Can’t decide whether ZoomInfo or LeadIQ is right for your sales team?
Or perhaps you’ve just heard of them but haven’t yet looked at their features in depth.
Read on to learn the major differences between these two sales intelligence platforms and how to choose the right one for your team’s size, workflow, and lead generation needs.
ZoomInfo vs. LeadIQ: Quick Comparison for Sales Teams
ZoomInfo and LeadIQ are both sales intelligence software solutions that help sales teams with prospecting, outbound lead generation, and lead management. However, they differ dramatically in their target users and core features.
Who Are ZoomInfo and LeadIQ Built For?
ZoomInfo is built for larger teams with data operations support and high-volume prospecting needs. It offers in-depth business intelligence, not just B2B contact data.
LeadIQ, on the other hand, is designed for leaner sales teams, or even solo SDRs, that have moderate prospecting needs and want a platform that is easy to use.
While both ZoomInfo and LeadIQ improve outbound sales workflows, they do so from different angles. ZoomInfo offers depth—more features and a bigger dataset. LeadIQ, on the other hand, is all about simplicity. You can build prospecting lists quickly, but don’t expect advanced automations or outreach tools.
Side-by-Side Comparison of Core Features
ZoomInfo is a full-scale GTM intelligence platform, offering everything from lead intelligence to market research insights.
Here are ZoomInfo’s main features:
B2B database with contact and company information
Advanced database search filters to find ICP-fit leads
Sales intelligence (buyer intent signals, web activity tracking, lead scoring)
Data enrichment
Lead segmentation
Outreach automation (called Engage, must be purchased as an add-on)
Multi-channel conversation intelligence
LeadIQ is more of a point solution that helps teams get the lead data they need to prospect effectively. Its feature set is much narrower—and you’re probably going to need other tools to support your efforts, including sales engagement software.
LeadIQ has the following features:
Chrome extension (reveals contact data on websites like LinkedIn)
B2B contact database with verified phone numbers and email addresses
Job change tracking and sales triggers
Data enrichment
AI cold email generation
Data sync through tech stack integrations
ZoomInfo Breakdown: Strengths & Tradeoffs
ZoomInfo’s major strengths are its large B2B database, sales intelligence and engagement tools, and its library of sales stack integrations.
Let’s go deeper into each capability.
Huge Contact Database
ZoomInfo’s B2B database contains information on over 300 million individual contacts and 100 million companies (most of them US-based). This size makes it one of the largest databases in the sales intelligence space.
Sales reps can find the following information on leads and companies:
Job title
Revenue numbers
Location
Technographics
Email addresses
Phone numbers
ZoomInfo’s database also offers strong filtering tools, allowing users to build highly targeted lead lists and discover companies and professionals that match their ideal customer profile (ICP).
Sales Intelligence & Engagement Tools
ZoomInfo offers two powerful (yet expensive) add-ons that extend the platform’s functionality:
Engage: A sales engagement platform for building automated, multi-step outreach campaigns with calls and emails.
Copilot: An AI-powered sales assistant that uses B2B data to help sales reps prioritize leads and personalize outreach.
Unfortunately, users have to pay extra—prices are not disclosed publicly—to gain access to these solutions.
CRM & Sales Stack Integration
ZoomInfo integrates with a wide range of CRMs and other sales tools, from sales engagement platforms to conversational intelligence solutions.
Here are the main ZoomInfo integrations:
Salesforce
HubSpot
Outreach
Salesloft
Gong
Clari
While their integration ecosystem is certainly extensive, there can be some onboarding complexity and a steep learning curve when setting up integrations. Teams with ops support are going to fare better here than a small sales team without technical expertise.
ZoomInfo Pricing: What You’re Really Paying For
ZoomInfo is one of the most expensive B2B sales intelligence platforms out there.
They’re also rather vague about what and how they charge, offering no public pricing information. Let’s cover their pricing model with what information is available and how much you can roughly expect to pay.
Plans & Pricing Structure
There have been reports that entry-level plans start at around $15K/year. This doesn’t include popular add-ons like Engage or AI CoPilot.
However, to find out exact pricing, you have to set up a meeting with ZoomInfo’s sales team, who will give you a custom quote based on your specific needs.
Final pricing depends on the following factors:
Credits: These are used to access company/contact records in the B2B database. The more credits you need, the more you pay.
Seats: ZoomInfo charges per seat, so the more users on the platform, the higher the monthly or annual subscription price.
Add-ons: If you want access to add-on functionality like sales engagement or intent data, you’ll have to purchase them as add-ons, which can significantly drive up the price.
With such high prices, it makes sense that small and medium businesses often seek out alternatives.
Drawbacks Around Pricing
Aside from the high cost, there are three major drawbacks to ZoomInfo’s pricing:
Locked-in contracts: ZoomInfo often requires annual or multi-year contracts. This can be an issue if your budget changes midway through a contract term.
Unclear limits: The credit system, which awards a certain number of credits annually or monthly to access the database, can be restrictive. It forces you to buy additional credits if you need more contact information than originally expected.
Surprise renewals: Some ZoomInfo contracts contain an auto-renewal clause that requires customers to give advanced notice (a month in this one case) if they want to cancel the agreement.
These issues can lead to teams only learning the true cost after that first renewal. There are a lot of disgruntled former customers online for precisely this reason.
LeadIQ Breakdown: Strengths
LeadIQ is an easy-to-use lead generation tool for finding and organizing lead information. It’s narrow in focus but does a good job providing what it promises.
Let’s quickly cover the top three reasons LeadIQ might be right for your business.
Fast, User-Friendly Prospecting via the Chrome Extension
The Chrome extension is a good choice for reps who prospect via LinkedIn on the go. It finds contact information for the leads—including email addresses and mobile phone numbers—when you visit their profiles.
The extension also provides other account details that help you personalize outreach:
Industry
Company size
Recent news
Funding
When you find leads you want to save, you can use the one-click capture workflow to move their information into your CRM or sales engagement tool. You can also create a custom lead list within LeadIQ.
Chrome extensions like this one are excellent because they fit seamlessly into reps’ current prospecting workflows. And this simplicity leads to minimal onboarding and high adoption rates.
Accurate, Verified Contact Data
LeadIQ comes with a B2B database that uses real-time verification to optimize email data accuracy.
The database also offers various filters you can use to find ideal buyers and create targeted lead generation lists.
It also tracks some basic lead activity—like recent job changes. At 100 million company profiles, the database is on the smaller side. It also has a limited quantity of direct dial numbers, which are vital for bypassing assistants and office managers and getting straight to decision-makers’ phones.
Overall, however, their database is valuable for smaller B2B teams looking to discover new leads, research target accounts, and find contact information associated with LinkedIn profiles.
Affordable Plans for Small Teams
LeadIQ offers several affordable plans for smaller sales teams and startups—ranging from $36 to $79 per user per month.
They even offer a free tier, which gives users (monthly):
50 verified work email addresses
5 mobile phone numbers
40 AI email generations
10 accounts tracked
LeadIQ also has an Enterprise plan that, for a custom price, gives you governance controls, analytics dashboards, and advanced admin settings.
Where Does LeadIQ Fall Short?
While it is useful for finding basic lead information, LeadIQ does have some shortcomings. In particular, it’s a good option for smaller companies, but enterprises will likely find it insufficient.
Not a Full Sales Platform
LeadIQ is a lead generation tool, full stop.
It only covers the top of the funnel, providing tools for finding, tracking, and organizing leads. Although it does offer AI email generation, that’s about all it has in terms of sales engagement and outreach automation.
Glaringly, there’s no sequencer—a vital prospecting tool for building and running multi-channel outreach sequences. There’s no automated follow-up either.
To automate your cold outreach, you still need a dedicated sales engagement platform, like Salesloft or Outreach. LeadIQ integrates with these platforms, which helps, but it’s still complicated to string together multiple tools to automate lead generation.
Limited Database & Features
LeadIQ’s database is smaller and less extensive than others on the market.
There have also been data quality issues around email addresses and phone numbers. This is especially common when searching for startup data, with 143 users complaining about the accuracy of early-stage startup contact information.
The feature set is also narrow. Outreach automation, for instance, is limited to AI-generated emails. There is no multi-channel sequence builder and no automated follow-up.
LeadIQ also lacks a built-in intent signals feature. You have to integrate other data tools with LeadIQ to get that data. This means LeadIQ on its own can’t provide full CRM enrichment or automated workflows triggered by lead behavior.
Meet Artisan: AI-Powered Outbound, Built Different
Artisan is an AI sales automation platform built around an AI BDR called Ava who automates the entire outbound lead generation process.
Let’s look at how sales teams are using Artisan to scale outreach and book more meetings without hiring new reps.
Ava: The AI BDR at the Core of the Platform
Ava is Artisan’s AI-powered sales teammate. She automates the entire outbound sales process, from prospecting and lead research to outreach and follow-up on LinkedIn and email. The result? B2B leads on autopilot, without constant input from employees.
Streamlined Prospecting and Outreach
Unlike most AI sales tools, Artisan doesn't just spray and pray generic messages to anyone and everyone. Ava uses real-time web data and LinkedIn signals to find ideal B2B leads and send them highly personalized messages. A unique waterfall feature selects the best data for personalization.
In addition to reaching out to ideal leads with personalized sequences, Ava also handles data enrichment, email deliverability, and A/B testing in the backend. Plus, both email and phone data are regularly hygiene checked, ensuring that messages reach their intended audience.
Comprehensive B2B, Local, and Ecommerce Data
Artisan’s lead data is highly reliable and international in coverage. It offers a real-time, enriched global contact pool, making it highly valuable for sellers with a global market.
ZoomInfo vs. LeadIQ vs. Artisan: Side-by-Side Breakdown
Below is a quick comparison of ZoomInfo, LeadIQ, and Artisan.
Note how Artisan matches ZoomInfo in contacts and data and goes beyond it in other categories, including ease-of-setup, pricing transparency, and AI outreach automation. Meanwhile, LeadIQ, while being the most affordable, lags behind ZoomInfo and Artisan in every other category.
Feature | ZoomInfo | LeadIQ | Artisan |
Contacts & Data | 300M+ (US-heavy) | ~100M (LinkedIn-focused) | 300M+ (web-enriched, real-time data) |
Outreach Automation | Engage (manual sequences) | Requires 3rd-party tools | Ava sends multi-channel outreach |
CRM Integration | Yes (deep, advanced) | Yes (1-click sync) | Yes (easy, fast setup) |
Intent Tracking | Add-on only | Not available | Included |
Chrome Extension | Limited use | Core workflow | Not needed—Ava handles it |
Ease of Use | Powerful but complex | Fast and beginner-friendly | Ava-led, plug-and-play UX |
Pricing | Opaque, starts ~$15K/year | Transparent, low monthly fees | Custom, flat-rate, startup-first |
So… Which One’s Right for You?
Here’s a quick-fire comparison of ZoomInfo, LeadIQ, and Artisan:
ZoomInfo: For large sales teams with big budgets and technical support, basic outreach automation needs, and complex use cases.
LeadIQ: For small, fast-moving SDR teams with low budgets doing prospecting on LinkedIn and using other tools for outreach.
Artisan: For sales teams that want to fully automate prospecting and cold outreach with one single AI SDR tool, accomplishing more with fewer tools and people.
Sales teams have a lot of software to manage. According to the Harvard Business Review, sellers who feel overwhelmed by technology are 43% less likely to hit their quota than sellers who are not.
Artisan combines email automation, sales engagement, sales intelligence, prospecting, and email deliverability into one platform, with AI oversight for full automation. If you haven’t yet explored how AI can scale your cold outreach, now is the time.
