Apollo

Apollo is the sales intelligence + outreach platform that B2B founders use to find prospects and email them. Think of it as 'LinkedIn Sales Navigator + Outreach.io + a sequencer, in one bundle, at a fraction of the price.' It's not the most polished product in the category, but the price-to-feature ratio is so good that it's become the default for indie B2B SaaS doing outbound. The core product is a B2B database — 275M+ contacts, 60M+ companies, sourced from various data providers. You filter by job title, company size, industry, technologies used, recent funding, hiring activity, dozens of other signals. Build a list of 'CTOs at Series A SaaS using AWS,' export emails and LinkedIn URLs, plug into the built-in sequencer for cold outreach. The whole flow that would require 4 separate tools at most companies happens in Apollo. For founders doing B2B sales motion the practical wins are: data accuracy is comparable to ZoomInfo at 1/10th the cost. The sequencer handles email + LinkedIn + calls with proper deliverability practices. Integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive cover most CRM exports. AI features (write emails based on prospect profile, summarise calls) are useful enough to use daily. The pricing is aggressive but real. Free tier supports 50 email credits/month and basic search — useful to evaluate. Basic at $59/user/month gets 100 email credits/day and unlimited search. Professional at $99/user/month bumps to 200 email credits/day and adds AI features. Organization at $149/user/month adds advanced features. Compared to ZoomInfo ($15K+/year minimum) or Outreach.io ($100+/user/month for the sequencer alone), Apollo is dramatically cheaper. The trade-offs: data accuracy is good but not perfect. ZoomInfo is still better on enterprise data; Apollo's sweet spot is SMB and mid-market. Email deliverability is your responsibility — Apollo doesn't magic past spam filters, so warm your domain and follow best practices. The UI is dense; new users get overwhelmed by the data filters. My take: if you're doing B2B outbound on a startup budget, Apollo is the obvious tool. The free tier is enough to validate the workflow. Pay for Basic when you're sending real outbound. Look at ZoomInfo only if you're targeting Fortune 500 and Apollo's data falls short. For 95% of indie B2B founders, Apollo is the right call.