Clay is an advanced tool for go-to-market teams that lets them automate personalized outreach and enrich lead data at scale. It integrates with over 75 data enrichment sources and uses AI to automate research and craft outreach messages.
However, the tool has some drawbacks that might push you to explore Clay alternatives on the market. These include a steep learning curve, overpricing credits, and a lack of spreadsheet-like functionalities.
In this article, we explore the top 10 Clay alternatives currently available that address these drawbacks.
Why Do You Need a Clay Alternative?
Here’s why you might consider switching from Clay to competitor platforms:
- Clay has a steep learning curve.
- Its credits are overpriced.
- It lacks spreadsheet functionalities.
Reason 1: Steep Learning Curve
Due to Clay’s extensive features and integrations, being a new user, you might often struggle to start a complete prospecting process immediately. Being relatively new to the market, it has occasional bugs and slow performance.
When you use Clay, you will need time to understand its functionalities before achieving its full potential.
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Reason 2: Overpriced Credit System
Many users on review websites observed that credits provide poor value compared to using API keys directly. Sometimes, they’re up to ten times more expensive than alternative options for data enrichment. This results in a quick depletion of credits, especially when seeking customization or personalization.
Additionally, the pricing structure is complicated as different actions consume varying amounts of credits.
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Reason 3: Limited Spreadsheet Features
Clay’s lack of advanced spreadsheet features, such as formatting options, restricts its effectiveness as a standalone tool for data enrichment. Users often find themselves relying on Google Sheets for tasks that require better formatting.
This reliance on separate tools complicates the process, disrupts their workflow, and reduces overall efficiency.
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What are the Best Clay Alternatives and Competitors?
1. Apollo.io
Apollo.io is a sales platform designed to help businesses find leads, manage deals, and improve sales performance. It provides the most up-to-date and accurate B2B data on over 275 million contacts and 73 million companies through its ‘Living Data Network.’
Features
- Using Apollo's Chrome Extension, you can prospect directly within tools like LinkedIn, Salesforce, Gmail, or any website and gain instant insights about contacts and companies without leaving their current workflow.
- With AI-generated lead scores, it identifies prospects most likely to convert by analyzing the sales history and combining it with Apollo’s data.
- Integrates intent data (via Bombora) to track businesses actively researching products or services relevant to what you sell.
- You can create automated, personalized email sequences with multiple touchpoints (email, phone calls, LinkedIn tasks).
- The built-in dialer enables cold calling from within the platform and provides verified phone numbers, automatic call recording, and transcription.
Pricing
Apollo.io offers a free plan with unlimited email credits, 5 mobile credits, and 10 export credits. If you need premium features, it offers three paid plans to choose from:
- Basic plan: $59 per user per month
- Professional plan: $99 per user per month
- Organization plan: $149 per user per month
Pros and Cons
✅ Consistently provides highly accurate contact information.
✅ Quick and helpful customer support.
❌ New users may experience a steep learning curve.
2. Lusha
Lusha is a B2B sales intelligence software that provides accurate contact data to allow sales, marketing, and business development teams to connect with decision-makers. It’s known for its strong emphasis on data privacy and compliance, including certifications like GDPR, CCPA, and ISO 27701.
Features
- Lusha’s job change alerts notify teams in real-time when prospects switch roles, enabling them to seize opportunities quickly.
- The technology filter lets you target companies based on their technology stacks. This allows the sales team to craft tailored pitches and boost their chances of closing deals.
- Create highly targeted lists of up to 1,000 prospects simultaneously using advanced filters and real-time data. Then, export them directly to CRM, automating workflows.
- Integrates effortlessly with platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, and Outlook in under 60 seconds.
Pricing
In addition to a free trial, Lusha offers three paid plans:
- Pro plan: $49 per user per month
- Premium plan: $79 per user per month
- Scale plan: Custom pricing
Pros and Cons
✅ Responsive customer support, especially in resolving issues related to inaccurate data.
✅ The free trial allows new users to test the platform before committing financially.
❌ Important contact information is sometimes unavailable, leading to wastage of credits.
3. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a B2B data platform that helps businesses accelerate growth by automating marketing and sales tasks. It offers a vast database of company information and decision-makers, allowing you to target the right people with precision.
Features
- Engage by ZoomInfo, a sales engagement tool, helps sales teams quickly connect with prospects using automated workflows, such as multi-channel prospecting campaigns—Salesflows.
- The AI recommendations engine suggests the best contacts and personas to target based on historical interactions.
- The FormComplete feature boosts lead capture with data-enriched forms, auto-fills details from a business email, tracks abandoned forms, and verifies emails in real time for high-quality leads.
- ZoomInfo Chat helps sales teams engage website visitors in real time, trigger personalized chats based on lead data, and schedule meetings instantly.
Pricing
Start a free trial and speak with ZoomInfo’s sales team to get a customized pricing plan—with three tiers for Sales, Marketing, and Talent.
Pros and Cons
✅ Easy to use, with responsive customer service and training.
✅ Smooth integration with Sales and HubSpot simplifies data exports and CRM record-building.
❌ Occasionally slow due to the large volume of data being processed.
4. UpLead
UpLead is a B2B sales intelligence tool that offers a database of over 160 million business contacts and allows you to search for leads based on 50+ filters, such as industry, job title, company size, and location.
Features
- Monitors over 16,000 different data points, enabling you to find companies that use competitive or complementary technologies. Plus, you can exclude certain technologies to filter out companies that would not be potential buyers.
- Smoothly integrates with major CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive. This lets you push leads directly into your CRM or download them as CSV files.
- The Intent Data feature helps sales teams find leads actively looking for solutions to their offerings. This leads to proactive engagement at the right moment, increasing the chances of conversion.
- The Prospector API feature lets you find contacts and emails based on job title, function, and location.
Pricing
Start with a 7-day free trial. After that, there are three paid plans to choose from:
- Essentials: $99 per month
- Plus: $199 per month
- Professional: Custom pricing
Pros and Cons
✅ Clean and intuitive dashboard simplifies searching and filtering contacts.
✅ A cost-effective solution compared to other platforms.
❌ Contact details can sometimes be outdated.
5. Datanyze
Datanyze is designed to elevate the sales prospecting experience by offering a comprehensive suite of tools that streamline data collection, improve content accuracy, and facilitate meaningful interactions with potential clients.
Features
- With its Google Chrome extension, you can access and collect contact information directly from LinkedIn profiles and company websites. No more switching between tabs or manually searching for contact data.
- Boasts a vast database, including over 63 million direct dial numbers and 84 million email addresses.
- Provides icebreaker suggestions based on current events or social media activity related to prospects. This helps sales professionals initiate personalized and relevant conversations.
Pricing
In addition to a 90-day free trial, Datanyze’s two paid plans include:
- Nyze Pro 1: $29 per month
- Nyze Pro 2: $55 per month
Pros and Cons
✅ The easy-to-navigate dashboard makes Datanyze accessible to users of all skill levels.
✅ Promises a refund for any inaccuracies found within its database.
❌ Lack of responsive customer support.
6. Kaspr
Kaspr is a lead generation platform providing accurate contact data, primarily focused on European markets. It offers access to a vast database of over 50 million verified phones and email addresses to help sales teams, recruiters, and marketers connect with prospects efficiently.
Features
- With the LinkedIn Chrome extension, easily extract contact data directly from LinkedIn profiles, including from Sales Navigator and Recruiter Lite.
- Offers a centralized dashboard for organizing leads, setting up follow-up tasks, and managing prospecting activities. It also supports tagging, list creation, and note-taking to ensure no prospect is forgotten.
- Integrates with major CRM systems like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Pipedrive, allowing enriched data to flow directly into existing pipelines. Zapier integration opens up further connections with tools like Google Sheets, ClickUp, and Bullhorn.
- Ensures all data collection and handling processes comply with European data privacy regulations—GDPR and CCPA.
Pricing
Kaspr offers a free plan and three paid plans:
- Starter plan: $65 per month
- Business plan: $99 per license per month
- Organization plan: $99 per license per month (minimum 5 licenses)
Pros and Cons
✅ Easy setup without a complicated onboarding process.
✅ Customer support team considers users’ feedback for future improvements.
❌ Can be expensive for small businesses.
7. Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder helps businesses identify companies visiting their websites and turn anonymous traffic into actionable leads. By tracking and analyzing website visitors, it provides insights into company names, their behavior, and interest levels.
Features
- Scrubs data to remove valueless traffic, such as bots or Internet Service Providers (ISPs), guaranteeing you see high-quality leads.
- Integrates with tools like Slack, Mailchimp, Google Ads, ActiveCampaign, and Looker Studio to fit smoothly into existing sales and marketing workflows. This enables teams to access lead data across different platforms.
- Based on the insights into the content prospects have viewed, sales teams can tailor the outreach pitches and reach out to them before competitors.
Pricing
Leadfeeder offers two plans:
- Free plan: Tracks up to 100 companies with data from the last 7 days.
- Paid plan: Starts at $165 per month, including unlimited visits data
Pros and Cons
✅ The Simple setup makes it accessible for teams with less technical expertise.
✅ The IP recognition service actually misidentifies many companies.
❌ Companies are often misidentified as carriers or unrelated businesses.
8. Outreach
Outreach is a sales execution platform designed to help sales teams, RevOps, and go-to-market leaders streamline their workflow and close more deals.
Features
- Provides real-time insights to sales leaders through tools to track deals, forecast revenue, and analyze probabilities of hitting targets.
- The dashboard displaying key metrics, sales funnels, and performance data offers a visual, easy-to-understand breakdown of how the sales cycle is progressing—what’s working and what needs improvement.
- Outreach’s AI capabilities assist in automating tasks, predicting deal outcomes, and guiding sales reps on the next steps to maintain momentum. It also improves sales coaching by analyzing meetings and interactions in real time.
- Offers role-based access controls (RBAC), meaning you only get access to the information and tools necessary for your role.
Pricing
Talk to Outreach’s sales team for a tailored pricing plan. The pricing is structured in five tiers: Engage, Call, Meet, Deal, and Forecast.
Pros and Cons
✅ Outreach makes it easy to manage a lot of prospects and keep track of who is being reached out to.
✅ Responsive customer support, even in non-system-related issues.
❌ Users find Outreach significantly overpriced for what it offers.
9. Instantly
Instantly is an email outreach platform helping businesses find, contact, and convert their ideal clients through automated email campaigns. It uses an AI-powered database of over 280 million verified contacts. Plus, advanced filters let you target and engage the right clients at scale.
Features
- The Unibox feature allows you to manage multiple inboxes from one place—you can categorize leads, respond, or forward emails to book meetings.
- Offers a resource library that includes over 600 email outreach templates, setup guides, and 200+ email outreach strategies, helping you fine-tune your campaigns.
- Create a list of buyers and reach out to them with Instantly in a click.
- From technologies to headcount and revenue - target only the people you know will resonate with your message using advanced filters.
Pricing
Instantly offers four paid plans:
- Growth Leads: $49 per month
- Supersonic Leads: $97 per month
- Hyperleads: $197 per month
- Light Speed: $492 per month
Pros and Cons
✅ Prompt customer support and access to useful training materials.
✅ Regularly adds new features according to customer feedback.
❌ Frequent updates and new features can be overwhelming, especially for beginners.
10. Anymail Finder
Anymail Finder is an email verification and discovery tool that boasts a high accuracy rate, with verified emails guaranteed to have a 97%+ delivery rate.
Features
- Search for verified email addresses by entering a person’s name and the domain of the company they work for.
- Integrates with LinkedIn, letting you build lists of leads and find emails directly from LinkedIn profiles and Sales Navigator.
- Use its browser extension to find accurate email addresses without leaving your web browser. It also generates comprehensive data-rich lists that can be exported in CSV or Excel formats for further outreach.
- Provides a robust API or seamless integration into existing workflows and supports bulk email searching, making it suitable for large-scale operations.
Pricing
You can start with a 3-day trial. After that, choose any plan from the following:
- Starter plan: $14 per month
- Standard plan: $49 per month
- Scale plan: $149 per month
- Ultimate plan: $299 per month
Pros and Cons
✅ Free trial enables you to test all the features before committing to a paid plan.
✅ Provides access to hard-to-find email addresses.
❌ Some features might be tough to get the hand of initially.
How to Close More Leads with Warmly?
While there’s no doubt Clay and all the alternatives in the list above are great outreach personalization tools, wouldn’t it be advantageous for you to know the anonymous visitors coming to your website?
After all, these visitors might be the best ICPs that convert into customers.
That’s where Warmly comes in.
Warmly leverages AI to give you highly accurate contact data and insights on your website visitors. It captures critical information like the name, email, LinkedIn profile, and research intent of visitors, making it easy for your sales team to prioritize high-quality leads.
Key features include:
- Real-time contact identification: Uncover visitor details and intent data, providing actionable insights into high-potential leads.
- Automated outreach: Warmly enables automated, real-time follow-ups via email or LinkedIn, as well as live chat tools for immediate engagement with visitors.
- Lead prioritization: Warmly’s AI-driven technology helps you focus on leads with the highest conversion potential based on demographics, firmographics, and visitor behavior.
- CRM and communication integration: Synchronize visitor data seamlessly with your CRM or communication tools, ensuring an uninterrupted workflow.
- Always-updated database: Gain access to over 200M+ contacts with constantly refreshed data, keeping your outreach relevant and timely.
What’s more, Warmly’s intuitive platform allows you to automate lead nurturing, improve inbound and outbound chat experiences, and schedule meetings directly from your website.
By integrating Warmly into your sales pipeline, you can significantly improve your lead conversion rate, nurturing visitors into potential customers through efficient and personalized engagement.
Sign up for Warmly’s free plan and discover firsthand how it can fill your pipeline with qualified leads, or book a live demo to see it in action first.