Leadfeeder vs Clearbit: Who Takes Home The Gold?

It’s no longer enough to send out content and see who bites.

Fortunately, with a powerful lead generation tool such as Leadfeeder or Clearbit supporting your sales strategy, it's never been easier to spot hot leads.

So which tool should you choose? In this article, I’ll run you through the pros and cons of both Leadfeeder and Clearbit. We’ll discuss functionality, support, and pricing, and then, I’ll share my objective conclusion.

Let’s compare Leadfeeder and Clearbit

Today, lead generation is heavily dependent on sales intelligence: the collection of contact data or company data that enables your sales and marketing teams to connect with the right buyers at the right time.

Upping your sales intelligence takes tech. Many SaaS companies provide sales intelligence tools, but Leadfeeder and Clearbit are a pretty close match, so if they’re on your shortlist, listen up. 

Before I get into details, let’s see where each platform stands overall.

Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a cloud-based B2B intent data platform designed to identify hot leads (companies) as they land on your site.

It’s designed to capture leads based on your ICP using the customizable filtering system within the software. The platform gives you data on prospects such as industry, company name, company size, location, job role, seniority, emails, Linkedin/Twitter/Facebook profiles, and on-site activities such as pricing page visits. Perfect for B2B sales and marketing teams.

You can also organize your data visually. This is possible thanks to Leadfeeder's IP Enrich API, which converts IP addresses into accurate, real-time firmographic data about your visitors.

What’s more, the Leadfeeder product, Connectors, allows you to connect and leverage data with other B2B tools. For example, you can sync prospect data with your chat provider to target website visitors based on their company size, location, and revenue. You can use plug-and-play connectors or integrate with the API for custom workflows — whatever works for you and your sales team.

More on this later: for now, let's turn our attention to Clearbit.

Clearbit

Clearbit is another cloud-based lead management solution that uncovers the companies behind anonymous website visits. Designed for marketing and sales reps, it’s a Salesforce automation solution that helps retarget website visitors, qualify prospects, score leads, and more.

Clearbit comes with two main products: Prospector and Enrichment. Together, they form an all-in-one solution that allows you to find and target ideal customers in minutes.

Clearbit also supports integrations with other major platforms, such as Slack and Hubspot. But just like above… more on that later.

Let’s get down to details with a Leadfeeder vs. Clearbit feature comparison.

Features: What are the main differences between Leadfeeder and Clearbit?

Although both Leadfeeder and Clearbit aim to generate hot leads, they each do it differently. Here are the features that each platform offers.

Leadfeeder features and integrations

The Leadfeeder platform comes with a variety of useful features that make lead generation as simple as possible for both salespeople and marketing teams. Here’s what you can do with the software:

• Reveal website visitors. Leadfeeder turns anonymous website visitors into company names and ways to get in touch. It’s exactly what you need to increase your conversion rate.

• Track visitor behavior. Website visits aren’t the only thing you can capture. Leadfeeder tracks a companies' visit entire session and reports on its duration, as well as the pages they visit and the files they download.

• Generate account lists with high intent. Leadfeeder automatically picks high-value leads from all current traffic and filters the list by parameters such as industry, location, and browsing behavior — or whatever you select.

• Get real-time notifications via our integrations. You can set up automatic notifications to enable timely follow-ups or determine when to contact a lead. Here’s a full list of integrations that Leadfeeder offers.

• Create lists of accounts to retarget on LinkedIn. With this feature, you can create and save custom feeds of accounts you’d like to retarget. You can also export a CSV file with your target accounts for use elsewhere in your advertising campaigns. In the end, you get great outreach without having to even ask for their phone numbers.

• Connect your prospect data with third-party B2B tools using Connectors. Leadfeeder Connectors let you use your visitors' firmographic data with third-party tools — for example, to enhance Google Analytics reporting, tailor website experience, and personalize on-site chat.

• Integrate sales activities with your CRM. Leadfeeder is the only player in the lead generation market that offers two-way CRM integration, meaning you can import leads into your CRM automatically and vice versa. This feature opens up a whole new approach to smart sales intelligence, as you can synchronize data between Leadfeeder and your CRM.

Finally, Leadfeeder supports integrations with major platforms for different purposes:

• CRM: Pipedrive, Salesforce, Zoho, Microsoft, Dynamics, HubSpot, WebCRM

• Email marketing: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign

• Communication: Slack, Google Hangouts Chat, LinkedIn

• Automation: Zapier

• Data: Google Analytics, Google Data Studio

Let’s now look at what Clearbit has to offer.

Clearbit features and integrations

Clearbit API offers some similar lead generation and management opportunities, namely:

• Track website visitors. There are several Clearbit API offerings. The Clearbit Reveal API enables traffic de-anonymization, so you can identify visitors who may be interested in your services but haven’t yet signed up for them.

• Recognize your ICP in the traffic. The Clearbit Discovery API helps identify website visitors that match particular criteria, such as company size or annual revenue. 

• Conduct predictive lead scoring automatically. This feature lets you score leads automatically based on their browsing behavior.

• Find emails in seconds. This is possible with Clearbit Connect, a free Chrome extension that allows you to type a company’s name and instantly see all available contacts. With this Clearbit email finder feature, you can seamlessly find the best contacts by name or job title.

• Segment website visitors. You can categorize visitors into different conversion flows based on their industry, company size, employee range, or other details.

• Get in touch with high-fit visitors via personalized chats. You can engage your leads with smart chats when they’re ready to convert or when they’re about to leave.

• Get real-time notifications via email, Slack, or Salesforce. You can set up automatic notifications for when your target accounts engage with intended data.

• Collect data from numerous third-party sources. With Clearbit's Enrichment API, you can collect and sort third-party data points from a wide range of sources. The data is automatically updated, so you don't have to worry about outdated or missing records.

Just like Leadfeeder, Clearbit can integrate with different third-party platforms. Here are the main ones:

• CRM: Pipedrive, HubSpot, Salesforce

• Email marketing: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Padrot, Segment, Marketo

• Communication: Slack

• Automation: Zapier

• Data: Google Data Studio

At first glance, Leadfeeder and Clearbit seem equally good. Let’s drill down to the main feature differences to reach a verdict.

Who takes the gold for features?

When it comes to features, it’s a question of details. After all, just one missing feature can negatively impact your entire lead generation process. In my Leadfeeder vs. Clearbit research, I found that Clearbit lags behind in a few areas. 

First, Clearbit doesn’t provide options for custom feeds and doesn’t allow you to track file downloads. For reference, a custom feed is a view that you create for yourself that only contains company names that have met your filtering criteria.

And on that note, when I referenced file downloads, I was referring to Leadfeeder’s ability to track when a website visitor clicks a file on your website.

Second, while Leadfeeder supports two-way CRM integration, Clearbit only lets you import sales data into your CRM (not the other way around). Consequently, you have to manually process your contacts to get a complete picture of your target accounts. Ouch.

In summary, I can boldly proclaim that in the Feature category... Leadfeeder takes first place.

But features aren’t everything. I also looked at two more categories: Support and Pricing.

Support: Who’s more helpful?

People rarely consider user support when choosing software, which is a shame. I personally believe that how a company handles your issues is just as important as the features its software provides.

Let’s look at the Leadfeeder and Clearbit support options.

Leadfeeder support

The most important thing you should know about Leadfeeder is that it offers live support via chat and email from 09:00 AM - 06:00 PM CET, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays or special events.

For self-service support, Leadfeeder has an extensive Help Center with tutorials on everything from getting started to integration and troubleshooting. ​Leadfeeder also regularly holds educational webinars on a variety of topics. 

Clearbit support

Unlike Leadfeeder, Clearbit doesn’t offer support chat on the website. If you have questions, you need to fill out a contact form and wait for a sales or support representative to get back to you. Premium support options are also only available to Business Plan customers.

In such cases, self-service is essential. To be fair, Clearbit has an extensive FAQ section on its website that covers topics from Clearbit basics to integrations and advertising.

And the most supportive company is…

…Leadfeeder. Who else? Dealing with hot leads requires immediate support, and that's what Leadfeeder provides, while Clearbit doesn’t.

Pricing: Is Leadfeeder or Clearbit more expensive?

We already have a winner for both features and support. How is this reflected in pricing? Let’s see.

Leadfeeder pricing

First things first: Leadfeeder's pricing is completely transparent, so you always know exactly what you’re paying for.

Leadfeeder offers two pricing plans:

• Free: This free plan only stores data from the last seven days and has a maximum of 100 identified companies. However, it includes an unlimited number of users. In short, this plan is perfect for testing the basic features of Leadfeeder.

• Paid: This plan starts at $99 per month and increases in tiers with the number of companies you need to identify.

You can try Leadfeeder for free for 14 days. No credit card is required, which means no unexpected recurring payments.

Clearbit pricing

Clearbit doesn’t disclose pricing plans on its website: you’ll have to request a custom quote to get an approximate price estimate for your specific needs. The price depends on the size of your CRM database, monthly web traffic, and monthly contact creation.

Plus, there’s no free trial version: you need to request a demo to see the platform in action before you decide.

The clear pricing winner

Leadfeeder wins again. Its transparent and flexible pricing options mean you only pay for what you use, and taking it for a spin in your setup is completely free.

Clearbit, on the other hand, doesn’t have such clear pricing, which can make sales budget planning difficult. Pricing appears as a Clearbit disadvantage in a number of independent product reviews. 

So, Leadfeeder or Clearbit?

Based on this research, Leadfeeder outperforms Clearbit in almost every respect. 

Leadfeeder, unlike Clearbit, has more diverse functionality and offers more features, such as custom feeds and form and file download tracking, not to mention two-way CRM integration.

Leadfeeder is also more flexible in terms of support and pricing. Live chat makes it easy to get questions answered on the spot, and you can also easily see pricing plans without having to contact the company. And, of course, you can get familiar with Leadfeeder right away — with just a few clicks, you can get started for free.

Still on the fence? There’s no harm in trying things out for yourself. As I said, it only takes a few clicks to see where your leads are coming from.