ContactOut Chrome Extension: Everything You Need to Know

What Is the ContactOut Chrome Extension?

The ContactOut Chrome extension is a browser-based tool that helps sales professionals, recruiters, and marketers find email addresses and phone numbers directly from LinkedIn profiles. Once installed, it overlays contact information on LinkedIn profiles, allowing you to instantly reveal personal and work email addresses, direct phone numbers, and social profiles without leaving the page.

With access to over 350 million professional contacts across 40 million companies, ContactOut has become a popular choice for B2B prospecting. The platform is used by 1.4 million professionals, including teams at major companies like Google, Microsoft, and Netflix. The extension works seamlessly with LinkedIn Standard, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and LinkedIn Recruiter, making it versatile for different user types.

ContactOut positions itself as offering triple-verified data with 99% confidence on B2B contact information. The tool goes beyond simple email finding-it provides a complete prospecting ecosystem with features like bulk operations, CRM integrations, and even basic email campaign functionality built directly into the platform.

How the ContactOut Chrome Extension Works

Getting started with ContactOut is straightforward. You install the extension from the Chrome Web Store, create an account, and link it to your LinkedIn profile. When you visit any LinkedIn profile, a sidebar appears showing available contact information-emails, phone numbers, and social links.

Here's what makes the extension useful in practice:

• Instant profile reveals: Visit a LinkedIn profile, and ContactOut automatically searches its database to display matching contact information. The extension surfaces data in seconds, eliminating manual research time.
• One-click saving: Add contacts to lists directly from the extension and tag them for easy segmentation later. You can organize prospects into folders based on campaign, industry, or any custom criteria.
• Bulk operations: Reveal and save multiple LinkedIn search results at once, saving significant time on list building. This feature is particularly valuable when working with LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches.
• CRM/ATS sync: Export your saved contacts directly to popular CRM and applicant tracking systems including Salesforce, HubSpot, Greenhouse, Lever, and Bullhorn, or connect via Zapier to over 5,000 other applications.

The extension also works on GitHub profiles, making it particularly valuable for technical recruiters looking to source developers. Additionally, ContactOut offers "ContactOut Anywhere," a feature that lets you find decision-makers on any company website, not just LinkedIn. This expands your prospecting capabilities beyond social networks.

The workflow is simple: browse LinkedIn or company websites as you normally would, and the extension displays available contact data in a non-intrusive sidebar. You can then choose to reveal the full contact details (which consumes credits), save the contact to your dashboard, or add them directly to an email campaign.

ContactOut Chrome Extension Installation and Setup

Installing the ContactOut Chrome extension takes just a few minutes. Here's the complete setup process:

Step 1: Install from Chrome Web Store. Search for "ContactOut" in the Chrome Web Store or visit the ContactOut website and click the installation link. The extension is compatible with Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers like Edge and Brave, though some users report occasional compatibility issues with certain browser versions.

Step 2: Create your account. After installation, you'll need to sign up for a ContactOut account. The free plan requires no credit card, giving you immediate access with 5 daily credits. You can upgrade to paid plans at any time as your needs grow.

Step 3: Connect your LinkedIn account. To unlock the full functionality of the extension, you'll need to authorize ContactOut to access your LinkedIn profile. This allows the extension to work seamlessly as you browse LinkedIn. While you can use the Search Portal without LinkedIn, the Chrome extension's real-time reveal feature requires this connection.

Step 4: Configure integrations. If you use a CRM or ATS, connect it in your ContactOut settings. This enables one-click exports and automatic syncing of contact data, eliminating manual data entry and keeping your systems aligned.

Once set up, the extension appears as a small icon in your browser toolbar. You can pin it for easy access, and it will automatically activate when you visit supported sites like LinkedIn or GitHub. The interface is clean and intuitive, with clearly labeled buttons for revealing contacts, saving to lists, and adding to campaigns.

ContactOut Pricing Breakdown

ContactOut uses a credit-based system across its pricing tiers. Here's what you can expect:

• Free Plan: 5 credits daily (no credit card required)-enough for occasional lookups. You get access to the Chrome extension and can find contacts on LinkedIn and GitHub. This plan works well for individual users doing light prospecting or testing the platform before committing to a paid subscription.
• Email Plan: Starting around $49/month (or approximately $99/month with US/UK data included), this plan offers unlimited email credits with a fair use policy, 300 exports per month, and includes the email campaign builder and list management features.
• Email + Phone Plan: Around $99/month (or higher with US/UK data), providing unlimited emails and phone numbers, 600 exports per month, data enrichment capabilities, and the AI email writer for personalizing outreach at scale.
• Team/API Plan: Custom pricing for enterprise needs, designed for large organizations requiring API access, advanced integrations, unlimited users, priority support, and custom features tailored to specific workflows.

One important pricing consideration: ContactOut charges significantly more for access to US and UK data. If you exclude these regions, you can get approximately 50% off the regular price. This makes the tool more affordable for teams focusing on other geographic markets but potentially cost-prohibitive for North American-focused prospecting.

Credits typically expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over, so it's important to plan your monthly outreach to avoid losing unused credits. Phone number lookups often consume more credits than email lookups, which can cause your credit balance to deplete faster than expected if you're heavily focused on cold calling.

What ContactOut Does Well

Based on extensive user feedback and testing, ContactOut excels in several areas:

Data accuracy: ContactOut uses triple-verification for their contact data and claims 99% confidence on their B2B information. Users consistently report high email accuracy, with many reviewers noting it provides "one of the highest accuracy rates" compared to alternatives. The platform cross-checks data against multiple sources and performs bounce testing to ensure deliverability. While no database is perfect, ContactOut's email accuracy is genuinely strong.

Ease of use: The interface is clean and intuitive. Most users can start finding contacts within minutes of installation. The Chrome extension sits unobtrusively on the side of your browser, and the portal organizes search filters clearly. The learning curve is minimal, which is particularly valuable for teams that need to onboard new sales reps quickly without extensive training.

Personal email access: Unlike some competitors that focus only on work emails, ContactOut provides personal email addresses as well. This is particularly valuable for recruiters reaching candidates who may not check work email frequently or who are passive candidates not actively job searching. Personal emails often have higher open rates for recruitment outreach.

Search portal flexibility: Beyond the Chrome extension, ContactOut offers a dedicated search portal with 20+ filters including job title, company, location, industry, company size, revenue, technologies used, and seniority level-allowing you to prospect without browsing LinkedIn directly. This is useful when you want to build large lists based on specific criteria without manually clicking through dozens of profiles.

GitHub integration: For technical recruiters, the ability to find contact information directly on GitHub profiles is a significant advantage. Many developers and engineers are more active on GitHub than LinkedIn, making this feature valuable for sourcing technical talent.

Comprehensive integrations: ContactOut offers native integrations with major CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot), ATS platforms (Greenhouse, Lever, Bullhorn), and Zapier connectivity to thousands of other applications. This makes it easy to incorporate ContactOut into existing workflows without constant CSV exporting and importing.

Where ContactOut Falls Short

No tool is perfect. Here are the most commonly reported limitations:

• Credit restrictions: The credit system can feel restrictive, particularly for high-volume users. Credits deplete faster than expected, especially when revealing phone numbers. Users frequently mention that the "unlimited" plans are actually capped at specific monthly limits under a Fair Use Policy (reportedly around 2,000 emails and 1,000 phone numbers per month), which can be misleading for teams expecting truly unlimited access.
• Phone number accuracy: While email accuracy is generally strong, some users report inconsistent phone data with occasional outdated or incorrect numbers. Phone number data appears to be less reliable than email data, and connect rates may be lower than specialized phone data providers.
• LinkedIn dependency: Full functionality requires linking your LinkedIn account. If you don't have LinkedIn or prefer not to connect it, your options become limited. Some users also express concern about LinkedIn's terms of service regarding third-party scraping tools.
• Basic outreach tools: ContactOut includes a campaign builder, but it lacks the advanced automation, sophisticated A/B testing, detailed analytics, and deliverability features of dedicated sales engagement platforms like Outreach, Salesloft, or Apollo.io.
• Pricing concerns: For small businesses or startups on tight budgets, the premium pricing can be prohibitive compared to alternatives, especially when factoring in the extra cost for US/UK data access. Some users feel the credit limitations don't justify the monthly cost.
• Data coverage gaps: While ContactOut has strong coverage in North America and major markets, users report that data availability in the EU and certain other regions is currently not as comprehensive. The platform is working to improve international coverage, but geographical gaps exist.
• Extension performance issues: Some users report that the Chrome extension occasionally slows down, fails to load on certain profiles, or experiences compatibility issues with specific browser versions. These technical hiccups can disrupt workflow, though they appear to be intermittent rather than constant problems.

ContactOut Data Accuracy and Verification

Understanding how ContactOut sources and verifies its data is crucial for evaluating its value. The platform claims a triple-verification process that includes:

Social profile matching: ContactOut matches email addresses and phone numbers to specific individuals by cross-referencing data from multiple social profiles and public sources. This ensures the contact information actually belongs to the person you're trying to reach.

LinkedIn profile matching: The platform verifies that contact details align with the correct LinkedIn profile, reducing the risk of misidentification or outdated information from someone who has changed jobs.

Bounce testing: ContactOut performs email verification checks to identify invalid, risky, or temporary email addresses before displaying them. This helps protect your sender reputation by filtering out addresses that would bounce.

User reviews indicate that email accuracy is ContactOut's strongest suit, with many professionals reporting 90%+ deliverability on the emails they extract. However, several factors can affect accuracy:

Data freshness varies by profile prominence and industry. High-profile executives at major companies typically have more accurate data because their information is widely available and frequently updated. Less-known professionals, particularly in niche industries, may have older or incomplete contact details.

Personal emails tend to remain stable longer than work emails since people change jobs but keep the same personal email addresses for years. This makes ContactOut's personal email feature particularly valuable for long-term relationship building.

Phone number accuracy is more variable. While ContactOut provides phone numbers for many profiles, users note that phone data can be outdated, particularly for professionals who have recently changed roles or relocated. The phone connect rate appears to be lower than email response rates.

Before launching major outreach campaigns with ContactOut data, it's wise to run your email list through an additional verification service like Galadon's free email verification tool to catch any risky or invalid addresses that might have slipped through.

ContactOut Use Cases: Who Should Use It?

ContactOut serves several distinct user groups, each with specific needs:

Recruiters and talent acquisition teams find ContactOut particularly valuable for sourcing passive candidates. The ability to find personal email addresses means you can reach professionals who aren't actively checking LinkedIn or responding to InMails. Technical recruiters especially benefit from the GitHub integration, which allows them to find contact information for developers and engineers who maintain active GitHub profiles but may have outdated LinkedIn pages.

Sales development representatives (SDRs) use ContactOut to build targeted prospect lists based on specific criteria like job title, company size, industry, and location. The bulk reveal feature saves significant time when working with large LinkedIn searches or Sales Navigator results. SDRs focused on account-based selling can use the Search Portal to identify multiple contacts at target accounts, then reach out to decision-makers across different departments.

Marketing professionals leverage ContactOut for partnership development, influencer outreach, and event marketing. Finding the right contacts at partner organizations or identifying speakers for conferences becomes much faster with accurate contact data readily available.

Startup founders and business development teams on limited budgets appreciate the free plan for occasional prospecting needs. When you only need to find a handful of contacts per day-potential investors, advisors, or strategic partners-the 5 daily credits can be sufficient without requiring a paid subscription.

Recruitment agencies and sales consulting firms that serve multiple clients benefit from the Team/API plan, which allows unlimited users and custom integrations. These organizations need high-volume access and the ability to separate data and campaigns by client account.

Comparing ContactOut to Alternatives

ContactOut isn't the only option for LinkedIn prospecting. Here's how it stacks up against popular alternatives:

ContactOut vs. Lusha

Both tools offer Chrome extensions for LinkedIn contact finding. ContactOut scores higher on G2 for lead building (9.4 vs 8.3) and lead enrichment (9.2 vs 8.0), indicating users find its data more reliable for these specific functions. Lusha tends to be more affordable with its Pro plan starting around $36/month versus ContactOut's higher entry price. Lusha also provides stronger direct dial accuracy and buyer intent signals, while ContactOut offers better personal email coverage. Lusha's LinkedIn integration is described as "seamless" with reports of 98% accurate email addresses and phone numbers, though its database is somewhat more limited than ContactOut's.

ContactOut vs. RocketReach

RocketReach offers a massive database of 700+ million professional contacts with an 85-97% data accuracy rate and particularly strong phone number coverage. ContactOut's pricing is generally more budget-friendly than RocketReach's comparable tiers, with RocketReach's Essentials plan starting at around $99/month for 100 lookups. However, RocketReach provides more comprehensive search filters and is often preferred by teams needing high-quality data for cold calling. RocketReach excels at scale, with powerful bulk lookup features that make it ideal for teams building large lists quickly, whereas ContactOut's one-profile-at-a-time workflow can feel slow for high-volume operations.

ContactOut vs. Apollo.io

Apollo takes an all-in-one approach, combining prospecting, enrichment, and email engagement in one platform with a database of 275+ million contacts. If you're tired of exporting ContactOut data into spreadsheets, then uploading it into your email tool, and manually updating your CRM, Apollo's integrated workflow may save significant time. Apollo includes email sequencing, calling features, LinkedIn automation, and native CRM sync all in one place. However, Apollo's interface can feel overwhelming initially because it's packed with features, and its phone number data isn't quite as strong as niche tools. Apollo offers a more generous free plan (60 emails per month vs. ContactOut's 5 daily credits) and starts at around $49/month for paid plans.

ContactOut vs. ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is the enterprise heavyweight with the most comprehensive B2B database and sophisticated intent data capabilities. ZoomInfo's data accuracy and coverage are generally considered best-in-class, but pricing is significantly higher than ContactOut and typically requires annual contracts. ZoomInfo is built for large sales organizations with dedicated budgets, while ContactOut serves small to mid-sized teams that need reliable contact data without enterprise-level investment. ZoomInfo also offers superior technographic data and company intelligence beyond just contact information.

ContactOut vs. Hunter.io

Hunter.io focuses specifically on email finding and verification, with a domain-based search approach rather than individual profile lookup. Hunter is more affordable (starting around $49/month) and doesn't require LinkedIn integration, making it a good choice for teams that want to find emails for entire companies without browsing individual profiles. However, Hunter doesn't provide phone numbers, and its email accuracy, while good, isn't quite as high as ContactOut's. Hunter is ideal for simple email finding at scale, whereas ContactOut offers a broader feature set including phone data, CRM integrations, and campaign tools.

LinkedIn Prospecting Best Practices

ContactOut is a tool, but successful LinkedIn prospecting requires strategy. Here are best practices to maximize your results:

Define your ideal customer profile first. Before you start revealing contacts, get crystal clear on who you're targeting. What industries? What company sizes? What roles? What geographic regions? A well-defined ICP ensures every contact you find is actually relevant to your offering. Use a B2B targeting tool to systematically identify your best-fit companies before hunting for individual contacts.

Use multiple search filters. Don't just search by job title. Combine filters like seniority level, company size, industry, location, and technologies used to create highly targeted prospect lists. The more specific your search criteria, the more relevant your outreach will be.

Focus on quality over quantity. A smaller list of 100 perfectly-targeted prospects will outperform a list of 1,000 random contacts. Take the time to evaluate whether each profile truly fits your ICP before adding them to your list.

Verify before you send. Even triple-verified data can go stale. Before launching outreach campaigns, run your email list through a verification tool to catch invalid addresses. Galadon's free email verification tool can help you identify risky addresses before they cause bounce problems and damage your sender reputation.

Personalize your outreach. Having someone's email address is just the starting point. Reference specific details from their profile-recent job changes, shared connections, content they've posted, or company news. Generic templates get ignored; personalized messages get responses.

Engage beyond just messaging. Before reaching out with a connection request or cold email, engage with your prospect's content on LinkedIn. Like and comment on their posts. This warm-up period increases the likelihood they'll recognize your name and respond positively when you do reach out.

Follow up consistently. Research shows it often takes 4-9 touchpoints to get a response from a prospect. Don't give up after one message. Create a multi-touch sequence that provides value at each step, varying your approach across channels (LinkedIn, email, phone) and message formats (text, video, voice notes).

Respect LinkedIn's limits. LinkedIn restricts connection requests to about 100-200 per week for regular accounts and has daily messaging limits. Don't use automation tools that blast hundreds of connection requests per day-this will get your account restricted. Stay within safe limits to protect your account.

Test and optimize. Track which messages get the best response rates. Test different subject lines, opening hooks, calls to action, and sending times. Use data to continually refine your approach rather than sticking with templates that aren't working.

Building a Complete Prospecting Workflow

The ContactOut Chrome extension is a tactical tool, but effective prospecting requires a strategic foundation. Here's a framework for getting better results:

Step 1: Define Your Target Market

Before you reveal a single contact, clarify who you're actually trying to reach. What industries? What company sizes? What roles? A B2B targeting tool can help you systematically define your ideal customer profile rather than guessing. Understanding which companies, industries, and roles represent your best opportunities will make every subsequent step-including contact finding-more effective.

Step 2: Build Your Prospect Lists

Use ContactOut (or alternatives like Lusha or RocketReach) to find contact information for your target accounts. Focus on quality over quantity-a smaller list of well-targeted prospects will outperform a massive list of random contacts. Use the Search Portal's filters to identify decision-makers at companies that match your ICP, then reveal their contact details strategically.

Step 3: Verify Before You Send

Even triple-verified data can go stale. Before launching outreach campaigns, run your email list through a verification tool to catch invalid addresses. This protects your sender reputation and improves deliverability. Galadon's free email verification tool can help you identify risky addresses before they cause bounce problems. This extra verification step takes just a few minutes but can save your campaigns from deliverability issues.

Step 4: Enrich Your Data

Beyond just having an email address and phone number, gather additional context about your prospects. What content are they sharing on LinkedIn? What recent company announcements or news articles mention them? What technologies does their company use? This enrichment data enables more personalized, relevant outreach. If you need to identify the technology stack a prospect's company uses, try Galadon's tech stack scraper to gather this intelligence.

Step 5: Personalize Your Outreach

ContactOut includes an AI personalizer for generating customized emails, but you can also use standalone tools for this. The key is moving beyond generic templates-reference specific details from the prospect's profile, company news, or shared connections. Mention a recent LinkedIn post they published, congratulate them on a company milestone, or reference a mutual connection. This level of personalization dramatically increases response rates.

Step 6: Multi-Channel Follow-Up

Don't rely solely on email. If you have phone numbers, use them strategically for high-priority prospects. Connect on LinkedIn. Send a video message. The combination of multiple touches across channels significantly increases response rates compared to single-channel approaches. Research shows that multi-channel campaigns generate 300% more engagement than single-channel outreach.

Step 7: Track and Optimize

Measure what's working. Track response rates by message type, industry, job role, company size, and time of day. Use this data to refine your approach continuously. What subject lines get the highest open rates? Which messages generate the most replies? Which prospects are most likely to convert? Let data guide your strategy rather than relying on assumptions.

ContactOut for Recruiters: Specific Considerations

Recruiters have unique needs that differ from sales professionals, and ContactOut offers specific advantages for talent acquisition:

Personal email is critical for passive candidates. Most professionals don't check LinkedIn daily, and work email can be monitored by employers. Personal email gives you a direct line to candidates without alerting their current employer. ContactOut's strength in personal email makes it particularly valuable for recruitment.

GitHub integration for technical hiring. When recruiting developers, engineers, or other technical roles, GitHub profiles often provide more current information than LinkedIn. ContactOut's ability to extract contact information from GitHub profiles gives technical recruiters an edge in sourcing hard-to-find talent.

ATS integrations streamline workflow. ContactOut offers native integrations with major ATS platforms including Greenhouse, Lever, and Bullhorn. This allows recruiters to push candidate information directly into their ATS without manual data entry, maintaining a clean pipeline and ensuring no candidates fall through the cracks.

Bulk sourcing for high-volume roles. When filling multiple similar positions, recruiters need to source dozens or hundreds of candidates quickly. ContactOut's bulk reveal feature on LinkedIn search results saves significant time compared to clicking through profiles one by one.

Compliance considerations. Recruitment often involves handling sensitive personal data, making compliance with GDPR and CCPA crucial. ContactOut states it complies with these regulations and provides mechanisms to request data removal, which is important for recruiters operating in regulated markets.

If you're a recruiter building a comprehensive candidate pipeline, consider supplementing ContactOut with Galadon's background check tool to verify candidate information and generate trust scores before moving forward with interviews.

Advanced ContactOut Features

Beyond basic contact finding, ContactOut offers several advanced features worth exploring:

ContactOut Anywhere: This feature extends ContactOut's capabilities beyond LinkedIn to any company website. Visit a target company's website, activate ContactOut Anywhere, and the extension will identify decision-makers at that company and display their contact information. This is particularly useful for account-based selling where you want to reach multiple stakeholders at specific target accounts.

Email Campaigns: ContactOut includes a basic email campaign builder that allows you to create multi-step sequences, automatically personalize messages, and track performance. While not as sophisticated as dedicated sales engagement platforms, this feature provides enough functionality for simple outreach workflows without requiring a separate tool. You can import prospects with one click, set up automated follow-ups, and measure open and reply rates.

AI Personalizer: This feature uses artificial intelligence to generate customized email copy based on a prospect's LinkedIn profile. It analyzes their role, company, recent activity, and other data points to create relevant, personalized messages at scale. According to ContactOut, personalized emails can generate up to 4x higher response rates than generic templates.

Gmail Integration: ContactOut offers a Gmail plugin that surfaces contact information as you compose emails. If you're emailing someone and need their phone number or alternative email address, the plugin displays available ContactOut data directly in Gmail without requiring you to switch to LinkedIn or the ContactOut dashboard.

Team Dashboards: For teams using ContactOut, the team dashboard provides visibility into prospecting activity across multiple users. You can see who's revealing contacts, track credit usage, share saved lists, and maintain consistency across your team's outreach efforts.

API Access: Enterprise teams can leverage ContactOut's API to integrate contact finding directly into their own applications or workflows. This enables custom automation, bulk enrichment of existing databases, and seamless integration with proprietary systems.

Data Enrichment: Upload a CSV of LinkedIn URLs or existing contact information, and ContactOut will enrich your list with missing data points. This is useful when you have partial information and want to complete your records without manually looking up each contact.

ContactOut Integration Capabilities

One of ContactOut's strengths is its integration ecosystem, which helps you incorporate contact data into existing workflows:

Salesforce Integration: Save contacts directly to Salesforce as leads or contacts with one click from the Chrome extension or Search Portal. ContactOut uses custom fields to avoid overwriting existing data, so you can enrich Salesforce records without losing information you've already collected.

HubSpot Integration: Similar to Salesforce, the HubSpot integration allows seamless contact creation and data synchronization. Contacts revealed in ContactOut can be automatically added to HubSpot lists and enrolled in sequences without manual export.

ATS Integrations: Greenhouse, Lever, and Bullhorn integrations enable recruiters to push candidate information directly into their applicant tracking system, maintaining candidate pipelines and tracking recruitment stages without switching platforms.

Zapier Connectivity: With Zapier support, ContactOut can connect to over 5,000 other applications. This enables custom workflows like automatically adding new ContactOut contacts to Google Sheets, triggering notifications in Slack when high-priority prospects are found, or syncing with less common CRMs that don't have native integrations.

Google Sheets Add-on: ContactOut offers a ContactSheets add-on that allows you to work with contact data directly in Google Sheets. This is particularly useful for teams that collaborate on prospect lists in spreadsheets or need to perform custom data manipulation before importing to other systems.

These integrations eliminate the tedious export-import cycle that plagues many prospecting workflows. Instead of revealing contacts in ContactOut, exporting to CSV, cleaning up the data in Excel, and manually importing to your CRM, you can push contacts directly where they need to go with a single click.

When to Use ContactOut vs. Alternatives

Choose ContactOut if:

• You primarily prospect on LinkedIn and want seamless integration with the platform
• You need both personal and work email addresses, particularly for recruitment or reaching passive prospects
• You're a recruiter who also sources on GitHub and needs technical talent contact information
• You want a straightforward interface without a steep learning curve or extensive training requirements
• You need reliable email accuracy and are willing to pay a premium for high-quality data
• You value native CRM and ATS integrations over constantly exporting CSV files

Consider alternatives if:

• You need higher volume at lower cost (look at Lusha's entry-level plans or Hunter.io)
• You want all-in-one prospecting and outreach with sophisticated email sequences and campaign analytics (Clay or Instantly)
• You need the most accurate direct dial phone numbers for cold calling (Cognism or specialized phone data providers)
• You're on a tight budget and primarily need email addresses without phone data (Hunter.io, GetProspect)
• You want advanced sales intelligence with intent data and technographic insights (ZoomInfo, Cognism)
• You're focused on scale and need to process thousands of contacts daily (RocketReach, Apollo.io)

Maximizing Your B2B Prospecting Results

Tools like the ContactOut Chrome extension are valuable, but they're means to an end. The real goal is connecting with the right prospects and starting meaningful conversations that turn into business opportunities.

That's why we built Galadon's free B2B tools-to help sales professionals, recruiters, and marketers work smarter at every stage of the prospecting process. Whether you need to identify target companies, verify email addresses, find mobile numbers, or run background checks on prospects, we've created practical tools that complement platforms like ContactOut.

The best prospecting stacks combine multiple tools for different purposes. ContactOut handles the LinkedIn contact reveal. A targeting tool defines your ideal customers. An email verifier protects your sender reputation. A mobile finder supplements your contact data. And a good CRM ties everything together, creating a single source of truth for all prospect information and interactions.

If you're serious about prospecting, you might also benefit from Galadon Gold, our premium community for sales professionals. For $497/month, you get access to 4 live group calls per week with sales experts, direct access to proven cold email frameworks that are working right now, a community of 100+ active sales professionals sharing what's working in their markets, and priority support for all Galadon tools. This kind of ongoing education and peer support can dramatically accelerate your results beyond what any single tool can provide.

Start with strategy, use the right tools for each job, and focus on quality conversations over quantity. That's how you turn contact data into actual business results.

Remember: ContactOut gives you the contact information, but your message, timing, and value proposition determine whether prospects respond. No amount of accurate data can compensate for poorly crafted outreach. Invest time in developing compelling messaging, understanding your prospect's pain points, and articulating clear value. The contact finder is just the first step in a much longer journey.

Frequently Asked Questions About ContactOut

Does ContactOut work with LinkedIn Sales Navigator? Yes, ContactOut fully supports LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Recruiter, and standard LinkedIn accounts. The extension works seamlessly across all LinkedIn versions, allowing you to reveal contacts regardless of which LinkedIn subscription you have.

How many credits do I need per contact? Email reveals typically cost 1 credit, while phone number reveals may cost more credits depending on your plan. Bulk operations and exports also consume credits. Check your specific plan details to understand credit consumption, as this varies by subscription tier.

Can I get a refund for inaccurate data? ContactOut's refund policy for inaccurate data varies by plan. Some users report receiving credit refunds for bounced emails or incorrect phone numbers, but this isn't guaranteed. Check with ContactOut support for their current policy on data accuracy guarantees.

Does ContactOut comply with GDPR and CCPA? ContactOut states it complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations and provides mechanisms to request data removal. The platform collects data from publicly available sources and processes it in accordance with privacy laws. However, as with any data tool, users should understand their own compliance obligations when using contact data for outreach.

Can I use ContactOut without LinkedIn? You can use the Search Portal without a LinkedIn account, but the Chrome extension's full functionality requires linking your LinkedIn profile. The real-time reveal feature that displays contact information as you browse LinkedIn profiles specifically requires LinkedIn authentication.

Do unused credits roll over? No, ContactOut credits typically expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over to the next month. Plan your prospecting activities to use your full credit allocation each billing period to avoid wasting credits.

What happens if I hit my monthly export limit? If you reach your monthly export limit, you won't be able to export additional contacts until your billing cycle resets or you upgrade to a higher-tier plan. You can still reveal and view contact information within ContactOut; you just can't export or sync to external systems until your limit resets.

Can I share my ContactOut account with team members? The Free, Email, and Email + Phone plans are designed for individual users. If you need multi-user access, you'll need to upgrade to the Team/API plan, which supports unlimited users and team collaboration features.

Final Thoughts: Is ContactOut Worth It?

ContactOut Chrome extension offers genuine value for professionals who regularly prospect on LinkedIn and need reliable contact data. The email accuracy is strong, the interface is intuitive, and the integrations with major CRMs and ATS platforms eliminate workflow friction. For recruiters seeking personal email addresses and sales teams focused on LinkedIn-based prospecting, ContactOut delivers on its core promise.

However, the pricing can be steep, particularly for small teams or individuals, especially when you factor in the premium for US/UK data access. The credit system feels restrictive compared to truly unlimited alternatives, and the phone data accuracy doesn't quite match the email accuracy. The outreach features are basic compared to dedicated sales engagement platforms.

If your prospecting strategy centers on LinkedIn, you value data accuracy over volume, and you can justify the investment, ContactOut is a solid choice. But if you're on a tight budget, need high-volume prospecting at scale, or want more sophisticated outreach automation, explore alternatives like Apollo.io for all-in-one functionality, Lusha for more affordable pricing, or RocketReach for massive database coverage.

Ultimately, the best tool depends on your specific needs, budget, and prospecting workflow. Take advantage of free trials, test multiple platforms, and choose the one that integrates best with your existing tech stack and processes. The tool is just an enabler-your strategy, messaging, and persistence determine your actual results.