Apollo.io Alternatives: AI-Powered Tools & Sales-as-a-Service in 2025

Major Takeaways: Apollo io Alternatives

Which Apollo.io Alternatives Are Leading in 2025?

• Martal Group, ZoomInfo, and lesser-known platforms like Instantly and Snov.io offer AI-powered features that automate 60–80% of SDR work.
  

Why Is AI the Core Advantage of These Apollo Alternatives?

• AI now handles list building, email writing, and outreach sequencing—reducing manual prospecting time by up to 50% and increasing reply rates by 3×.

How Does Sales-as-a-Service Compare to Apollo.io?

• Sales-as-a-Service providers manage your outbound campaigns end-to-end, offering faster ramp-up and 50–70% cost savings over in-house teams.

What Makes Martal Group a Unique Apollo.io Alternative?

• Martal blends AI-trained by 100+ top SDRs with live sales talent, delivering 4–7× better conversion rates than platform-only solutions.

Who Should Use a Sales Platform vs. Outsourcing?

• Use Apollo-style tools if you have trained SDRs; choose outsourcing like Martal if you need speed, scale, and fewer internal resources.

How Fast Can These Alternatives Deliver Pipeline Results?

• While DIY tools require months of onboarding, Martal’s Sales-as-a-Service model delivers qualified meetings in as little as 3 weeks.

What’s the Real ROI Difference Between Tools and Services?

• Outsourced SDR solutions can cut CAC and reduce SDR-related costs by up to 70%, while maintaining or improving SQL volume and quality.

Introduction

What if you could offload 80% of your outbound sales tasks to AI? (3) In 2025, B2B sales teams are doing just that. Apollo.io has long been a go-to outbound platform for building lists and running email sequences, but it isn’t the only one in the market. 

With more than 78% of companies using AI in at least one business function (2), organizations are increasingly adopting solutions that dramatically reduce manual work.

Two strategies have emerged: next-gen AI-powered tools that automate prospecting and outreach, and Sales-as-a-Service providers that handle the entire sales development process for you. Both promise to boost pipeline while lightening your team’s workload – but which is right for you?

In this comprehensive guide, we (Martal Group) draw on our industry insight to explore the best Apollo.io alternatives from both angles. 

First, we’ll compare 8 AI-driven platforms (including some lesser-known gems) that can automate an SDR’s routine tasks – from finding prospects to drafting emails. 

Next, we’ll examine Sales-as-a-Service in 2025, an outsourced model (pioneered by Martal) where an external team powered by AI acts as your SDR function. By the end, you’ll understand the new landscape of outbound sales solutions and how to choose the best approach for your organization.

Let’s dive in by looking at the top Apollo alternatives that leverage AI to make outbound lead generation and outreach faster, smarter, and easier.

AI-Powered Apollo.io Alternatives for Outbound Sales

Apollo.io offers a comprehensive B2B contact database plus built-in email sequencing. However, no tool is perfect. You might seek an Apollo alternative for more automation, better data quality, specific AI features, or even just a fresh approach to outbound. 

Below, we’ve compiled a comparison of 8 Apollo.io alternatives that can supercharge your sales development. These include well-known platforms and innovative newcomers, all capable of offloading significant SDR workload through AI.

Each alternative is briefly described in the table, highlighting its type, key AI-powered features, and who it’s best suited for. 

8 Best Apollo.io Alternatives [Comparison]

Table: Eight AI-powered Apollo.io alternatives in 2025, with Martal’s Sales-as-a-Service model at the top. Each offers unique ways to automate outbound sales tasks, from AI-driven data sourcing to automated email sequences.

Martal Group (AI SDR Platform)

Martal offers a Sales-as-a-Service model combining an outsourced SDR team with an AI-powered platform. It’s designed to fully manage outbound prospecting while leveraging machine learning trained on years of SDR experience.

• All-in-one outbound platform + human SDR team
• AI trained on 15+ years of SDR data for smart targeting
• Offloads ~80% of prospecting tasks (research, email drafting, multichannel outreach)
• Continuous optimization by expert sales strategists

Best For: Teams looking for a fully managed outbound sales engine with fast ramp-up and 4–7× higher conversion rates, without in-house hiring.

ZoomInfo SalesOS

ZoomInfo is a sales intelligence platform best known for its massive B2B database and robust analytics. It goes beyond contact data, offering intent signals, visitor tracking, and automation features.

• Database of 260M+ global contacts
• AI “Scoops” & intent data to surface buying signals
• Website visitor tracking & CRM integrations
• Conversation and email automation (Engage module)

Best For: Enterprises that need deep data, analytics, and intent insights, and can invest in an enterprise-grade solution.

Cognism

Cognism is a global contact data platform with strong compliance features, making it ideal for international outreach. Its AI-powered search helps reps find qualified leads quickly.

• Diamond AI Search for text or voice prospecting queries
• Phone-verified mobile numbers (87% connect rate)
• GDPR/CCPA compliance built-in
• Seamless CRM & sales engagement integrations

Best For: International sales teams prioritizing compliance and high-quality mobile outreach, especially across EU and global markets.

Saleshandy

Saleshandy is an all-in-one outbound platform positioned as a cost-effective Apollo alternative. It combines a large contact database with sequencing and automation tools.

• 700M+ contact database covering 60M companies
• Unlimited email sender accounts (no extra cost)
• Email automation + deliverability tools (warm-up, analytics)
• Native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and others

Best For: Small to mid-size teams that want a budget-friendly, data + outreach tool in one platform.

Instantly.ai

Instantly.ai is built for cold email automation at scale, making it a favorite among startups and scale-ups that need volume outreach with personalization.

• Unlimited email sending with auto warm-ups
• Built-in B2B leads database + LinkedIn sourcing
• Generative AI for automated sequence copy
• Smart scheduling to optimize inbox delivery

Best For: Startups/scale-ups needing to send thousands of personalized cold emails per day with minimal manual effort.

Snov.io

Snov.io provides a sales CRM and outreach suite that’s lightweight and easy to adopt. It’s especially useful for lean teams and new SDRs.

• Email finder & verifier (102M+ emails, 95% accuracy)
• AI email writer & conversational AI
• Multi-channel campaigns (email + LinkedIn) with unlimited follow-ups
• Built-in CRM with pipeline tracking

Best For: Lean teams or early-stage SDRs who want a simple, affordable tool for nurturing leads with personalized outreach.

Seamless.AI

Seamless.AI acts as an intelligent lead search engine, helping sales reps quickly uncover verified contact details in real time.

• Real-time email & phone number search across the web
• “Total AI™” recommendations to build targeted lists
• Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting
• AI-powered data enrichment (fills incomplete profiles)

Best For: High-volume prospectors and SDRs who spend lots of time sourcing manually—Seamless automates that work in one click.

Lusha

Lusha is a crowdsourced contact database that’s affordable and easy to use. Its focus is quick access to verified direct dials and emails.

• Crowd-verified database of 100M+ contacts
• Simple LinkedIn plugin for pulling contact info
• 7-step AI data validation for accuracy
• Affordable pricing (starting ~$36/mo)

Best For: Budget-conscious teams or startups needing a lean but effective tool for fast access to verified contacts.

As shown above, Apollo alternatives come in different flavors. Some (like ZoomInfo, Cognism, Lusha, Seamless) focus on data – providing rich contact info and signals to improve your targeting. 

Others (like Saleshandy, Instantly, Snov) excel at automation – scaling your outbound messaging with AI-assisted personalization and deliverability optimization. 

Martal Group, by contrast, is a full service sales and marketing outsourcing company that blends platform + people, giving you an AI-enhanced SDR team on demand.

Key Benefits of AI-Powered Outbound Tools

All these alternatives share a common theme: using AI to handle the heavy lifting of outbound sales. Instead of your reps slogging through spreadsheets and sending generic emails, modern platforms can:

• Build targeted lead lists automatically: AI can scan millions of records to find prospects that fit your ICP, or even watch for buying signals (new funding, hiring sprees) and surface ideal contacts.
  
• Handle tedious research & data entry: Tools now aggregate public data, scrape LinkedIn, and enrich leads in seconds, reducing manual research time by 50% or more (4).
  
• Write and personalize outreach messages: Generative AI can draft tailored emails and LinkedIn messages for each prospect, incorporating relevant details to boost engagement. Data shows that the top three benefits of AI adoption are higher sales data quality, better understanding of customers, and improved personalization (1).
  
• Automate multi-touch sequences: From email follow-ups to LinkedIn tasks and even voicemails, AI workflows ensure every lead gets the right number of touches across channels – without reps manually pushing each send.
  
• Optimize send times and email deliverability: Advanced algorithms schedule emails when prospects are most likely to open, and warm-up features maximize inbox placement, so your messaging actually gets through.
  
• Analyze and adapt in real time: Many platforms include AI analytics or recommendations – suggesting who to contact next, which sales email  template works best, or when to call versus email, based on what’s working.
  

In short, these tools aim to save SDRs hours of tedious work per day. Imagine your sales team focusing only on high-value activities – like hopping on calls with interested prospects – while the software takes care of routine prospecting and lead nurturing tasks. That’s the promise of AI in outbound sales.

Next, we’ll explore the second big trend: instead of doing outbound yourself with any platform, you can outsource the entire function. Enter Sales-as-a-Service, a model where an external provider runs your outbound sales for you, powered by their own AI-enabled systems. Could this be the ultimate Apollo.io “alternative”? Let’s find out.

The Rise of Sales-as-a-Service in 2025: Outsourcing Your SDRs

Outsourcing SDR functions allows businesses to cut costs by as much as 65% while maintaining lead generation efficiency (5). That jaw-dropping stat has caught the attention of many CMOs and CROs. 

In the past, if you wanted B2B leads, you either hired an in-house team and gave them tools like Apollo, or contracted a basic appointment-setting agency. Today, a more sophisticated option is taking off: Sales-as-a-Service.

This means partnering with a specialized firm to act as your fractional SDR team, handling outreach from start to finish. Crucially, the best providers leverage AI-driven platforms and expert humans working together – delivering the volume and precision of automation plus the strategy and personalization of seasoned salespeople.

Why are companies embracing Sales-as-a-Service in 2025? Several strategic reasons stand out:

• Faster Pipeline, No Ramp Time: Building an internal SDR team takes months of recruiting and training – the average hire takes 52 days and ~3 months to fully ramp up productivity. An outsourced team can start producing qualified appointments in a matter of weeks (6). You get instant firepower in your pipeline without waiting on new hires.
  
• Major Cost Savings: Between salaries, benefits, software, and management overhead, a single in-house SDR can cost ~$140K/year fully loaded(6). With outsourcing, you typically pay a flat monthly fee that’s a fraction of that. 

Studies find companies can save 50–70% on SDR costs by outsourcing inside sales (6). For example, one analysis showed an outsourced SDR around $2.5K per month vs. $8–12K in-house (when factoring overhead) (6). That freed-up budget can go toward other growth initiatives.

• Access to Expertise & AI Tech: A Sales-as-a-Service provider (like Martal) comes with built-in tools and playbooks that a new internal team wouldn’t have. They’ve honed outreach strategies across many outbound campaigns and often have proprietary data/AI platforms. You essentially rent a world-class outbound engine. For instance, our Martal platform is trained on 15+ years of B2B sales data and the tactics of 100+ top SDRs, which translates into 4–7× higher conversion rates for campaigns (7). It’s like plugging your company into an outbound machine that’s already optimized for results.
  
• Scalability & Flexibility: Need to double lead volume next quarter? Or pause outreach for a month? Outsourcing gives you on-demand control. You can scale the external team up or down much faster than hiring/firing internally. This flexibility is crucial in volatile markets. In fact, 66% of enterprises outsource at least part of their sales/operations to stay agile (6). With a provider, you avoid long-term fixed headcount – you pay for what you need, when you need it.
  
• Full Funnel Focus: Rather than juggling prospecting alongside closing, your internal team (AEs, etc.) can focus on later-stage deals while the outsourced sales company can fill the top of the funnel. It’s a division of labor that increases efficiency and ensures pipeline never runs dry. One survey found 79% of businesses using sales outsourcing scaled faster as a result (8). It makes sense – your sales org can concentrate on core competencies while lead generation specialists handle the tedious appointment-setting work.
  

Of course, outsourcing outbound isn’t a magic bullet. Success requires choosing the right partner and aligning closely on your ICP, messaging, and goals. Quality control and communication must be managed. But the model has matured such that providers are truly extensions of your team, often embedding dedicated account managers and using collaborative tools so you have visibility. The best firms will feel like your own SDR team – just operating externally.

Martal Group’s Sales-as-a-Service: AI + Human Touch

As one of the pioneers of Sales-as-a-Service, we at Martal Group have seen firsthand how this approach can transform a company’s growth trajectory. Our model combines a fractional SDR team (experienced reps and account managers) with our AI-powered outbound platform to deliver end-to-end results. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Trained AI Sales Agent: Martal’s platform isn’t just any sales software – it’s trained by the data and tactics of our top 100 SDRs over 15 years  (7). That means when “our AI” is prioritizing leads or crafting an email, it’s using battle-tested techniques that have converted across industries. You’re getting the strategy of a seasoned team built into the software. For example, our AI can automatically identify high-value prospects (using intent signals, technographic data, etc.) and draft a multi-touch sequence in minutes. We’ve had clients launch campaigns in “30 minutes” on our platform that would have taken weeks elsewhere (7).
  
• Human Expertise on Tap: Unlike a software tool, with Martal you also get real human SDRs and managers guiding the sales process. They ensure the messaging is spot-on, add personalization where it counts, and engage in live selling (calls, LinkedIn conversations) when prospects raise their hand. This human + AI combo consistently outperforms automation alone (6). For instance, an AI might draft the initial outreach, but our reps will add a hyper-relevant opener referencing the prospect’s company news – a small touch that massively boosts reply rates. Humans and AI each do what they do best.
  
• Full-Service Execution: Martal’s team handles everything from contact sourcing to appointment booking. That means you don’t need to worry about list building, sequence setting, A/B testing, or follow-up cadence – we take care of it. We provide regular reporting and check-ins, so you see exactly what’s going on. One client noted that Martal “hit the ground running” and got them qualified sales calls in 3 weeks after they had struggled for a year to generate traction on their own (7). Speed is a huge advantage of handing over the reins to pros.
  
• Flexible Service Tiers: We offer scalable plans (essentially outsourced SDR-as-a-service packages) to fit different company sizes. Whether you’re a lean startup or an enterprise, you can start with a fractional team and scale up as needed (8). This is far more efficient than over-hiring internally. And if something’s not working or needs to change (e.g. targeting a new vertical), we can pivot quickly without the organizational friction.
  
• Outcome-Oriented Partnership: The end goal is meetings and revenue. A good Sales-as-a-Service partner aligns their incentives with yours. At Martal, we set lead generation KPIs for booked demos, SQLs, etc., and our team relentlessly optimizes to hit them. It’s not about activity volume for us – it’s about qualified pipeline. This focus on results is why our clients trust us as a long-term sales partner rather than a short-term outsource experiment.
  

In summary, Sales-as-a-Service offers a compelling alternative to the DIY platform route. Instead of licensing software (Apollo or otherwise) and dedicating internal headcount to use it, you license an outcome – a steady stream of sales ready leads – from an expert provider using cutting-edge tech on your behalf. Especially in 2025’s economic climate (where many teams are stretched thin), this model can be a game-changer. You get to do more with less: less overhead, less management burden, but more sales opportunities.

That said, the best choice ultimately depends on your organization’s needs and resources. For some, an in-house team armed with great AI tools will make sense. For others, partnering externally yields a better ROI. 

Conclusion: Empowering Your Outbound Sales Strategy

The outbound sales landscape has evolved dramatically. Between cutting-edge AI tools and Sales-as-a-Service partners, you have more options than ever to build a high-performance sales pipeline.

The common thread is efficiency – whether through automation or outsourcing, modern solutions are all about generating more qualified leads with less grunt work for your team. Apollo.io may have been the default choice in years past, but as we’ve seen, there are plenty of capable alternatives that might suit your organization even better.

As you consider your next steps, keep your buyers and team in mind. Do you have the resources to maximize a DIY platform, or would an expert-guided service remove barriers? Are you aiming to offload tedious tasks with AI while your sales reps focus on closing sales deals? 

The right answer might even be a combination (for example, using an AI platform internally for some campaigns and an outsourced team for others). The ultimate goal is to consistently fill your funnel with quality opportunities – how you get there should align with your company’s strategy and strengths.

Finally, if you’re looking to supercharge your outbound results without the usual headaches, we’re here to help. Martal Group offers a free consultation to assess your sales development approach and show how our AI-powered SDR platform and seasoned team could fit your needs. 

We’ll share honest advice on the best path forward – whether it’s leveraging a new tool or letting us handle the heavy lifting. In 2025, outbound success isn’t about working harder; it’s about working smarter with the right partners and technology.

Book a consultation with Martal today, and let’s explore how you can achieve more leads, more conversions, and more revenue by tapping into the next generation of outbound sales solutions.

References

1. Salesforce
2. McKinsey & Company
3. Martal – AI Sales Automation
4. Kontax AI
5. Martal Group – Outsourced SDR
6. Martal Group Blog – Lead Generation Trends
7. Martal AI SDR Platform
8. LLCBuddy