Apollo.io review in 2024: The right sales tool for your business?

Sales platforms are among the most important additions to every business’s tool stack, both remote and in-office, due to their sheer efficiency. They bring prospecting, engagement, campaign management, and closing features all under one roof. 

In another series of our top sales software reviews, let’s give a warm welcome to Apollo.io—a powerhouse in the sales automation market. 

Let’s dive right into it.

P.S. We’ve already covered a detailed lemlist review, and will consistently add new ones to make this a new tradition, helping you make the right decision when looking for a new sales software for your business. 

What is Apollo.io? The product overview 

With over 500,000 companies using Apollo.io for their sales operations, it’s safe to say that it’s an incredibly functional and credible automation tool. While positioned as a sales intelligence platform on G2, Apollo.io is the embodiment of a true all-in-one sales automation suite. 

Containing an extensive lead database, inbound and outbound prospecting features, multichannel sales engagement, deal management, analytics, email deliverability, and more, businesses can seamlessly integrate all their sales processes with Apollo.io. 

It’s gained a particularly strong reputation for its rich lead database with consistent detailed and up-to-date prospect and company data, as well as highly effective intent signals. This empowers sales reps to pinpoint the hottest leads and launch Apollo outreach sequences at the most optimal time, greatly increasing the odds of booking a demo and making the sale. 

Suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries, Apollo.io is a versatile tool that can be used by both sales and marketing teams, streamlining and automating their inbound and outbound efforts.

How to get started with Apollo.io?

Creating your Apollo.io account is incredibly simple, just sign up with your work email or directly through Google/Microsoft with your work or personal email..and that’s it. 

Considering they have a freemium plan and 14-day trials for all paid plans, new users can play around with the platform before committing to a serious purchase. 

Once you’re signed in, you are welcomed with a simple, step-by-step, almost gamified onboarding process to help remove the learning curve: 

You can always skip the onboarding (top right corner) and come back to it at any time, but with complex tools like sales automation platforms, it’s always best to undergo the training right away to experience the product for its full potential, even if you’re just testing it out. 

Once setup is complete, or should you choose to skip it for later, users will enter their Apollo.io dashboard for the first time:

As with most similar tools, there is a neat tab on the left side for easy access to all key features, with the onboarding hub and settings right below. 

The UI is incredibly clean and unclustered, and while I am a fan of minimalistic layout and design, this may not be everyone’s cup of tea. 

Assuming you’ve completed the onboarding or sufficiently tested out the platform dashboard, you are now ready to get down to business and use Apollo.io to supercharge your sales workflows. 

What are the main Apollo.io features? 

Apollo.io has a robust set of features designed for every stage of the B2B selling process, from identifying targeted prospects to closing deals. While a traditional sales tool, Apollo.io is quite versatile, also utilized by marketing, business development, and revenue teams. 

Here’s an overview of Apollo.io’s main features that make this product one of the most powerful sales automation platforms on the market.

What are the Apollo.io pricing plans? 

Apollo.io’s price is surprisingly very reasonable, considering the sheer amount of value you get and the name it has established for itself in the market. 

It comes with 3 paid pricing plans — Basic, Professional, and Custom, as well as a limited Free plan for those looking to get a feel for the product before making a purchase. 

Let’s take a look at each one in more detail: 

“Free” Apollo.io pricing plan

While positioned as a plan for individual users or small teams just getting started with sales automation, Apollo.io’s free plan is too limited to conduct any form of business workflows (but so is the case for most freemium sales software). 

The Free plan provides users 2 active sales sequences, ‘basic’ search filters for the contact database (so forget about intent signals and lead scores), limited to 10k words per month AI email assistant, and maximum 250 outbound emails per day. 

“Basic” Apollo.io pricing plan

Priced at $49 per user/month, Apollo.io’s Basic plan is ideal for small businesses/sales teams looking to scale their prospecting and engagement efforts. 

With more extensive contact search filters, unlimited email and sequence automation, a built-in cloud-call dialer, and several key integration features—this is a great plan to get started with Apollo.io (you can always upgrade when the time is right). 

There are still a fair amount of limitations on features and usage, but a significant step up from the Free plan.

“Professional” Apollo.io pricing plan

Looking to enjoy the full powers of Apollo.io? The Professional plan, priced at $99 per user/month, is the most popular one among users, helping small and medium-sized businesses grow their sales operations without limitations. 

Besides all the features from the Basic plan, the Professional plan also comes with higher limits for the AI email assistant (800k words/month), call recordings and AI conversation intelligence, tracking website visitors, advanced analytics and reporting dashboards, and priority customer support. 

While some of the key features are still capped in the Professional plan, the volume provided is more than sufficient for small to medium-sized businesses, and if not—then your best (and only) option is the next, premium pricing plan. 

“Custom” Apollo.io pricing plan

The Organization Apollo.io cost is $5,000/year, and as inferred from its name — it can be customized for larger organizations looking to remove all feature limitations for their sales and marketing operations. 

On top of everything from the Professional plan, the Organization plan provides 1M words/month for their AI email assistant, international call dialer + AI-generated transcripts/summaries, customizable reports, advanced API access, dedicated customer support, and advanced security configurations. 

While the price tag is quite hefty, realistically speaking, the Custom plan will remove the need to pay for at least 1 or 2 extra tools in your tech stack, given its extensive suite of features.

What are Apollo.io reviews by real users? 

The Apollo.io reviews are exactly what you’d expect them to be — pretty great! 

• G2 →  4.8 / 5 
• Capterra →  4.6 / 5 
• Product Hunt →  4.4 / 5 

After looking through hundreds of Apollo.io reviews from real users, the most often-mentioned pros and cons include: 

✅Coming as no surprise, users love the vast and accurate contact database, which is crucial for effective prospecting.
✅The platform’s clean and intuitive dashboard UI makes it easy to navigate and use.
✅The automated outreach sequences, while simplistic in nature, work flawlessly without any issues. 

❎Some users find the initial setup and onboarding process complex, though I did not experience that at all.
❎The Free plan is too limited for any form of business use, which is a negative for those looking for a functional sales automation tool at no cost.
❎At times, users report minor bugs and glitches with the platform, though I did not experience a single one during my testing of the product. 

And, some real-world reviews:

“I love how this gives me the email information for some of the top companies I need to work with. It has helped me generate revenue for my company in ways I could have never done on my own.” 

“Very useful tool that allowed us to scale our outbound strategy from lead gen to sending.

Their product evolves very fast and they keep innovating.

Why not 5 stars?: Replying to emails from multiple domains is far from being optimized.” 

“Well, If you are entering into any new territory – and do not have any clue of the regional top business leaders, this is the best way to go. If you know how to target your leads on LinkedIn, the same is expected here and you are connected and a well-designed sequence is generated for your cold emails. We have attained good contacts and leads out of this software while we are targeting the middle east clients.“

What is the best Apollo.io alternative?

Choosing a sales platform is a serious business decision that will directly impact the success and productivity of your sales team, therefore having a direct correlation with profits as well, so you must take your time to make an informed decision. 

Here’s a brief, oversimplified comparison of the top Apollo.io competitors in the sales automation space: 

After spending countless hours comparing the top sales automation platforms ourselves, it’s safe to say that Apollo.io undoubtedly lives up to its reputation. 

With its versatile suite of features ranging from a top-class contact database to AI qualification and personalization features, this is definitely a great choice for businesses looking to grow their sales operations. 

While better than most other sales automation platforms on the market, we invite you to check out Reply.io to see if that would be a better fit for you. In fact, we’ve curated a detailed comparison of the two tools.

Key differences include: 

• With Reply.io, you get more channels for your outreach campaigns (including email, cloud calls, LinkedIn, SMS, and WhatsApp);
• Reply.io comes with a native AI SDR agent that hyper-personalizes your outreach AND handles responses on your behalf (including booking meetings); 

• Reply.io provides businesses with an awesome AI Chatbot that captures, qualifies, and nurtures inbound leads to generate more warm leads; 
• With Reply’s Google Postmaster and MailToaster integrations, and a dedicated deliverability team at their disposal, users can enjoy enhanced email deliverability for their outreach campaigns; 
• No more limits with unlimited mailboxes and warmups, making your outreach campaigns run super smooth so you can reach more prospects easily.
• Take advantage of LinkedIn automation to step up your outreach game on one of the top professional networks, making it a breeze to connect with key decision-makers.
• Last but not least, Reply.io provides much more powerful team management features to keep better track of sales reps’ performance, tasks, KPIs, etc.

How to choose your sales automation platform?

In summary, Apollo.io is a fantastic sales automation platform that significantly enhances all the key B2B sales processes, from prospecting all the way to closing deals. 

Mostly known and loved for its extensive contact database with powerful search filters, Apollo.io is especially a great fit for businesses struggling to identify relevant prospects in their niche. 

We encourage you to research more sales automation platform alternatives on the market, and considering most of them now provide free plans, it’s probably a good idea to play around with them and decide which best suits your needs (or even which UI your sales team prefers) before committing to a costly subscription. 

Once again, we invite you to take Reply.io for a spin and contact our sales or CS teams if you have any questions, we’d be more than happy to talk!  

Stay tuned for more in-depth reviews of top sales automation tools coming soon. Until next time!