20 Best Lead Generation Tools to Increase Sales in 2025

I’m sure your business’s golden lead generation techniques may have worked for you once, but by continuing them, you’re leaking 50% of your potential customers today.

In high-stakes prospecting, let’s say B2B scenarios, lead generation has shifted from a lead’s mere engagement metrics to its intent and relevance. 

And for that, businesses are changing gears and investing in ‘lead generation tools.’ They are advanced prospecting tools that help you capture, nurture, and store quality leads that convert.   

I’ve tried and reviewed 32 lead generation tools and selected the following top tools. Honestly, there’s a variety and no one size fits all. Below, I’ve shared my detailed experience using them, what’s unique about them, features, pros, cons, and pricing. 

• 1. HubSpot Sales Hub – Best for B2B Lead Generation
• 2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator – Best to Target Professionals on LinkedIn
• 3. MailChimp – Best Email Platform for Small Business
• 4. Apollo.io – Best for B2B Database and Sales Intelligence
• 5. PhantomBuster – Outreach, Lead Extraction, and Enrichment
• 6. LeadPages – Popular Landing Page Creator for Lead Gen
• 7. Unbounce – Popular A/B Testing for Landing Pages
• 8. Reply.io – AI-powered Lead Generation for Sales Team
• 9. Manychat – Best for Messenger
• 10. SocialTargeter – Best for Social Media Leads
• Show moreShow less

Best Lead Generation Tools Comparison

Best Lead Generation Tools Reviews

Below, I’ve put together in-depth reviews of leading lead generation tools on the market, highlighting key features, what I liked and disliked, and, given an overall rating.

1. HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub is an all-in-one lead management and prospecting software. Designed specifically for sales teams, HubSpot goes beyond basic lead generation and helps nurture, track, and manage leads from one window.

Though I feel the extended functions add an immediate learning curve for beginners. But once set, I bet you won’t need another app for lead management.

Marketing can generate and nurture leads through email campaigns, content marketing, and web forms, while Sales can focus on converting those leads into customers with tools like multi-channel sequences, meeting scheduling, and pipeline management. 

Bonus to HubSpot for providing three separate automation functions:

• One for automating internal workflows such as assigning tasks, sending reminders, updating company properties, etc.
• Next one for building multi-channel outreach sequences
• And lastly, a chatflow builder for structuring live chats

HubSpot Sales Hub is perfect for you if you’re already a HubSpot CRM user. You’ll benefit from the integrated connectivity between its CRM, Sales, and Marketing tools. It also integrates with 1500+ apps and services like MS Teams, LinkedIn, Aircall, Jira, Slack, and more.

Customers who use HubSpot’s sales software see a 78% increase in deal close rate just after 6 months.

HubSpot Sales Hub Features

• Build dynamic lead capture forms and landing pages using a drag-and-drop builder for easy lead data collection
• Use Live chat bots to qualify leads, collect information, book meetings, and route leads to the right salesperson
• Get daily AI-recommended guided actions to help you prioritize tasks, actions, or next-best-steps
• Take notes, make calls, send emails, schedule meetings, and more directly from your lead’s profile
• Generate branded quotes and invoices, and manage payments directly within the Sales Hub
• Use Sales Feeds to see who opened, clicked, or engaged with your material or sales materials across email and web

HubSpot Sales Hub Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5 (12,200+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (470+ reviews)

HubSpot Sales Hub Pricing

Plans start at $15/month per user, billed annually. A free version is available for up to 2 users.

HubSpot Sales Hub

2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium sales tool that helps you find leads, stay up-to-date, and engage with the right prospects on LinkedIn’s extensive network of a billion users.

And no, it’s not the same as LinkedIn Premium.

Premium Business is just an extended version of the free LinkedIn experience. Sales Navigator includes access to Premium Business features, plus the following:

• 50+ advanced search filters to search through LinkedIn’s network
• Built-in CRM integrations to keep your data synced
• Real-time signals on decision-makers, such as job changes, recently posted content, etc.

Besides, once you’ve integrated your CRM, you can create new CRM leads and contacts directly from Sales Navigator and view LinkedIn info about leads, contacts, and accounts directly in your CRM app.

A thoughtful feature for enterprise users is custom ROI reports demonstrating the return on your investment in Sales Navigator. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Features

• Leverage 50+ Advanced lead and account search filters (e.g., function, seniority level, location, industry) to find target leads quicker on LinkedIn
• Use Relationship Explorer to reveal the best path into prospect and customer accounts
• Enrich leads by allowing AI to aggregate and summarize key insights about leads
• Receive AI-powered lead and account recommendations based on your activity, saved leads, mutual connections, and buyer interest
• Rank leads based on Buyer intent signals and get alerted for specific activities that have shown intent
• Create dynamic org charts providing alerts on key leads and visibility into buying committee gaps
• Use an AI messaging assistant to brainstorm and create personalized first-touch InMail drafts for effective outreach

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Ratings

• G2: 4.3/5 (1970+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (150+ reviews)

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Pricing

Plans start at $79.99/month, billed annually. A free trial is available.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

3. MailChimp

MailChimp is an AI-powered email marketing platform. In fact, a popular tool among small businesses for generating leads via email, driving up to 21x ROI within just six months.

Getting started is easy. MailChimp offers 130+ ready-made email templates and a drag-and-drop editor for building branded emails from scratch. I especially like the customer journey builder for lead capturing. It allows me to target prospects at key moments.

For example, when a visitor visits the pricing page, I can trigger on-screen pop-ups or send emails asking them to sign up for a demo. If they are browsing through the company blog or homepage, I can pop up a newsletter sign-up form.

MailChimp’s editor also comes in handy for creating dynamic forms and landing pages that adjust content and fields for new and returning visitors with filters based on site behavior, traffic source, and more.

Real-time AI-powered insights help you understand how customers interact with your brand, their likelihood to purchase, and their lifetime value, if any.

The fact that I can A/B test emails and predict best days and times for engagement adds greatly to my lead generation efforts.

MailChimp Features

• Use a drag-and-drop editor for building forms and landing pages, then use AI to generate on-brand content in minutes
• Access to predictive, advanced, and behavioral segmentation allows prioritizing the right leads and sending the right message
• Use the automation builder to trigger email sequences or actions based on customer behavior, such as when someone abandons their cart, joins your newsletter, or interacts with content
• Connect with 300+ apps such as Shopify, WordPress, Canva, and more
• Monitor and improve campaign performance minute-by-minute with AI-powered recommendations

MailChimp Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5 (5200+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5 (17,400+ reviews)

MailChimp Pricing

Plans start at $20 per month. A free 14-day trial is available.

MailChimp

4. Apollo.io

Apollo is an AI-powered sales intelligence software that provides solid sales qualified leads (SQLs) without much marketing mess. It’s trusted by sales and revenue teams at 50k+ companies, including ClickUp, Autodesk, DocuSign, and more.

Apollo offers a massive B2B database including 600 M+ profiles and 80 M+ companies, making it easy to fill your lead pipeline. The database is searchable using 65+ filters and AI prompting to surface insights such as emails, phone numbers, and 30+ data points for each prospect.

You can lay over the Apollo Chrome Extension on top of Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, or any company website to get instant lead insights.

Moreover, Apollo provides both automatic and customizable lead scoring models, allowing you to score leads based on what matters to your business.

I like that Apollo advances on lead scoring and uses AI and intent data to identify and monitor hot leads.

A top-line feature is Apollo’s omnichannel sequences that let you engage prospects with a mix of emails, cold calls, LinkedIn messages, and more channels.

Apollo Features

• Built-in lead B2B lead database with millions of enriched contacts and accounts
• Use Apollo AI to automatically prioritize and score leads based on buying signals, engagement, and potential
• Engage prospects through a combination of automated and manual touchpoints, including emails, cold calls, and LinkedIn messages
• Build end-to-end workflows using conditional logic to automate tasks such as lead assignment, follow-up reminders, and deal stage updates
• Use AI-driven conversational intelligence tools for pre-meeting insights, next step recommendations, and instant call transcriptions

Read our full review on Apollo.

Apollo Ratings

• G2: 4.7/5 (8000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (360+ reviews)

Apollo Pricing

Plans start at $49/user per month, billed annually. A free version is also available.

Apollo

5. PhantomBuster

PhantomBuster is a lead extraction and enrichment platform that helps you scrape leads from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, X, Search engines, and 20+ channels. It’s trusted by 2.5 million+ users, including Airtable, Workday, Pinterest, and more.

The platform offers 100+ pre-built automation recipes, called “Phantoms,” to automate lead generation. For example:

• Use the ‘Data Scraping Crawler’ Phantom to extract email addresses, phone numbers, and social media information from the web
• If you already have a list of company names, find their corresponding website URLs with  ‘Domain Name Finder Phantom’
• Local businesses can use the ‘Google Maps Search’ Export to zero in on leads in the area

The extracted leads are stored in a “Leads Database” within the PhantomBuster platform, where users can view, manage, and further enrich their leads.

And there’s no limit to the use cases; there are ready-made Phantoms for sending personalized messages, extracting profiles of those who liked your company post, and automating social nudges (likes, comments, invitations), etc.

If the pre-built Phantoms don’t meet your specific needs, you can customize some configurations (limited) or code your own using JavaScript. However, that might not be the first preference for noncoders. 

But here’s the tub: PhantomBuster doesn’t have a proprietary lead database; instead, it integrates with your accounts from platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter via session cookies or API keys. This allows Phantoms to operate and scrape data on your behalf.

You can also automate multi-step workflows by connecting multiple Phantoms. For example, I can scrape LinkedIn and send a personalized DM to people who like or comment on my company post, without lifting my finger.

PhantomBuster Features

• Choose from 100+ automation recipes for scraping, nurturing, or engaging with leads across 20+ channels
• Build multi-step outreach workflows to post lead-generation processes like personalized DMS, follow-ups, social interactions, and more
• Integrates with CRM tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive, and automation tools like Zapier and Integromat, and email enrichment tools (Hunter, Dropcontact, Snov.io)
• Narrow your scraped lists with 1,000+ data points like job location, company size, connection degree, languages spoken, and more
• Use AI to clean, segment, or score leads in a flick

PhantomBuster Ratings

• G2: 4.5/5 (77+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (60+ reviews)

PhantomBuster Pricing

Plans start at $56 per month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

PhantomBuster

6. LeadPages

LeadPages is a no-code landing page builder helping you attract and convert leads by designing beautiful landing pages, pop-ups, offers, alerts, and websites.

Landing pages designed using LeadPages load 2.4 times faster and deliver a 4X conversion rate than the industry average. It’s trusted by 400k+ businesses, including Zapier, eBay, Vimeo, Shopify, and more.

Getting started is easy. Choose from a library of 250+ pre-designed templates or use the drag-and-drop editor to create professional-looking designs, free from code.

Use the editor to easily drag-and-drop content blocks, widgets, icons, and graphics from the built-in icon Library. For effective lead generation, LeadPages’s conversion tools help create clickable alert bars, pop-ups, checkout pages, and more for your products and services.

You can A/B test multiple landing page variations, experiment with different headlines, images, CTAs, and more to continuously optimize your page. 

LeadPages integrates with 90+ tools, including marketing automation platforms, email marketing services, and other tools, allowing for seamless lead management and follow-up.

LeadPages Features

• Choose from a library of 250+ conversion-optimized landing page templates categorized by page type, industry, style, and color
• Customize templates for look, style, and graphical elements with a drag-and-drop editor
• Collaborate on design in real-time, leave comments, annotate, or mention someone to make changes quickly
• Use AI for generating eye-catching landing page copy and images
• Set up A/B tests in just a few minutes to test different text, images, CTA buttons, and more
• Receive AI-driven performance insights of landing pages, pop-ups, and alert bars
• Built-in lead management dashboard allows you to search for, sort, edit, and delete leads as needed
• Create articles that answer questions for prospects and launch them from LeadPage’s free domain or on your own website

LeadPages Ratings

• G2: 4.3/5 (225+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (290+ reviews)

LeadPage Pricing

Plans start at $37/month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

LeadPage

7. Unbounce

Unbounce is an AI-powered landing page builder and conversion rate optimization (CRO) platform for agencies, e-commerce, and SaaS companies.

If you want an influx of inbound leads, Unbounce helps you build, test, and launch landing pages, website pop-ups, and sticky bars that convert. 

Unlike other landing page builders, Unbounce stands out with its intuitive no-code interface and advanced design elements. It lets you add video background, Parallax Scrolling, Content gating, and more blocks to increase lead collection from your landing pages. 

With Unbounce’s no-code A/B testing tool, you can test different copies and designs and run campaign-specific tests on your own.

For better personalization, a feature I especially like is Smart Traffic, which uses AI to send visitors to the pages best suited to their device type, location, timezone, and more. The team at Unbounce claims that Marketers who turn on Smart Traffic get 30% more sales and signups (on average).

Adding to this, you can use AI to generate copies, A/B test them, and analyze real-time insights from incoming visitors. Overall, Unbounce’s combination of AI-powered design and robust analytics makes it suitable for various use cases, such as:​

• Marketing Campaigns: Launch and test landing pages for promotions, product launches, or special offers.​
• Lead Generation: Create targeted landing pages to capture and convert leads effectively.​
• Performance Analysis: Use real-time analytics to monitor and refine landing page performance.

Unbounce Features

• Offers over 100 professional-looking templates for landing pages, forms, pop-ups, and sticky bars that are easily customizable using the drag-and-drop editor
• Built-in A/B testing allows you to test different versions and determine the most effective design and content
• Use AI-powered Smart Traffic to automatically direct visitors to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert
• Enable Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) to match your landing page copy to visitors’ search terms and needs
• Generate compelling copy or multiple variants of your existing copy for your landing pages, ads, and emails using AI-powered Smart Copy
• Monitor and analyze landing page performance with real-time visitor insights and data

Unbounce Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5 (370+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (255+ reviews)

Unbounce Pricing

Plans start at $64/user per month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Unbounce

8. Reply.io

​Reply.io is an AI-powered sales engagement platform designed to automate and optimize your lead generation and outreach processes.

It has an extensive, real-time B2B lead database of 1 billion contacts, including social profiles, with up to 40% featuring verified emails. You can import your prospect list or integrate Reply.io with your CRM to automatically add details to contact records on autopilot.

You can also install Reply.io’s Chrome extension to bulk find and verify emails on LinkedIn with built-in accuracy checks.

Unlike competitors like QuickMail and Saleshandy, which focus primarily on email, Reply.io lets you set up multi-channel outreach sequences involving email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS, WhatsApp, and more channels via Zapier.

Compared to Saleshandy, Reply.io has a far extensive lead database and also uses AI to optimize email content and send time based on prospect behaviour. Saleshandy, however, falls short on these fronts. 

Read my Saleshandy Review.

With each sequence, Reply.io lets you deploy AI agents to manage responses and handle objections from prospects while the sequence is running.

If your lead generation strategy is focused on email, Reply.io offers deliverability tools like email warmups, verification, anti-spam protection, and personalization elements.

Overall, because of a user-friendly interface and AI features spread across the software, Reply.io makes a suitable choice for small to medium-sized teams looking to implement AI for lead generation and outreach automation.

Reply.io Features

• Access a lead database of 1 Billion+ contacts and companies
• Build automated sequences to engage prospects through email, LinkedIn, SMS, call, WhatsApp, and more channels
• Use Jason AI, an AI-powered sales assistant, to automate responses, sequence creation, and follow-ups on LinkedIn
• AI algorithms assess prospect engagement and behavior, assigning lead scores to help sales teams focus on high-potential leads.
• Get AI-recommended optimal follow-up times and content based on prospect activity
• Integrates with 100+ third-party apps, including CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and automation tools like Zapier, Make, and more
• Manage communications across all channels from a unified inbox 

Reply.io Ratings

• G2: 4.6/5 (1400+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (95+ reviews)

Reply.io Pricing

Plans start at $59/user per month, billed annually. A 14-day free trial is available.

Reply.io

9. Manychat

Manychat is a cloud-based chatbot software that automates customer conversations across Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, TikTok, and SMS. It is good for messenger, for those seeking a versatile chatbot platform that enhances landing page engagement, Landbot is worth exploring.

The platform manages over 1 Billion+ conversations annually and is trusted by Nike, Hotmart, and 1 million+ brands. Also, my favorite tool for generating leads via social DMs. 

With Manychat, you can build custom chat flows that dictate how conversations unfold using different triggers.

For example, you can use if/then logics or keyword-based triggers to set up messages, actions, and transitions that give a humanly conversation vibe.

Additionally, you can add AI between automation. Simply feed AI with your conversation goals and FAQs about your business, and let it handle unexpected questions not addressed in the sequence.

I like that Manychat goes beyond one-on-one conversation to help you automate other tasks, such as replies to every social like or comment on your posts.

When we first tried Manychat, there wasn’t any immediate learning curve. I didn’t have to create automated flows from scratch, nor was any coding involved. Thanks to the bunch of ready-made campaign templates, Manychat offers.

How do you know the ROI of your automated conversations and advanced campaigns?

Manychat lets you track conversion events and overview insights from an analytics dashboard. However, if you’d like detailed dashboards, you can set them up using DataQuantics or Datadog integrations.

Manychat Features

• Has an intuitive visual editor for designing chatbot workflows for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, without coding, using an intuitive visual editor
• Build AI-powered chat flows to deliver answers based on intent, handle questions in different languages, and answer unexpected questions by training AI with your business info
• Integrate Manychat with other email automation platforms like MailChimp or HubSpot to automate email or message delivery.
• Use advanced segmentation to filter your audience based on their location, demographics, behavior, and last interactions
• Broadcast mass messages for cart reminders, product recommendations, etc., and accept direct payments using PayPal and Stripe integrations
• Monitor chatbot performance with detailed analytics

Manychat Ratings

• G2: 4.6/5 (148+ reviews)
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

Manychat pricing

Plans start at $15 per month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

Manychat

10. SocialTargeter

SocialTargeter helps you generate leads from social media apps like Reddit, X, and LinkedIn. 

If you’re following up with Google’s recent updates, you’ll know that it’s prioritizing Reddit discussions on the SERPs. Ignoring Reddit now is like turning your back on SEO a decade ago.

SocialTargeter understands your business’s relevant keywords, topics, and user intents and scans Reddit for discussions where you can naturally engage and promote your business. 

Once you’ve identified a discussion, you can use AI to generate relevant, useful replies to selected mentions.

SocialTargeter Features

• AI-Powered Post Discovery to find high-potential Reddit posts relevant to your business
• Track competitor activities on Reddit and identify opportunities where you might win the first mover advantage
• Monitors how Reddit engagements influence your search engine rankings and overall visibility
• Get AI-generated response suggestions to help you engage naturally and effectively in Reddit discussions
• Receive real-time notifications for new posts and mentions of your brand or competitors
• Comprehensive dashboards and reports to track your Reddit marketing performance and ROI

SocialTargeter Ratings

Not enough reviews

SocialTargeter Pricing 

Plans start at $9.99/month, billed monthly. A free plan is available.

SocialTargeter

Honorable Mentions

In addition to the above, the following lead generation tools deserve honorable mentions for their features and popularity.

11. GetResponse: Ideal for growing email lists and nurturing leads

12. ZoomInfo: Best for generating B2B leads

13. Lemlist: Personalized cold email outreach

14. Expandi: Best for LinkedIn prospecting

15. Uplead: Ideal for B2B lead prospecting and outbound sales activities

16. Outreach: Automate and optimize multichannel sales sequences

17. Hunter: Lead email finder and verifier

18. Lusha: Best for enriching B2B leads with direct dials and email addresses

19. OptinMonster: Ideal for creating high-converting pop-ups and forms

20. ThriveThemes: Building lead-generating websites and opt-in forms

What is Lead Generation?

​Lead generation is the strategic process of identifying and attracting potential customers (also known as leads) for your business’s products or services. Its primary purpose is to build a pipeline of interested prospects, nurturing them towards becoming paying customers.

Essentially, there are four types of lead generation techniques:

1. Inbound Lead Generation: This approach focuses on collecting leads through valuable content and experiences. Strategies include content marketing (like blogs and videos), search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and email marketing
2. Outbound Lead Generation: This method involves proactively reaching out to potential customers via cold calling, emailing, and targeted advertising
3. B2B (Business-to-Business) Lead Generation: This strategy targets other businesses as potential clients. It often involves tactics like LinkedIn marketing, industry events, and account-based marketing (ABM)
4. B2C (Business-to-Consumer) Lead Generation: This approach focuses on individual consumers. Methods include email marketing, social media promotions, and content creation aimed at engaging and converting individual buyers