D&B Hoovers Alternative

SalesRipe vs D&b Hoovers: a Quick Overview

D&B Hoovers is by no means the only B2B lead generation platform in the market; there are a plethora of other tools that B2B marketers and business owners can tap on, including SalesRipe. In this comparison guide, we walk you through the pros and cons of SalesRipe vs D&B Hoovers, and discuss how they stack up against each other.

SalesRipe And D&B Hoovers:
Company Background

Firstly, D&B Hoovers is a sales intelligence solution that seeks to help business users build their pipeline faster, surpass their competition and increase sales productivity. D&B Hoovers was founded by Gary Hoover and Patrick Spain back in 1990, and it was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 2003. The company continued operating under its original name “Hoover’s” for over a decade, but it was recently rebranded as D&B Hoovers in 2017.

SalesRipe, on the other hand, is an easy-to-use lead generation platform that provides targeted business and consumer sales leads. SalesRipes comes with search and list-building capabilities, and like D&B Hoovers, you can use SalesRipe to identify and connect with your ideal customers. SalesRipe was founded in 2015, and it’s used by the world’s most prestigious and reputable companies, including Amazon, Google, Adobe, Oracle, and Dell.

SalesRipe Pricing vs D&B Hoovers Pricing

If you’re looking for a lead gen tool that’s priced fairly and affordably, then SalesRipe will be your best bet.

SalesRipe offers three different plans, including a Basic plan that costs $49/month, a Plus plan that costs $79/month, and an Ultimate plan that will set you back by $129/month. If you’re a larger company looking for a fully customized solution, there’s also an Enterprise plan that’s available upon request.

SalesRipe’s basic plan comes with 200 credits that you can use to download 200 contacts to Excel. Your unused credits automatically roll over to the next month, and you can search for and view an unlimited number of leads.

How about D&B Hoovers’ pricing? Well, the company doesn’t publish any pricing information on its website, demonstrating a lack of transparency. If you search “D&B Hoovers pricing” online, you’ll see an Entreprenuer.com article that says an Essentials subscription to Hoover’s costs $89 per month or $899 per year, but note that this article was published back in 2011, and D&B Hoover’s prices are likely to have increased since then.

On top of that, beware of hidden costs that will add to whatever you’re paying for D&B Hoovers’ lead gen tool. A G2crowd reviewer points out that she was unaware that users weren’t allowed to download lists to include the email addresses of their prospects unless they paid extra, with the additional charges working out to be $0.50 an email, with a minimum of 5,000 emails.

Contracts And Lock-in Periods

D&B Hoovers requires all its users to sign a contract with them, and locks them in for the duration of their contract. If you’re running a huge company, and you know that you definitely need to get your hands on a few thousand B2B leads every month, then this might not be an issue. But if you’re running a smaller business and/or you’re still experimenting and figuring things out, then it obviously wouldn’t make sense to commit to using D&B Hoovers right off the bat.

On top of that, also consider that entrepreneurs running smaller or new businesses need to be careful about their cash flow. You might think that you can pay off a $12,000 invoice and have just enough to get by, but what happens if one of your biggest customers delays their payment to you in the same month? All of a sudden, you might not have enough to finance your sales team’s payroll, and if that happens, business will grind to a halt.

Last but not least, being locked into a contract also presents a problem if you realize that you’re not getting much value out of a tool. A G2 crowd reviewer states that using D&B Hoover actually created more problems in her company’s workflow, and despite showing D&B empirically that their solution is not the best fit due to outdated data, D&B would not cancel their contract.

Other reviewers have also pointed out their dissatisfaction at being locked into a contract. One reviewer states that it’s impossible to cancel the contract once you’ve signed it, due to a certain clause that’s built in. This same reviewer shares that D&B Hoovers says that you can send incorrect numbers back in exchange for “credits”, but that they do not honour this promise.

Unlike D&B Hoovers, SalesRipe takes a different approach to working with businesses. In order to support all the small and medium enterprises out there, SalesRipe designs all its plans to be contract-less, meaning that our clients can cancel at any time. Furthermore, you don’t get a penalty for choosing to pay on a monthly basis. As a strict rule of thumb, we bill all our clients per month instead of per year, so as to provide them with more flexibility.

Number Of B2B Contacts

When it comes to B2B contacts, D&B Hoovers has got the upper hand — the company’s database consists of 120 million business contacts. On the other hand, SalesRipe’s database features over 200 million consumer and 20 million business leads from across the world. SalesRipe also lets you filter your business leads using 30+ different criteria, including:
  • Geographic: State, County, City, Zip Code, Country
  • Industry: SIC Code, Industry Type
  • Size: Sales Volume, Number of Employees
  • Title: Contact Title, Contact Level, Contact Job Function
  • Other Filters: Technologies Used at Business, Landline vs Mobile Phone Numbers, One Contact per Company vs Multiple, Presence of URL and Exclusions

Here, it’s worth noting that SalesRipe guarantees the accuracy of its data (90% accurate on average), while D&B Hoovers does not. Many lead generation platforms do feature statistics about their accuracy on their website, so the fact that D&B Hoovers chooses to keep silent on this front does say something.

For more details, look at D&B Hoovers’ G2 Crowd review page, where multiple reviewers have stated that D&B Hoovers provides inaccurate information. One reviewer even shares that they were “many instances” where his company called a prospect after getting their information from D&B, only to find out that they passed away or moved on to another role years ago.

SalesRipe vs D&B Hoovers:
Which Is A Better Fit For Your Company?

If your key criteria in choosing a lead generation tool is the number of contacts that it offers you, then your choice is simple — go for D&B Hoovers. Keep in mind, however, that while D&B Hoovers does deliver in the absolute volume of its contacts, its lack of accuracy has proven to be problematic for many of its customers.

If you’re looking for a tool that provides you with the most value and bang for the buck, SalesRipe is a better choice instead. While SalesRipe’s database in smaller than that of D&B Hoovers, 20 million leads still makes for a pretty sizeable database, and there’s no chance that you’ll run out of leads or prospects to contact when using SalesRipe.

Go for SalesRipe if...

  • You believe in lead quality over quantity
  • You don’t want to waste your time calling outdated leads
  • You’re a small or medium sized company that values flexibility
  • You’re working around a fixed budget, and you need to keep cash flow in mind
  • You’re looking for value for money

Go for D&B Hoovers if...

  • You’re prepared to deal with inaccurate lead information and outdated leads
  • You’re an enterprise firm that needs to generate thousands of leads every month
  • You’re heavily funded, and budget is not a concern for you
  • Your key criteria in choosing a lead generation tool is the number of contacts it offers you

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