2021 Hunter.io Vs ContactOut Compared

Hunter.io vs ContactOut For 2021

Hunting for new prospective leads can be extremely tough, as well as time consuming. While email marketing is an effective tool to reach your potential customers and introduce them to your brand, reaching them can be rather tricky. Contact details of prospects and their email addresses are highly valuable.

Thankfully, today, there are many tools that make this painstaking process very easy. And, most of the small and enterprise businesses, use email-finding tools to prospect and collect email lists.

All you need is the name of the individual and the company they work for and when these details are uploaded into the email marketing software, you can find out their email address.

However, with so many email-finding tools out there, often, finding the best option can be quite a challenge. We have done extensive research, post which we have put together a detailed in-depth review of two popular players in the market, i.e., Hunter.io and ContactOut. Read on to know everything about these two email-finding tools and find out which one can help you source prospective candidates more effectively.

Hunter.Io

Hunter.io is essentially an email finding and lead generation tool that enables your business to improve its outreach process. This simple tool is an excellent choice for lead generation when it comes to crawling contact information and verification of email IDs for any individual, domain or organization. Add the Chrome extension and bulk domain research and Hunter.io becomes a wonderful addition to any business’s outreach strategy.

Hunter.io makes it extremely easy for businesses who make use of email IDs to reach their prospective clients and market their products/services. The tool is also very useful for companies who need to verify the email IDs of a group of people, allowing you to find, as well as verify, all the mail IDs at once instead of doing it individually, which can be a laborious and time-consuming process.

ContactOut

Very similar to Hunter.io, ContactOut is a popular email finder tool. The email search engine lets you find any person’s contact details such as their email address, phone number and social media profile links. The key difference between Hunter.io and ContactOut is that ContactOut lets you find the email IDs of individuals from their LinkedIn profiles.

The email finder tool is extremely easy to use. All you need to do is sign up for one of ContactOut’s plans and install ContactOut’s Chrome extension and start searching. This tool is very useful to build your prospects list to target your email marketing efforts and it can also be used to recruit and hire talent for your company.

About the Company

Hunter.Io

Started in 2015, by Antoine Finkelstein and François Grante, Hunter’s mission was to enable professionals to create connections with people. The company believes in the values of a transparent and open world. The Hunter team is very small and comprises remote teams working from Europe, Asia and America helping over 2 million professionals to create connections.

ContactOut

Founded by Robert Liu, the founder of LifeClub in 2015, ContactOut is headquartered in San Francisco’s Bay Area in California. ContactOut as we know is an email search engine, as well as a recruitment sourcing tool that uses artificial intelligence to provide data coverage of more than a billion email addresses.

Used by more than 30% of Fortune 500 companies such as Bank of America, Microsoft, PwC, Nestle, MERC, etc. as a business and recruiting tool, ContactOut scours the internet using powerful servers and AI match processors for emails and phone numbers and matches an email to an individual with around 97% accuracy.

With more than 1.1 billion emails and more than 50 million phone numbers (of which 75% email addresses and 10% of phone numbers are from individuals on LinkedIn) contained in its database, ContactOut is very robust in terms of accuracy, volume and focus.

Hunter.Io vs ContactOut: How Do They Work?

Hunter.Io

The Hunter.io tool works by searching the internet for email addresses. You can simply enter the website address you want in the search bar and click “find email addresses.” Hunter.io will deliver details of email IDs that are available for the particular web address. You can export the email address and add it to your email marketing database.

You can also verify the email IDs that have been found so that you can remove the ones that don’t exist or are not valid. While Hunter.io is completely legal to use; however, you must follow the data rules when using the email IDs found in your marketing.

ContactOut

ContactOut adds a Chrome extension to your device and enables you to find the email IDs and phone numbers of people. ContactOut is compliant with all the privacy laws, as well as regulations of the US, as well as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations). ContactOut sources data that is only public.

Hunter.Io vs ContactOut Features

Hunter.Io

As mentioned earlier, Hunter.Io is essentially an email outreach and lead generation plugin that can help to optimize the outreach processes of businesses. The tool has several useful features which we will discuss in-depth.

Interface

The Hunter.Io tool has a simple and sleek interface that is very easy to navigate. It has a minimalistic design and the options are self-explanatory. All you need to do is enter the website’s name in the Hunter.io search bar and press search. You can get details of all the employees working for the particular company and their position, as well as email addresses. The tool can also sort the results on the basis of the email address, departments, etc. in a few seconds.

Domain Search

This enables you to find the proper contact in a particular business very quickly. It lists the details of email IDs that are available on the internet publicly, along with the department filters, confidence scores and detailed scores. This feature also allows you to export the information as a spreadsheet or load it onto your CRM or software.

Email Finder

This feature is the most popular feature of the tool and enables you to find the email addresses of businesses and individuals in just a few seconds. Hunter.io does this by searching for the website address that you have entered and the email IDs which are associated with this.

The tool puts all the data together based on the email address information available on the internet, verification and other information to find the appropriate contact information you need.

Email Verifier

This is a very handy feature that enables you to verify if the particular email address is authentic after you have conducted an email search. This feature helps to reduce the number of bounced emails because of the wrong email address being mailed.

It is very easy to check the email address by entering it into their portal. However, the limitation of this feature is that you can’t use it to verify regular Gmail, Yahoo and other personal addresses.

Bulk Tasks

This allows you to search and verify large lists of domains, as well as email addresses easily and quickly. This feature is especially useful for businesses dealing with huge amounts of data.

It enables you to browse through several domains, modify the list and find many people on the basis of other information. It also allows you to find out the proper email addresses from a certain website address or that belong to a specific organization.

Lead Management

This feature enables you to sort through the email database and add the leads manually or import them. It allows you to link with other applications and export the details. The tool also allows you to filter the leads by industry, website, company and position for each company.

Campaigns

The Campaigns feature allows you to connect the Hunter.io tool to your Gmail account and gather all your prospects and conduct your outreach program seamlessly. From here you can create email templates and add them to individual email campaigns, which makes email marketing very easy and completely hassle-free. This is an excellent feature for small outreach campaigns requiring personalized follow-ups.

ContactOut

Chrome Extension

ContactOut’s Chrome extension is very handy and lets you access the search tool directly on the page without the need to log on to the site. The Chrome extension works as an overlay on LinkedIn and helps you to find email addresses and phone numbers. It also works on GitHub.

Search Portal

ContactOut allows you to locate candidates directly via the Search Portal feature, which allows you to make unlimited searches. This feature also allows you to find candidates who aren’t on LinkedIn.

Save Profiles

Once you register with ContactOut, you can access your dashboard, which lets you save your leads from LinkedIn, organize the candidates into groups, share the data with your team and also export the contacts into an Excel spreadsheet or ATS easily and quickly.

Email Campaigns

This feature enables you to engage with your contacts with less effort. While browsing LinkedIn, you can send emails, using ContactOut’s free reusable email templates for your email campaigns. You can also contact several people at a single time and also follow up with your contacts automatically.

Hunter.Io vs ContactOut Pricing

Hunter.Io

Hunter.io has different plans including:

Free

● Monthly Cost: Free

● Yearly Cost: Free

● Searches per Month: 25

● Verifications per Month: 50

Starter

● Monthly Cost: $49

● Yearly Cost: $34/month

● Searches per Month: 500

● Verifications per Month: 1,000

Growth

● Monthly Cost: $99

● Yearly Cost: $69/month

● Searches per Month: 2,500

● Verifications per Month: 5,000

Pro

● Monthly Cost: $199

● Yearly Cost: $139/month

● Searches per Month: 10,000

● Verifications per Month: 20,000

Enterprise

● Monthly Cost: $499

● Yearly Cost: $279/month

● Searches per Month: 30,000

● Verifications per Month: 60,000

All the packages except the Free plan offer domain priority support, search full results and exports, campaigns premium features.

ContactOut

Basic

● Monthly Cost: $49/user

● Annual Cost: $39/user ($948 billed yearly)

● 500+ million email and phone numbers (50% of the database)

● 100 contacts/month (1,200 contacts per year)

● Works only on standard LinkedIn

Sales

● Monthly Cost: $99/user

● Annual Cost: $79/user ($1,908 billed yearly)

● 750+ million email and phone numbers (75% of the database)

● 200 contacts/month (2,400 contacts per year)

● Works on Sales Navigator and Recruiter Lite

● Salesforce integration

Recruiter

● Monthly Cost: $199/user

● Annual Cost: $159/user ($1,908 billed yearly)

● 1+ billion email and phone numbers (100% of the database)

● 400 contacts/month (4,800 contacts per year)

● Works on all LinkedIn versions and Recruiter Pro

● 30+ ATS integrations via Zapier, Salesforce integration

Team

● The sales team needs to be contacted for the pricing and details of this plan

● Volume discount

● Team collaboration

● Enterprise support

Hunter.Io vs ContactOut: Who Is It For?

Hunter.Io

Hunter.io is a suitable tool for:

● Businesses or individuals who are looking for ways to build a database comprising email addresses.

● Marketing and sales teams of businesses who can locate contacts of prospects easily and quickly.

● Marketing professionals for outreach efforts to editors, journalists, etc.

ContactOut

The ContactOut email finder tool is suitable for businesses (large and enterprise) and recruiters who want to find contact details like phone numbers and email addresses of people on LinkedIn and otherwise, enabling them to:

● Target their email marketing.

● Focus recruitment campaigns, allowing them to hire talent easily and quickly.

Hunter.Io vs ContactOut: Pros and Cons

Hunter.Io

Pros

● Hunter.io offers 25 free searches and 50 free verifications, which is quite generous and this option works well for people wanting to try out the tool before subscribing to a paid monthly or yearly plan.

● The tool is extremely easy to use. It has a simple and sleek interface with easy navigation and a set of sensible features.

● The search results provided by Hunter.io are very reliable and this is because you can use the search, as well as verification features together to eliminate the irrelevant or invalid results.

● Hunter.io connects with Google Sheets enabling streamlined email marketing.

Cons

● Although Hunter has a free plan with 25 free searches and 50 free verifications, the paid packages are quite expensive starting from $49 per month up to $499 per month.

● You can use Hunter.io to search for business email addresses only and it cannot search Gmail, Yahoo and other personal addresses.

ContactOut

Pros

● ContactOut is a well-organized, quick and accurate sourcing platform that allows you to hire the best candidates very quickly. It also allows you to organize all the data in a single dashboard.

● The tool is very accurate and delivers a high return of accurate email addresses.

● ContactOut is very easy to install and use and the simple user interface is designed for easy navigation.

● The tool allows easy integration with most of the CRM platforms.

Cons

● ContactOut is quite expensive compared to other tools on the market.

● Does not have a free plan. To start using the tool, you need an annual membership with ContactOut rather than a month-on-month engagement.

● Works only with LinkedIn and GitHub.

● Poor customer support.

Which Tool Should You Choose?

Hunter.Io

Hunter.io is an excellent email-finding tool for businesses and individuals. It uses one of the most extensive databases of over 100 million professional email addresses and finds the updated contact info you require.

Each result you get via the Hunter.io email finder goes through email verification, which returns a verification status, as well as a confidence score that helps to evaluate the accuracy of the information.

With its simple and easy-to-use interface, unique features like domain search, bulk tasks, lead management and campaigns, email finding and verification, multiple pricing tiers with a free plan (allowing easy trial), the tool can contribute greatly to the growth of your business.

ContactOut

ContactOut is AI driven and has over 1.1 billion emails and more than 50 million phone numbers in its database, which is huge. ContactOut offers many features such as Chrome extension, email campaigns and saving profiles and pricing tiers, which makes it a good tool for large and enterprise businesses and recruiters for their email marketing efforts and hiring the best talent.

Hunter.Io vs ContactOut: Testimonials

Here are a few client testimonials that we found online when we were doing our review.

Clients who used Hunter.io said:

“I love that Hunter.io built out a platform that scours for emails across the internet, they show you exactly where they pulled the email from and provide a source for the email. They have a well-built database that allows us to pull out specific emails from companies and advertise to.”

“I have used many tools, but I found that Hunter is the best tool I have ever used so far. It is effortless to use, and the email results are almost correct and satisfactory.

● The results provided by the Hunter are 80 to 90% accurate and valuable.

● Free to use with a limited number of attempts.

● Pricing is also great, not too expensive.

● The Bulk Email Finder tool is handy.”

“It is the most useful tool I have ever found! Very easy to use, and providing such rich information... I love it!!!”

Customers who used ContactOut said:

“Pricing seems a bit much, to find hidden info, it doesn't always find the obvious info. An upgrade should be made. If I am on LinkedIn of a 1st connection there should be recognition that I have access to a given phone number and it should pull up as well.”

“This company acquired my stolen personal information from a Linkedin data leak and published it on their website without my consent. The process of opting out took a week.”

FAQs

How to find email addresses using an email finder?

Email finder is essentially a tool that allows you to find verified professional email addresses using their name and to find an email address, you need the full name of the person, the domain name of the company or the website that the individual belongs to.

Are the email addresses guesses or found somewhere?

Both of these can occur. Firstly, the email finder searches in the database of the particular tool for email addresses that appear on the internet publicly. If there is no match, then the email finder uses other information and data points to assume the most likely email address for the person.

Verdict

All business owners and marketers understand how vital it is to grow their client base. Today, emails are one of the best ways for businesses to contact both B2B and B2C prospects. And, a good email finder tool can ensure that you don’t miss out on any opportunity to contact your prospects and build your database.

Hunter.io is among the leading email finders in the market with a market share of around 50.59%, while ContactOut has a market share of 1.8%. And, while Hunter.io has customers in more than 70+ countries, ContactOut has customers in 17+ countries. Hunter.io has better market coverage compared to ContactOut.

And, after an in-depth comparison of both their features, pricing pros and cons and customer support we conclude that Hunter.io is the best email finder tool on the market that can help to optimize your prospect building and outreach efforts. And the best part is that if you don’t believe us, you can try out Hunter.io for free!

Did you feel we missed anything in this review?

We'd love to know, so drop us a comment below.

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