Email marketing is one of the most widely used methods to generate leads for a new business or any B2B business generally. The only problem is that you need to have these emails in the first place before you can create and send email marketing campaigns.
Business development and sales managers previously had to dig through multiple websites to search for emails online by following a painstaking, manual, one-by-one process. Unfortunately, this method can go on endlessly resulting in bottlenecks that prevent you from streamlining, scaling, and driving significant results from your email marketing efforts.
Lucky for you, you don’t need to go down that route because technology has given us some great tools that simplify finding email addresses. These are, you guessed it, email finders.
In this article, we’ll examine one of the best email finders in the market, namely, Hunter.io, to see how good it is.
What Is Hunter.io?
Hunter is a cloud-based email search tool that aids businesses in discovering and authenticating email addresses from websites, social media platforms, and other sources.
Additionally, Hunter.io provides “Campaigns,” a straightforward bulk/cold emailing outreach tool that allows you to get the email addresses of prospects and help you schedule email sequences targeted toward them.
It combines multiple tools into one slick suite and also offers a full feature set for anyone looking to launch an email outreach campaign.
How Does It Function?
Hunter.io functions by crawling the internet and searching for the email results you want. It is entirely legal, but when using the results in your marketing, you must follow the laws and regulations concerning data in your country/state of residence.
Enter the URL of the website you’re interested in into the search field, and then click “Find email addresses.” After that, you’ll get a list of potential email addresses available on that site. These addresses can then be exported and added to your database.
Hunter.io also allows you to validate the email addresses it has discovered, allowing you to discard those that are invalid.
Who Uses Hunter.io?
Hunter can be used in several industries. Its features, for instance, can immediately aid in your SEO efforts by streamlining your link-building initiatives. Moreover, it can allow your sales and marketing teams to generate leads among other things.
From an SEO standpoint, you’ll be surprised to know that, in forums and groups dedicated to affiliate marketing, Hunter.io is most frequently brought up when people ask which email discovery tool is the best at the moment.
Several well-known tech companies, including IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe, use Hunter.io. Therefore, it meets large and small organizations’ needs in terms of performance and features.
How Do I Begin Using Hunter?
- Visit the Hunter IO signup page
- Type in your company email address or select “Sign Up With Google” to register
- Then select “Continue”
- Click or tap “Create Account” after providing your name and choose a password
- Access your account by logging in using the email and password you used during signup
- You’ll now be taken to the main dashboard, where you’ll be encouraged to launch your initial search
- You will be prompted to add your phone number for security after providing the specifics of your search
- After entering your phone number, select “Send Verification Code”
- You’ll receive the code via SMS and must enter it in the box you now see on your screen
- You will then get access to fifty free searches for free or you can choose a premium subscription
Cost of Hunter.io
You can pay for your Hunter.io subscription either monthly or yearly, and your price options are as follows:
- Free Pack: This package allows you to search 25 times and gives you 50 verifications each month.
- Starter Pack: Hunter’s Starter pack, which is the most inexpensive, gets you 1,000 requests each month at $49.
- Growth Pack: For this plan, you have to pay $99 monthly and you will get 5,000 requests per month. If you’re a small or medium business, this is the one to get.
- Pro Plan: A staggering 20,000 requests are included in the Pro pack each month but the price point is equally staggering. You need to shell out $199 per month for this plan, which is a steep climb from the Growth pack pricing.
- Business Pack: The business pack goes for a monthly cost of $399 bundle, giving you 50,000 requests each month. Suited for large enterprises, this plan is geared to make you the King of the Hunters.
The prices listed above apply if you choose to pay on a monthly basis. You can save 30% off the listed price when paying annually.
Hunter.io Features
Hunter.io can initially appear to be nothing more than an email find and verifier. The software does, however, have a wide range of additional functions. The following are some of the features that make Hunter.io stand out as a top email-finding tool.
Interface
Claiming to have the most excellent email hunter on the market is of little use if the user interface is a complete mess. So what is Hunter.io like in this regard?
They have adopted an entirely minimalist style. Thus, even if it can appear sparse initially, it also means there isn’t much clutter. As a result, finding the feature you need will take less effort and time.
In Hunter.io, form is less important than function. Enter the domain you’re searching email addresses for, select “All,” “Personal,” or “Generic,” and then click the spyglass icon on your home dashboard to start the search function. It’s as simple as that!
Domain Search
Still, on the homepage, you can look for emails on Hunter.io by entering a domain of your choice. So instead of going through every page of a website for the email you require, it is now simpler to rapidly search across a complete website.
Another advantage is that the tool can search a whole website, even the invisible code. This increases the likelihood that you will locate the precise email you seek without performing any site inspection manually.
Additionally, Hunter.io’s pattern recognition software will recognize how the business configures its emails, making it more straightforward to find the email of the desired individual.
Email Finder
As suggested by the name, this is unquestionably the most used feature of Hunter.io and allows you to locate email addresses for both persons and companies. It accomplishes this by accessing its enormous email database and checking the website URL for any linked email accounts.
This tool not only provides you with the email address but can also occasionally locate other forms of contact information, such as phone numbers and social media accounts.
Author Finder
The feature’s nature is evident from the name. It allows you to input the URL of an article and get the email address of the author. Additionally, it includes not only the author’s email address but also their full name.
Email Verifier
When you’ve finished your email search, you can verify that the address is legitimate using the email verification tool. This is advantageous since it reduces the number of emails that bounce, preventing you from running into issues with your email provider.
The confidence score on Hunter.io gives you a sense of your chances of successfully reaching the lead using the email address the app has discovered.
Typically, anything above or equal to 90% is a good score. But let us add the caveat that the confidence scores aren’t always accurate and can be a shallow metric.
Bulk Tasks
You can effectively and efficiently get the best outcomes by using the bulk tasks option.
The search tool operates on extensive lead lists. It allows you to perform each of the four tasks we listed above.
Multiple domain or company names can be entered (one per line), which will scrape them for pertinent email addresses. Additionally, it supports various CSV, Excel, TXT, or Numbers files when it comes to exports and imports.
Additionally, you can set the maximum allowed number of addresses per domain for the search. If it discovers more, the tool filters them and only offers the most trustworthy outcomes.
There is an option to do email verification on the findings, which will somewhat slow down the procedure. You also have the opportunity to include the source URLs.
After pressing the upload button, the procedure is finished. Finally, a list of emails with the additional information is presented.
Just keep in mind that only premium users can download the findings. Therefore, it’s a good idea to use the bulk email verification feature while looking for many email addresses. Doing this can lower the number of bounced emails in your campaign.
Leads
Hunter.io provides its own tool for handling customer relationships; its own CRM in a sense. On top of that, you can quickly transfer leads between platforms thanks to the integration with well-known CRMs.
This helpful tool aids in work management and compiles all detected email addresses into one place for easy access.
From there, you can filter your saved email addresses by business, organization, website, or position. These can then be transferred to other applications such as the popular email marketing automation tool, Mailchimp.
If your use case mainly revolves around link-building and other related tasks, then Hunter.io can also function as your lead management or CRM system. However, you might need more specialist CRM software for more complicated projects.
Campaigns
The Hunter.io campaign management tool isn’t overly complicated, just like the leads feature. So if you wish to send brief emails without any opt-in forms, its simplicity could work in your favor.
The application helps you create campaigns and follow-ups using your Gmail account. It has a few extra options and looks similar to a typical email form.
The technology also makes organizing a follow-up email incredibly simple. Choose how many days after you send the first email you want a follow-up to be sent.
More sophisticated solutions offer a more comprehensive range of options, including what should be done in scenarios where a user clicks on your link but doesn’t convert.
However, the email outreach capabilities of Hunter.io are more than sufficient for modest link-building outreach operations.
Chrome Extension
In our opinion, the Hunter.io extension that you get for the Chrome web browser is one of Hunter.io’s best features.
Even though it can seem like a minor inconvenience initially, continually switching between different web pages to copy and paste domains can be time-consuming.
Before you even realize it, you may have wasted a solid 30-40 minutes switching web pages to transfer hundreds to thousands of information at different times throughout the day.
Thanks to the Chrome extension, you can do a single-click search on your targeted websites.
This saves a ton of time and makes it much easier to sift through emails for larger firms with hundreds or thousands of people. In addition, you can use the Hunter.io Chrome extension even with the most basic package because it is free.
Google Sheets Integration
The Google Sheets integration is the last feature that makes Hunter.io stand out as the best email-finding tool.
You can instantly add relevant email addresses to your listed list of inputs through the Hunter.io Google Sheets add-on. To help you clean up the list, you can also select numerous emails from an email list you acquired and authenticate them.
You must manually enable the add-on from the Google Sheets add-on menu to use this integration. The Hunter.io Google Sheets extension comes even with the free plan. However, you might discover that you use up your credits quite rapidly.
Customer Support
User-friendliness was taken into consideration when designing Hunter.io. As a result, using this app shouldn’t be difficult if you are familiar with other CRM systems.
This does not preclude you from ever needing tech support, though. Fortunately, you can access a comprehensive list of tutorials, video guides, and FAQs by visiting the help center on the Hunter.io website. These resources can help you find the solution to your problem.
You can speak with the company’s representatives if you feel that this website section does not provide adequate information.
The direct chat icon in the bottom right corner of the website is the simplest way to achieve this.
The first step in the customer support process is a chatbot that assists in focusing on a specific help issue. You are then prompted to write your question and wait for the first available agent to respond after selecting the type of assistance you need. They usually respond in a few hours, according to the information on the website.
Pros and Cons
We’ve highlighted some benefits Hunter.io can provide for you and your company. Still, we’d be dishonest if we didn’t also assess some of its shortcomings. So, in that vein, let us run through some of Hunter’s benefits and drawbacks:
Pros
- Free Searches – Up to a whopping 50 free searches are available on Hunter.io. This is perfect for individuals who want to test it before committing to a paid package.
- Reliability – Overall, Hunter.io’s search results are very trustworthy. This is partly because users can filter out inaccurate or irrelevant results by combining the search and verification functions.
- Integration – A streamlined email marketing system is made possible because you can link Hunter with Google Sheets, with further rumors suggesting that the company is working on more integrations.
Cons
- Price – Hunter offers 50 free searches, which is fantastic. Still, the packages are relatively expensive, with the least expensive starting at $49 per month.
- LinkedIn – Hunter no longer offers LinkedIn integration which is a bummer because it was a helpful tool for finding email addresses.
- Restrictions – Hunter is restricted to looking for corporate email addresses exclusively; personal ones cannot be found. This could result in addresses like “info@xxxxx” populating search results rather than a specific person’s address.
Can Hunter.io Save You Time?
Hunter.io helps you save time and effort that would otherwise be spent manually finding and verifying emails.
Additionally, using the tool can result in higher revenue and ROI on outreach spending by providing more accurate emails and allowing you to send more precise emails, as well as connecting you with the right prospects.
Final Verdict
We advise you to board the Hunter.io train. Overall, it’s an unbelievably user-friendly product with many excellent capabilities for any organization trying to expand its lead generation and marketing efforts.
So, if you’ve been thinking about starting to use the tool, go ahead and do it. There is, after all, a great free plan that can deliver a lot for your company. After that, if you get the desired results, upgrade your plan to get more searches, verifications, and features.