Apollo.io vs Seamless.AI
 Apollo.io |  Seamless.AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 26/100 | 13/100 |
| Rank in category | #3 | #7 |
| Rated comments | 30 | 17 |
| Best for | Budget-conscious teams prospecting into the US; Small teams that want data and sequencing in one tool; Building large lists that will be verified separately | Budget-conscious reps who want a cheaper alternative to ZoomInfo and will verify data themselves |
| Skip it if | Teams that need reliable direct dials for cold calling; Senders who cannot run a separate verification step; Prospecting outside the US or in niche verticals | Teams that cannot absorb a hard-to-cancel annual contract; Buyers who need dependable email accuracy without separate verification |
| Starting price | $49/seat/mo | Custom pricing |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Free plan with 900 credits per seat per year. Paid plans billed annually: Basic $49, Professional $79 and Organization $119 (minimum 3 seats) per seat per month; monthly billing costs more (the page says annual saves 24%). 14-day trial on Basic and Professional. Inbound and Advanced Dialer are paid add-ons. | Sales-led pricing; no public plan prices. The pricing page asks how many contacts you need per month and your company size before quoting, and offers free sign-up and competitor switch discounts. |
Independent users treat Apollo as the budget default: far cheaper than ZoomInfo, with data and sequencing bundled in one place, and good enough for US prospecting if you accept extra cleanup. The recurring complaint is data freshness: users describe stale records, people who left years ago, wrong or switchboard phone numbers and bounce rates that stay high even after Apollo's own verification, plus renewals and credit changes that raised costs. About 40% of the Reddit mentions read as promotional, including a large, coordinated cluster of near-identical comments pitching Prospeo as the Apollo replacement, so this rests on roughly 30 independent opinions.
Users like
- Costs a fraction of ZoomInfo, and users who weigh price against quality call the data good enough for the money[1][2][3][4][5]
- Several users who had both Apollo and ZoomInfo preferred Apollo overall[1][2][3]
- Database, sequencing and dialing live in one tool, which users find simple for early-stage or low-volume outbound[1][2][3]
- Works without major issues for some users, particularly when targeting the US[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Stale records: users find people who left months or years ago (one found a contact who died 20 years earlier still listed), with bounce rates around 9% even after running lists through a verifier[1][2][3][4][5]
- Phone numbers are a weak spot: inactive, wrong-person or HQ switchboard numbers returned instead of no result, and one user reports half the numbers were unreliable[1][2][3][4]
- Costs have crept up: a long-time customer's renewal tripled after a credit system change, and others say enrichment is expensive for what it returns[1][2][3]
- Coverage thins outside the US and in some niches: it lost to ZoomInfo and Cognism in one team's US and EMEA test, and a health tech team found it missed many people after leaving ZoomInfo[1][2][3]
Independent users are largely negative: the most common reports are inaccurate data (guessed email patterns, wrong phone numbers, bounce rates near 20%), annual contracts that are hard to exit, and aggressive sales follow-up. A minority, mostly in 2023 to 2026 comments, rate the data as good enough to replace ZoomInfo at a fraction of the price, so data quality is contested rather than settled. The corpus shows no promotional seeding, but much of it is older r/sales discussion from 2022 and 2023.
Users like
Users complain about
- Data accuracy is the main complaint: emails guessed from naming conventions, wrong phone numbers, and one two-year customer reporting 18 to 23% bounce rates[1][2][3][4][5]
- Annual contracts with no cancellation; buyers describe being unable to exit and continuing to receive bills[1][2][3]
- Aggressive sales outreach and weak support once the deal is signed; one person says the company cold called them about 20 times after removal requests[1][2][3][4]
- Teams that tested it against ZoomInfo went back to ZoomInfo, citing more accurate and thorough data[1][2]