5 LeanData Alternatives Based On What You're Trying To Do

If you've landed on this page, you have a big decision to make about your tech stack. But the good news is you've already taken the first step, which is to do some research. Love that for you. You're likely in one of two situations. The first? You're inheriting an old LeanData flow and you're scared to touch it. The spiderweb of logic is out of control and you don't want to be the person that broke lead routing. 😬 The second — LeanData is now cost prohibitive for your organization and you're looking for less expensive solutions. The good news is that we can help on both fronts.

Why are you here, really?

Sure, LeanData is the OG leading routing solution. Once upon a time, it was probably the best. But at this point, LeanData isn't a great choice for a litany of reasons. Thankfully, you've got options.

There are two primary use cases for LeanData:

1. Lead routing
2. CRM hygiene

Different solutions shine in different areas. There's also one solution that covers both, but we'll get to that later. (Just kidding, it's us.)

How to select your primary use case

This depends on the business objective you're trying to achieve, and your business objective depends on your company's growth stage.

See how it all fits together, like some magical revenue puzzle?

Okay, so what are the growth stages, and what are the corresponding business objectives?

Glad you asked.

Growth stages + their primary use cases

Stage #1 🐥

At stage one, you're trying to get your sales and marketing orgs off the ground. You may have a handful of reps and a single dedicated marketer.

Your inbound lead volume is low. You're still getting the word out about your product, and that requires a lot of SEO love and outbound effort from your sales reps.

Some (loose) attributes of stage one:

• Under $1M in ARR
• Fewer than 5 sales reps
• No CRM

At this stage, your primary business objective is to drive awareness. With a low volume of inbound and only a few reps, it may be premature to think about the LeanData use cases mentioned above.

Stage #2 🦌

In stage two, your inbound lead volume is picking up, so you need to increase your bandwidth.

This means hiring more reps, implementing a CRM, and ditching your lead routing spreadsheet.

You may be in stage two, if:

• Between $1M–$5M in ARR
• ~5–10 sales reps
• Hiring your first SDRs
• Using CRM

In stage two, you're starting to build processes and adopt technologies that will set your teams up for success in the future. Having clean data and a solid foundation is crucial.

Trust me, you don't want to try to detangle the web later. Enriching your CRM data and making sure it's clean is a top priority, so data management capabilities are a must-have.

Stage #3 🐅

At this point, you're chugging along on your revenue journey. You have sizable sales and SDR teams, your sales team is segmented, and there's a lot of tech powering your inbound funnel.

Stage 3 could look like:

• $5M in ARR

• 10 sales reps

• Inbound lead volume is high (>100 hand-raisers per month)
• Using a CRM, marketing automation platform (MAP), sales engagement platform, & more
• Segmented sales team
• Routing logic taking place on the back end (even if it's just via your CRM or MAP)

At this point, your lead volume has picked up, and the most important thing is to get leads into the hands of the right rep ASAP. Failing to do so will have a devastating impact on your ability to convert them.

A quick lead response time is the name of the game here, so advanced lead routing capabilities are a must.

Stage #4 🚀

In stage four, your revenue teams are built and you're starting to execute on the 'expand' part of that land and expand strategy.

You likely have a customer success (CS) team, complex lead routing scenarios, and lots of integrations piping data into your CRM.

Your attributes?

• $10M in ARR

• Have a CS team
• Complex routing scenarios (Geo, business size, technographics, etc.)
• High inbound volume (hundreds per month) or low volume with high average contract value (ACV)
• Better coordination between sales and marketing teams (ABM efforts)

Depending on your go-to-market strategy, your business objective at this stage will differ.

If you're running a true enterprise motion, meaning your ideal customer profile (ICP) is extremely narrow and you're only going after a handful of good-fit accounts with high ACVs, then your primary business objective should be campaign orchestration in those good-fit accounts.

With that in mind, your primary use cases will likely be attribution and ROI tracking.

In this model, it costs more to convert customers and there also tends to be a bigger emphasis on outbound sales motions. So figuring out what's working and being able to prove ROI is the most important thing.

On the other hand, if your business has any volume component whatsoever, your primary objective should still be to convert as many inbound leads as possible.

It's extremely expensive to run highly orchestrated campaigns against thousands of accounts when your ACV is relatively low (say in the thousands as opposed to hundreds of thousands).

Not sure which one you are?

Pull your target account list in your CRM. If that list numbers in the thousands, then your business has a volume component and the best return on your marketing investment is to convert existing demand.

This means prioritizing lead routing capabilities in a LeanData alternative.

Chili Piper — best for doing it all

Chili Piper is an all-in-one Demand Conversion Platform that helps you book meetings, qualify, and route leads efficiently. At this point, Chili Piper beats LeanData—at a much leaner price.

Relevant Chili Piper features

• Book meetings from existing web forms
• Route leads based on any object in Salesforce
• Can handle complex routing rules and round robins
• Rules-based lead routing (no spider webs here)

Chili Piper Pricing

Pricing is $30 per user per month for lead routing + a $150 platform fee. If you opt for the entire Demand Conversion Platform (including lead routing, form scheduling, chat, and handoff), the price is just $72 per user per month + a flat $1000 platform fee.

Chili Piper's lead routing solution is called Distro and web form scheduling is called Concierge.

You can see the full Chili Piper pricing breakdown here, including the Concierge + Distro bundle pricing (highly recommended).

What people are saying in the wild

Zoom Operations — best for data management

Since acquiring RingLead, ZoomInfo is a data orchestration platform that helps you segment, enrich, and dedupe data in your CRM and marketing automation platform.

Relevant ZoomInfo Operations Features:

• Data enrichment
• Data cleanup
• Audience segmentation
• Lead scoring
• Lead routing (limited functionality)

RingLead Pricing

ZoomInfo does not publish pricing information publicly on its website. (We're guessing that means $$$.)

What people are saying in the wild

6sense — best for attribution and ROI tracking

6sense is an account engagement platform that leverages intent signals and campaign orchestration to power ABM programs.

Relevant 6sense features

• Engagement metrics and intent data
• Campaign tracking
• Account and contact scoring
• Campaign orchestration
• Account insights for sales

6sense Pricing

6sense does not publish pricing information publicly on its website.

What people are saying in the wild

Distribution Engine — one flat cost

Distribution Engine is a decent choice when it comes to price, especially if you're worried about going over budget.

The issue is that you can only record up to three updates on a single record. It also doesn't automatically sync with calendars, making it tough when sales reps go on vacation. In short, it's a fairly basic solution, but a good starting point.

Relevant Distribution Engine features

• Integration with standard and custom Salesforce objects
• Round robin assignment
• Ownership assignment
• Lead to account matching

Distribution Engine Pricing

It's only $45/user/month, but support packages cost extra. (There's really only one other good option that's more affordable.)

What people are saying in the wild

Salesforce Lead Assignment — no integration needed

If you're already using Salesforce and not ready to purchase a second tool, they have a native lead assignment option you can use in the meantime. Once you graduate from the basics, you'll want lead routing you can set and forget instead.

Relevant features

• Lead routing only (can't route any other record)
• That's about it…

What the interface looks like

Pricing

It's included in all versions of Salesforce so it's technically the most affordable (but you get what you pay for).

The bottom line

Of course, if you want it all in one product, you've got to go with the 🌶️