Top 3 LinkedIn Sales Navigator Alternatives & Competitors For Sales Prospecting

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an effective tool for prospecting and generating leads. It helps sales and marketing teams harness LinkedIn to find, research, and engage prospects.

However, Sales Navigator lacks essential features, such as data extraction, automation, and deal tracking, for teams that want to scale lead generation and grow their sales pipeline.

In this guide, we’ll break down our top picks for LinkedIn Sales Navigator alternatives to help you level up prospecting, lead generation, and outreach.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator alternatives overview

• Top pick: PhantomBuster for taking the manual work out of prospecting and outreach so sales teams can focus on more critical tasks.

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What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a prospecting and lead generation tool that helps sales teams find and engage target buyers.

It offers several features, from advanced search filters and lead recommendations to real-time updates on prospects, to identify and connect with leads from LinkedIn.

This sales intelligence software also comes in handy for lead qualification and relationship-building.

What LinkedIn Sales Navigator is good for

Sales Navigator helps you leverage LinkedIn's extensive professional network to identify, research, and contact prospects who match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Useful features for sales and marketing teams include:

• Advanced search capabilities: Use 50+ filters, including 'Company Type,' 'Function,' and 'Seniority level,' to identify ICP-aligned prospects with decision-making power. Leverage buyer intent-based filters to find leads interested in your company and refine the results with Boolean search operators.

• Real-time updates: Set alerts for saved leads to stay on top of their job changes, news mentions, and recent posts. These updates help you determine when to connect with a prospect or send a revised pitch.

• Lead recommendations: Sales Navigator’s lead recommendations, which are based on your saved leads, search history, and past interactions, minimize the need for manual prospecting.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator has several strong points for B2B prospecting, lead generation, and qualification.

However, it’s not always the best choice for teams looking to scale the process of generating and nurturing leads, especially when you’re on a tight budget.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator limitations: Why look for an alternative?

Here are a few reasons why sales professionals eventually look for Sales Navigator alternatives:

• Lack of automation: Finding, managing, and reaching out to prospects using Sales Navigator involves much manual work. You can set up alerts for job changes, new posts, or company news. However, it’s still up to you to send connection requests, follow up with leads, and engage with their content, which can be time-consuming.

• Limited contact data: Lead data is usually limited to job title, company name, location, and other details prospects share on their LinkedIn profiles. You’ll need a third-party tool to find phone numbers and email addresses.

• Restricted to LinkedIn: Sales Navigator limits lead generation and outreach to LinkedIn’s network, which isn’t ideal if your target buyers aren’t active on the platform.

• No data extraction: While you can save prospects into lists, Sales Navigator doesn’t let you download lead data in a CSV file and add it to your CRM.

• Not a full-fledged CRM: Sales Navigator lacks core CRM capabilities, such as lead management and pipeline tracking, making monitoring and managing interactions difficult.

3 Best LinkedIn Sales Navigator alternatives and competitors for prospecting

If you’ve been struggling to scale sales prospecting and outreach with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, look at these alternatives.

1. PhantomBuster: The best LinkedIn Sales Navigator alternative for automated sales prospecting

• ⭐️ G2: 4.4/5 (86 reviews)

• ⭐️ Capterra: 4.5/5 (63 reviews)

While LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a lead generation powerhouse, PhantomBuster is the go-to tool for sales teams that want to scale prospecting with automation.

With PhantomBuster’s automated workflows, you can cut down on manual tasks, such as:

• Sending connection requests and follow-up messages to leads.

• Finding professional email addresses of prospects.

• Liking and commenting on a prospect’s recent posts.

The best part? You can run these workflows on repeat, meaning engagement and outreach happen in the background while you focus on qualifying leads and building relationships.

Plus, with several pre-built automations for LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, even non-technical users can get started in minutes.

PhantomBuster also easily integrates with HubSpot, so you can automatically export enriched lead data to your CRM.

Why people switch from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to PhantomBuster

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a smart choice for B2B prospecting and lead generation. However, many G2 users report struggling with the tool’s complex UI and steep learning curve. The lack of automation capabilities adds to the hassle.

PhantomBuster, on the other hand, comes with ready-to-use templates for various automations, including contact data enrichment, extraction, and social selling.

“PhantomBuster lets me scale my outreach while keeping it targeted and intentional,” remarks a user on G2.

Plus, unlike Sales Navigator, PhantomBuster’s HubSpot and Salesforce integrations are available on all plans, so keeping your CRM up to date is easier.

PhantomBuster key features

PhantomBuster makes up for most of the things LinkedIn Sales Navigator lacks, allowing sales teams to put prospecting and outreach on autopilot.

• Data extraction: Download search results from Sales Navigator, export the list into a CSV file, and add the data to your CRM.

• Lead enrichment: Use prompts to analyze a prospect’s LinkedIn profile and discover hidden details, such as their communication preferences and decision-making authority.

• Lead engagement: Send connection requests to prospects with personalized intro messages and automatically follow up with those who don’t respond.

• Automated social selling: Automatically follow a prospect on LinkedIn, engage with their posts, and endorse their profiles.

• Scheduling: Run automations on repeat—daily, weekly, or on-demand—to scale lead generation and nurturing without manual intervention.

• Chainable workflows: Combine different automations to extract, enrich, and export lead lists in one go.

• CRM integrations: Export enriched lead data to HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce, and automatically update a record when there’s a change.

With PhantomBuster, many of the routine, repetitive tasks in your sales process are automated so that you can focus on closing deals.

Pros and cons of PhantomBuster

Pricing plans: LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs PhantomBuster

PhantomBuster offers numerous pricing plans and is a more affordable alternative to LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs PhantomBuster

Sales Navigator is built to cover basic prospecting and lead generation needs. While it lets you access LinkedIn’s extensive database, you must manually manage and monitor leads.

PhantomBuster’s pre-built workflows help automate these manual tasks, enabling you to scale outreach and social selling. It makes your SDRs more efficient by saving their time.

When to choose PhantomBuster over LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

• You want to extract prospecting lists from Sales Navigator and export them to your CRM.

• You need to enrich lead data beyond first names, job titles, and company locations.

• You want to automate repetitive tasks, such as sending connection requests, following prospects on LinkedIn, and liking their posts.

2. ZoomInfo

• ⭐️ G2: 4.5/5 (8728 reviews for ZoomInfo Sales)

• ⭐️ Capterra: 4.1/5 (303 reviews for ZoomInfo Sales)

Sales Navigator lets sales teams access prospects’ LinkedIn profiles, monitor their professional updates, and connect with them.

But here’s the thing—your prospecting and lead generation efforts are limited to LinkedIn’s network (and what prospects choose to share on the platform).

What if you wanted to take prospecting beyond that? Enter ZoomInfo.

Unlike Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo provides comprehensive data from multiple channels, including company websites, LinkedIn, and third-party providers. You can then use this contact data and pair it up with sales engagement tools to power your lead generation efforts.

ZoomInfo key features

ZoomInfo’s strength lies in its power-packed global database of 174 million email addresses and 70 million phone numbers.

The data is verified using AI and human reviewers to ensure accuracy. And you get 300+ filters to search the database and find ICP-aligned prospects.

Other useful features include:

• Organizational charts: View company hierarchies to identify key decision-makers in target accounts.

• Technographic and intent data: Find prospects looking for solutions like yours.

• Automated workflows: Build automation sequences to connect with prospects based on buying signals and sync data to your CRM.

• Chrome extension: Access contact information and company insights while visiting websites and LinkedIn profiles.

• CRM integrations: Easily sync with HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and other readily used CRM platforms.

Pros and cons of ZoomInfo

Pricing plans: LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs ZoomInfo

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo takes sales prospecting beyond LinkedIn’s network and gives you access to a massive database of verified and up-to-date contact data.

With in-depth organization charts, professional profiles, and intent data, it’s also easier to analyze and qualify prospects.

And when you’re ready to break the ice, you’re not solely restricted to connection requests and InMails.

When to choose ZoomInfo over LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

• You need accurate, up-to-date contact data for sales outreach.

• Your target prospects aren’t active on LinkedIn.

• You're running large-scale outbound campaigns and need a scalable data source.

3. Seamless.AI

• ⭐️ G2: 4.4/5 (5008 reviews)

• ⭐️ Capterra: 4.0/5 (207 reviews)

Sales Navigator fits the bill when your focus is LinkedIn-based prospecting. But if you want to boost prospecting with real-time verified contact data, Seamless.AI is a better choice.

With a global database boasting over 1.8 billion verified business emails, Seamless.AI helps scale lead generation and enrichment beyond LinkedIn.

This AI-powered platform also lets you craft personalized emails, call scripts, and pitches that speak to a prospect’s pain points.

Seamless.AI key features

What sets Seamless.AI apart from Sales Navigator is its massive database, which includes:

• 1.8 billion+ email addresses

• 414 million+ phone numbers

• 121 million+ company profiles

You can view in-depth data for each prospect, including company name, job title, industry, and more.

And like Sales Navigator, you can track job changes as they happen to time your outreach campaigns right.

The platform also offers an easy-to-use lead enrichment tool, which helps refresh lead data and feeds it back to your CRM. Finally, there’s the AI-powered Pitch Intelligence, which helps inform outreach strategies.

Pros and cons of Seamless.AI

Pricing plans: LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs Seamless.AI

LinkedIn Sales Navigator vs Seamless.AI

Seamless.AI is a worthy Sales Navigator alternative when you’re looking for quick access to accurate contact data. With decent lead enrichment and AI research capabilities, it helps fine-tune outreach strategies, too.

But remember that Seamless.AI doesn’t have built-in lead engagement or automation capabilities. You’ll need third-party sales tools to implement outreach campaigns, track interactions, and nurture leads.

When to choose Seamless.AI over LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

• You’re focused on large-scale prospecting, not relationship-building.

• You need a global prospecting database of contacts and company lists with granular filtering options and AI research capabilities.

• You want to simplify lead enrichment and CRM sync.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator alternatives FAQs

Is LinkedIn Sales Nav good for lead generation?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is powerful lead generation software for B2B businesses. Its advanced filters and Boolean search operators help sales teams identify key decision-makers.

You can monitor their job changes, news mentions, and online activity to craft personalized connection request messages and InMails for outreach.

What is better than LinkedIn Sales Navigator for automated prospecting?

PhantomBuster is a better alternative to LinkedIn Sales Navigator and helps automate sales prospecting. With PhantomBuster, you can set up automated workflows to download search results from Sales Navigator and export lead data to your CRM.

You can also enrich lead data and set up targeted social selling campaigns to engage prospects.

Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator worth it?

Yes, but not as a standalone tool. LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides value to sales and marketing teams with its advanced search capabilities, real-time updates, data quality, and lead recommendations.

However, you’ll need other LinkedIn Sales Navigator competitors like PhantomBuster to cover your team’s end-to-end prospecting and outreach needs.

Is there a free version of LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator doesn’t have a forever-free plan.

However, a 30-day free trial is available to users with no other active paid subscription on LinkedIn and who haven’t opted for any free trials on the platform for the last 365 days.

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