Verified B2B data for sales and outbound teams.

There is no single answer, and a provider claiming otherwise is describing their own coverage rather than yours. Databases are strong in different segments: one may be excellent on North American software and thin on European manufacturing, and the aggregate record count tells you nothing about either. Test against reality instead. Take fifty accounts you know well, run them through each provider, and compare what share of expected contacts appear, what share of emails survive verification, and how many direct dials reach the person named.

There are free tiers, and they are useful for testing a provider rather than running a campaign on. Free tiers typically cap credits, restrict filters, and expose the least recently verified slice of the database, which is the part most likely to bounce. Using one to check match rates against accounts you already know is sensible diligence. Using one to build a sending list is how new domains get damaged before they have sent anything worth sending.

In the United States CAN-SPAM permits unsolicited commercial email provided the sender identifies itself honestly, uses accurate headers and subject lines, offers a working opt-out and includes a physical postal address. It is a compliance regime rather than a prohibition. Other jurisdictions are stricter: GDPR requires a lawful basis for processing in the EU, Canada's CASL generally requires consent, and several go further. This describes how the rules are commonly framed and is not legal advice; confirm your own markets with counsel.

Because the cost lands on the sending domain rather than on the list. Unverified contacts produce bounces, and bounce rate is one of the signals receiving providers use to decide whether mail from a domain reaches an inbox at all. That damage accumulates against the domain and the address the mail left from, so one bad campaign can degrade sending that took weeks of warmup to establish. Verification before sending is not a quality nicety, it is what protects the asset the campaign runs on.

It depends so heavily on deal size that the number alone is not decision-useful. A $2,000 cost per lead is cheap against a six-figure contract and ruinous against a $5,000 one. The ratio worth tracking is cost per lead against average contract value, and then cost per meeting your reps accepted, since a low cost per lead usually means a low bar for what counted as one. Any benchmark quoted without the deal size attached is describing somebody else's business.