| Functionality | 3 <p>Cognism's functionality is very limited. Whilst it does offer one of the largest contact databases on the market with a relative strength in mobile data - the product does very little beyond that.</p><p>We were disappointed by the omission of any kind of outbound functionality (email or phone) and were not impressed by the quality of other facets of the product including the granularity of filter provided or the lack of any material automation/AI features.</p> | 4 <p>LinkedIn Sales Navigator is not your typical lead generation tool. Instead its best viewed as a <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">way to leverage LinkedIn's vast network to identify leads and the best path to reach them via you and your team's connections. As such, its database does not provide emails or phone numbers, meaning you'll still need to find these on a different platform. </span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">However, it does excel in a number of areas such as LinkedIn messaging, the granularity of its data and filtering options as well as its relationship/network mapping features. The ability to know the 'best path in' to contact a lead is something unique to Sales Navigator that can only be done using LinkedIn's vast network.</span></p> |
| Ease of Use | 8 <p>Cognism's lack of functionality makes it simple and intuitive to use. Its core prospecting interfaces are familiar and easy to grasp. It would take an average SMB employee less than 10 minutes to master the platforms use.</p> | 8 <p>Much like their consumer facing product, LinkedIn Sales Navigator's web app is simple and intuitive to use. Its search interfaces are familiar and well presented. Additionally, its company profiles, though detail rich, are easy to navigate and use. It would take an average SMB employee less than 30 minutes to master the platform.</p> |
| Look and feel | 7 <p>Cognism's design is modern and relatively simple, especially when compared with a lot of its competitors. When tested, we find both searches and general interfaces to be fast to load. Additionally, contact profile pages and lists were well laid out and easy to consume.</p> | 7 <p>Sales Navigator's design aesthetic closely mirrors that of its consumer counterpart (LinkedIn). When tested, we find its interfaces well laid out and able to display complex information in a way that still easily digestible. Additionally, we find that searches and page loads are generally fast to load (<2s).</p> |
| Customisability | 5 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cognism offers a handful of basic avenues for customisations. Beyond the ability to create custom searches or build targeted lists, you are also able to define an ideal customer persona to help hone and narrow searches more easily.</span></p> | 5 <p>Sales Navigator only offers a handful of avenues for customisation. Beyond the ability to simply create targeted lists, you're also able to create custom org charts to match buyers and champions within organisations. Additionally, you're able to create custom buying personas to more easily run complex searches. However, we noted the lack of some more enterprise friendly features, such as the ability to assign/manage territories to specific teammates.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 3 <p>Frustratingly, Cognism does not offer a self-serve option to try out the platform. Instead, you’ll need to trudge through a sales demo before you are able to access their trial. Once access was granted, we found the platform very simple to set up and use. Given the lack of outbound functionality, there isn't much further setup required either.</p> | 6 <p>Customers are able to get started with Sales Navigator self-serve via their website. However, whether or not you get a free trial depends on your LinkedIn plan status e.g. premium, free etc. If you already have a LinkedIn account though, inital setup is extremely simple <5 mins.</p><p>However, there are a number of things which you might want to customize that can take some time. For example, you are able to create buying heirarchy maps manually within the platform, something that can take several days to get the most out of.</p> |
| Customer Support | 3 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You can contact Cognism's customer support via a live chat widget inside their web app. At first, you'll be greeted by an AI bot which, when tested, we find to be relatively unhelpful and eager to hand off to irrelevant help centre articles. Additionally, we found it difficult to get in contact with a real support agent and instead having to rely on account executives/sales reps who are more focused on driving purchases than provided information succinctly. </span></p> | 8 <p>The primary channel for support in LinkedIn Sales Navigator is via a chat widget inside their web app. The initial chat will be with an AI chatbot instead of a real agent. When tested, we find this AI chatbot to be one of the most helpful on the market, being able to answer most questions we had. When it failed, it readily handed off to a real agent in less than 5 minutes who was able to handle more complex queries via email.</p> |
| Integratability | 5 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cognism provides a number of native integrations with popular CRMs (Salesforce, Hubspot), sales engagement platforms (Outreach, Salesloft) and automation platforms like Zapier. Additionally, it offers an API through which users can interact with Cognism's database directly (however this is not part of their standard offering and you will need to pay more to access this).</span></p> | 3 <p>Though Sales Navigator does provide integrations with some CRMs (Salesforce, Hubspot) and email engagement platforms (Salesloft, Outreach), you'll need to be on their highest pricing tier to take advantage of them. Additionally, the lack of a readily available API or integration with automation platforms such as Zapier makes Sales Navigator one of the more closed off platforms that we've tested.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 4 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Cognism offers self-serve export functionality within its web app. Additionally, Cognism offers an API through which businesses are able to interact with their database directly (however this is not part of their standard offering and you will need to pay more to access this).</span></p> | 2 <p>Due to privacy restrictions, the ability to export accounts, leads or lists from Sales Navigator is omitted entirely. Additionally, though an API exists, it is not readily available to developers and requires approval from LinkedIn to use.</p> |
