When it comes to scaling outreach, the right platform can make all the difference. Two standout options—Instantly and Apollo—each bring their own strengths to the table. But which one truly fits your approach?

Apollo (Apollo.io) is known for its wide-ranging capabilities, including advanced prospecting and data management. On the other hand, Instantly (Instantly.ai) excels at streamlining high-volume email campaigns with a focus on maximizing deliverability.

After spending significant time using both platforms, I’ve identified key distinctions that can help your team optimize its outreach efforts. In this Instantly vs. Apollo comparison, I'll break down their differentiators and share insights on which tool could better support your strategy.

I’ll also introduce a 100% FREE, game-changing tool that complements both, giving your outreach a precise and actionable edge.

Apollo vs. Instantly: What Do They Offer?

Both Apollo and Instantly are designed to supercharge outreach, but their core focus sets them apart. Apollo offers an all-in-one sales platform that covers everything from prospecting to engagement, while Instantly focuses on simplifying high-volume email campaigns.

Here’s my breakdown of their key products.

Apollo Products

Apollo provides a comprehensive platform for B2B sales teams, combining advanced prospecting, seamless sales engagement, and performance analytics. Its core products include:

• Prospecting: Apollo’s advanced search filters allow users to sift through over 65 criteria, making it easier to find ideal prospects. The persona filter, which segments prospects based on roles and seniority, proved valuable for tailoring outreach. I loved the buyer intent signals, which helped our team target companies showing active interest in specific solutions.
• Sales Engagement: Apollo’s automated email sequences were extremely helpful in keeping prospects engaged throughout the sales funnel. However, templates felt a bit rigid, requiring several manual tweaks to ensure personalization for specific audiences. Despite this, the voice dialer functionality, which enables direct calls from the platform while logging interactions into the CRM, helped us maintain consistent outreach.
• Conversations: The Conversations tool ensures smooth tracking of interactions across multiple touchpoints, instrumental in maintaining continuity with prospects. The call transcription feature was quite useful for reviewing important discussions, although I noticed that longer conversations sometimes led to minor inaccuracies in the transcription. What stood out was context syncing, which linked conversation history with a prospect’s profile, allowing us to provide more tailored follow-ups without sifting through past records.

Instantly Products

Instantly specializes in optimizing email outreach, offering tools that enhance campaign efficiency, deliverability, and personalization while maintaining simplicity. Here’s what this GTM platform offers:

• Campaign Builder: Instantly’s Campaign Builder allows for easy creation of large-scale email campaigns, using variables, sequences, and Inbox Rotation to improve deliverability. I found the Inbox Rotation tool QUITE EFFICIENT in rotating emails across multiple accounts to simulate natural email behavior, which ultimately increased response rates. The smart scheduling and automation in this tool made our outreach feel more authentic and bypass spam filters.
• Lead Database: The platform’s 160 million contact database, with advanced filters (based on factors like company size, revenue, and technology usage), make targeting high-value leads much faster. This streamlined approach helped us narrow down the most relevant contacts and launch more focused campaigns, reducing the time spent manually filtering through data. The results were consistent, with a noticeable improvement in outreach accuracy and engagement.
• Deliverability: Instantly’s Deliverability Network took care of email deliverability issues by automating positive email interactions to improve inbox placement. What really set this apart is the deliverability dashboard, which gave clear, real-time insights into inbox vs. spam rates, making it easy to gauge the performance of ongoing campaigns. The Slow Ramp feature, designed to gradually increase email volume, was another valuable addition—it helped protect our domain’s reputation and ensured smooth scaling over time.

How Reliable Is Apollo’s Data Compared to Instantly?

Both Apollo and Instantly provide valuable data solutions, but they prioritize different aspects of outreach. Apollo offers a broad data set with advanced filtering and verification systems, while Instantly focuses on refining email deliverability using thorough lead verification and list hygiene. 

Apollo Data Quality

Apollo stands out with its extensive dataset sourced from public records, contributors, and third-party providers. This broad coverage helped us refine our outreach and target higher-quality prospects, thanks to the platform’s robust filtering options and real-time updates that kept contact information up to date.

Here's what I liked about Apollo’s data:

• Advanced filtering made it easy to identify top-tier prospects, especially in complex B2B sales.
• Real-time updates reduced manual list-cleaning, ensuring fewer bounce backs.
• Diverse sourcing provided solid coverage across industries, allowing us to craft more accurate campaigns.

That said, there were instances when I encountered outdated information, particularly with email contacts, which occasionally led to undelivered messages.

Instantly Data Quality

From my experience, Instantly focuses primarily on ensuring high deliverability. The platform's email verification and bulk domain testing tools were particularly effective, cutting down on email bounces and improving engagement rates. What stood out most was the deliverability dashboard, which gave us real-time insights into how well our emails were performing in terms of inbox placement.

Here's what I found impressive about Instantly's data:

• Deliverability tools like bulk verification made a noticeable impact on the success of campaigns.
• Clear performance insights through the dashboard allowed us to adjust our strategies on the go.
• Reliable email interactions kept our deliverability rates high, ensuring better outreach results.

Despite its strengths, Instantly does have a smaller dataset, which became apparent when we targeted more niche industries.

Keep reading: If you're still weighing what Apollo offers versus the competition, check out our in-depth review of its top alternatives.

Apollo vs. Instantly: Pricing

Both Apollo and Instantly offer multiple pricing tiers that cater to different business sizes and outreach needs. Each platform provides a variety of plans, ranging from free or entry-level options to more advanced models for larger teams or high-volume operations.

Apollo Pricing

1. Free
2. Basic: $49/user/month*
3. Professional: $79/user/month*
4. Organization: $119/user/month* (minimum 3 users)

*Billed annually

Instantly Pricing

1. Growth: $30/month
2. Hypergrowth: $77.6/month
3. Light Speed: $286.3/month
4. Enterprise: Custom

Benefits & Shortcomings: Apollo vs. Instantly

Apollo and Instantly have been praised for their ease of use and effectiveness, but their reviews reveal different strengths that cater to varying outreach needs.

Apollo is consistently complimented for its intuitive design and the depth of its contact database. My team found its multi-channel outreach tools seamless to execute. However, like other users, I noticed occasional inaccuracies in contact data, which slightly hampered the efficiency of email campaigns, particularly when targeting specific industries. Despite the hiccups, Apollo’s automation tools helped to keep leads engaged throughout the sales funnel.

Instantly, by contrast, excels in email campaign execution and ensuring emails reach their intended inboxes. The simplicity of setting up high-volume email campaigns and its email warmup feature were IMPRESSIVE and significantly improved deliverability rates. That said, paying separately for lead generation and email outreach might not suit smaller teams with tighter budgets.

Here’s a quick comparison of their pros & cons:

Apollo or Instantly: Which Option Better Suits Your Business Needs?

When evaluating Instantly and Apollo, the choice hinges on the nature of your outreach and lead management needs. For me, Instantly offers a streamlined approach to email campaigns, delivering quick, efficient blasts at scale, while Apollo provides a broader toolkit for prospecting and sales engagement, integrating data-driven insights into outreach workflows.

But what if you could take both platforms a step further?

RB2B offers a unique way to capture the intent of visitors to your website—giving you actionable data on exactly who’s checking out your products or services. Whether you prefer Instantly’s simplicity or Apollo’s all-in-one approach, adding this tool to your arsenal ensures you’re reaching out to the right people at the right time.

Elevate Your Outreach With RB2B’s Website Visitor Insights

Both Instantly and Apollo are powerful tools in their own right, but neither can offer the direct insight into website visitor behavior that RB2B provides. By implementing this tool, you’ll be able to identify REAL PROSPECTS from the moment they engage with your website, eliminating guesswork from your lead generation process.

Let’s say your marketing team is sending out hundreds of emails through Instantly, or you’re managing a multi-channel campaign with Apollo. Integrating RB2B's Person-Level Website Visitor ID tool into your process provides a layer of precision you won’t get from either tool alone. Instead of reaching out blindly, you can now identify the exact people who’ve shown interest in your business, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Rather than sifting through lists of cold prospects, RB2B delivers clear, person-specific insights straight to your Slack channel, including detailed visitor information like:

• Name
• Job title
• Email
• LinkedIn profile
• Specific pages they visited

No more manual searches or complex spreadsheets. With detailed profiles delivered in real time, your team can act SWIFTLY and personalize outreach based on visitor interest.

Note: RB2B tracks only U.S.-based website visitors and is 100% compliant with CPRA and CCPA. Since it doesn't track traffic from the EU, you don't have to worry about violating GDPR. 

How To Get Started With RB2B

Getting RB2B set up is straightforward and takes just a few minutes:

1. Sign up
2. Confirm your email and provide basic information
3. Add the RB2B script to your website's header
4. Link the tool to Slack and activate notifications

And the best part → RB2B is 100% FREE!

You can continue using the tool’s basic version indefinitely or opt for additional features with the Pro version after your 30-day trial.

Final Thoughts

Choosing between Instantly and Apollo comes down to your specific needs—whether you prioritize fast, high-volume email outreach or a more comprehensive, data-driven strategy. Regardless of which tool you prefer, integrating RB2B can give you the edge in your outreach efforts by connecting you directly to visitors already interested in what you offer.

RB2B’s Person-Level Website Visitor Identity tool makes outreach smarter and more targeted, helping your team engage prospects at just the right moment. If you’re serious about boosting your results, sign up for RB2B today—no spreadsheets, no confusion, just real-time data your team can act upon.

Keep reading: Check out our comprehensive reviews of competitors like ZoomInfo, UpLead, Lusha, Leadfeeder, and 6sense, or explore other useful guides below.

• Hunter alternatives
• Demandbase vs. 6sense
• ZoomInfo vs. Cognism
• Seamless vs. ZoomInfo
• Clearbit alternatives

Featured image source: Kampus Production