Apollo.io is one of those tools that makes you go through the five stages of modern marketing grief. First, shock, “hang on, why am I in here?”, then enlightenment, “ohhh, so this is why I get those spooky hyper-personalised sales emails that pretend we are old mates”. Once you get past that, it clicks why teams love it, Apollo has a huge B2B contact database plus outreach features in the same place, so prospecting and emailing do not feel like two separate jobs. Reviewers consistently call out how much time it saves and how easy it is to spin up targeted lists fast. The bit that won us over was the AI generated sequences, they are genuinely solid for getting a decent first draft of an outreach flow without staring into the abyss of a blank screen. It is not magic, you still need to sanity-check tone and targeting, and like most databases it can have the odd outdated or off-target contact, so a quick verify step is worth it. Also, the free tier is useful to poke around, but sequences and exports are a bit limited until you pay, which is worth knowing before you fall in love.