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Revenue Operations · Explainer

How Do I Evaluate Outreach vs Salesloft vs Apollo for Outbound Cadences in 2027?

By Kory White · Updated Nov 2026 · 9 min read
Screenshot from Salesloft's own site showing a Workflow screen with a list of cadences and step counts
Direct answer

Choose by team shape first, then check the criteria below in a trial with your own CRM and your own list. This is a judgment based on what each vendor publishes, not a hands-on test.

Apollo fits a small or mid-sized outbound team that wants contacts, sequences and a dialer in one tool and wants to read a price before talking to sales. Apollo's pricing page shows $49, $79 and $119 per seat per month on annual billing, and its sales engagement page pairs sequences with a built-in deliverability suite and a contact database. Outreach and Salesloft fit larger sales-development and account-executive organizations that already have a data source and a CRM and want sequencing, coaching and forecasting around them. Neither publishes a price: Outreach says to reach out for custom pricing, and Salesloft shows no prices and routes you to a sales call.

Between those two, the deciding factors are your CRM and your other tools. Outreach lists native Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics plugins; Salesloft describes CRM Sync for Salesforce, Dynamics 365 and HubSpot, and since December 3, 2025 it has been part of the same company as Clari forecasting. Treat any per-seat price you see for Outreach or Salesloft on a third-party site as unconfirmed.

Which tool fits which team (judgment)

These are suggestions drawn from the vendors' own pages. They are not test results, and a trial against your own list is the only way to confirm them.

Screenshot from Apollo's own site showing a sequence builder with an automated email step, a connection request step and a call step

Cadence features: channels, steps and testing

All three describe multi-channel outbound. Outreach says its sync covers email, LinkedIn, SMS and calls, lets you manage multiple stakeholders in the same sequence, and pauses sequences for out-of-office replies until the prospect returns. It also lists integrated A/B testing with results shown with statistical significance. Salesloft names email, phone and social as Cadence channels, includes a dialer (or a connected third-party dialer), and lets reps sort steps by channel, time zone and account. Apollo describes sequence steps across email, call and networking platforms, with parallel and power dialers.

Where the pages differ is testing and limits. Apollo's free plan allows 2 sequences; paid plans list unlimited sequences, and A/Z testing is listed from the Professional plan (Apollo pricing). The Salesloft page read does not mention A/B testing, which does not prove it is missing, so ask for it in the demo.

Test the same three-step cadence in each tool: send volume per day, how replies and bounces pause a prospect, and how a rep adds a manual task. Those details decide daily use more than feature lists do.

Data: where the contacts come from

Apollo is the only one of the three that leads with its own database: its navigation says "Access 240M contacts & 30M companies" and it says over 600,000 companies use it (Apollo). That is Apollo's own claim about size, not an accuracy measure.

Outreach's support site describes Smart Data Enrichment across multiple data providers without naming them. The Salesloft page describes no built-in database and says third-party integrations deliver curated content. In practice, Outreach and Salesloft buyers should budget for a separate data source. That is judgment, so confirm what is bundled before you sign.

Data quality is where reviewers push back on Apollo: a TrustRadius summary says a notable concern among 34% of reviewers is the accuracy and completeness of contact data. Check a sample of your own target accounts before you pay.

Deliverability

Apollo lists a built-in deliverability suite on its sales engagement page and "Deliverability Suite & Email Warmup" and "Domain & Mailbox Purchasing" on its Basic plan and above (pricing). On free plans you can connect Gmail accounts only.

The Outreach sales engagement page and the Salesloft pages read make no deliverability claims (Outreach, Salesloft CRM page). That does not mean the features are absent. It means the vendor pages do not say, so ask both how they handle sending limits, bounce handling and domain setup, and plan to manage sender reputation yourself either way.

No page read here reports an inbox-placement rate for any of the three, and this page gives none.

CRM sync

Reviewers flag sync as the soft spot for the two enterprise tools. A TrustRadius summary lists inconsistent Salesforce integration and data synchronization as an Outreach con, and a TrustRadius summary lists inconsistencies in data synchronization, particularly with call logging, for Salesloft. Those are summaries of a small number of reviews, so use them as questions for the demo, not conclusions.

AI features

Outreach launched Omni, a conversational agent built into Slack and its mobile app, on April 27, 2026, and its pricing meters AI credits. Salesloft lists account and buyer-identification agents that draft personalized emails. Apollo lists an AI Assistant that builds sequence steps and context-aware email drafts, and its Professional plan adds AI research and AI lead scoring.

Screenshot from Apollo's own site showing a task screen with an AI-drafted email and an AI insights panel

Every figure on these pages about AI results comes from the vendors themselves. Judge AI by running it on your own accounts and reading the drafts. Apollo's page also marks two features, Book of Business and an AI-guided task queue with a unified rep inbox, as coming soon, so do not buy them yet.

Pricing: what is published

Apollo says annual billing saves 24% against monthly billing, and unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Seat price is also not the whole bill for any of them. Ask each vendor what is extra: dialer minutes, data credits, AI credits, onboarding and support.

Contract terms

Only Apollo publishes terms. Monthly billing is pay month-to-month and cancel anytime at a higher effective cost; annual billing is a 12-month commitment paid upfront at a discount. Switching annual to monthly means canceling and waiting for the plan to expire, mid-cycle downgrades on annual plans are not permitted, refunds are not issued for unused time, and all seats on an account must be on the same plan (Apollo pricing FAQ).

Outreach's and Salesloft's pages read publish no term lengths, renewal terms or minimum seat counts. Outreach says pricing depends on team size, usage and the capabilities required. Ask both for the term, the renewal and price-increase language, the AI-credit overage rules, and what happens to your data if you leave. That is judgment about what to ask, not a finding about either contract.

Ownership and 2025-2026 changes

A merger in progress is a question to put to Salesloft directly: which product names, roadmaps and support teams stay, and what happens to your renewal terms.

What reviewers say

TrustRadius shows Apollo at 8.5 out of 10 from 672 reviews, Outreach at 8.2 from 1,049 reviews and Salesloft at 7.6 from 976 reviews, as read on November 4, 2026. These are TrustRadius's scores and were not tested by me. The rating gaps are small, and the written summaries are built from a limited set of reviews: 89 for Apollo, 18 for Outreach and 11 for Salesloft.

Common cons in those summaries are interface complaints for all three, contact-data accuracy for Apollo, and Salesforce sync consistency for Outreach and Salesloft. Reviews describe past versions of fast-changing products, so weigh them lightly.

A short evaluation plan

Questions people ask

Which is best for outbound cadences: Outreach, Salesloft or Apollo?

It depends on team shape. Judgment based on each vendor's own pages: Apollo for smaller teams that want contacts, sequences and a published price in one tool; Outreach or Salesloft for larger teams that bring their own data and want engagement, coaching and forecasting around it. No source read here tests them against each other.

Do Outreach and Salesloft publish prices?

No. Outreach says to reach out for custom pricing and Salesloft shows no prices. Apollo publishes $49, $79 and $119 per seat per month on annual billing.

Is Salesloft still a separate company?

Salesloft and Clari announced a merger agreement on August 7, 2025 and said on December 3, 2025 that they have merged, per Salesloft's newsroom. The release does not say whether products will be retired or kept separate.

Does Apollo include contact data?

Yes. Apollo's navigation says "Access 240M contacts & 30M companies", and plans include credits for data use (Apollo pricing). A TrustRadius summary says a notable concern among 34% of reviewers is contact data accuracy and completeness.

Sources

Vendor pages and prices change often; check each one before you buy. This page is general information from public sources, not a hands-on test and not advice for your specific team.

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