Apollo.io vs Salesforce Sales Cloud comparison

Apollo.io and Salesforce are both solutions in the Opportunity Management category. Apollo.io is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while Salesforce is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Apollo.io holds a 16.8% mindshare in OM, compared to Salesforce’s 14.6% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Apollo.io users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Apollo.io

Read 6 Apollo.io reviews

639 Views
639 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Read 117 Salesforce Sales Cloud reviews

5,106 Views
511 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Apollo.io

Salesforce Sales Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Salesforce Sales Cloud and Apollo.io compete in the CRM and sales automation space. Salesforce Sales Cloud appears more robust due to its extensive features and integrations, while Apollo.io gains an edge with its modern interface and affordability.

Features: Salesforce Sales Cloud provides customizable workflows, advanced analytics, and seamless integration with various third-party applications. Apollo.io focuses on lead generation and sales intelligence, offering data enrichment, email automation, and a user-friendly interface.

Room for Improvement: Salesforce Sales Cloud could improve its cost-effectiveness for small businesses, the steep learning curve, and the complexity of customization options. Apollo.io could enhance its integration capabilities, expand its feature set to match larger competitors, and improve its scalability for growing businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Salesforce Sales Cloud offers both cloud-based and on-premise deployment options, providing extensive support and training resources. Apollo.io features a straightforward cloud-only deployment with responsive customer support but fewer customization options than Salesforce.

Pricing and ROI: Salesforce Sales Cloud generally has higher upfront costs but aims for long-term value through scalability and extensive features. Apollo.io offers a lower-cost entry point with a focus on rapid ROI through essential sales functionalities, making it more accessible for smaller businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed Apollo.io vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Apollo.io vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

July 2025

Download the complete report

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Apollo.io

Ranking in Opportunity Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Ranking in Opportunity Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

117

Ranking in other categories

CRM (2nd), Sales Force Automation (2nd), Conversation Intelligence Software (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Opportunity Management category, the mindshare of Apollo.io is 16.8%, up from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 14.6%, up from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Opportunity Management

Featured Reviews

Vaibhav Patil

Digital Marketer at DigiLiterate

It makes finding your target audience easy, has a verified contact details feature, and its customer support is helpful and always available

My company used Seamless AI and Hunter.io, but I found Apollo.io more affordable based on the number of leads it gives versus what other products provide. Apollo.io has around one hundred fifty industries you can target, so it has a more extensive lead database than other products. The tool also has a more user-friendly interface and is easy to use versus other tools. You first need to learn how to use Apollo.io, which becomes pretty easy. Other advantages of Apollo.io over other products include more filters you can use to find your target audience. It also shows you verified emails and has mass email and cold call features which you can't find in other tools.

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Kamal Deep

Founder and Salesforce Consultant at SaaSnic

Experience exceptional project enhancements and seamless automation integration

Salesforce Sales Cloud itself is a wonderful solution, and there are two different versions: Lightning and classic. The Lightning version is a new generation version compatible with any mobile device, whether it's a phone, iPad, or any size of screen. The reporting and analytics functionalities, especially with the Einstein feature, are wonderful because it allows for analysis of data regarding your opportunity pipeline, giving insight into how long it will take to close deals. This gives a great understanding of running different levels of campaigns and defining smart workflows, where if one task is done, the other task can automatically get created and assigned to different team members. This flexibility is a key benefit of Salesforce Sales Cloud. Lead management is a great feature in Salesforce Sales Cloud because if you go for enterprise and above licenses, you can define different record types. For example, if one company is into two different businesses such as real estate and car reselling, both being opposite, this can be defined in Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing for different workflows, fields, and mechanisms that do not affect each other's operations. The predictive insight feature known as forecasting is a very old feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud, giving predictions based on your pipeline and previous opportunity closings. The new Einstein analytics feature is more advanced and is enabled with AI, providing better forecasting based on your current pipeline. Salesforce Sales Cloud is working smartly with AI to help close more deals based on opportunity stages, trends, and industries, advising on the steps to take next. Lead generation is the most important thing because every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the intent data it provides our company. I find it really interesting how Apollo.io can detect the intent of companies looking for your company's solution."

"What I like most about Apollo.io is it lets you find your target audience. The tool also helps you find verified contact details, apart from allowing you to send bulk emails to people you're looking to contact."

"The product's most valuable feature is its ease of use, especially for beginners."

"It is a scalable solution."

"I like the tool's UI. Its user experience is clear."

"Apollo is very user-friendly."

"The solution can scale massively. I've been quite impressed."

"The development cost, maintenance cost, everything will be drastically reduced - unlike traditional infrastructure where we maintain everything on our own."

"Salesforce provides a lot of tools out of the box like opportunity tracking, automation, and linking between account, contact, and posting."

"Salesforce is very user-friendly, which makes it effortless to track business management reports."

"The most valuable features of Salesforce Sales Cloud are the ability to track portfolio opportunities and reporting capabilities. The notification process inside the platform is also very valuable, and extracting reports is extremely useful. However, we are currently using only a small part of its functionality."

"The automation of Salesforce Sales Cloud makes the process very easier to focus on leads and converts them automatically to accounts, contacts, and opportunities."

"The most valuable features are performance and integration."

"You can capture all the contacts that relate to an account or business, including personal details."

More Salesforce Sales Cloud pros

Cons

"The solution sends callouts when not in maintenance mode, which is a headache for the people involved."

"What's missing in Apollo.io is a proper CRM and pipeline management system. The tool is excellent at finding contact information, but it has room for improvement in sending emails and tracking the sales pipeline."

"The solution's initial setup process could be better."

"Sometimes we get the wrong information on Apollo. They should improve the emails because we are connecting all the emails and logging on to Apollo.io."

"They should provide a larger number of free emails."

"Apollo.io still needs to work on the CRM part because it has started building some CRM infrastructure for companies to use and track their sales activities."

"The solution's design could be improved."

"Salesforce must build some connectors and features to make integrations easier."

"I need to do a lot of customization to implement an ERP solution for an energy and utilities client versus a BFS client. Salesforce should look at the common customizations each client wants and see how much of that can be standardized into industry-specific specific solutions. That would speed up implementation, so we don't need to go through the same steps a hundred times. Salesforce could do it once and put it out for the rest of the clients to use it."

"The monitoring is very good, but it could be better."

"CI/CD is the biggest room for improvement. Deployment between environments and configuration."

"I don't like the way parent-child relationships work in transactions between records in Salesforce Sales Cloud. NetSuite is a little bit more user-friendly in that sense. Salesforce Sales Cloud requires that you build everything from scratch. I don't like that. It leaves a lot of thinking and solutions to the consultants and the process is more prone to errors."

"It is a bit pricey."

"I think the user experience could be improved. I would like the user interface to be a bit more user-friendly and modern."

More Salesforce Sales Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With my idea about the pricing aspect of Apollo.io, I feel that the solution's pricing model is super good and a steal for what the product offers."

"Paid versions are likely to provide more accurate information and offer more convenience to users."

"Apollo.io is more affordable than its competitors. I'm on an unlimited plan that costs $19 monthly. Nowadays, Apollo.io has a $99 plan that gives you ten thousand emails monthly. Other products would cost $2,000+ annually."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"Being license based, the license varies by type. The pricing is considered average."

"It's expensive, storage being the most costly aspect."

"My understanding is that Salesforce is a little bit expensive, but in terms of the efficiencies, automation, and visibility, I think it's definitely value for money."

"Not the cheapest"

"It is a premium product, so it is not the cheapest solution. I think if it's implemented well, and you're getting the soft cost benefits, the efficiencies, it's justified. But not if you're looking at just apples for apples as a subscription, without the complexity that you can achieve. It can deal with complex business requirements. Some other CRMs can't. But you certainly pay, so it's a premium-charged solution. It's one of the more expensive ones."

"The main issue is the price. Because it's SaaS, you will have to pay on a monthly or yearly basis."

"You need to pay for the license per user per month. For example, you need to pay $100 per user. If you have 200 users using your Salesforce, that would be multiplied by a hundred, that's $20,000 per month and a quarter million per year."

"We must pay for the licenses."

More Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apollo.io?

The product's most valuable feature is its ease of use, especially for beginners.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apollo.io?

We are using the free version of the solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Apollo.io?

Sometimes we get the wrong information on Apollo. They should improve the emails because we are connecting all the emails and logging on to Apollo.io.

See all answers

What do you like most about Salesforce Sales Cloud?

The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Salesforce Sales Cloud?

With today's generative AI capabilities like ChatGPT ( /products/chatgpt-reviews ), it should be possible to directly communicate with the software rather than navigating through the entire system ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud?

I generally use Salesforce Sales Cloud ( /products/salesforce-sales-cloud-reviews ) for our sales process, setting up the entire opportunity lifecycle from lead generation to contract closure. It h...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Opportunity Management

July 2025

Download Apollo.io product report

Buyer's Guide

Salesforce Sales Cloud

July 2025

Download Salesforce Sales Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce

Overview

The sales intelligence and engagement platform to crush your sales numbers every quarter. Use our data of over 220 million contacts and 30 million companies to find and engage your future customers at the right time with the right message in our all-in-one platform.

Apollo.io

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a comprehensive CRM platform designed for efficient lead management, sales forecasting, and customer engagement, offering extensive customization and cloud-based accessibility.

Aimed at enhancing business efficiency, Salesforce Sales Cloud supports core business processes like CRM, lead and opportunity management, sales forecasting, and customer engagement. Its robust integration capabilities allow seamless connectivity with ERP systems and various applications. The platform offers pipeline tracking, process automation, and advanced sales cycle management. Users appreciate its cloud-based accessibility, allowing teams to operate remotely and manage sales operations effectively. However, users highlight concerns about its complexity, cost, and the need for a more intuitive interface.

What features does Salesforce Sales Cloud offer?

Customization: Tailor the CRM to meet specific business requirements.
Robust Reporting: Comprehensive analytics and data insights.
Lead Management: Efficiently manage and convert leads.
API Integration: Seamless connectivity with multiple applications.
Cloud Accessibility: Work from anywhere with cloud-based access.

What benefits should be evaluated in Salesforce Sales Cloud reviews?

Enhanced Productivity: Streamline sales processes with automation.
Improved Collaboration: Facilitate team coordination and client engagement.
Accurate Forecasting: Make informed decisions with reliable sales forecasts.
Flexibility: Accommodate diverse industry needs with ease.
Legacy System Integration: Efficiently update and integrate with existing systems.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is widely implemented across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, supporting sales teams in tracking and managing sales operations. Its use extends to reporting, collaboration, and enhancing client interactions, allowing companies to tailor Salesforce to meet industry-specific requirements efficiently.

Salesforce

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Coca-Cola Enterprises, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Financial Times, Just Eat, Jobsite, H.R. Owen, PlayerLayer, O2, DMGT, Philips, Xtreme.ie, Business Stream, Remote Asset Management, Dialogue Group

Buyer's Guide

Apollo.io vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

July 2025

Free Report: Apollo.io vs. Salesforce Sales Cloud

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We monitor all Opportunity Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.