform.

All that sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? 

Well, there’s a slight catch. To access all these features and even advanced filters, salespeople will have to pay for Apollo’s highest tier, Organization, at the cost of $4,284, billed annually (more on pricing later). 

Email Deliverability Tools

Apollo has an inbox ramp-up tool and an email warmup to optimize your email deliverability, while its competitors usually have only one email warmup tool.

But don’t expect miracles. Two doesn’t equal better.

Deliverability in Apollo is a known pain. Many users on Reddit report hitting spam folders even after warming up. On top of that, Apollo doesn’t offer proactive alerts or built-in spam diagnostics. So yeah—it’s better to have a third-party warm-up tool like Folderly to complement Apollo.

CRM, Calling, and Multi-Channel Features

Apollo connects natively with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot, which is helpful for syncing leads and activities. 

But don’t expect smooth multichannel workflows within your sales process. You can create steps across email, call, and LinkedIn, but you still need to babysit each campaign. This isn’t a plug-and-play automation suite, and true multichannel orchestration is still manual.

AI Tools and Productivity

Apollo has developed some cool AI features, but they all require manual, clunky setups and recalibration. 

Here are the main AI tools you get in Apollo: 

• Persona-based list building: A true time-saver, but it needs manual tweaks, like selection of job titles.

• Buying intent filters (Bombora): Half of users comment on high-quality data, while the other half say intent signals are largely outdated.

• AI email copy and subject lines: Email composition is OK, but it gives off ChatGPT writing vibes from the get-go.

• AI call insights: A nice feature to transcribe your sales meetings.

• AI content center: Gathers content from your website and pinpoints CTAs, value prop, and customer pain points. Apollo builds a sequence or one-time email based on those inputs. 

• AI Research: A suite of templates that force LLMs to go through your leads and proceed with certain actions like “Label if a company SaaS or non-SaaS, is a good fit for my ICP or not.” In three attempts, it returned errors but devoured credits. You might get lucky—or not. 

So, what’s the overall verdict? Apollo’s AI tools are good on the surface but glitchy when you dig deeper. And they’re not free. Most actions will cost you extra credits. So you’ve got to do the math unless you want to end up with zero credits.

Integrations and Reporting

Apollo integrates natively with major CRMs and sales tools, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn via a Chrome extension, and Zapier. There's also an open API for advanced custom workflows and automations.

You can push contacts and activities to your CRM, sync sequences, and trigger updates using rules and workflows. To set up automation, expect to invest time in mapping fields and managing sync errors.

On the analytics side, you get all the basics: 

• Sequence performance

• Email open/click/reply rates

• A/B testing reports

• Email deliverability reports. 

But you won’t find real-time alerts or pipeline-level forecasting.

Apollo.io Pricing Breakdown

When it comes to pricing, Apollo is fairly competitive. But there are some complexities and “hidden” fees you should be aware of. 

Pricing Structure

Apollo clearly offers flexible entry pricing and a generous forever-free account, but costs can increase quickly with large prospecting and enrichment volumes and additional seats for SDR teams.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of Apollo’s pricing plans:

• Free plan: 100 credits per user/month, 2 sequences, 10 new website visitors daily, basic filters

• A 14-day trial period for the Basic plan; no card required

• Basic ($59/user/month): 1 mailbox, 2,500 credits per user/month, 2 sequences, advanced filters, meetings scheduler, 6 intent topics, 10 new website visitors daily, and intent filters

• Professional ($99/user/month): 4,000 credits per user/month, 250 new website visitors daily, unlimited sequences, US dialer, 5 mailboxes per user, automated workflows and AI research intelligence, call recordings, and AI insights (4,000 mins)

• Organization ($149/user/month but min. 3 users, annual billing only, in total $4,284): 6,000 credits per user/month with all features included, 15 mailboxes, 500 new website visitors daily, call recordings and AI insights (8,000 mins)

What You Actually Pay For

Unfortunately, things aren’t as simple as they appear with Apollo pricing. Your real expenses can increase exponentially based on your prospecting needs.

Most tasks—from email address discovery to API calls—cost you a credit. You’ll burn through them fast, so you’d better speak with their account executive to get a pricing estimate tailored to your real needs.

For instance, you’ll pay eight credits for one phone number or to enrich a contact profile.

Apart from that, the US dialer is available only on the Professional plan and the international dialer on the Organization plan (alongside pre-built advanced reports and dashboards).

What Are the Downsides of Using Apollo.io?

Based on real customer feedback and posts on LinkedIn from people asking for feedback on Apollo alternatives, the platform has become increasingly rigid for several reasons. 

Data Accuracy Concerns

This is often the central question for companies seeking a tool like Apollo and the main reason to buy or stay clear. Given Apollo’s official claim of 91% accuracy, it would seem like a straightforward decision. Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple. 

Verified emails? Mostly good, but some users say it’s hit and miss, which you’ll only know for yourself after running your own outreach sequences. 

Phone numbers? A disaster that costs you an arm and a leg (remember eight credits per phone).

Reddit threads are full of posts like:

“Half the numbers we called were dead.”

“I’d pay more if it worked consistently.”

Users also emphasize stale data:

“Apollo is good to start, but the data is pretty inaccurate.”

“Apollo's data is everywhere, and the leads aren't updated if they switch jobs and stuff.”

Deliverability Struggles

If you’re on a tight budget, you can settle for Apollo’s warm-up tools, but they don’t fully protect deliverability and sometimes show inaccurate scores. 

A handful of Reddit threads take a dim view, too. Their deliverability tanked due to a combination of poor email quality (lots of bounces) and a warm-up tool that failed to fix the issue.

Clunky User Experience

Apollo’s setup isn’t rocket science, but it’s also not smooth. Lead prospecting is heavily manual, with AI of little help. You’ll go through a lot of back-and-forth before you create a decent lead list. 

Campaign building is also manual, enrichment can lag or fetch outdated information, and the app occasionally glitches when switching between tabs.

Ultimately, even AI-powered features don’t replace or reduce SDRs’ workload.

Support and Onboarding

Support is excellent if you pay top dollar for the Organization plan. 

For the rest of the users, customer support is chat-only and representatives are slow to respond. You can also email them, but the response time can fall anywhere within 1–3 business days.

Onboarding is another pain in the neck. Apollo doesn’t offer a white-glove onboarding process, so you’re left to dig through endless knowledge base articles and videos and in-app tutorials to learn the ropes.

Scaling Costs Quickly

We’ve already told you that paying for every move on the platform is highway robbery. But let’s see how that actually happens with an example.

Say you’re a lean startup with two SDRs. Each needs to send 150 personalized emails per week, enrich 100 CRM lead records, and make 30 recorded calls.

Here’s how fast the credits burn:

• Email open/view: 1 credit each

• Verified mobile number: 8 credits

• Enrichment: 1–8 credits per lead

• Call recording (Pro only): 1 conversation minute = 1 credit

• AI usage: 1 credit per AI research “run” (a run refers to a single AI research task, such as cleaning a list or enriching a profile)

So weekly, your team could burn:

• 300 emails = 600 credits

• 200 enrichments = 400–800 credits

• 60 calls (average 10 minutes) = 600 credits

• AI usage = ~100 credits (if applied only to selected accounts)

Total: 1,700–2,100 credits/week, and that’s before you count searches, exports, API calls, or retries on bounced contacts. Your realistic monthly credits volume could be ~8,000, which is right within the Organization plan for over $4,000 per year.

Introducing Artisan: A Tool Built for Automation

Apollo is a good starting kit. But if you're here, you're probably already annoyed by the same stuff as all power users.

An educated guess would be that you’re looking for an alternative that does the following: 

• Doesn’t charge by credit for contact information

• Handles email natively

• Truly automates 80% of your outbound work

• Includes inbox warm-up with proven deliverability fixes, enrichment, and smart email outreach features

Can you relate?

Then it might be time to meet Artisan, a newer AI BDR tool that offers an AI employee called Ava who handles an array of outreach tasks autonomously: automated lead research, persona mapping, humanized custom messages, follow-ups, and lead enrichment, to name a few. 

All that translates into an all-in-one full campaign orchestration with fewer manual efforts.

But what about the number of leads?

Artisan found 2,131 verified prospects in its 300 million-strong B2B database for the content marketing manager role across Europe alone, in contrast with 866 leads offered by Apollo.

Apollo.io vs. Artisan: Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

Is Apollo.io Worth It?

Apollo is good for solo SDRs, early-stage teams, and anyone who needs a decent email sequencer with built-in data.

But it’s not a good option for scaling outbound teams or those who want multichannel outreach with serious automation and fresh contact data.

Final verdict? Apollo’s not bad; it’s just not enough anymore. The landscape has changed, and newer tools like Artisan are simply built better for how outbound actually works.

If Apollo Isn’t Enough Anymore…

Artisan is the only AI BDR platform that does everything from data scraping and finding buyer intent to AI template generation, sequencing, warmup, and outreach.

If you want to see how a next-gen AI tool can transform your outbound outreach, freeing reps up to focus on cultivating human connection and closing deals, get in touch to book a demo. 

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

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