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Apollo.io

Apollo.io

The AI-powered B2B sales platform that replaces your data provider, outreach tool, dialer, enrichment engine, and CRM — 210M+ contacts, smart sequences, and AI agents, all in one platform.

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ChatBot

ChatBot

Help, convert, and sell 24/7 with an AI agent trained on your business data — no coding, instant setup, and seamless human handoff when it matters.

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Quick Comparison: Apollo.io vs ChatBot

A high-level overview of pricing, key strengths, and use cases to help you choose the right tool fast.

Features
Apollo.io
ChatBot
Quick View
Apollo.io is an AI-powered B2B sales intelligence and engagement platform co-founded in 2015 by Tim Zheng and Ray Li in San Francisco. It gives sales…
ChatBot by Text is an AI chatbot platform developed by Text, Inc. — the company behind LiveChat and HelpDesk — that trains on your website…
Pricing
Freemium: Starting at $49/mo
Free Trial: Starting at $19/user/mo
Key Strength
• 210M+ Contact Database with 65+ Advanced Filters — Search the world's largest B2B contact database by job title, seniority…
• AI-Generated Replies from Your Content — paste your website URL and ChatBot automatically scans and builds a knowledge base;…
Best For
Apollo.io serves a wider range of sales teams than any other tool in its category — from first-time SDRs on…
ChatBot by Text is ideal for businesses that want an AI chatbot that supports, captures leads, and sells — without…

Detailed Feature Breakdown

Go deeper into the specific capabilities, pros, cons, and integrations of both platforms.

Features
Apollo.io
ChatBot
Overview

Apollo.io is an AI-powered B2B sales intelligence and engagement platform co-founded in 2015 by Tim Zheng and Ray Li in San Francisco. It gives sales teams access to 210M+ contacts and 30M+ companies with 65+ search filters, AI-powered multichannel outreach sequences, real-time data enrichment, inbound lead routing, conversation intelligence, and AI sales agents — all from one platform.

Backed by $251.3M in funding at a $1.6B valuation, trusted by 500,000+ companies from startups to Fortune 500s, and rated 4.7/5 from 9,015+ G2 reviews, it is the most widely used and reviewed all-in-one sales platform in the market.

ChatBot by Text is an AI chatbot platform developed by Text, Inc. — the company behind LiveChat and HelpDesk — that trains on your website content, help center, product documentation, and uploaded files to deliver instant, accurate AI-generated responses 24/7.

Trusted by 35,000+ brands worldwide, it is designed for businesses that want to automate customer support, capture and qualify leads, recommend products, and recover hesitating shoppers — with seamless human agent handoff and multichannel deployment across website, Messenger, SMS, and email included out of the box.

Key Features

• 210M+ Contact Database with 65+ Advanced Filters — Search the world's largest B2B contact database by job title, seniority level, company size, industry, location, technology stack, funding stage, hiring signals, and buyer intent data to build hyper-targeted prospect lists for any ICP.

• AI-Powered Multichannel Sequences — Build automated outreach campaigns combining email, LinkedIn touches, phone calls, and task reminders in one coordinated sequence; includes A/B testing, send-time optimization, email deliverability guardrails (SPF/DKIM/DMARC checks, spam word detection, bounce management), and reply detection that auto-pauses follow-ups.

• AI Sales Agents (SDR Agent, Research Agent, Deals Agent, GTM Agent) — Four specialized AI agents automate the most time-intensive GTM tasks: the AI SDR Agent builds and runs outbound campaigns autonomously; the Research Agent enriches lead records with real-time company data; the Deals Agent prepares reps for every conversation with meeting intelligence; the GTM Agent orchestrates cross-functional go-to-market workflows.

• Inbound Intelligence (Visitor ID + Form Enrichment + Lead Routing) — Identifies anonymous website visitors, enriches form submissions with Apollo's full contact and company data in real time, and instantly routes qualified leads to the right rep via built-in calendar scheduling and automated nurture sequences — preventing hot inbound leads from going cold.

• Data Enrichment & CRM Cleansing — Continuously enriches and cleanses contact and company records across your CRM with always-fresh data from Apollo's network; supports Salesforce, HubSpot, and custom CRM enrichment workflows with job change alerts and signal-based re-engagement triggers.

• Conversation Intelligence & Deal Execution — AI-powered call recording, transcription, call summaries, next-step generation, pipeline boards, real-time deal alerts, conversation coaching dashboards, and meeting prep briefs keep every deal moving and every rep developing.

• Built-In Dialer & Email Infrastructure — Native click-to-call dialer with local presence, call recording, and voicemail drop; dedicated email sending infrastructure with deliverability guardrails and custom tracking domains — no external dialer or email service required.

• Apollo Academy + 24/7 AI Help + Community — Always-on educational resources including Apollo Academy courses, tutorials, weekly webinars, a community forum, and 24/7 AI chat support; live personalized onboarding included on all paid plans.

• AI-Generated Replies from Your Content — paste your website URL and ChatBot automatically scans and builds a knowledge base; it answers customer questions accurately and in context based exclusively on your verified business content, not general internet knowledge.

• Visual Story Builder (No Code) — design and customize full conversation flows using a drag-and-drop visual canvas; add buttons, cards, carousels, quick replies, images, and conditional logic; import prebuilt templates for lead capture, FAQ handling, product recommendations, appointment booking, and order tracking without writing any code.

• AI Sales Agent Capabilities — detects buying signals mid-conversation (hesitation at checkout, product comparisons, bulk inquiries) and proactively recommends products, presents discount offers, and guides shoppers through purchase completion — delivering an average order value of $430 and $11,000/month in extra revenue per Text's published benchmarks.

• Seamless Human Handoff — configure handoff rules in natural language; when a query exceeds the bot's scope, it escalates to a human agent via LiveChat with full conversation context, so the human never asks the customer to repeat themselves.

• Multichannel Deployment — deploy the same trained AI agent across your website chat widget, Facebook Messenger, SMS, and email from one configuration; every conversation lands in the shared Text inbox alongside LiveChat and HelpDesk tickets.

• Advanced AI Training — beyond URL crawls, upload PDFs, product catalogs, help documentation, and other files; configure fallback behaviors, confidence thresholds, and response styles to tune the bot's accuracy and tone to your brand.

• Reply Suggestions for Human Agents — AI-generated response suggestions are served to human agents in real time when handling escalated conversations; Essential includes 5 reply suggestions per user per month, Growth includes 50, enabling hybrid AI-human workflows.

• Analytics and Performance Dashboard — track conversation volume, resolution rates, escalation triggers, agent performance, channel distribution, and AI resolution counts against your plan limits to continuously optimize chatbot coverage and accuracy.

Pros
  • Permanently free plan with 100 credits, unlimited email sends (Gmail/Microsoft), and full database access — the most generous free tier in B2B sales intelligence, driving 500,000+ company signups
  • 4.7/5 from 9,015+ G2 reviews — the highest volume of verified reviews of any sales intelligence or outreach platform in the market
  • Replaces five separate tools (data provider, outreach platform, dialer, enrichment, CRM) — teams report 64% lower tech stack costs and 4x SDR efficiency improvement
  • Backed by $251.3M from Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Tribe Capital at $1.6B valuation — financial stability and R&D investment that smaller bootstrapped tools cannot match
  • Four specialized AI agents (SDR, Research, Deals, GTM) automate the most time-intensive parts of the sales workflow with no additional tool purchase
  • Full compliance stack: GDPR, SOC 2, CCPA, ISO/IEC 27001, CASA Tier 2, CPRA, EU-US DPF, PCI DSS — the broadest enterprise-grade compliance certifications of any tool in its category
  • Job change alerts and intent signals surface the highest-probability buyers before competitors reach them
  • Part of the Text, Inc. ecosystem — native integration with LiveChat and HelpDesk creates a seamless unified support stack with no middleware
  • 14-day free trial with no credit card required — full feature access from day one of the trial
  • AI trains on your own website and content automatically — just paste your URL, zero manual knowledge base building
  • Proven revenue impact: Wembley Stadium added $1.5M in 8 months, Hairlust saved 20% communication time — verifiable published case studies
  • 35,000+ brands including large enterprise deployments on 13 localized domains with 800K+ monthly unique visitors (Hairlust)
  • Prebuilt chatbot templates for common use cases — lead capture, FAQ, product recommendations, appointment booking — shorten deployment to minutes
  • Multichannel deployment (website, Messenger, SMS, email) from one configuration without rebuilding the bot
Cons
  • Credit system complexity — phone credits cost 8x more than email credits, credits expire at the end of each billing cycle (no rollover on standard plans), and overage credits at $0.20 each with a 250-minimum purchase add unexpected costs at volume
  • Organization plan requires a minimum of 3 users ($357/month annual minimum) — teams smaller than 3 seats cannot access advanced features like AI agents and custom reporting without paying per-user pricing
  • Data accuracy is strong globally but mixed for mobile phone numbers outside the US and Western Europe — European teams specifically report lower phone coverage than Kaspr or Cognism
  • Customer support quality on lower tiers receives consistent criticism across G2 and independent reviews — free and Basic plan users report slow response times and bot-first support experiences
  • Feature depth in some areas (call intelligence, advanced deal management) lags behind dedicated point solutions like Gong, Chorus, or Outreach — teams with mature revenue operations may still need specialist tools alongside Apollo
  • Historical data breach in 2021 (240M records exposed) remains a reputational concern for enterprise procurement teams conducting security due diligence, despite subsequent SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certification
  • Pricing page does not show full per-plan monthly prices prominently — Essential starts at $19/user/month but full plan cost breakdown requires contacting sales or checking the pricing page carefully
  • AI resolution limits are plan-capped: 10/month on Essential (120/year), 200/month on Growth (2,400/year), 2,000/month on Enterprise (24,000/year) — high-volume deployments exhaust allowances quickly
  • Reply suggestions for human agents are also capped: 5 per user/month on Essential, 50 per user/month on Growth — limited for teams with high agent volumes
  • No permanent free plan — the 14-day trial converts to a paid plan; teams needing a free forever option must look elsewhere
  • Full omnichannel capability (SMS, email, Messenger alongside website) requires proper setup — not a single-click deployment for all channels
  • Enterprise plan pricing is annual-only with no published monthly rate — larger teams must commit annually upfront
Best For

Apollo.io serves a wider range of sales teams than any other tool in its category — from first-time SDRs on the free plan to Fortune 500 enterprise GTM teams on custom Organization plans.

• SDRs and outbound sales reps at growth-stage companies — use Apollo's 210M+ database with 65+ filters to build highly targeted prospect lists, launch automated multichannel sequences, and manage call tasks from one platform without juggling multiple tool subscriptions.

• Founders and solo sales operators doing outbound — start on the free plan with 100 credits and unlimited email sends to validate ICP fit before investing in paid prospecting; upgrade to Basic at $49/mo only when volume demands it.

• Revenue operations and sales managers — use Apollo's enrichment workflows to keep CRM data fresh, leverage AI agents to automate SDR-level tasks, and use conversation intelligence and coaching dashboards to identify performance gaps and replicate top-rep behaviors across the team.

• Enterprise GTM teams consolidating tech stacks — replace a 5-tool stack (ZoomInfo + Outreach/SalesLoft + Gong + Clearbit + Salesforce enrichment) with Apollo's Organization plan and AI agents to reduce per-rep tool costs while centralizing data, outreach, and deal intelligence in one governed platform.

ChatBot by Text is ideal for businesses that want an AI chatbot that supports, captures leads, and sells — without requiring developer involvement — and that benefit from tight integration with the Text, Inc. support ecosystem.

• E-commerce stores with active website traffic — the AI's ability to detect checkout hesitation, recommend products, offer discounts, and close sales autonomously makes it a direct revenue-generating tool, not just a support deflection layer.

• Customer support teams already using LiveChat — the native Text, Inc. integration means ChatBot handles routine queries automatically while passing escalations to LiveChat agents with full context, creating a seamless AI-to-human support workflow.

• Small and mid-sized businesses starting with automation — the Essential plan at $19/user/month includes a full AI chatbot, live chat integration, shared inbox, and ticketing system; it is one of the most complete starter packages in the chatbot category at this price.

• Multi-domain and multilingual businesses — Hairlust's deployment across 13 localized country domains with 800K+ monthly visitors confirms the platform's reliability at scale; language-specific chat experiences are configurable per domain from one account.

• Marketing teams running lead generation — prebuilt lead capture bot templates, conditional flows based on visitor behavior, and direct integration with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Mailchimp make ChatBot an effective top-of-funnel capture tool for marketing campaigns.

Pricing Details

Free ($0/mo, unlimited users): 100 credits total (not per month), unlimited B2B email sends (Gmail and Microsoft only), basic sequence automation, access to full 210M+ contact database with limited filters, basic email open/click tracking, limited CSV export, HubSpot and Salesforce basic integrations, Apollo Academy access, 24/7 AI chat support.

Basic ($59/mo monthly, $49/user/mo billed annually): 5,000 credits/month, unlimited email sends (all email providers), full sequence automation with A/B testing, all 65+ database filters, email deliverability center, job change alerts, buy intent data (basic), advanced integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Outreach, SalesLoft), CSV export (unlimited), LinkedIn extension, click-to-call dialer, call recording, live onboarding, 24/7 AI chat + email support.

Professional ($99/mo monthly, $79/user/mo billed annually): 10,000 credits/month, everything in Basic plus AI-assisted email writing, advanced filters and intent signals, email reply tracking, conversations (call intelligence), deal management, advanced reporting, custom fields, sequence analytics, video prospecting, AI research assistant, LinkedIn automation steps in sequences, priority support.

Organization ($149/mo monthly, $119/user/mo billed annually, minimum 3 users): 15,000 credits/month, everything in Professional plus AI SDR Agent, AI Deals Agent, AI GTM Agent, inbound visitor identification, real-time form enrichment, lead routing and scheduling, advanced CRM enrichment and cleansing, custom roles and permissions, SSO (SAML), advanced security settings, data privacy controls, custom reporting, dedicated onboarding, phone support, CSM access.

Essential ($19/user/month billed annually): AI chatbot with AI-generated replies, visual Story builder, prebuilt templates, website chat widget deployment, multichannel support (Messenger, SMS, email), live chat integration with LiveChat, shared inbox, HelpDesk ticketing system, 10 AI resolutions/month (120/year), 5 AI reply suggestions per user/month, 10,000 API calls free then $0.17 per 1,000 requests, 60-day data retention, 2 GB + 50 MB per user file storage, 3 bots, 1 knowledge source per bot, 300 training documents, 50 active stories, 1 team member (per seat), 1 domain.

Growth ($49.50/user/month billed annually — most popular): Everything in Essential plus 200 AI resolutions/month (2,400/year), 50 AI reply suggestions per user/month, 100 AI reply suggestions per user/month, 200,000 free API calls then $0.17 per 1,000, 15 GB + 100 MB per user file storage, 10 bots, 10 knowledge sources per bot, 1,000 training documents, 400 active stories, 10 team members, 10 domains.

Enterprise (Annual plan — contact sales for pricing): Everything in Growth plus 2,000 AI resolutions/month (24,000/year), 1,000,000 free API calls then $0.17 per 1,000, 30 GB + 500 MB per user file storage, 50 bots, 50 knowledge sources per bot, 10,000 training documents, 1,000 active stories, 50 team members, 50 domains, enterprise compliance, customization, and frontier AI capabilities, dedicated support.

All plans: 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

Unique Features

Apollo.io's competitive position rests on three structural advantages that no single competitor has simultaneously replicated: database scale, product breadth, and product-led growth velocity.

• 210M Contact + 30M Company Database With Continuously Refreshed Intent Data — Apollo's database is among the largest in B2B sales intelligence, and unlike static databases, Apollo refreshes contact and company data continuously using AI-driven verification. The addition of buyer intent signals — tracking which companies are actively researching topics relevant to your product — lets Apollo users prioritize outreach to the accounts most likely to convert right now, not just the accounts that fit the ICP. No tool at Apollo's price range offers both this scale and intent data natively.

• Four Specialized AI Agents Replacing Human Labor Across the GTM Funnel — Apollo's AI SDR Agent, Research Agent, Deals Agent, and GTM Agent are not generic chatbots — they are purpose-trained agents that automate specific GTM tasks: building and running outbound campaigns (SDR Agent), enriching and briefing reps before meetings (Research Agent and Deals Agent), and orchestrating cross-functional go-to-market workflows (GTM Agent). The depth of task automation across all four stages of the funnel — find, engage, meet, close — is matched only by custom AI-agent stacks costing 5x+ the price.

• Inbound + Outbound in One Platform (Visitor ID + Form Enrichment + Lead Routing) — Apollo is one of the only platforms in its price range that handles both outbound prospecting and inbound lead capture in a single workflow. Anonymous visitor identification surfaces the companies behind your website traffic, form enrichment completes lead records in real time, and instant lead routing with built-in scheduler ensures hot inbound leads are contacted within minutes. Most sales teams run a separate tool for each of these functions — Apollo's unification produces the 70% increase in lead conversion its customer base reports.

• Product-Led Growth at $1.6B Scale — Apollo's free plan is genuinely functional — not a feature-crippled demo — and it is the reason 500,000+ companies have adopted it without a sales call. This PLG flywheel funds continuous product investment: Apollo grew ARR 40% in 2024 and reported 500% growth on its AI platform in 2025, enabling R&D velocity that bootstrapped competitors simply cannot match.

ChatBot by Text's strongest differentiators are its native position inside the Text, Inc. unified support ecosystem and its proven, published sales revenue impact — not just support deflection.

• Native Text, Inc. Ecosystem Integration — ChatBot, LiveChat, and HelpDesk are all built by the same company and share a unified inbox, conversation history, and customer context automatically; a ChatBot escalation becomes a LiveChat conversation and a HelpDesk ticket with zero data loss or integration setup — a level of native coherence that no third-party tool can replicate.

• AI Sales Agent With Published Revenue Benchmarks — Wembley Stadium earned $1.5M in eight months and the platform benchmarks an average of $11,000/month in extra revenue and $430 average order value per supported business; these are verified case studies that establish ChatBot as a revenue tool, not just a support cost-reducer.

• Visual Story Builder With Prebuilt Expert Templates — bot experts at Text, Inc. maintain a library of prebuilt templates covering every common business use case; importing a template deploys a fully functional chatbot flow in minutes, lowering the technical barrier to production-grade bots for non-developers.

• AI Resolution Metering by Plan — rather than crediting per message, Chatbot by Text meters by AI resolution (a fully autonomous end-to-end conversation the AI handles without human intervention); this pricing transparency aligns cost directly to the value the AI delivers — you pay for complete resolutions, not message volume.

• Proven at Enterprise Scale — Hairlust deploys ChatBot across 13 localized country domains handling 800K+ unique monthly visitors and 15,000 monthly orders, confirming that the platform handles high-volume, multi-domain, multilingual enterprise deployments reliably from the same configuration.

Integrations

Apollo.io integrates with every major CRM, sales engagement platform, marketing automation tool, and communication platform used by modern B2B sales and marketing teams.

• Salesforce & HubSpot (Deep Bidirectional Native Sync) — Full two-way sync with Salesforce and HubSpot including contact creation, deal and opportunity management, activity logging, sequence enrollment triggers, custom field mapping, and advanced CRM data enrichment that continuously refreshes stale contact and company records; available from Basic plan with advanced features on Organization.

• Outreach, SalesLoft & Marketo (Sales Engagement + Marketing Automation) — Native integrations with Outreach and SalesLoft allow teams already on those platforms to use Apollo purely as a data layer, pushing enriched contacts into existing sequences; Marketo and Sendgrid integrations connect Apollo's data and intent signals to marketing automation and email delivery infrastructure.

• LinkedIn (Chrome Extension + Sequence Steps) — Apollo's LinkedIn Chrome extension enriches any LinkedIn profile with Apollo data in one click; Professional plan and above adds LinkedIn automation steps (connection requests, messages, InMail) directly inside Apollo sequences, enabling true multichannel outreach without a separate LinkedIn tool.

• Zapier, Webhooks & Full API (Organization and Custom Plans) — Zapier integration connects Apollo to 5,000+ external tools; real-time webhooks fire on lead events (new contact, email opened, reply received, job change detected) for custom GTM stack integration; the full REST API is available on Organization and Custom plans for engineering-led teams building Apollo's data and engagement layer into proprietary workflows.

ChatBot by Text integrates with the full Text, Inc. ecosystem natively and connects to the broader tool stack via purpose-built integrations.

• Text, Inc. native integrations — LiveChat and HelpDesk connect automatically within the same Text account; ChatBot escalations pass full conversation context to LiveChat agents in real time, and resolved or unresolved chats create HelpDesk tickets automatically with zero configuration.

• CRM and marketing platforms — HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and ActiveCampaign connect natively to sync captured leads, contact data, and conversation attributes directly to your CRM or email marketing lists from every ChatBot interaction.

• Social and messaging channels — Facebook Messenger connects natively for social channel bot deployment; SMS support routes text message conversations into the same unified inbox; email channel integration handles asynchronous customer queries through the bot before escalation.

• E-commerce and website platforms — Shopify and WordPress plugins enable one-click ChatBot installation for online stores; Google Analytics integration tracks chatbot-driven conversions, lead capture events, and sales attribution within your existing analytics setup.

• Automation and developer tools — Zapier integration connects ChatBot to 3,000+ additional apps for custom lead routing, notification workflows, and CRM updates; a full REST API with 10,000–1,000,000 free monthly API calls by plan tier gives engineering teams programmatic access to bot data, conversation events, and configuration management.

Frequently Asked Questions

Expert Verdict

Final Analysis: Which is better?

After testing both platforms: choose Apollo.io (Freemium: Starting at $49/mo) if you prioritize Apollo.io serves a wider range of sales teams than any other tool in its category.. Choose ChatBot (Free Trial: Starting at $19/user/mo) if you need ChatBot by Text is ideal for businesses that want an AI chatbot that supports, captures.. Both are reliable AI tool options, but they optimize for different user profiles.

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