Key takeaways
- Compare cost per usable contact, not cost per record.
- Check what uses a credit. Being charged for records with no email or phone inflates the true price.
- Annual contracts and seat minimums matter more than the monthly number.
What to do
- Ask what uses a credit. Viewing, revealing, exporting? Are you charged when no email or phone exists?
- Ask about the contract. Monthly or annual, seat minimums, auto-renewal terms and cancellation.
- Test your own market. Search for the people you really sell to on a free plan or trial and count how many have a usable email or phone.
- Work out cost per usable contact. Monthly price divided by the number of reachable people you can actually pull.
| Pricing model | How it works | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Per seat, annual | Each user pays, billed yearly | Seat minimums, auto-renewal, export caps |
| Monthly credits | A pool of contacts per month | What counts as a credit, rollover rules |
| One-off list | Pay once for a file | Age of the data, no refresh, resale rights |
| Free tier | A small monthly 100 | Which fields and filters are actually included |
What to know
Two buyers can pay the same monthly price and get very different value. If a tool charges a credit for every record you view, including ones with no contact details, your effective price per reachable person can be several times the advertised one.
Buzzlist pricing is flat and monthly with no seat minimum: Free is 100 contacts a month with no card, Starter is $199 for 1,500 contacts, Growth is $499 for 4,000 contacts with deeper business profiles and work emails, and Scale is $1,499 for 15,000. Searching, filtering and saving are free, and a contact is only used when a real email or phone is revealed.
