If you’ve spent more time fighting with spreadsheets and clunky CRM exports than actually talking to leads, you’re not alone. There’s a small army of B2B sales teams and founders out there looking for a tool that actually takes lead gen and sales automation off your plate—without creating three new headaches. This is for you.
Clay claims to be that tool. In this review, I’ll walk through what Clay actually does, how it works in the real world, what’s worth your money, and what’s just noise. If you want to know whether it’ll really help you find and close more deals (instead of just burning your budget and time), keep reading.
What Clay Promises
Clay markets itself as the “Swiss Army knife” for B2B sales teams and growth folks. The pitch: automate the grunt work of finding leads, enrich them with tons of data, and tee up personalized outreach without a bunch of manual steps.
Here’s what you’ll see on the box:
- Lead sourcing: Pull in prospect lists from LinkedIn, company domains, or a CSV.
- Data enrichment: Get info like emails, job titles, company details, and social links.
- Automations: Set up workflows to score leads, find contact info, and even draft outreach emails.
- Integrations: Connects with tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, Apollo, and Zapier.
- AI features: Uses GPT-style AI for email drafting and list building.
Sounds great, but let’s get practical.
Getting Set Up: Not Quite Plug-and-Play
First, don’t believe the “zero setup” hype. Clay’s onboarding isn’t rocket science, but it’s not one-click magic either.
The process:
- Sign up (credit card required, no free plan).
- Pick a template or start from scratch. Templates help, but expect to tweak things.
- Connect data sources: LinkedIn, company URLs, or upload your own CSV.
- Set up enrichment: Choose what data you want Clay to pull (emails, socials, company size, etc.).
- Build automations: This is where most people get tripped up—lots of options, but some trial and error.
Pro tip: Block out 1–2 hours just to set things up, especially if you want to build something custom. If you’re not comfortable fiddling with Zapier or Airtable, expect a learning curve.
Lead Sourcing: Fast, but Not Flawless
Clay’s lead sourcing is a big selling point. You can search LinkedIn, pull from Crunchbase, or upload a list of domains. It’ll try to find contacts at those companies, with job titles and email addresses.
What’s good: - Bulk lead pulls: Scrape hundreds or thousands of leads quickly. - Filters: Narrow by title, company size, location, industry, etc. - Data enrichment: Clay stitches together info from multiple sources.
What’s not: - Quality varies: Email accuracy is about average for the industry (expect 70–85% deliverable). - LinkedIn scraping: Technically possible, but you’ll need a paid LinkedIn account and to watch for rate limits or bans. - Duplicates and messy data: Prepare to do some cleanup, especially if you’re merging from several sources.
Ignore the “one-click magic” claims. You’ll still need to sanity-check your lists before blasting out emails. There’s no getting around it.
Data Enrichment: Good, But Not Unique
Clay’s enrichment features pull in a ton of firmographic and contact data—emails, LinkedIn URLs, company info, even recent funding rounds. You choose what you want, and Clay fills in the blanks.
What works: - Plug-and-play enrichment steps: You can add enrichment “blocks” in a workflow. - Multiple providers: Clay pulls from several data vendors, which boosts coverage. - Enriches from just a domain: Handy if you only have company names.
Where it falls short: - Email accuracy: Like every tool, some emails will bounce. Clay offers “verified” and “guessed” emails, but don’t expect perfection. - APIs can fail quietly: Sometimes a block just doesn’t return data—no clear explanation. - Credits system: You pay per enrichment step, so costs can add up fast.
Bottom line: Clay’s enrichment is as good as, but not better than, Apollo, Hunter, or Clearbit. It stands out by letting you mix and match data sources in one workflow.
Automations: Flexible, But Requires Patience
Clay’s big feature is the ability to chain together “blocks” (like Legos for workflows). You can:
- Find a list of VP Sales at SaaS companies
- Enrich their emails and LinkedIn profiles
- Score leads based on firmographics or keywords
- Send the best ones to outreach tools or your CRM
The good: - No-code (sort of): You don’t have to code, but you do need to think logically. - Lots of integrations: Zapier, Make, HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, Apollo, and more. - Powerful filters: Build pretty complex logic without code.
The not-so-good: - UI is busy: Easy to get lost in the workflow builder. Not as intuitive as Airtable or Notion. - Debugging is clunky: When something breaks, troubleshooting isn’t always straightforward. - Can’t replace a real ops person: If you’re hoping to “set it and forget it,” you’ll be disappointed.
Pro tip: Start with a template. It’s much easier than building from scratch.
AI Features: More Sizzle Than Steak (For Now)
Clay touts its use of AI for things like drafting outreach emails, summarizing LinkedIn profiles, or clustering leads. It’s impressive on paper, but don’t expect miracles.
What’s useful: - Email drafts: Can save you time as a first pass, but you’ll still need to edit before sending. - Profile summaries: Helps with quick research, not deep personalization. - AI-powered lead scoring: Promising, if you have enough data.
What’s overhyped: - “Personalized” at scale: AI can’t fake genuine personalization. You still need to review. - Fully automated outreach: Dangerous territory—easy to burn bridges with bad emails.
Treat AI as a helper, not a replacement for real sales research or writing. Anyone selling you “hands-off, AI-driven sales” is selling you a bridge.
Integrations: Decent, but Not Seamless
Clay connects to a lot of stuff—CRMs, outreach tools, Slack, spreadsheets, Zapier, and more. This is good, but don’t expect plug-and-play.
- CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot): Can push leads, but mapping fields takes work.
- Zapier/Make: Opens up more automation, but can get complicated fast.
- Email tools: You’ll probably want to connect to something like Outreach, Apollo, or Mailshake for actual sending.
You’ll need to spend time mapping data, troubleshooting, and making sure things sync the way you want. Still, it beats manual copy-paste.
Pricing: Not Cheap, Not Outrageous
Clay starts at around $149/month for individual users. Team plans go up from there. You pay for “credits” that cover enrichment and automation. Heavy users (lots of contacts, lots of enrichment) will see costs stack up.
- No free plan: There’s a 14-day trial, but plan to pay if you want to use it for real.
- Volume discounts: Available, but you’ll need to talk to sales.
Is it worth it? If you’re spending hours a week sourcing and researching leads, Clay can save you time. If you’re early-stage or very budget-conscious, you might be better off with a few cheaper tools cobbled together.
What Clay Does Best
- Automating repetitive list-building and enrichment
- Combining data from multiple sources in one place
- Speeding up the “find and research” part of outbound
If you want a “sales ops person in a box,” Clay gets you close—as long as you’re ready to get your hands dirty.
Where Clay Falls Short
- Not for people who want zero setup
- Still requires manual review and QA
- Costs add up with scale
- Learning curve for non-technical users
And no, it won’t magically fill your pipeline while you sleep.
Should You Use Clay?
If you’re running outbound at any sort of scale (100+ contacts/week), and you’re tired of duct-taping together spreadsheets and enrichment APIs, Clay is worth a look. It’s powerful, but you’ll need to invest some time up front.
If you’re just starting out or sending a few emails a week, you can probably get by with LinkedIn, Apollo, and Hunter for a lot less money.
Final Thoughts
Clay is a genuinely useful tool—if you treat it as a workbench, not a robot butler. It’ll save you time, but it won’t save you from thinking. Start small, get your first workflow running, and don’t try to automate everything at once. Simple is good. Iterate as you learn what actually moves the needle for your team.