The $9.3B company is a leader in the go-to-market (GTM) intelligence space and is aggressively expanding into new GTM categories — but M&A integrations may be causing the core product to suffer, according to customers we spoke with.
Is ZoomInfo in trouble?
The $9.3B company is a leader in the go-to-market (GTM) intelligence space and grew revenue 47% YoY in 2022.
And it’s aggressively expanding into new GTM categories via acquisitions, including:
- Comparably (talent acquisition)
- Ringlead (data orchestration)
- Chorus.ai (conversation intelligence)
- Insent (conversational marketing)
Here’s a snapshot of its M&A activity from ZoomInfo’s profile on CB Insights.
But as it expands from its data roots to a full-blown sales workflow management solution, it appears customers have mixed feelings — citing challenges ranging from pricing to product innovation.
Add in a growing cohort of challengers like Apollo.io, Lusha, and Cognism and the situation looks a bit dicey.
To get under the hood a bit, we recently partnered with Pavilion, a community of GTM leaders and their teams, and spoke to their members about their views on sales intelligence and data enrichment vendors.
Those are summarized in this Vendor Scorecard.
As you can see in this excerpt from the scorecard, ZoomInfo scored the lowest on CSAT (customer satisfaction).
So what are buyers saying about ZoomInfo and the competition?
Pricing is high
ZOOMINFO
The biggest challenge ZoomInfo faces each and every year when it comes to renewal is the price tag; especially for the additional intent services, which are in the five-digit range. Pricing is definitely the biggest challenge. — VP at Fortune Global 500 subsidiary
Read the full transcript here.
ZoomInfo’s core product at a standstill?
ZOOMINFO
We would love to see the product evolving more; as I mentioned, our perception is that ZoomInfo has stood still for the last year. We haven’t seen a huge amount more value compared to the competitors in the market who are moving forward. We know ZoomInfo has been busy on big acquisitions and integrations, offering different capabilities. However, the core product we bought from them has stood still. — C-level executive at $10M+ funded training platform
Read the full transcript here.
Buyer that churned off of ZoomInfo has similar concerns
ZOOMINFO
I think ZoomInfo’s kind of dug their own grave to the extent that, again, trying to integrate more features and functionality into the platform for them has meant buying and trying to integrate other businesses. And ultimately, what has happened is the functionality, utility, and usability of the platform itself has degraded significantly. They’re also trying to play in categories that, historically, they have not lived in. This is an instance where I think that ZoomInfo would be better suited to focus on their core offering and strongest value proposition, which is quality and accuracy in contact data for selling teams. — VP at $10M+ funded marketing platform
Read the full transcript here.
Clearbit has an edge with its startup coverage
CLEARBIT
What’s really important for any of these data enrichment tools is the hit rate. Our customer base skews earlier-stage…So, you go to DiscoverOrg, ZoomInfo, and the hit rate for a brand new startup is just exceedingly low. Companies that were recently incorporated in Delaware — those databases that work so well for big enterprise sales, they just don’t tend to work. Clearbit is probably the best in the market for enrichment when you’re talking about early- and growth-stage startups. — CEO at $100M+ funded compliance platform
Read the full transcript here.
UK-based Cognism wins out for its European data & GDPR compliance
COGNISM
ZoomInfo was most probably the strongest competitor that we considered…The big strength that Cognism has is that European data that we weren’t seeing from some of the other vendors, which are quite limited in terms of European footprints…The key point that we need to make sure of is compliance for Europe. We have some strict legal issues with regards to GDPR and Cognism was able to give us the certainty that we would be compliant if we were using their data, whereas other vendors weren’t in that position. — Marketing Director at $1B+ market cap manufacturer
Read the full transcript here.
Fresh off the press
Our Vendor Scorecard, produced in partnership with Pavilion, compares companies like ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo.io, Lusha, and more on:
- Customer satisfaction
- Win reasons
- Pricing
Download the free 1-pager here.
