Clearbit Connect: Everything You Need to Know

What Is Clearbit Connect?

Clearbit Connect is a Chrome extension designed to help sales professionals and marketers find verified email addresses directly from their inbox. The tool integrates seamlessly with Gmail and Outlook, allowing users to search for companies, discover employee contact information, and enrich their prospect data without leaving their email client.

The extension displays contextual information about anyone who emails you, including their company details, role, and social profiles. For outbound prospecting, you can search any company and find relevant contacts to reach out to-theoretically in just a few seconds.

But here's where things get complicated: Clearbit was acquired by HubSpot in December, and the landscape has changed significantly since then.

What Happened After the HubSpot Acquisition

Following the acquisition, Clearbit's services were integrated into HubSpot's platform under the new name "Breeze Intelligence." This merger fundamentally changed how the product works and who it's designed for.

If you're already a HubSpot user, this integration can be seamless. The enrichment tools now work natively within HubSpot's CRM, eliminating the need for third-party connectors. However, if you use Salesforce, Pipedrive, or another CRM, Clearbit may no longer be your ideal solution.

The old standalone pricing model disappeared entirely. Everything now runs through HubSpot's credit-based billing system, where enrichments, form submissions, and intent data all consume credits from a monthly pool that resets each cycle.

On April 30, the free Clearbit platform and Clearbit Connect were officially discontinued. Existing free Connect accounts that offered 10 credits per month were sunset on that date. This means you can no longer sign up for new free accounts, making alternatives even more important for teams on a budget.

How to Install Clearbit Connect (If You Still Have Access)

For those with existing access or enterprise agreements, installing Clearbit Connect is straightforward but requires a few specific steps:

Step 1: Chrome Web Store Installation
Visit the Chrome Web Store and search for "Clearbit Connect." Click "Add to Chrome" to install the extension. Once added, the Clearbit icon will appear in your browser's extension toolbar.

Step 2: Sign Up with Google
You'll need to sign up using your Google account. Clearbit collects your email and name during this process, along with location data via IP address to provide enriched company information.

Step 3: Grant Gmail Permissions
The extension requires access to your Gmail inbox to enrich email addresses and display contact information. Accept the necessary permissions to enable full functionality.

Step 4: Configure Your Ideal Customer Profile
One unique feature of Clearbit Connect is the ICP Checker. You can set criteria for your ideal customer profile, and as you browse the web, the extension button changes color when you visit a company website that matches your parameters.

How to Use Clearbit Connect in Gmail

Once installed, Clearbit Connect works in two primary modes within Gmail:

Enriching Incoming Emails
When you open a conversation in Gmail or hover over an email address, Clearbit automatically searches hundreds of sources to insert information about the sender directly into your sidebar. You'll see their avatar, job title, company details, location, timezone, and social profiles. This context helps you understand who you're communicating with before you respond.

Finding New Email Addresses
Click the Clearbit icon in Gmail's compose window to search for new contacts. Enter a company domain and job title-you don't even need the person's name. Clearbit will return a list of people matching that criteria, along with their verified email addresses. Each time you reveal an email, it consumes one credit from your monthly allocation.

Browsing Company Websites
As you navigate the web, Connect checks each domain against your ICP settings. When you land on a qualifying company's website, click the extension widget to see company information like employee count, funding, industry, and technology stack. Navigate to the "People" tab to find contacts at that organization and reveal their emails.

Current Clearbit Pricing Structure

Understanding Clearbit's pricing today requires navigating HubSpot's tiered system. Here's what the current landscape looks like:

Free Tier: HubSpot offers 25 monthly credits at no charge for lead discovery, website visitor identification, and list building. This is useful for testing, but insufficient for any serious prospecting operation.

Starter Plans: Breeze Intelligence starts at approximately $45/month with an annual commitment (or $50/month on monthly billing), which gives you 100 credits. Each successful enrichment consumes one credit. However, you also need a minimum HubSpot Customer Platform subscription starting at $15/month, bringing the realistic minimum to $60/month.

Growth and Professional Tiers: Costs escalate based on credit volume and HubSpot platform tier. Reports suggest pricing can range from $1,184 to $4,135+ monthly for Professional and Enterprise customers who need higher volumes.

Enterprise Contracts: For larger organizations, custom quotes are standard. Industry reports mention contracts ranging from $17,100 to over $80,700 annually depending on company size, data volume, and negotiated discounts.

The credit system catches many users off guard. Features that seem bundled-like form shortening, Salesforce syncs, and ad audiences-all consume credits in the background. What looks like a $45 add-on can quietly escalate into five-figure territory at renewal. Additionally, credits expire every 30 days with no rollover, meaning unused credits represent lost investment.

What Data Does Clearbit Collect and Provide?

Understanding what data Clearbit accesses and delivers is crucial for evaluating its value proposition:

Data Clearbit Collects From You:
When you use Connect, Clearbit gathers personally identifiable information including your email and name via Google sign-up. They collect location data through IP addresses and web history by tracking URLs you visit to provide enriched company data. Importantly, they don't associate your web history with you as an individual user. The extension also requires access to your personal communications to enrich email addresses within Gmail.

Data Clearbit Provides About Contacts:
For individuals, you'll receive name, work email address, job title, role, seniority level, location, timezone, and social media profiles including LinkedIn, Twitter, and GitHub handles. For companies, Clearbit offers domain information, company name, logo, industry sector, employee count, annual revenue estimates, funding details, technology stack (technographic data), and headquarters location.

This data comes from indexing hundreds of sources across the web in real-time, essentially functioning as a search engine specifically built for people and companies rather than web pages.

The Real Limitations of Clearbit Connect

Before you commit to any pricing tier, understand what you're actually getting-and what you're not:

• HubSpot Lock-In: The tighter integration is a double-edged sword. If you're not on HubSpot (or planning to switch), Clearbit becomes increasingly difficult to justify.
• Credit Overages: Users frequently report surprise bills from exceeding their credit allocation. Without careful monitoring, costs spiral quickly.
• Annual Contracts: Most plans require annual commitments with at least 30 days' notice to cancel. You can't simply downgrade or exit mid-year.
• Data Freshness: Some competitors note that Clearbit updates its database monthly, which may not catch recent job changes or company updates in real-time. While generally accurate, you'll occasionally encounter outdated information.
• Limited Free Functionality: The old Clearbit Connect offered 100 free credits monthly. Current free tiers are more restrictive, and new free accounts are no longer being created.
• No Phone Numbers: Unlike some alternatives, Clearbit focuses primarily on email addresses and firmographic data. If you need direct dial numbers for cold calling, you'll need additional tools.
• Regional Coverage Gaps: While Clearbit performs well for US-based companies, coverage can be inconsistent for international markets, particularly in EMEA and APAC regions.

Clearbit Connect Use Cases: When It Actually Makes Sense

Despite the limitations and pricing complexity, Clearbit isn't wrong for everyone. Specific scenarios where the tool delivers genuine value include:

Qualifying Inbound Leads: When prospects fill out forms or send emails, Clearbit automatically enriches their profiles with company and role information. This helps sales teams prioritize which leads to follow up with first based on company size, industry, or seniority level.

Account-Based Marketing Programs: Marketing teams running ABM campaigns benefit from Clearbit's ability to identify website visitors and enrich account records with firmographic data, enabling personalized content and targeted advertising.

CRM Data Hygiene: For HubSpot users with messy databases, Clearbit's continuous enrichment feature automatically updates contact records, fills in missing fields, and corrects outdated information without manual data entry.

Sales Intelligence and Research: Before reaching out to prospects, sales reps use Connect to research company details, understand organizational structure, and identify multiple contacts within target accounts-all without leaving their inbox.

Form Optimization: Breeze Intelligence includes form shortening capabilities that reduce friction on landing pages by auto-filling known fields for returning visitors, improving conversion rates for marketing campaigns.

What B2B Professionals Actually Need

Here's the thing: Clearbit Connect addresses only one piece of the B2B prospecting puzzle. Finding an email address is step one. What you really need is a systematic approach to:

1. Define your ideal customer profile (ICP) with specific firmographic and demographic criteria
2. Build targeted prospect lists based on industry, company size, technology stack, and buying signals
3. Find and verify contact information including emails and direct phone numbers
4. Validate data quality before launching outreach campaigns

Most sales teams cobble together 4-5 different tools to accomplish this workflow, paying for each separately. That's expensive and inefficient.

A Smarter Approach: Define Your Target Market First

Before hunting for individual email addresses, step back and clarify exactly who you should be targeting. This is where most prospecting efforts fail-not in the email finding, but in the targeting strategy itself.

Ask yourself:

• What industries convert best for your product or service?
• What company size (by revenue or employee count) represents your sweet spot?
• Which job titles actually have purchasing authority?
• What technologies does your ideal customer already use?
• What signals indicate a company is actively looking to buy?

Our B2B Targeting Generator helps you work through this analysis systematically. Rather than guessing at your ICP, you get AI-powered insights into which market segments offer the highest probability of conversion.

Free Tools That Replace Clearbit's Core Functions

You don't need expensive enterprise contracts to build an effective prospecting stack. Here's how to cover Clearbit's key capabilities without the five-figure price tag:

Email Finding and Verification

Clearbit Connect's primary function-finding email addresses-can be accomplished with several free or low-cost alternatives. Our Email Finder lets you discover professional email addresses using just a name and company (or LinkedIn URL). Pair this with our Email Verifier to validate deliverability before you send.

For higher volumes, consider tools like Findymail, which offers competitive rates for email discovery and verification combined.

Direct Phone Numbers

Email isn't always enough. When you need to actually get someone on the phone, you need verified mobile numbers. Clearbit historically focused more on company enrichment than direct contact data. If cold calling is part of your playbook, our Mobile Number Finder can help you track down cell phone numbers that actually ring.

Background Checks and Trust Verification

Beyond basic contact data, understanding who you're dealing with adds another layer of qualification. Our Background Checker provides comprehensive reports with trust scores, helping you avoid wasting time on unqualified prospects or identify red flags before engaging.

Technology Stack Intelligence

Understanding what technologies your prospects already use helps you personalize outreach and identify buying signals. If they're using a competitor, that's valuable context. If they're using complementary tools, you know they fit your tech stack requirements.

Our Tech Stack Scraper provides this intelligence without requiring expensive enrichment credits.

Company and Contact Enrichment

For full-scale enrichment workflows, Clay offers a powerful alternative that combines data from multiple providers. You can layer sources to maximize coverage while only paying for successful matches-a stark contrast to Clearbit's credit-per-request model.

Data Accuracy: How Clearbit Compares to Alternatives

One of the most critical factors in choosing any prospecting tool is data accuracy. Sending emails to invalid addresses damages your sender reputation and wastes valuable outreach opportunities.

Clearbit has generally maintained positive reviews for data accuracy, with users praising the comprehensiveness and freshness of company and individual information. The platform's multi-step validation process and proprietary data sources help eliminate inaccurate information. However, the monthly database update cycle means some data-particularly job changes or company restructuring-may lag behind real-time changes.

Email verification rates vary by tool, but most quality platforms achieve 95-98% accuracy. Clearbit Connect provides verified email addresses, but all emails should still pass through additional verification before high-volume campaigns. The key difference lies in how frequently data refreshes and whether the tool catches typos or format errors automatically.

For critical campaigns where deliverability matters most, many professionals use a layered approach: find emails with one tool, verify with another, and cross-reference against multiple databases before committing to outreach.

Building Your Outbound Campaign

Once you've identified your targets and gathered contact information, you need to actually reach them. This is where the rubber meets the road.

For cold email at scale, platforms like Instantly or Smartlead let you run multi-mailbox campaigns with proper warm-up and deliverability management. These tools handle the technical complexity of sending thousands of personalized emails without landing in spam.

For LinkedIn outreach, Expandi provides automation capabilities that complement your email campaigns. Multi-channel sequences consistently outperform single-channel approaches.

CRM integration ties everything together. Whether you're using HubSpot, Salesforce, or a more sales-focused CRM like Close, make sure your prospecting data flows seamlessly into your deal pipeline.

Clearbit Alternatives: Quick Comparison

If Clearbit's pricing or HubSpot dependency doesn't work for your team, several alternatives offer similar functionality with different trade-offs:

Apollo.io combines email finding, enrichment, and sales engagement in one platform with over 275 million contacts. It's more outbound-focused than Clearbit and includes built-in sequencing tools. Pricing starts lower but can scale quickly with usage.

ZoomInfo offers the most comprehensive B2B database with particularly strong US coverage. It's ideal for enterprise teams but comes with enterprise pricing. The platform includes intent data, technographics, and organizational charts.

Lusha focuses on simplicity with a Chrome extension that works directly on LinkedIn profiles. It's more affordable than Clearbit but with lighter enrichment capabilities. Good for individual reps rather than marketing automation.

RocketReach provides solid global coverage with verified emails and phone numbers. The interface is straightforward, pricing is transparent, and it integrates with most CRMs without requiring a specific platform commitment.

Each alternative has specific strengths depending on whether you prioritize database size, international coverage, ease of use, or integration flexibility. The key is matching your workflow requirements to the tool's architecture rather than forcing your process to fit the software.

When Clearbit Still Makes Sense

Despite the limitations, Clearbit (now Breeze Intelligence) isn't wrong for everyone. It makes sense if:

• You're already deeply invested in HubSpot's ecosystem and want native integration
• Your primary use case is marketing enrichment rather than outbound sales
• You have the budget for enterprise-level data tools and prefer a single vendor
• Website visitor identification and intent data are core to your strategy
• Your team operates exclusively within HubSpot for all sales and marketing activities

For companies fitting this profile, the HubSpot integration eliminates friction and consolidates vendors. Just go in with eyes open about the credit consumption model and budget accordingly. Monitor usage closely, especially in the first few months, to avoid surprise overages at renewal time.

The Bottom Line on Clearbit Connect

Clearbit Connect was once a straightforward, generous tool for finding email addresses. The HubSpot acquisition transformed it into something more powerful but also more complex and expensive.

For most B2B professionals-especially those not already committed to HubSpot-there are smarter ways to build your prospecting stack:

1. Start with targeting: Use our B2B Targeting Generator to define and refine your ideal customer profile
2. Layer your data sources: Combine multiple tools for email finding, phone numbers, and company intelligence rather than relying on a single expensive provider
3. Verify before you send: Always validate email addresses to protect your sender reputation
4. Build systematic outreach: Use dedicated email and LinkedIn automation tools designed for sales sequences

The goal isn't to find the perfect replacement for Clearbit. It's to build a prospecting workflow that delivers results at a cost that makes sense for your business. Start with clear targeting, layer in the data you need, and execute consistently. That's how you fill your pipeline-regardless of which tools you use.

And if you need help scaling your prospecting efforts beyond what tools alone can provide, Galadon Gold connects you with proven frameworks and a community of sales professionals who've built successful outbound systems. Sometimes the best tool is learning from people who've already solved the problems you're facing.