| Functionality | 7 <p>Despite Apollo primarily being a prospecting database, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of its sales engagement feature set. On the email front, we were pleased to find a range of rich functionality including A/B testing, email warmup and support for inbox rotation. On the phone front, the native dialer and AI conversation analysis functionalities were stand out. If we were to call out an area which was lacking it would be on the richness of the sequences builder (complex branching logic is not possible) and also any kind of sales forecasting functionality it limited.</p> | 7 <p>Close is primarily a CRM. That being said it does offer fairly strong multi-channel (email, phone, SMS) outbound capabilities. It's native dialer and adjacent functionalities are particularly strong. Additionally, given its focus as a CRM, it excels in areas such as pipeline tracking and deal management.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 6 <p>Apollo's web app is relatively simple and easy to navigate. Additionally, when tested, we find it's search pages were generally fast to load.</p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Apollo's web app is generally intuitive and easy to navigate. Additionally, its onboarding was simple and not overwhelming. Our only complaint is that some of its sequence builder interfaces were slightly non-standard and therefore take a bit more time to get used to. On average, it would take an SMB employee less than 45 minutes to master its use.</span></p> | 7 <p>Though Close is focused on power users, we were pleased by how intuitive the platform is to use. It's core sequencing interface is very well presented and familiar. Additionally, even more advanced features such as call transcript analysis are very well presented and not overwhelming. It would take an average SMB employee around 30 minutes to master its use.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>Apollo's web app is relatively simple and easy to navigate. Additionally, when tested, we find it's search pages were generally fast to load.</p><p>However, some of its engagement centred interfaces were a bit clunky and overwhelming. For example, its sequence builder was unintuitive to use on initial glance.</p> | 8 <p>When compared with most tools in the sales engagement space, Close presents itself as one of the best designed and easiest to use tools on the market. Though lacking in colour, we appreciated its modern aesthetic and fast page load times.</p> |
| Customisability | 7 <p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">From an engagement perspective, there are a number of customization options Apollo offers. For example, you can provide their AI with context about your business and targets which will then be used when drafting AI email sequences. Apollo's analytics dashboards are also extremely customizable and among some of the most granular we've tested.</span></p> | 8 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close offers significant customization for fields, workflows, and pipeline stages. You can create custom data objects to track items beyond people and companies, such as partnerships. It also supports extremely granular custom filters to target contacts and leads when setting up sequences.</span></p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Unlike many of similar products of this scale, Apollo offers a simple, self-serve free trial for their platform. When tested, we found the initial setup to be simple (taking <10 mins), especially if you're using google workspace to power your emails. However, given then feature breadth that Apollo offers, it can take a lot of time to fully customize the experience. For example - most customers will still need to connect CRMs and customize Apollo's AI 'power-ups' to suit their needs.</span></p> | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close offers a free trial without need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. However, fully setting up the platform and upskilling your reps can take up to a week, given Close's powerful and rich outbound functionality.</span></p> |
| Customer Support | 8 <p>Apollo offers support via a live chat widget within its web app. When tested, we find agents to be helpful and about to troubleshoot technical questions often in the first response.</p><p>Additionally, Apollo provides a detailed help centre which was able to answer almost all basic question we had in testing.</p> | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You can only contact Close's support team via email, however the team is often helpful and replies within 15 minutes. Close also offers a lot of helpful onboarding guidance and high quality self-help resources.</span></p> |
| Integratability | 7 <p>Though Apollo offers a very large integrations marketplace, its clear that most integrations are geared not towards using Apollo as a sales engagement tool, but rather as a prospecting database. As such, some integrations such as document signing platforms were missing. That being said, all the core integrations including CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot) and automation platforms (Zapier) were present.</p> | 4 <p>Close lacks native integrations with a lot of tools we'd like to have seen such as Apollo or other prospecting databases. That being said, we did appreciate the integration with Zapier through which you are able to connect to a much broader array of tooling.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 6 <p>Apollo offers self-serve export functionality for contacts directly within their web app. High export limits are also available for larger enterprises depending on what plan you are on.</p><p>Additionally, Apollo offers a well-documented API through which businesses are able to interact with their database directly.</p> | 7 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close allows users to export key data via self-serve. Export of most other data is also available via API or on request.</span></p> |
