Zen Intent · Costing

What Apollo would cost us

The gap Apollo is meant to fill is two fields on a lead. This is what closing it costs with what we already pay for, and what it costs with Apollo on top.

Where we start

Today we pay nothing extra for contact data.

Two of the three are already on the invoice. Neither is being used for the thing we are considering buying a third tool to do.

The gap

Two fields out of 53, and both are ours to fix.

decision_maker_linkedin is already mapped in our code, the workflow just sends the key empty. owner_email was never mapped at all, so a supplied value would be dropped on the floor. Before any subscription, part of this is a bug.

Path one

Using what we own costs about five cents a lead.

Path two

Apollo charges a seat before it answers one call.

Side by side

New monthly spend, all three ways.

Apollo Basic costs more than Hunter Starter for roughly the same credit allowance, and it arrives on top of Hunter rather than instead of it.

Maximum Apollo

If Apollo supplied everything it can, that is 12 of our 41 fields.

Even at maximum scope, Apollo cannot touch 24 of the 41. The other 5 are verification flags and social links.

The useful surprise

Maximum scope costs the same as asking for the email alone.

One people/match call returns the person and their company together, and costs one credit whether we read one field off it or twelve. Apollo also charges nothing when it finds nobody. So the Apollo line on the invoice does not grow with scope. What changes is what we could switch off.

The catch

We can only switch those off if Apollo hits every lead.

Apollo undercuts the owned path by about $24 a month only in the version where we accept losing most of our contacts. Keeping quality doubles the bill. At our more likely volume, 200 unlocks a month, Apollo only is $18 more than what we own and still loses two thirds of contacts.

All three together

Chained as a waterfall, each stage only pays for the last one's misses.

1. SerpAPI Maps sources the lead14 business fields
2. Hunter Email Finder looks for the owner's email1 credit, most leads hit
3. Hunter verifies whatever it foundDeliverability
4. Apollo runs only on what Hunter missed1 credit, on the remainder
5. SerpAPI search fills any LinkedIn still emptyBudget we own

This is the cheap way to run all three. Calling Apollo on every lead spends credits re-answering questions Hunter already answered. Calling it fourth means we only spend where we have nothing, which cuts the Apollo credit line by roughly the share Hunter already fills.

What all three buys

Coverage compounds. Two sources beat the better one alone.

If Hunter fills 6 in 10 and Apollo finds 35% of what is left, the pair reach about 74%. That is the real argument for all three, and it is 14 points, not 35.

The line we had not costed

SerpAPI is a staircase, and enrichment is what climbs it.

The offset nobody expects

Hunter and Apollo pay part of their own way, in SerpAPI searches.

Both return a LinkedIn URL on the people they match. Every one of those is a SerpAPI search we do not spend. So adding them cuts our search count instead of raising it, and at full enrichment that is the difference between the $75 tier and the $25 one.

A $50 saving, which is most of an Apollo seat. It does not make Apollo free, but it is a real credit against it that the earlier slides left out.

Run your own numbers

Total monthly cost, SerpAPI subscription included.

What the money buys

One capability on this list is Apollo only.

The whole premium is the direct dial. Everything else on the invoice we would be paying for a second time.

Recommendation

Spend nothing until the free steps run out.

1. Map the missing owner_email columnOne line
2. Fix the empty decision_maker_linkedin key in the workflowNo spend
3. Add a SerpAPI profile lookupBudget we own
4. Switch Hunter Email Finder on for leads$49 a month
5. Then measure Apollo by hand on 25 real businessesDecide after

If fewer than about three in ten come back with an email at step five, the direct dial is the only thing left to buy and $65 a seat is hard to justify. Our development database is synthetic seed data, so no percentage from it describes the real pipeline. Measure on live businesses.

Revenue and margin

Cost tracks leads a month, not customers. Margin stays above 96%.

Revenue is a range because it depends which plan the customer is on. Apollo is nearly free to add on the two highlighted rows, $26 at 2,500 leads and $40 at 12,000, because it supplies LinkedIn URLs and knocks SerpAPI down a tier. Margin dips from 96.9% to 96.2% between the first two rows for the same staircase reason: we buy Hunter Growth before we fill it.

These are projections on assumed volumes. The plan mix is not read from live data, so drop the real subscriber mix in when you have it and the rows move. The margin band does not.

What a customer is worth

The same lead volume is a very different number of customers.

A lead costs 35 credits, so a plan's credit allowance divided by 35 is the leads it delivers. Six thousand leads a month is 96 Starter customers or 11 Enterprise ones, and the API bill is identical either way. This is why the operating thresholds on the next slide are written in leads, not customers.

Bigger plans are cheaper per lead, from $3.18 down to $2.36, so an Enterprise heavy mix earns slightly less per lead and lands at the lower end of each margin range. The free Welcome Gift delivers 42 leads and earns nothing, so it is pure cost of acquisition.

For ops

Watch leads a month. Upgrade at these lines.