Top 11 People Data Labs Alternatives & Competitors
Are you searching for a solution that can fetch B2B profile data at scale? Or maybe you read about People Data Labs, and now you want to explore alternatives. A quick search online, and you'll find a lot of websites filled with customer reviews, and simmered down lists that really do no good. What you need is a comprehensive list of alternatives, judged under the right parameters.
In this article, I will first establish some important metrics that great B2B data enrichment providers MUST have. Then, it's time for all the alternatives to be put up against these metrics so you know exactly where each stands out and where they may fall short. I will also highlight the pros and cons of each provider platform, so you know what you're getting yourself into.
Here's a quick glance at the alternatives to People Data Labs, compared and ranked across defined metrics.
For those seeking a detailed analysis, I got you covered too! But first let's look at what metrics we should be judging the alternatives against and why.
B2B data enrichment provider metrics
Freshness
The idea that everyone wants fresh, live data is only true sometimes. The right provider allows customers to control the freshness of data, offering cheaper data when freshness is not a concern.
For example, if you are looking for job posting data, you need fresh data. However, cached data would suffice if you only wanted to match a company URL with its name because a company's name and URL will only change occasionally.
When exploring the different providers, understand their data freshness guarantee. Review their documentation and determine whether they provide the option to control data retrieval from cache or to scrape live.
Data points
Currently, you might only be looking for a specific set of data points. Even if you've identified a provider that caters your needs for now, you might need additional data points in the future. Consider committing to a provider with an exhaustive set of data points so you don't accrue technical debt from day one.
We've heard countless stories of people having to switch providers after realizing the limited data points available or having to engage different providers for different sets of data, making their workflow a mess.
Legal compliance
Generally, you won't get into legal trouble even if your data provider fails to legally comply. If anything, the providers are the ones who'll get into trouble (if they employ illegal tactics like Mantheos). What you don't want, is having to migrate your already-integrated applications and workflow when something does happen.
And so, it's best to find a provider that is legally scraping data. After all, web scraping is indeed legal per the US court ruling. GDPR and CCPA are the basic compliance standards for the data industry.
Pricing
Even if you are in a small or a large company, pricing matters. As a small company, you need pricing flexibility based on what you use and not get tied down to a fixed plan. As a larger company, you will benefit from good enterprise packages to ensure that your large-scale data operations do not incur uncontrollable costs.
For this article, I will be comparing the cheapest monthly plan of each provider:
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Get the number of profiles available via that monthly plan.
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Calculate the cost per profile.
Of course, the more expensive monthly and annual plans would lower the cost per profile.
Before going in detail on all the competitors and alternatives of People Data Labs, let's first look at what People Data Labs has going for them.
People Data Labs
People Data Labs (PDL) scrapes public data and works with third-party partners to get private data. Then it packages this data into datasets that customers can call using APIs. It isn't developer-focused, but with quite a comprehensive range of data points available, it's arguably the most complete in the list. Though they are guilty of breaking down one data point into many granular forms, which inflate the absolute quantity.
Now, let's look at PDL objectively through our metrics:
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Data Freshness: APIs are called using PDL's Datasets, which are updated monthly by default.
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Data Points: People Data Labs provides a plethora of data points. It is arguably the most complete data points provider on the list. The company offers >200 data points per profile, but they achieve this number by splitting the data down to their most granular forms. For example, a single location address is split into 12 different fields! Some examples:
location_street_address
,location_address_line_2
,location_continent
,location_country
,location_region
, etc. -
Legal Compliance: People Data Labs has an edge with additional compliance besides GDPR and CCPA. PDL complies with GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 regulations.
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Pricing: Their Pro plan starts at $98/mo for 350 profiles ($0.28/profile).
People Data Labs has also faced a fair amount of critical reviews by past users on their high price tag, data recency and usage. Check out People Data Labs Review to get a comprehensive idea on their product features, pricing, and comparisons.
Let's look at why customers in the past chose People Data Labs, and why you should look for better alternatives.
Pros and Cons of People Data Labs
Pros:
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Large datasets on multiple data points.
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Plug-and-play model allows for immediate consumption.
Cons:
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At $0.25 per match, it's expensive to utilize PDL services.
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Pre-collected databases compromise fresh data.
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History of security issues; PDL data breach 2019.
Now, that we've had our appetizer, onto our entree. Here are the best alternatives to People Data Labs.
11 Best People Data Labs Competitors and Alternatives- A Detailed Analysis
1. Proxycurl (Best Overall 🌟)
Proxycurl is a developer-focused company that provides a huge portfolio of API endpoints which scrape and enrich profiles, providing a huge amount of data points. Depending on their use cases, customers can use Proxycurl's APIs flexibly and integrate them into any existing applications and workflows. Proxycurl also sells datasets of person and company profiles with millions of samples for enterprise customers looking for scale.
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Data Freshness: Proxycurl provides immense flexibility in choosing your dataset. You can choose between freshly-scraped data, data 29 days old or younger or even historical data that is older than 29 days.
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Data Points: Proxycurl's data is comprehensive and provides coverage for both people and companies profiles. People's profiles include contact information, work email and even personal email.
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Legal Compliance: Strictly follows GDPR and CCPA regulations.
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Pricing: Proxycurl's Starter plan begins from $49/mo for 2500 profiles ($0.02/profile). The offer stands head to head with the cheapest option on the list, ReachStream.
Pros and Cons of Proxycurl
Pros:
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API crawls are dispatched on-demand and are made in real-time for the latest data.
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Flexibility in data freshness.
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High scale crawl, scraping about a million pages per day.
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Affordable price plans.
Cons:
- Businesses requiring extensive hands-on customization might need additional support.
2. ReachStream (Cheapest 💰)
ReachStream is a B2B sales and marketing data platform offering contact, company and technographic data for prospecting. Its main offering is a simple, user-friendly platform where you can view unlimited contact and company profiles, along with unlimited contact data updates for free. Additionally, ReachStream offers a monthly renewable freemium plan, letting users test the application and download data for free.
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Data Freshness: Database is updated monthly through a 7-tier manual and AI verification process.
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Data Points: ReachStream also provides large, diverse datasets that are affordable for many businesses. It provides 20+ contact and company data points with comprehensive contact, firmographic and technographic data. It is a valid competitor to People Data Labs.
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Legal Compliance: ReachStream complies with GDPR, CCPA, ACMA, EDPS, CAN-SPAM, and ANTI CAN SPAM act regulations.
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Pricing: Their Super Saver plan starts from $99/mo for 5000 profiles ($0.02/profile). It is the cheapest option per profile on the list.
Pros and Cons of ReachStream:
Pros:
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High database accuracy.
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User-friendly platform.
Cons:
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Limited integrations with CRM platforms.
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Limited set of features.
3. Coresignal
Coresignal's main offering is not data scraping but selling datasets. Coresignal's datasets also consist of public and private data, which they either scraped themselves or acquired through third-party means. They also have live scraping APIs, but these are more limited in scope.
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Data Freshness: Coresignal's datasets are updated monthly; a separate option is available for live scraping via APIs.
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Data Points: Coresignal is missing important data points such as contact info (phone numbers & emails) from their datasets.
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Legal Compliance: The company is GDPR and CCPA compliant.
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Pricing: Their Subscription plan starts from $800/mo (incomplete pricing info).
Pros and Cons of Coresignal:
Pros:
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Large dataset, aggregates data from a significant number of sources (20).
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Provides a lot of data formats: JSON, Parquet, CSV, Other (upon request).
Cons:
- Reports of customers receiving out-dated data. See Proxycurl vs. Coresignal.
- "Real-time" API does not return data immediately.
4. Bright Data (Most Flexible)
Bright Data does not scrape data for you but provides proxies for your own scrapers. They also sell templates of scrapers that you can build on. This is the most flexible alternative on the list, as you are building your own scraper. In 2022, they launched a new line of dataset products, with variety that rivals or even exceeds that of Coresignal's datasets.
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Data Freshness: Since you build your own scraper, you have the autonomy on freshness. Their datasets are updated monthly by default.
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Data Points: The data points are similar to Coresignal, but they have more data points as Bright Data scrapes for any data visible on a website.
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Legal Compliance: Bright Data is GDPR and CCPA compliant.
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Pricing: Their product pricing starts at $500/mo for 86k profiles ($0.006/profile) (not a direct comparison as this pricing is for their scraper builder).
Pros and Cons of Bright Data:
Pros:
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Reliable and a variety of proxy services: residential proxies, ISP proxies, data center proxies, and mobile proxies.
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Data collector and SERP API tools enable you to collect public data in real-time.
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Automated IP address rotation allows scraping target sites more consistently and efficiently.
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Added flexibility as you build your own scraper.
Cons:
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Some proxies are quite expensive and might be beyond budget for startups and small businesses.
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The documentation provided for the usage of the software is complex.
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Proper settings and implementations can take weeks to ensure everything functions correctly.
5. PhantomBuster
PhantomBuster, another alternative to PDL, does offer scraping services, however, in a different way from the norm. They have you use your own accounts to scrape for private data. At this point, this in itself is already a red flag in legal compliance as it involves scraping private data. Private profiles return additional data that you can't get from public profiles, but with its own limitations: Low rate limit and legal risk. Customers can only scrape 80 profiles per day before their account gets blocked by LinkedIn. You definitely don't want that to happen!
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Data Freshness: PhantomBuster only scrapes live data.
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Data Points: It is an added advantage having private profile data via private profile scraping; however, it has limited scraping frequency.
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Legal Compliance: PhantomBuster is only GDPR-compliant, and rightly so, as they scrape private profiles, which is a huge risk in itself.
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Pricing: Their Starter plan begins from $69/mo for 1470 profiles ($0.047/profile).
Pros and Cons of PhantomBuster:
Pros:
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Allows automation on repetitive tasks.
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Supports business scaling by providing valuable insights through data analysis.
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Supports integration with multiple platforms.
Cons:
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Only supports Hubspot, and limited options for other CRMs.
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Unable to bypass LinkedIn's limit or connection invite restrictions.
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Safety concerns as Phantom Buster requires you to download a Chrome extension and access your cookies to enter LinkedIn.
6. UpLead (Highest Rated by G2 ⭐️)
UpLead is the highest rated B2B data provider in the industry, known for its high ROI and user-friendly platform. Instead of providing raw web scraped datasets, they provide a clean prospecting list, which you can then plug into your CRM. Uplead prides itself with its dedication to providing accurate data, backed up by real-time verified emails, mobile numbers and intent data.
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Data Points: People and company profile, along with verified email addresses and intent data.
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Data Freshness: UpLead updates their datasets on a monthly basis. Limited information is available regarding the specifics.
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Legal Compliance: UpLead complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations.
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Pricing: Their Essentials plan starts from $99/mo ($0.60/profile).
Pros and Cons of UpLead:
Pros:
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Commendable user-interface; allows very precise searches.
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Provides detailed contact information (email and phone number).
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Excellent tracking of lookups.
Cons:
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Limited database coverage; only has leads from North America.
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The number of "valid" leads cuts down the amount of total leads. Even if a large amount of leads are generated, only a small % of them are pursuable "valid" leads.
7. ZoomInfo
Similar to Coresignal, Zoominfo also sells access to its database on a subscription basis. It deals with B2B data; extensive company and contact information, and is equipped with advanced search capabilities and integration options. Potential customers purchase subscriptions to gain access to its database of people and companies to sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals.
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Data Freshness: Zoominfo manually updates their database based on change detection.
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Data points: Zoominfo provides company profile, business contacts and companies contact database, intent data. They also generate and analyze customer interactions across communication channels, like sales calls, emails, and business websites.
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Legal Compliance: Similar to People Data Labs, Zoominfo is GDPR, CCPA, and ISO 27001 compliant.
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Pricing: Their product plan starts from $14,995/ year.
Pros and Cons of Zoominfo:
Pros:
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Accurate contact information, along with a large database.
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Supports workflow automation.
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Provides a granular view with advanced search options, along with intent data.
Cons:
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Expensive plans.
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Users must expect a steep learning curve.
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Customer service has received its fair share of criticism.
8. Lusha
Lusha also sells access to its huge B2B database of contact information, including emails, phone numbers, and LinkedIn profiles, which are highly useful for sales, marketing, and recruitment professionals. The platform is primarily built for easy integration with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot, offering lead enrichment and data retrieval.
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Data Points: Lusha provides a full company and people profile.
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Data Freshness: Lusha relies on publicly available data sources and claims to update its data regularly, but the exact frequency or guarantees on data freshness are not always clear. The focus is on collecting verified, crowd-sourced contact details.
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Legal Compliance: Similar to Zoominfo, Lusha has GDPR, CCPA and ISO 27701 compliance.
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Pricing: The Pro plan starts from $32/ mo for 1,920 emails and 480 phone numbers ($0.06/ full profile)
Pros and Cons of Lusha:
Pros:
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Reasonable pricing for the quality of data it provides.
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Interactive dashboard and allows seamless integration.
Cons:
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Instances of wrong information being served; posing trust issues.
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Constantly poor customer support.
9. Xverum
Like most on this list, Xverum provides access to its massive-scale open web data with an aim to empower ML and SaaS platforms. Their datasets are focused on firmographic data (information about companies), individual profiles, and other relevant public data.
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Data Points: Firmographics, complete employee and company profile data.
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Data Freshness: While Xverum promises regular updates to its datasets, there is no specified period mentioned.
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Legal Compliance: Xverum complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations.
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Pricing: Xverum is secretive about their pricing plans as they do not list their plans upfront in their website. You have to reach out to their team to get a quote. However, after some research, I discovered that the basic plan starts at $1,000 per month.
Pros and Cons of Xverum:
Pros:
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They offer robust API options, enabling smooth integration into marketing and sales tools.
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Extensive targeting options, supporting businesses in building segmented, tailored lists.
Cons:
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Xverum does not publish its pricing structure openly, which can make budgeting and cost comparison challenging.
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Data update periods are not transparent; businesses that rely on highly current data might need a provider with data freshness guarantee.
10. Revelio Labs
Revelio Labs standardizes public employment records to create a comprehensive HR database, pivotal for HR analytics and the data services industry. Revelio Labs does not provide raw datasets or provide scraping services. Instead, it provides workforce intelligence by analyzing publicly available workforce data. They do however, provide a dataset builder option where you can choose and filter parameters from their datasets.
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Data Points: Revelio Labs provides workforce dynamics (aggregated workforce statistics), company and people profiles.
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Data Freshness: Their datasets are updated monthly, but they also offer weekly or daily data delivery for select feeds.
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Legal Compliance: Revelio Labs only complies with GDPR. A risky venture, if you're looking to leave no rooms for secure usage.
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Pricing: Similar to Xverum, Revelio labs does not have public plans listed on their website. This is common practice for data vendors and providers. After going through their sales process, I found out their plan starts from $85,000/year.
Pros and Cons of Revelio Labs:
Pros:
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Provides more than just datasets; workforce intelligence gives insights into company workforce trends, labor movements, and turnover.
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Revelio's product covers a broad number of industries, with its predictive analysis allows sectors like technology, finance, and healthcare to make informed decisions.
Cons:
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No transparent pricing details available.
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Limited to only providing workforce data and lacks broader B2B data.
11. Versium
The final entry for People Data Labs alternative is Versium. Versium hosts rich datasets for both B2B and B2C marketers to address some of the biggest pain points in marketing and sales; figuring out who is likely to buy, and who will never buy. Versium's main services include data enrichment, identity resolution, and predictive modeling, to help companies optimize their marketing strategies.
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Data Points: Versium also provides Firmographics, enriched with people, company and job profiles.
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Data Freshness: Just like Xverum, Versium promises fresh data through 'regular' updates, but fails to mention on time intervals they are updated.
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Legal Compliance: Versium is certainly not going over the mile with their data compliance as they are only GDPR compliant.
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Pricing: The 'Contact sales for Demo' trend continues as Versium does not display their plans publicly. My research suggests their plan starts from $300 / mo ($0.04/ profile).
Pros and Cons of Versium:
Pros:
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Provides comprehensive data for both B2B and B2C companies.
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Seamless integrations with major marketing platforms and CRMs.
Cons:
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Versium does not provide pricing information readily on the website.
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Requires a learning curve to fully utilize all features.
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Poor interface design.
So, what's the best alternative to People Data Labs?
Our verdict:
Proxycurl is the overall best alternative for your data needs. While there are good data providers out there (as we just discussed), you deserve the best. Proxycurl goes head-to-head with all the other alternatives in their own domain. It matches ReachStream's affordable price, while giving you enough room to match Bright Data's flexibility.
People Data Labs's challenges with high price and data freshness fade into the rearview mirror of Proxycurl.
Let us hear your data needs. Contact us by emailing us at hello@nubela.co or sign up for free and get 10 free credits (100 if you sign up with your work email). Try Proxycurl today!
FAQs
Is People Data Labs Legit?
People Data Labs is a reputed data provider in the industry. They have a solid customer rating of 4.6 out of 5. You can check out their in-depth review at People Data Labs Review.
How can I verify data accuracy from a data provider?
Most providers offer demos or free credits upon signup (like Proxycurl) which allow you to verify data quality firsthand. Do your due diligence and test their data accuracy, freshness, and relevance before subscribing to a provider. A good indicator is to look for platforms with real-time verification features, which help maintain a high standard of data accuracy.
How frequently should a B2B data provider update their datasets?
Regular updates are important for fields that rely on current information, and in an ideal world, real-time update would be most desirable. However, any provider that updates their data monthly or shorter intervals than that are meeting the industry standard. With Proxycurl, you have the flexibility to select data recency (e.g., freshly scraped data or historical data).
How can I evaluate the ROI of a B2B data provider?
Consider lead conversion rates, data accuracy, integration efficiency, and cost savings over time. While not immediate, higher-quality data should yield better results in the long term. It should also save your time on lead research and improve outreach success rates.
What’s the difference between intent data and enrichment data?
Intent data shows a prospect's likelihood of engaging with a service based on behaviors. Providers include companies like UpLead and ZoomInfo. Enrichment data adds depth to existing profiles with information like contact details, job roles, and company specifics This is what providers like People Data Labs and Proxycurl do best. Choosing the right data type depends on what your needs are.