Lemlist vs Apollo: Unbiased Comparison of Sales Automation Tools

Why compare Lemlist and Apollo?

Sales automation tools are more than just a convenience—they're essential for scaling your outreach and closing more deals with less effort. When it comes to top contenders in the field, Lemlist vs Apollo always sparks heated debate. Both platforms promise to streamline your sales processes, automate follow-ups, and help your team work smarter, not harder.

But here's the catch: while both tools share similar goals, they take very different approaches. So, which one truly has the edge for your business?

In this review, we'll compare:

• Key features side by side
• Pros and cons of each tool
• Best-fit scenarios based on team needs

Let's dive in.

Lemlist vs Apollo: Features Overview

Lemlist

Lemlist is a cold outreach tool designed to ensure your emails are not delivered to someone's spam folder. It focuses on personalized email outreach and follow-ups to help sales teams and marketers create more engaging and effective email campaigns.

Key Features

• Personalized email campaigns: Lemlist allows users to personalize images and videos within their emails to make them more engaging.
• B2B lead contact database: Lemlist has an AI-powered B2B database with 450 million+ contacts
• Email deliverability: Lemlist includes tools to improve email deliverability, ensuring that your emails reach the inbox and not the spam folder.
• Automated follow-ups: Users can set up automated follow-up sequences to ensure no leads fall through the cracks.
• Integrations: Lemlist integrates with popular CRMs and other sales tools to streamline workflows.
• Analytics: Detailed analytics help users track the performance of their email campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

Pros

• High level of personalization: The ability to personalize images and videos can significantly increase engagement rates.
• User-friendly interface: Lemlist's interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible for users of all skill levels.
• Email deliverability: The platform offers robust tools to improve email deliverability, ensuring your messages are seen.

Cons

• Limited to email: While Lemlist excels in email automation, it lacks features for other aspects of sales automation, such as multichannel campaigns. You'll have to add to your tech stack for this.
• Pricing: Lemlist can be on the pricier side, especially for small businesses or startups with limited budgets.

Pricing

You can choose from an annual or monthly subscription plan. There is a 14-day free trial available across all the plans and separate plans are available for teams with more than 10 users. The plans below are based on an annual subscription.

• A starter plan is $32 per month, per user sending email: This gives you unlimited and customizable campaigns, 100 credits per month for their email finder and verifier, access to their leads database, Ai-generated sequence, custom text variable, access to the Chrome extension, custom reports and analytics, in-app support and a perasonalized booking page.
• A professional plan is $55 per month, per 3 users sending email: This gives you everything from the starter plan and 250 credits per month for their email finder and verifier, email warm-up and deliverability booster, CRM integrations, Custom image personalization, A/B testing for your campaigns, inbox rotation, syntax personalization, API access and access to Zapier integration.
• A multichannel plan is $79 per 5 users sending email: This gives you everything from the previous plans and 500 credits for their email finder and verifier, LinkedIn prospection and voice notes, cold calling prospection with Aircall, advanced campaign filters,Yaaaa custom landing pages and premium support chat.
• An outreach scale plan is $129 per 15 users sending email: This gives you access to everything from the previous plans and 1,000 credits per month for their email finder and verifier and a dedicated account manager for with 4+ seats on their plan.

A closer look at Lemlist

Below we do a deeper dive into Lemlist's top three features – personalized email campaigns, dynamic images and videos and their B2B lead database.

1. Personalized email campaigns

This is one of Lemlist's standout features specifically designed to help you stay out of your recipient's spam box. It helps you personalized bulk email campaigns by creating custom text variables, images and dynamic landing pages. This could be useful if you often send cold email campaigns. With the modern consumer increasingly unlikely to open an email as soon as they read its subject line, it's more important than ever to personalize your cold email outreach.

2. Dynamic images and videos

Lemlist allows you to create dynamic images and videos in your emails. These can be personalized with your recipient's name, company logo and other relevant details which is a great to add that personal touch to your cold emails.

3. B2B lead database

Lemlist has an AI-powered B2B database with over 450 million contacts of warm lead data. It also gives you general filters so that you can find your ideal buyer via specific criteria such as demographic, industry and company size. Saving sales team time sourcing potential clients so they can focus on growing their sales pipeline and cold emailing outreach efforts.

Apollo

Apollo is a comprehensive sales automation platform that offers a wide range of features for lead generation, email automation, and sales intelligence. It is designed to help sales reps find and engage with potential customers more effectively.

Key Features

• Lead generation: Apollo offers a robust database of contacts and companies, making it easy to find and target potential leads.
• Email automation: Users can create and automate personalized email sequences to engage with leads.
• Conversation intelligence: Apollo provides detailed insights and analytics on leads and accounts, helping sales teams make informed decisions.
• Multi-channel outreach: Apollo supports outreach through email, phone, and LinkedIn, providing a more comprehensive approach to sales engagement.
• CRM Integrations: Apollo integrates with major CRM platforms such as folk, ensuring seamless data flow and collaboration.

Pros

• Comprehensive features: Apollo offers a wide range of features, making it a one-stop-shop for sales automation needs.
• Lead database: The extensive lead database is a significant advantage for finding and targeting potential customers.
• Multi-channel outreach: The ability to engage with leads through multiple channels can increase the chances of successful conversions.

Cons

• Complexity: With so many features, Apollo can be overwhelming for new users, and it may take some time to learn how to navigate the platform effectively.
• Cost: Like Lemlist, Apollo can be expensive, particularly for smaller businesses or teams.
  

Pricing

You can choose from a monthly, quarterly or annual plan. The plans below are based on an annual plan.

• A free plan is available: With unlimited email credits, capped at a minimum of 10,000 per month per account, providing users 60 mobile credits per year, and 120 export credits per year. Plus other benefits such as basic sequence automations (limited to 2 sequences), basic filters, custom fields, limited API access and custom stages.
• A basic plan is $49 per user, per month: With unlimited email credits capped at a minimum of 120,000 per year, per account, providing users 900 mobile credits per year and 12,000 export credits per year. Plus other benefits such as data enrichment, the ability to select 10,000 records at a time, A/B testing, job chnages and advanced filters.
• A professional plan is $79 per user, per month: With unlimited email credits capped at 120,000 per year, per account, providing users 1,200 mobile credits per year and 24,000 export credits per year. Plus other benefits such as no sequence limit, uncapped sending limit through SendGrid, advanced reports, email reply and meeting tracking, call recordings and track website visitors.
• An enterprise (or organization plan) is $149 per user, per month with a min of 3 users: With unlimited email credits capped at a minimum of 120,000 per year, per account, 2,400 mobile credits per year and 48,000 export credits per year. Plus other benefits such as customizable reports, advanced API access, buying intent and intent filters, SSO sign on.

A closer look at Apollo

Below we do a deeper dive into Apollo's top three features – conversation intelligence, end-to-end sales workflow automation and deal management.

1. Conversation intelligence

Apollo's conversation intelligence feature provides insights into your sales outreach by showing you what's working with an interaction with a prospect. It includes tools such as call recording, AI-powered analysis, keyword and sentiment analysis as well as reporting. Sales teams can use these to continuously improve their performance, make more data-driven decisions and help with lead qualification.

2. Sales workflow automation

Apollo's workflow automation features allow you to automate various sales tasks including lead assignment, data entry and follow-up reminders. This helps streamline processes, reduce manual work and capture important tasks. There's a specific workflow engine that automates the entire sales funnel including automation to add contacts to sequences, assigning tasks and updating fields. For sales teams of 20-50 people who need centralized contact management alongside this automation, folk CRM stands out as the ideal solution to track deals, manage relationships, and maintain a single source of truth for all your prospects and customers.

👉🏼 Try folk now to manage contact-based reminders with your team

3. Deal management

Apollo's deal management feature is designed to help sales teams track, manage and close deals throughout the sales pipeline. On top of people and company records, deals enable you to engage with prospects in a meaningful way and keep track of everything in one place. It benefits SDRs and Account Executives more directly. By helping sales reps to get visibility on current and historical deals to give them context for conversations at individual and account levels – and by helping account executives get a seamless workflow for contacts, accounds and deals to help them access and update critical data faster.

What is sales automation?

Sales automation refers to the use of software and technology to automate repetitive sales tasks. This can include lead generation, email marketing, follow-ups, scheduling meetings, and more. The goal of sales automation is to save time, reduce human error, and allow sales teams to focus on more strategic activities, ultimately leading to increased productivity and higher sales.

Why is sales automation important?

Sales automation is crucial for your team to be able to lift parts of the sales cycle that might be just as important as generating leads – but just as time consuming. By automating these parts, your team can:

1. Increase efficiency: Automation allows sales teams to handle repetitive tasks, such as follow-up emails, lead nurturing, and data entry, without manual intervention. This frees up time for sales representatives to focus on more strategic activities, like building relationships with prospects and closing deals.

2. Create consistency: Automation ensures that every lead receives timely and consistent communication, reducing the chances of human error or missed opportunities. This consistency helps maintain a professional image and ensures that no lead falls through the cracks.

3. Data-driven insight: Automated systems can track and analyze vast amounts of data, providing valuable insights into sales performance, customer behavior, and campaign effectiveness. These insights enable sales teams to make informed decisions, optimize strategies, and ultimately improve conversion rates. For medium-sized sales teams of 20-50 people, combining this data with folk CRM provides the perfect foundation for managing relationships, tracking deal progression, and maintaining visibility across your entire sales pipeline.

Conclusion

Both Lemlist and Apollo offer powerful tools for sales automation, but they cater to slightly different needs. Lemlist is ideal for teams looking to enhance their email outreach with personalized content and strong deliverability tools. Apollo, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive solution, offering robust lead generation, multi-channel outreach, and detailed sales intelligence. If email personalization is your top priority, Lemlist may be the better choice. But if you need a more all-encompassing sales automation platform with extensive lead generation capabilities, Apollo is likely the better fit. Ultimately, both tools can help you streamline your sales processes and achieve better results. However, for sales teams of 20-50 people who need to centralize lead data from either platform, folk CRM emerges as the clear winner, providing seamless integration capabilities while offering superior contact management, deal tracking, and team collaboration features specifically designed for growing sales organizations.

👉🏼 Try folk now to centralize every lead from Lemlist or Apollo and never miss a follow-up

More resources

• The modern sales stack for SMBs
• The ultimate guide to CRMs for SMBs
• How to build a centralized contact database

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