While Clay.com is a popular tool for waterfall enrichment, it comes with a ton of complexity and a large price tag. With Watson, lead enrichment is fast and easy at much cheaper price point.
There are 3 ways Clay.com and Watson differ: complexity, cost, and use cases.
Clay is famously powerful, but has a steep learning curve. Like, really steep.
So steep in fact, that the company lists 76 experts (consulting firms and freelancers) on their own site who you can hire to implement the software.
That's because Clay does many, many things all in one tool. A spreadsheet tool at that.
If you're not looking to add another spreadsheet UI to your daily workflow, Watson might be an alternative to consider.
While Watson only does one thing - waterfall enrichment - it does it really well. And it's simple.
It basically works like this:
Upload a CSV.
We enrich it.
Done.
No need to hire a consultant to explain that process.
Clay.com's pricing can be a bit confusing. You buy credits and can then spend those credits on different features.
Let's compare apples to apples. What does it cost to enrich 1,000 prospects each month with Clay?
If you check their credits calculator, each enriched work email costs 2 contact credits.
Clay's starter plan entails 2,000 contact credits. That's $149/month. Yikes.
Watson also offers a $149/month plan (Growth) - which enriches 2,000 prospects.
Watson's Basic plan starts at $49/month.
While Clay charges about 15 cents per work email on their cheapest plan, Watson only charges 10 cents.
At a much more affordable entry point.
Watson and Clay are both great tools for lead enrichment.
If, however, you are looking for a tool that tags on many more features like CRM data cleaning or drafting emails with ChatGPT - Clay is worth another look.
Many growth markers and sales experts already have a tool for those features.
In our minds, your choice will likely boil down to a few of the following points.
Are you only looking for waterfall enrichment?
Choose Watson. It's easier to use and half the price.
Are you looking for one tool to replace many?
Choose Clay.com. While expensive and hard to learn, their software will help your outreach efforts.
More reachable contacts means more deals closed!
