Clay put to the test: AI orchestration for B2B lead lists

Clay is an AI-powered sales tool that helps B2B teams find, enrich, and prepare leads for personalized outreach. Instead of offering databases itself, Clay sees itself as an orchestration platform: It connects over 100 data sources and AI services in a table-like interface and uses them to build automated workflows for your lead generation.

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What is Clay anyway?

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Clay is not a classic database like ZoomInfo or Apollo, but an open data orchestration platform. You connect Clay to various sources — such as Google, LinkedIn, Hunter, Clearbit, OpenAI and many more — and build your own data workflows from them in a table-like interface.

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In practice, this means: You import a list of companies or domains, define columns (“puzzles”) that perform specific actions, and let Clay automatically research, enrich and pre-qualify. Clay is therefore more of the “brain” in front of your CRM: You send the final cleaned and enriched leads to HubSpot, Salesforce or your outreach platform.

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Clay review: Key features at a glance

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In the clay test, four functional blocks stand out in particular, which set the tool apart from classic “list enrichment”:

• Orchestrate 100+ data providers in one table
• Waterfall enrichment to optimize costs and data quality
• deep AI integration for hyper-personalization in outreach
• Claygent as an AI agent for live web research

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Clay thus clearly positions itself as a professional tool for B2B sales, RevOps and growth teams — less than a “simple” email finder tool.

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The so-called Clay Table At first glance, it looks like an Excel spreadsheet in which every column can be an action: find an email, validate an email, summarize a website, search for a LinkedIn profile, analyze job advertisements and much more. These “puzzles” can be combined into complex workflows, including if/then logic.

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Waterfall enrichment & AI personalization

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Particularly exciting in the clay test is Waterfall enrichment. Instead of using an expensive data provider for all contacts, you define a multi-level set of rules: First, Clay tries to find the email with a free service, resorts to a cheaper provider in case of failure and only uses expensive, highly accurate sources as the last stage. This reduces costs per data set while maintaining high data quality.

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The second strength is deep AI integration: Clay can integrate OpenAI models directly into lines — for example, to summarize websites, analyze LinkedIn posts, or write personalized email intros. In combination with the enrichment data, the result is highly personalized messages that look significantly less like mass mailings.

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With Claygent Is there also an AI agent who visits live websites, extracts information (e.g. names in the imprint, speaker lists, latest news) and writes it to your spreadsheet. For data that is not in any standard database, this is extremely helpful in practice — for example in niche industries or events.

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Onboarding, UX & entry hurdle

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In the test, Clay makes an ambiguous impression when getting started: The interface looks tidy, the account setup is uncomplicated, and initial learning resources (onboarding videos, Clay University, Slack community) help get started.

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At the same time, the “blank canvas” should not be underestimated at the beginning: Unlike classic lead tools, Clay doesn't provide ready-made lists or ready-made processes, but expects you to build your own logic. Anyone who is used to tables, if/then logic and API links will quickly find their way around. For less technical users, however, the learning curve can be steep.

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In practice, this means that Clay is not something that is rolled out “in an hour” in a team. For serious use, set aside time to set up, test, and document your workflows — or have someone on the team who has RevOps/Automation experience.

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For whom clay is really worthwhile

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From our view of Clay and the available experience reports, a clear picture emerges: Clay is a Professional tool for B2B sales, RevOps and growth teamswho want to do lead generation and personalization on a large scale. Clay is particularly suitable for:

• B2B company with active outbound sales
• Agencies that build lead lists and outreach campaigns for clients
• tech-savvy marketers and RevOps teams who love working with data and APIs

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Clay, on the other hand, is less suitable for classic B2C e-commerce retailers, very small teams or companies looking for a “plug and play” solution without training. If you just want to quickly scrape a few emails and throw them into a campaign, you're often better off with simpler, cheaper tools.

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Clay experiences at a glance: Strengths & Weaknesses

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When you bundle experience reports and tests on clay, clear strengths emerge:

• enormous flexibility thanks to 100+ integrations and AI connection
• strong waterfall enrichment logic for cost optimization
• deep personalization options with GPT-based models
• table-like interface that makes data work extremely powerful

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On the other hand, there are weaknesses that you should be aware of:

• steep learning curve — especially for teams without a technical person
• Credit-based pricing, which can quickly become expensive without monitoring
• clear B2B and US focus, especially DACH data is not always perfect
• No own outreach function: You have to send emails with other tools

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Our conclusion from Clay's experiences: Anyone who is ready to learn will get one of the most powerful tools for B2B data orchestration. Anyone who wants to do “just a bit of lead gen” will probably be frustrated — and pay too much.

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Clay in the DACH context: Data protection & support

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Especially from a DACH perspective, it's worth taking a look at data protection and governance: Clay is a US platform that works with many US-based subprocessors (e.g. cloud infrastructure and AI providers). GDPR-compliant use usually requires an order processing contract (DPA) and appropriate standard contractual clauses.

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Some reviews highlight that detailed data protection documents and DPAs are offered primarily in enterprise scenarios and that there is no dedicated German-language support. For larger B2B organizations, this is manageable — but requires internal coordination with legal/compliance.

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For teams with high data residency requirements and strict compliance requirements, this can be a knock-out criterion. A thorough data protection check and clean documentation of the data flows are recommended in advance.

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Clay alternatives & classification in the tool stack

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Many reviews compare Clay with classic data providers and web scraping tools. The picture is relatively consistent: Clay is extremely powerful but complex — and is particularly worthwhile for teams that already use multiple data sources and want to orchestrate them centrally.

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For users who primarily easy web scraping or looking for “out-of-the-box” lead tools, alternatives are usually:

• specialized web scrapers with ready-made templates
• All-in-one outbound tools with integrated email delivery
• classic data providers with ready-made data packages

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In many setups, Clay is less of a substitute than middleware: It sits between raw data (web, data provider, CRM) and the actual outreach tools and ensures that your lists are clean, enriched, and prioritized.

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Clay FAQ: Common questions from our clay test

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Does Clay replace my CRM or outreach tool?

No Clay is neither a CRM nor an email tool. It sits in front of it and prepares your data: build, enrich, filter, prioritize lists — and then hand them over to HubSpot, Salesforce, or your outreach tool.

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Is Clay a data provider like ZoomInfo or Apollo?

Also no. Clay doesn't have its own database, but connects you to many data sources (e.g. ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit, Hunter, Google, LinkedIn). Clay orchestrates these sources instead of selling data himself.

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Do I need programming skills to use Clay?

You don't need to be able to program, but a good understanding of tables, logic (“If/Then”) and APIs is clearly an advantage. Many reviews describe Clay as a “low-code” platform aimed at tech-savvy marketers, RevOps, and growth teams — not complete beginners.

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Is Clay worthwhile for small teams or solo self-employed people?

That depends heavily on your use case. If your business model is based on scalable B2B outbound and you want to combine many data sources, Clay can also be worthwhile for smaller teams. On the other hand, if you only occasionally research leads or run simple campaigns, the price (and learning curve) isn't justified in many cases.

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Clay Conclusion: Our test result for B2B teams

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Clay is currently one of the most powerful tools for B2B data orchestration and AI-powered prospecting. The combination of 100+ data sources, waterfall enrichment, AI personalization and flexible table logic makes the tool a powerful lever for RevOps and sales teams who are data-driven and want to seriously scale outbound.

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At the same time, Clay is not a “quick start tool”: The learning curve, the credit-based pricing model and the B2B/US focus require technical expertise, a clean setup and clear governance rules. However, anyone who does this gets a platform that can massively speed up manual research, list building and personalization — and ideally achieves significantly better outbound results.

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The KI Company helps companies to use such tools in a targeted manner: from selection (Clay or Alternative?) from designing workflows to integration into CRM and outreach stacks. If you would like to check whether Clay fits your go-to-market strategy — or which AI-based alternatives make more sense — we would be happy to advise you without obligation.