What do you dislike about Apollo.io?
0 stars would actually be a generous rating. Apollo.io has officially earned the title of the most brilliantly counter-intuitive company I have ever encountered. It seems they are working tirelessly—heroically, even—to stop customers from… paying for their services. A bold strategy.
As a long-time recurring paid customer, I was simply doing what I always do: manually saving companies to my “Saved” tab so I could review them later and, as usual, proceed to purchase more licenses and leads. But in the middle of this very routine process, Apollo decided I was unworthy and issued a permanent ban. No warning, no alert, not even a friendly “Hey, you're adding a lot today”—just a sudden digital exile.
When I asked support for an explanation, I was informed that I had added “too many companies in one day.” Fascinating. Especially since Apollo did not notify me once, at any point, that such a limit even existed. The first and only message they managed to send was the ban itself. Professionalism at its finest: execution first, communication never.
To add to the spectacle, Apollo’s customer service closed tickets with impressive speed—faster than they respond to actual questions, of course—ensuring I couldn’t even reply to their beautifully crafted copy-paste “you are banned” scripts.
And the irony? Priceless. Apollo.io, a company permanently banned from LinkedIn for scraping LinkedIn, now banning paying customers who manually save companies. Truly poetic. And meanwhile, the market is full of scrapers offering the same data for a fraction of Apollo’s prices. You would think Apollo would want to hold onto the recurring customers they still have. But no—innovation knows no bounds.
So what does this ban mean for me?
Absolutely nothing. I have 20+ employees with their own Apollo subscriptions. They will continue the work, and we will continue paying—well, we would have, before Apollo demonstrated their unique approach to customer retention.
Naturally, I instructed my team not to renew their subscriptions in January. So Apollo will be waving goodbye to over 20 subscriptions at $99 each every month. We’ve already received excellent offers from third-party providers.
And honestly? I’m laughing. This ban is saving us a small fortune. For around $70, we’ll get the same list of companies and 50,000 verified leads—while Apollo would like to collect roughly $800 for those leads plus 20×$99 in subscriptions.
So, bravo. Truly. A company apparently desperate for revenue has chosen to throw away over $2,000 a month by banning a long-time paying customer without warning. A business masterclass. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
