A popular free CRM with powerful marketing, sales, and service hubs that scale as your business grows.
Full Review
Apollo.io is an all-in-one sales intelligence and engagement platform with a database of over 275 million contacts. It combines prospecting,…
Full ReviewThe HubSpot CRM to Apollo.io workflow creates a powerful prospecting and sales engagement pipeline. Apollo.io handles lead discovery, contact enrichment, and outbound email sequencing, while HubSpot CRM serves as the system of record for managing relationships, tracking deals, and reporting on pipeline health. Together, they eliminate the gap between finding prospects and managing them through the sales funnel.
Apollo.io offers a native HubSpot integration that enables bidirectional contact syncing, automatic CRM logging of Apollo outreach activities, and deal creation from Apollo sequences. The integration is available in Apollo's Basic plan and above and can be configured in Apollo's Settings > Integrations > CRM section. For teams needing additional automation logic, Zapier provides supplementary connections between the two platforms.
The core business outcome is a streamlined outbound sales motion. Sales development reps (SDRs) use Apollo.io to build prospect lists, verify email addresses, and launch multi-step email sequences. When prospects engage — by replying, clicking links, or booking meetings — the data flows into HubSpot, where account executives manage deals. This division of labor, supported by automated data flow, scales outbound sales without scaling headcount proportionally.
| Step | Tool | Action | Connection to Next Step |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apollo.io | Prospect identified, enriched, and enrolled in outbound sequence | Native CRM sync pushes contact and activity data to HubSpot |
| 2 | HubSpot CRM | Contact created, activities logged, deal created when prospect converts | Sales pipeline managed through to close |
Begin in Apollo.io by building targeted prospect lists using its database of over 270 million contacts. Use filters such as Job Title (e.g., "VP of Marketing," "Head of Sales"), Company Size (50-200 employees), Industry (SaaS, Healthcare, Finance), Technologies Used, and Revenue Range to narrow your ideal customer profile. Save these as dynamic lists that automatically update as new matching contacts enter Apollo's database.
Verify email addresses using Apollo's built-in email verification before adding contacts to sequences. Create multi-step sequences combining automated emails, manual email tasks, phone call tasks, and LinkedIn connection requests. A typical sequence includes: Day 1 — personalized cold email, Day 3 — follow-up email with value proposition, Day 5 — LinkedIn connection request, Day 8 — email with case study, Day 12 — break-up email. Use Apollo's A/B testing to optimize subject lines and email copy.
Configure the HubSpot integration in Apollo's Settings > Integrations. Enable "Auto-sync contacts to HubSpot" and select the sync direction (Apollo to HubSpot, HubSpot to Apollo, or bidirectional). Map Apollo fields to HubSpot contact properties: Apollo's Person Title to HubSpot Job Title, Apollo's Company to HubSpot Company Name, Apollo's Phone to HubSpot Phone Number, and custom fields like Apollo's "Sequence Status" to a HubSpot custom property.
In HubSpot, create a custom contact property called "Apollo Sequence Status" (dropdown: Active, Completed, Replied, Bounced) and "Apollo Last Contacted" (date field). These properties will be populated automatically by the Apollo integration and help sales reps understand each contact's outbound history.
Set up HubSpot workflows to automate actions based on Apollo data. When "Apollo Sequence Status" changes to "Replied," automatically create a task for the assigned sales rep to review the reply and determine next steps. When a meeting is booked (Apollo detects a calendar booking link click), create a HubSpot deal in the first pipeline stage with the contact associated.
Build HubSpot dashboards that combine Apollo prospecting metrics with CRM pipeline data. Track key metrics like sequences sent, reply rates, meetings booked (from Apollo), and connect them to deals created, win rates, and revenue closed (from HubSpot). This end-to-end visibility reveals which outbound sequences and target segments produce the highest-value deals.
From Apollo.io to HubSpot: contact information (email, name, title, company, phone, LinkedIn URL), company data (size, industry, revenue, technologies), sequence enrollment status, email send/open/click/reply events, meeting booked events, and call logs. The native integration syncs in near real-time for activity data and every 5-15 minutes for contact property updates.
From HubSpot to Apollo.io: contact ownership, lifecycle stage, deal stage, and custom properties. This allows Apollo to exclude contacts already in active deals or existing customers from new outbound sequences, preventing embarrassing duplicate outreach.
SDR team scaling: A growing SaaS company hires SDRs who use Apollo.io to prospect and sequence. All their activity automatically appears in HubSpot, where managers track pipeline contribution by SDR, sequence performance, and lead-to-opportunity conversion rates — without requiring SDRs to manually log CRM activities.
ABM campaigns: Marketing identifies 200 target accounts. The list is imported to Apollo where SDRs run personalized multi-channel sequences. Engagement data flows to HubSpot where marketing can see which accounts are warming up and coordinate complementary advertising and content campaigns.
Founder-led sales: A startup founder uses Apollo to find and contact potential customers during evenings and weekends. Replies and meetings flow into HubSpot, where a part-time sales assistant manages follow-ups, proposals, and deal tracking during business hours.
Without this integration, SDRs spend 45-60 minutes daily manually logging outreach activities in the CRM. Over a 5-person SDR team, that is 18-25 hours per week of pure data entry eliminated. Additionally, automated contact enrichment from Apollo's database saves 15-20 minutes per prospect compared to manual LinkedIn research. For teams prospecting 50+ contacts daily, this reclaims 12+ hours weekly. The bidirectional sync also prevents 2-3 hours weekly of "did we already reach out to this company?" research.
Outreach.io and SalesLoft are enterprise-grade sales engagement platforms that offer deeper HubSpot integrations but at higher price points. ZoomInfo with HubSpot provides a similar prospecting-to-CRM workflow with a larger contact database but significantly higher cost. Lemlist is a more affordable outbound email tool that integrates with HubSpot via Zapier. For teams already paying for HubSpot Sales Hub, its built-in sequences feature handles basic outbound email automation natively.
