Best Groove by Clari Alternatives in 2026
Groove by Clari captures every sales activity into Salesforce as one source of truth. Compare Apollo.io, Outreach, Salesloft and Gong on architecture and cost.
Apollo.io, Outreach, Salesloft and Gong are the main Groove by Clari alternatives. Apollo.io publishes a price and bundles contact data, Outreach and Salesloft sell cadence governance for larger teams, and Gong is conversation intelligence. All three of those alternatives keep their own record alongside the CRM.
Key takeaways
- Groove by Clari captures every sales activity into Salesforce, which Clari describes as a single source of truth.
- Clari's pricing page publishes no dollar figure for Groove, so evaluating cost requires a sales conversation.
- Every alternative that keeps its own record reintroduces a reconciliation job between that record and the CRM, which somebody has to own.
- That Salesforce focus is worth a great deal on Salesforce and close to nothing on any other CRM, so the CRM decision comes first.
Reviewed and updated August 29, 2026
Best Groove by Clari Alternatives in 2026
Groove by Clari sells one job above all others: capturing every sales activity into Salesforce so the CRM is a single source of truth. That focus is the whole product, and it is also the reason the shortlist of genuine alternatives is shorter than a feature grid suggests: swap it for a platform that keeps its own record, and reconciling the two becomes somebody's job.
Capture Depth and Platform Breadth Are Different Purchases, Not Different Features
A broad platform keeps its own database of prospects, sequences and activity, then pushes a copy into the CRM. Most sales engagement tools work this way, and it works fine until the two records disagree. When they do, somebody has to decide which one is right, and that job never goes away.
A Salesforce-centred platform makes the CRM the destination for everything it captures. Clari's own page for Groove puts it as a single source of truth, with automation and AI capturing every sales activity, so reporting leans on Salesforce rather than on a parallel record.
The trade is portability. A Salesforce-centred tool is worth a great deal on Salesforce and close to nothing off it, so the design that makes it valuable also makes it a poor choice if a CRM migration is on the horizon.
That is the axis to evaluate on. Comparing a capture-focused tool with a broad platform on feature counts produces a grid where they look similar and a rollout where they do not.
Why Consider Alternatives to Groove by Clari
Groove by Clari does the capture job well, and the reasons to look elsewhere are mostly about fit rather than quality.
The price is unpublished. Clari's pricing page carries no dollar figure, so evaluating the cost means booking a call, and comparing it against two other unpriced platforms means booking three.
You are not committed to Salesforce. The Salesforce focus is the product. On a different CRM, or with a migration planned, the main reason to buy it is gone.
You need a contact database too. Groove sequences prospects. It does not source them, so list building is a separate purchase and a separate line item.
Conversation intelligence is the actual gap. If the problem is what happens on calls rather than how touches get sent, a different category of tool addresses it.
Top Groove by Clari Alternatives
- B2B contact and company database (240M+ contacts)
- Multi-channel sequences (email, phone, LinkedIn)
- AI-powered email writing and optimization
- Built-in dialer with call recording
- and 6 more listed below
- Multi-Channel Engagement and Sequences
- AI-powered email generation and optimization
- Conversation intelligence with call recording
- Deal health scoring and pipeline management
- and 6 more listed below
- Cadence automation
- Conversation intelligence with AI call summaries
- Deal pipeline tracking and management
- AI-driven revenue forecasting
- and 6 more listed below
1. Apollo.io
Starting Price: Free | Website: www.apollo.io
All-in-one sales intelligence and engagement platform combining a 240M+ contact database with automated sequences, email outreach, dialer, and AI-powered workflows for prospecting at scale.
Key Advantages over Groove by Clari:
- Lower starting price (Free vs Contact Sales)
- Broader integration ecosystem (12 vs 9 integrations)
- Offers a free tier (Groove by Clari does not)
- Unique capabilities: B2B contact and company database (240M+ contacts), Multi-channel sequences (email, phone, LinkedIn), AI-powered email writing and optimization
Considerations:
- Requires evaluation to see if it fits your specific workflow
Notable Features: B2B contact and company database (240M+ contacts), Multi-channel sequences (email, phone, LinkedIn), AI-powered email writing and optimization, Built-in dialer with call recording, Automated workflows and engagement rules
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, LinkedIn, Zapier, Slack, and 4 more
2. Outreach
Starting Price: Contact Sales | Website: www.outreach.io
Enterprise sales engagement platform with multi-channel sequences, AI-powered deal insights, revenue forecasting, and conversation intelligence for scaling outbound sales teams.
Key Advantages over Groove by Clari:
- Broader integration ecosystem (12 vs 9 integrations)
- Unique capabilities: Multi-Channel Engagement and Sequences, AI-powered email generation and optimization, Conversation intelligence with call recording
Considerations:
- Requires evaluation to see if it fits your specific workflow
Notable Features: Multi-Channel Engagement and Sequences, AI-powered email generation and optimization, Conversation intelligence with call recording, Deal health scoring and pipeline management, Revenue forecasting with scenario planning
Integrations: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Gong, Chorus, and 4 more
3. Salesloft
Starting Price: Contact Sales | Website: www.salesloft.com
AI-powered revenue workflow platform offering cadence automation, conversation intelligence, deal management, and forecasting to help sales teams drive predictable revenue.
Key Advantages over Groove by Clari:
- Broader integration ecosystem (12 vs 9 integrations)
- Unique capabilities: Cadence automation, Conversation intelligence with AI call summaries, Deal pipeline tracking and management
Considerations:
- Requires evaluation to see if it fits your specific workflow
Notable Features: Cadence automation, Conversation intelligence with AI call summaries, Deal pipeline tracking and management, AI-driven revenue forecasting, CRM sync with bi-directional updates
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Drift, Vidyard, and 4 more
4. Gong
Starting Price: Contact Sales | Website: www.gong.io
Revenue AI platform that captures and analyzes customer interactions across calls, emails, and meetings to deliver deal intelligence, forecasting, and sales coaching insights.
Key Advantages over Groove by Clari:
- Broader integration ecosystem (12 vs 9 integrations)
- Unique capabilities: AI-powered call recording and transcription, Deal intelligence and risk alerts, Revenue forecasting with pipeline analytics
Considerations:
- Requires evaluation to see if it fits your specific workflow
Notable Features: AI-powered call recording and transcription, Deal intelligence and risk alerts, Revenue forecasting with pipeline analytics, Sales engagement sequences (Gong Engage), Coaching insights and talk-track analysis
Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex, Gmail, and 4 more
Quick Comparison Table
| Tool | Starting Price | Features | Integrations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groove by Clari (original) | Contact Sales | 10 features | 9 integrations |
| Apollo.io | Free | 10 features | 12 integrations |
| Outreach | Contact Sales | 10 features | 12 integrations |
| Salesloft | Contact Sales | 10 features | 12 integrations |
| Gong | Contact Sales | 10 features | 12 integrations |
Reading the Roster: What Each Option Trades
The roster above lists what each tool does. What follows is what each one costs you in something other than money.
Apollo.io is the only tool in this group that publishes a price, and its pricing page confirms a Starter plan that is free forever. It is also the only one that bundles a contact database with the sequencer, so prospecting and sending sit in one subscription rather than two. What you give up is depth on the revenue-intelligence side, and data quality that varies by segment rather than holding uniformly. Teams that buy it for the database and use the sequencer because it is already there tend to be satisfied. Teams that need enterprise sequencing governance find the ceiling quickly.
Outreach is the enterprise default for large sales development organisations, and its pricing page publishes no figure at all, so evaluating it begins with a sales conversation rather than a comparison. What the money buys is governance: sequence permissions, shared templates, and reporting a revenue operations team can administer across dozens of reps without each of them inventing a private process. For a team of three that is a heavy tool with an expensive procurement cycle attached. For a team of forty it is the reason the forty stay coordinated.
Salesloft competes with Outreach on the same ground, and its pricing page likewise publishes no dollar figure. The distinguishing pitch is that cadence execution, conversation intelligence and deal management sit inside one platform rather than being bought separately, which matters if a call-recording tool was already on the shopping list. The trade is the same as Outreach's: an unpublished price means a procurement cycle before you can even compare, and the product assumes multi-step cadences are how your team sells.
Gong appears in this roundup as an alternative and is mostly a different product. Its pricing page publishes no per-seat figure and says the model depends on factors specific to the team. What it does exceptionally well is capture and analyse conversations: call recording, transcription, deal risk signals, and coaching material drawn from what reps actually said on the call. What it does not do is replace a sequencer. Teams that swap a cadence tool for Gong discover that gap in week two, usually the hard way.
- Every sales activity captured into Salesforce
- One source of truth rather than a parallel record
- Reporting leans on Salesforce
- Worth little to a team not on Salesforce
- Own database alongside the CRM
- Two records to keep aligned, and somebody owns that
- Portable across CRMs and CRM migrations
- Deeper governance and cross-rep reporting features
- Contact database and sequencer in one subscription
- Publishes a price rather than requiring a sales call
- No list-building purchase to make separately
- Least suited to large-team sequencing governance
Where This Sits in a Cold Outbound Stack
A sales engagement platform is a sending and tracking layer, and it is worth being precise about what it does not decide. It does not decide who you contact, and list quality moves reply rate further than sequence design does. It does not decide what you say. It does not make a weak offer land.
It is also worth noticing how much of the product a given team will actually use. Every platform in this roundup is built around multi-step cadences: a first touch, bumps on days three, seven and twelve, then a breakup message. RevenueFlow runs one message per campaign and sends no thread replies or bump sequences, on the view that a second message landing under the one somebody ignored reads as a bump whatever the campaign structure calls it. A team working that way is buying a cadence engine and using one step of it, which is a real argument for the cheapest competent option rather than the most capable one.
The same logic applies to conversation intelligence. Recording and scoring calls is valuable once there are calls to record. On a programme still trying to book the first ten meetings a month, it is a tool bought ahead of the problem it solves.
When Moving Off Groove by Clari Is Worth It
Salesforce is no longer the destination. A CRM migration removes the entire architectural argument. Decide the CRM first, then the engagement layer, and never the other way round.
You need list building in the same tool. Apollo.io bundles a contact database with the sequencer, which turns two purchases into one for teams that do not already have a data provider.
Governance at scale is the requirement. Outreach and Salesloft sell permissioning, shared templates and cross-rep reporting as their core product, and at a large rep count that depth matters more than write-versus-sync.
The problem is on the call, not before it. Conversation intelligence is a different purchase, and swapping sequencers will not touch it.
When Staying on Groove by Clari Wins
If Salesforce is the system of record and it is going to stay that way, that capture depth is a durable advantage rather than a feature that competitors will match next quarter. Every alternative that keeps its own record reintroduces a reconciliation job, and teams routinely underestimate what that job costs in trust rather than in hours.
Staying is also right when the complaint is really about reply rate. The sending platform is a long way downstream of the things that decide whether a cold email works, and a migration will not move them.
Running the Switch Without Losing the Programme
Moving off a Salesforce-centred platform is a data question before it is a tooling question.
Work out what lives only in Salesforce today and what a synced replacement will keep in its own database instead, because that boundary is the reconciliation job you are taking on. Decide who owns it before the migration rather than after.
Export first: contact lists, sequence templates, custom fields, and the historical reply and meeting data that gives you a baseline. Move one campaign or one seller before moving everything, and run both platforms in parallel for a couple of weeks so the comparison is measured rather than remembered.
Confirm sending domains and inboxes are connected and authenticating on the new platform before any real volume shifts. Check the contract and its notice period early. Then measure at thirty days against the exported baseline.
How This Comparison Was Put Together
Prices and plan details come from each vendor's own pricing page, read on the day of writing and kept as a dated snapshot. Four of the five platforms here publish no dollar figure on that page at all, which is recorded as what it is rather than filled in from a third-party blog. Feature lists are the vendors' own descriptions of their products.
Nothing here is ranked by measured reply rate, deliverability or meetings booked. Those outcomes belong to the list, the offer and the sending infrastructure far more than to the platform pushing the send, so a league table presented as a measurement would be invented. Read this as a map of what each vendor sells, what it assumes about how you sell, and what it will cost you to find out its price.
The Short Version
If Salesforce is staying and hygiene matters, staying put is the structurally correct answer and this whole comparison is academic. If you need contact data and sending in one place with a price you can read, Apollo.io is the only one here that offers both. If governance across a large rep team is the requirement, Outreach and Salesloft are the two to price, and pricing them means booking calls. If the gap is what happens on calls, Gong is a different purchase and the honest one.
Decide the CRM before the engagement layer. Getting that order wrong is how teams end up migrating twice.
Related Reading
- Groove by Clari vs Outreach: Sales Engagement Platform Comparison
- Groove by Clari vs Salesloft: Sales Engagement Platform Comparison
- Gong vs Groove by Clari: Sales Engagement Platform Comparison
- Apollo.io vs Groove by Clari: Sales Engagement Platform Comparison
If you would rather have this run for you, RevenueFlow books qualified meetings on a pay-per-meeting basis and publishes client results.
Pricing and features are taken from the vendors' own pages. Verify current terms with the vendor before relying on them.
Frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions- What does the Salesforce focus mean in practice?
- Groove captures every sales activity and puts it into Salesforce, which Clari describes as a single source of truth. The aim is one authoritative record rather than two that have to be reconciled, so management reporting leans on Salesforce rather than on an approximation built somewhere else.
- Is a synced platform actually a problem?
- It is a job rather than a problem. Two records that can disagree means somebody decides which is authoritative and keeps them aligned, and teams routinely underestimate what that costs in trust rather than in hours. Synced platforms buy portability in exchange, which matters if a CRM migration is anywhere on the horizon.
- Which alternative includes contact data?
- Apollo.io. It bundles a contact database with the sequencer, so prospecting and sending are one subscription rather than two. Groove by Clari sequences prospects and does not source them, so a list-building purchase sits alongside it. Outreach and Salesloft are the same in that respect.
- Should I pick the CRM or the engagement platform first?
- The CRM, always. A Salesforce-centred engagement tool is a strong choice while Salesforce is the system of record and a poor one the moment that changes. Choosing the engagement layer first and the CRM second is how teams end up running two migrations instead of one.
About the author.
Tim Carden is CMO / CTO at RevenueFlow, which builds and operates outbound revenue engines for B2B companies. Studied at McGill University.
Tim Carden · CMO / CTO
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