Comparisons

Smartlead vs Apollo.io

Firstly, we appreciate the Apollo.io team, who've put in a commendable effort. However, if you want all your emails to land in prospects' inboxes, read our Apollo.io review & claim free trial credits.

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Scale Your Outreach Without Worrying About Daily Limits or Email Eeputation

It’s hard to find the right cold email tool for your business, especially when the market is flooded with thousands of them. We suggest creating a checklist to find the right outreach tool that offers the features your business needs.  

For instance, Apollo offers an excellent B2B database of 265+ million contacts. With such a database, you can build the lead list of your dream. But, is it the best option for cold email outreach?

You need more than a lead list to launch successful cold email campaigns. You need AI warm-ups, A/B testing, ESP matching feature, powerful API, and more.

To help you make the decision, here’s a detailed comparison between Smartlead and Apollo.

Why is Smartlead Better Than Apollo and the Best Choice for Cold Email Marketing?

  • Unlimited Mailboxes Per User: Unlike Apollo, which offers max 15 mailboxes/user, Smartlead offers unlimited mailboxes even in the Basic Plan.
  • Complete White-Labeling Access: Unlike Apollo, Smartlead allows you to customize the app with your logo, domain name, and branding and offer client access to it.
  • Powerful API: Ever dreamt of earning money while sleeping? From fetching lead message history to integrating with your choice of CRM, Smartlead’s API can automate anything you want. Literally.
  • Best Customer Support: The Smartlead team is known for staying one step ahead in solving your problems. Any problem you face, ping us on Slack, Chatbot, or anywhere you want.
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Highlighted Features Comparison

  • Unlimited Team Members:

    You can add as many people as you want and track the team's performance in one place without paying an extra dime.

  • Smart Warm-Ups

    Smartlead auto adjusts the number of warm-up emails and uses human-like conversations to enhance your domain reputation and deliverability. Unlike Apollo, Smartlead “manually” moves emails landed in spam to the primary inbox, marking them as important.

  • Custom Warm-Up Identifier Tag

    Smartlead allows you to assign a unique 2-word phrase to each mailbox to identify warm-up emails sent from Smartlead. This will help set up filters in your email client to manage warm-up emails effectively.

  • Subsequences for Behavior-Based “Sequences”

    You can create subsequences to automate responses based on the response you received.

  • Auto-Rotating Email Accounts

    This feature rotates the sender’s account to enhance deliverability.

  • Unlimited Email Rotation

    With Smartlead, you can send up to 10000 emails with no extra charges. so now you can send bulk emails in a blink.

  • Smart Personalization

    Personalize subject lines and email body using “spintax” or “spin-tags” feature to generate different text combinations automatically.

  • A/B Testing

    You can test email versions, subject lines, and opening lines with A/B testing and see what works best for you.

Detailed Analytics

Smartlead offers a comprehensive view of your email performance, displaying key metrics such as number of emails sent, clicked rate, response rate, bounce rates, etc.

Automatic Out-of-Office Detection

You can use Smartlead's "Automatic Out Of Office detection" by categorizing Out-of-Office replies in your campaign data.

  • B2B Database

    Apollo offers a large B2B database of 265+ million contacts with 65 data attributes. It lets you filter the database and create a targeted lead list.

  • Extensions

    Apollo offers LinkedIn, Gmail, and Salesforce extensions.

  • Lead Scoring

    You can create precise scoring models with full flexibility to define criteria, weightings, and variables and score your lead accordingly.

  • Meeting Scheduler

    This helps you automate booking meetings and provides options like pre-meeting insights, automated scheduling, & inbound routing flows, etc.

Dialer

You can make, receive, and record calls, join active calls, and log calls to your CRM.

Task Manager

With Apollo, you can stay on top of all of your tasks, including calls, emails, LinkedIn connections, and other important action items.

Pricing Comparison

  • They have a basic plan which is perfect for marketers and scale-up businesses - $33/per month billed annually.

  • They have a popular plan which is perfect for marketers and scale-up businesses - $65/per month billed annually.

  • They have a pro plan which is perfect for agencies and large marketing companies - $78/per month billed annually.

  • They have one custom plan where you can have all Smartlead features customized according to you

  • They offer a free plan with 1 mailbox per user.

  • They offer a Basic plan with 1 mailbox per user at $39/month billed annually.

  • They offer a Professional plan with 5 mailboxes per user at $79/month billed annually.

They offer an Organization plan with 15 mailboxes per user at $79/month billed annually.

Why Do People Consistently Choose Us?

Due diligence is critical before investing into an AI cold email, so we've done the research & collected feedback comparing all the pros and cons of Apollo.

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Features
Unlimited Email Accounts
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Unlimited Email Warm-Ups
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Custom Warm-Up Identifier Tag
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Unlimited Rotating Emails
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No Extra Cost on Additional Mailboxes
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Automatic Out Of Office detection
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A/B Testing
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ESP Matching
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OTHER ENHANCED FEATURES
Whitelabel
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HubSpot Native Integration
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API Access
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Webhooks
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Wrapping up

Smartlead is built focusing on cold email outreach to scale businesses like yours. Our engine is definitely smarter than any cold email tools in the market right now. You can cross-check this fact with the reviews and feedback on Twitter and LinkedIn, and other software review websites.

While Apollo has a variety of features—such as the database, meeting scheduler, Gmail and LinkedIn extensions, etc.—Smartlead’s features are only to enhance cold email deliverability.

It has a long list of features that can make cold emailing a smooth sail for you and your team. Don’t hesitate. Sign up now for free and check out yourself.

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Frequently asked questions

General Questions

What are active leads?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Active leads are the contacts you upload in Smartlead, similar to contacts in HubSpot; if you upload 1000 leads to a campaign, they are considered 1000 active leads. If you upload similar leads to a new campaign, they are not considered a “new active lead” as they already exist in our system.

Do you provide mailboxes, or do I need to connect my own?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

We don’t offer mailboxes yet. You need to get your own dedicated list of mailboxes using popular providers like Gmail, Outlook, Zoho, and others that exist in the market. Once you get them, follow our detailed guides to connect them quickly.

Do you offer guides and articles on succeeding with cold emails?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Absolutely, one of our most popular guides can be found right here. It's been used by a large percentage of users to go from zero to cold emailing experts. Covering all topics from email infrastructure to copywriting and lead sourcing.

Is another tool needed for warmups?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

No, Smartlead has over 200,000 highly reputed mailboxes connected. The advantage you get along with naturalized AI conversations is access to aged domains you will never find in any warmup tool.

What is the API commonly used for?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

It is used popularly by agencies to automate their entire lead generation process as well as to connect Smartlead to external tools to push and pull data from. You can also connect to 1000s of apps using Zapier.

What type of businesses sees the most success with Smartlead?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Anyone that can close deals from demos will succeed with Smartlead. It works for Sales companies, Marketing agencies, SaaS businesses, Recruitment, and offline companies (like construction).

Do you provide me with lead sources?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

We do not provide you with leads. You will need to use other data providers. These leads can be automatically added to Smartlead using our API or bulk uploaded via our CSV upload system.

Do you integrate with any CRMs?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

We're building native integrations with Hubspot, Salesforce, Close, Pipedrive, and many more. The best part, due to our open API and Webhook infrastructure, you can connect to any CRM in the world without an issue.

How many team members can I add?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

You can add an unlimited number of team members, as well as assign them roles and authority access.

Do you have custom plans beyond the Pro plan?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Yes, it's common for many people to move to Custom plans after a few weeks. You can view all the options for up to 10M leads on the subscription page once you sign up for free.

Credits/Pricing

What is the difference between a lead & email credit?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

A lead credit refers to a unique email address (or lead) uploaded to your account.An email credit refers to an email sent out using SmartLead across any campaign in your account.

What is the pricing for whitelabeling?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

The pricing for whitelabeling is set at $29 per client. When you purchase the Pro plan, you will receive one free client as part of the package. Whitelabeling allows you to customize the branding and appearance of the platform, making it appear as your own product or service to your clients.

With the Pro plan, you have the option to add additional clients at a cost of $29 per client. This enables you to extend the whitelabeling feature to multiple clients, providing them with a tailored and branded experience.

If you require whitelabeling for your business, it is recommended to explore the pricing details and options available within your account settings or contact the support team for further assistance.

Billing Questions

Do I have to pay per email account?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

No, you get access to unlimited email accounts and warmup accounts without having to pay per account. This will let you scale your email outbound and without paying a penny more.

Does Smartlead require any long-term commitment if you go for their plans?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

No, Smartlead offers monthly and annual plans without any long-term commitments. You can easily and quickly cancel your individual subscriptions whenever you want to.

If I upgrade my plan am I charged the full amount or the difference?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

You are charged the difference.

Powerful Automated Email Marketing that Drives Sales.

  • All Features Included
  • No Credit Card Required
  • Free Warmup Included
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