Who Apollo is built for
Apollo is a full-stack sales engagement platform. Their core promise is volume: build a long filter-driven list, drop it into sequences, dial through it. If you have a dedicated SDR team running 200+ outreaches per rep per day, Apollo's all-in-one workflow is hard to beat.
Where the model breaks down is when you don't have an SDR team — or when "more contacts in the sequence" isn't the bottleneck. The bottleneck for most small teams is finding the right person at each named account, not finding more accounts.
Where Contactwho wins
- No filters. You don't pick title, seniority, department, geo, or company size. You describe what you sell in one sentence and pick a company. The AI does the targeting work that filters were a proxy for.
- Ranking with reasoning. Every contact comes back with a match score and a plain-English explanation of why they were chosen. You can paste that reasoning into the first line of your email.
- Time to first contact. A search takes under a minute, end to end — domain in, ranked decision-makers out, email revealed, outreach draft ready.
- Pricing that doesn't bite at the seat level. Apollo's per-seat cost climbs fast across "Basic / Professional / Organization" tiers. Contactwho is flat at $29 / $79 / $199 per month for the whole workspace.
Where Apollo still wins
- Sequencing and dialer. Apollo has a built-in sequencer, a dialer, and email infrastructure. If your team runs from one tool end-to-end, that's a real advantage Contactwho doesn't try to match.
- Raw database breadth. Apollo's marketed contact count is larger. For broad filter-based list building ("all VP Eng at SaaS companies in NY"), they have more rows. For named-account ranking, raw count matters less than ordering quality.
Pricing comparison snapshot
| Plan | Contactwho | Apollo (annual billing) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | $29/mo, unlimited searches | Free tier; Basic $49/user/mo |
| Mid | $79/mo | Professional $79/user/mo |
| Scale | $199/mo | Organization $99/user/mo + min seats |
Apollo's effective cost rises quickly with seats and add-ons (dialer minutes, AI features, enrichment credits). Contactwho's plans are workspace-level, not per-seat.
When to pick which
- Pick Apollo if you have ≥3 SDRs running heavy sequences, you want one tool for prospecting + sending + dialing, and your team is comfortable building filter-based lists.
- Pick Contactwho if you're a founder, a small sales team, or an agency. You don't want to learn filters. You want the right person at each account, ranked and explained, with email and a draft.
You can also use both: Contactwho to identify and rank the right contacts at each account, exported to Apollo for sequencing.