Enrich data

Hunter is the simplest: give it a company domain or a name and it finds and verifies the work email. Apollo adds a large B2B database, email sequences and a dialer, so you can find and contact prospects in one place. Clay suits growth teams and agencies building tightly targeted lists at scale, and expect a learning curve. Most founders start with Apollo or Hunter on the free plan.

Apollo, Hunter and Clay all have free plans, and Hunter's comes with monthly credits. That covers a small weekly list of prospects. Once you enrich hundreds of contacts a month, you will need a paid plan. Dropcontact has no free plan: 50 free credits let you test it, and paying starts at €79 a month.

GDPR applies to work emails because they identify a person. Many B2B teams rely on legitimate interest, which requires a clear purpose, a balancing test and an easy way to opt out. Dropcontact works by algorithm rather than a stored contact database, which is why European teams pick it. Rules on cold email also differ by country, so check them before you send.

Dropcontact finds and verifies professional emails and cleans up existing CRM records, which is its main job. Apollo enriches contacts with roles and company details. Clay lets you define your own columns and fill them from several providers. Run a test on a few hundred records first to check the hit rate before you process the whole CRM.

People change jobs and companies change domains, so any database goes stale. Hunter verifies that an address delivers before you send. A high bounce rate harms your sending domain, so verify every list right before a campaign. Remove addresses that fail verification rather than guessing.