Sales Strategy

Online tools for phone number lookup

lemlist team
LAST UPDATED
September 2, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

Phone number lookup is your best bet to ensure your database of contacts is active and real.

But what tool should you be using?

In this post, we’ll share everything you need to know about phone number look-up services and how you can use them for phone number searches when identifying leads.

What is a phone number lookup service?

A phone number lookup service is a tool that allows you to enter a phone number and retrieve information about the person or business associated with it. It is the opposite of a traditional phone book, where you look up a name to find a phone number.

However, some services like lemlist offer this feature where you can look up a name online and get any phone number associated with their professional accounts like LinkedIn.

So when dealing with a new business contact, you can run a quick check to confirm that you’ll be speaking to the right person during a sales call.

How to use phone number lookup tools safely and responsibly

Phone lookup services can be helpful, but you should also respect people’s privacy and their personal information.

So here are a few tips to ensure you remain respectful;

  • Use reliable services

Look for established companies with clear data sources and privacy policies.

Free services might be tempting, but their information might be inaccurate or outdated. This can be a problem for your business.

  • Be cautious of what you find

Only some things you see online are true, especially with free lookups.

Verify information through multiple sources before concluding.

  • Respect boundaries

Fair use policies exist for a reason. Avoid excessive lookups, especially on the same number, to avoid harassment.

Phone number lookup tools for phone number verification

To verify a phone number or business contact, you need the right tool for your specific needs. This is why you need to understand how they work before getting started.

How does a phone number lookup work?

Depending on the software or service you choose, your phone number look-up could work in any of these two ways;

1. Reverse Phone Lookup

This is the most common type of phone number lookup.

You enter the phone number and the software then reviews public and private databases to find information about the owner of the number. This could include the owner’s name, address, location and phone carrier.

Source: Business Insider

In some cases, it would also contain a spam and risk score. Oftentimes, this is used as a phone number verifier.

2. Information retrieved

In this case, you upload a list of contacts, and the software scans through several databases to give you a contact number.

Most of the time, the contacts you upload could be either email addresses or LinkedIn profiles.

Tools that offer this often provide a Chrome extension so you can find leads and their phone numbers straight from within LinkedIn.

With lemlist, you can find accurate phone numbers for your leads with the Phone number finder. Finding phone numbers can be time-consuming; doing it with lemlist can save you hours of work.

lemlist sources its phone number data from ContactOut, one of the most reliable contact databases online, ensuring high accuracy.

With lemlist, you can find your leads’ phone numbers in several ways:

  1. Straight from within LinkedIn with the Chrome extension
  2. By uploading a CSV with LinkedIn profile URLs
  3. When sending leads from the leads database to a campaign
  4. In existing campaigns, you can automatically search for your leads’ phone numbers

Here’s how to find phone numbers in lemlist's leads database:

Lemlist Phone number finder pricing

Phone number finder credits are included in lemlist plans. Here’s how many you get with each plan:

  • Free plan: Up to 25 free phone numbers/month
  • Email Starter plan: Up to 25 free phone numbers/month
  • Email Pro: Up to 38 free phone numbers/month
  • Multichannel Expert: Up to 75 free phone numbers/month
  • Outreach Scale: Up to 125 free phone numbers/month

5 Top online tools and services for phone number lookup

Want to start looking up phone numbers online and not sure where to start from? Here are the top phone number lookup services you can consider;

1. Datagma

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

G2 - 4.4/5 (16 reviews)

Overview

Datagma is a phone number lookup service that goes beyond basic phone number lookup.

It looks through the internet, searching for publicly available data to identify the owner of a phone number.

This includes name, location, and potentially carrier information. It also uses the database and algorithms to discover business and individual email addresses associated with a name or company.

Datagma also has a LinkedIn integration that uses a Chrome extension to retrieve contact details directly from the LinkedIn profiles you search for. It can extract verified email addresses and phone numbers whenever you upload a contact.

Additionally, Datagma offers WhatsApp integration too.

Pricing

Free plan, $32/month on Discover plan, and $55/month on the Premium plan.

Pros

  • Bulk uploads: You can upload a file containing phone numbers, emails, or even LinkedIn profiles to gather complete data.
  • Extra features like automation to remove manual searches
  • A Chrome extension for simplified search
  • Data is updated in real-time

Cons

  • It relies on public data which means that the accuracy depends on the quality and availability of publicly accessible information.
  • Unavailable features like the bulk upload on the free plan
  • It only uses Linkedin and Sales Navigator to get phone numbers

2. Truecaller

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Capterra - 4.5/5 (62 reviews) | G2 4.4/5 (24 reviews)

Overview

While primarily designed for direct consumers, Truecaller is a free phone look-up service that uses reverse phone lookup to identify the details associated with a phone number, allowing you to block spammers.

Once you search for the phone number on the search bar, you’ll see details like location, caller’s name, and a spam statistic to help you measure the spam risk of that number

The major difference here is that the information is entirely crowdsourced from the Truecaller community. So you’re getting details based on the interaction that number has had with other people.

For example, if a caller ID is mostly stored as ‘Food delivery’, that’s what will be displayed in the results you get.

This tool is particularly great for small teams because you can quickly dial a number and get the details from Truecaller before proceeding to the call.

Pricing

Free plan, and custom pricing for the business plan

Pros

  • Free reverse lookup service
  • Peak calling hours to show the best time to call the user
  • Included spam statistics to show phone number spam rates
  • It offers a large phone directory since information is crowd-sourced

Cons

  • No bulk uploads feature. Only manual searches are available
  • The lookup feature cannot be used in large business teams

3. Whitepages

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Comparably- 3.5/5 (215 reviews), Gartner - 5/5 (2 reviews)

Overview

Whitepages were initially used for background checks. However, you can use it to find a business contact and get their contact information like emails and phone numbers. Since the searches are confidential, you can quickly get verified phone numbers using its search engines.

These search engines go through public records search and premium data partners to provide the most accurate details available. It’s perfect for business owners who want to maintain an up-to-date database of customers.

You can also run a reverse phone lookup with this service. Simply add the phone numbers you want to verify and it’ll search billions of phone records to provide the name linked to the number.

Pricing:

$4.99/month for contact info, $9.99/month for business and $29.99/month for business all-access. But can only be accessed from the U.S.

Although you can access the free page from anywhere.

✅ Pros

  • Offers phone information like whether it's a landline, cell or VOIP, business line, and area code location.
  • Spam risk level report and volume
  • Highly accurate information and regular updates on contact changes
  • Get notified when contact name changes

❌ Cons

  • You can only search for numbers in the United States
  • The business account for bulk uploads can only be accessed by users in the United States

4. Intelius

Rating ⭐⭐⭐

Consumer Affairs -  3.3/5 (576 reviews) | Trustpilot - 2.4/5 (319 reviews)

Overview

The Intelius phone lookup service uses a reverse phone lookup to find details associated with a phone number.

Each search provides a report that could include the name, known aliases, and other contact information of the owner like email addresses and other phone numbers.

You can even get the social media profiles associated with that number like LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram profiles.

Pricing

$0.95 for a 5-day trial or $21.35/month for People Search

Pros

  • Extensive owner reports and details available with each search
  • Associated social media profiles included in search results
  • Additional searches like people search and address search is available

❌ Cons

  • No available free searches

5. Experian

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Gartner - 4.4/5 (91 reviews) | G2 - 3/5 (6 reviews)

Overview

Experian offers a free phone validation tool that ensures you call the right person at all times.

Specifically designed for businesses, you don’t have to waste productive time calling the wrong numbers.

The reverse phone append feature provides all information associated with a phone number. It also has an API that can run on your website to check before adding a contact to your database.

The best part is that you can do a bulk upload and regularly maintain your list with this service. While you can validate some numbers for free, you need to be subscribed to the service to validate more numbers.

Pricing

Custom pricing from $1000/annum

✅ Pros

  • Free trial available
  • Extensive features like adding contacts to your database
  • Real-time phone verification
  • Phone list bulk cleansing service included

Cons

  • It can be quite expensive

Free vs. paid phone number look-up services

If you’re considering whether paying for a phone number lookup service or tool is worth the price, you should compare both options.

Free services are great for smaller businesses who want to verify a few contacts. They offer straightforward features with simple interfaces. However, they tend to offer lower accuracy, limited information and sometimes ads.

Paid services, on the other hand, often get their details from private databases, so they offer more comprehensive information. These paid services also offer additional features and higher accuracy.

So it all boils down to what your business needs at a particular time. Nevertheless, if you’re going to use this system on a regular basis, we recommend investing on a paid plan.

Get only valid phone numbers and leads

Getting quality prospects requires staying on top of the most productive tools you can get. This includes getting more advanced tools to qualify your leads.

Tools like lemlist offer more accurate data, more customisation and advanced verification.

lemlist uses a waterfall enrichment method to combine information from third-party data sources that provide 40-55% more accurate contacts. Also finding the numbers is just the beginning. You also need a robust engagement tool to keep them engaged and interested.

Learn more about lemlist's lead database, Phone number finder, and Email Finder and Verifier here.
lemlist team
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G2 Rating
Price
Best for
Standout feature
Con
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/mo
$75/mo
$2,999/mo
Large, distributed sales teams
AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs
Lack of tracking system
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Sales operations and finance teams
Powerful configurability
Limited training resources and complex to navigate
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Mid-market and enterprise businesses
Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$15/user/mo
$40/user/mo
Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$30/user/mo
$35/user/mo
Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
Ease of use and adoption
Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs
4.8
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/user/mo
$50/user/mo
Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-check
Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-xmark
7-day trial
$12/month
4.75
star
star
star
star
star-half
Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
square-check
Limited
square-check
Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
square-xmark
Limited
square-check
Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
square-check
iOS only
Limited
square-xmark
1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
square-check
$9.99/month
4.45
star
star
star
star
star-half
160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
Best for
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-check
€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
star
star
star
star
square-check
30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-xmark
square-check
Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-xmark
€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
Better communication within teams and with customers by organizing information about customer interactions and history.
Data Handling
Handles both identified and anonymous data, stitches together various data points.
Deals primarily with identified customer data.
Use Cases
Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM
CRM
Free plan
Best feature
Best for
Con
1. HubSpot CRM
square-check
Sales automation
Sales teams
Up to 1,000 contacts
2. Insightly
square-check
Custom fields
Basic needs
Not enough info about the free plan
3. Agile CRM
square-check
Deal and sales pipeline tracking
Small teams
Up to 10 users
4. Zoho CRM
square-check
Lead and contact management
Businesses of all sizes
Limited to 3 users
5. ClickUp
square-check
Unlimited tasks and unlimited members
Personal use
Up to 100MB storage
6. EngageBay
square-check
Live chat
Small and midsize enterprises
Up to 1,000 branded emails per month
7. Bitrix24
square-check
Unlimited users and 5 scrum teams
Big teams
Up to 5GB of cloud storage
8. FreshSales
square-check
Easy to use and simple setup
Beginners
Up to 3 users
9. Mailchimp
square-check
Very beginner friendly
Marketing teams
Send up to 500 branded emails per month
Type of Affiliate Marketing
Unattached
Related
Involved
Format
Paid advertising
Social media or YouTube channels
Dedicated website or blog
Focus
Quick income
Your niche
Your audience
Engagement with your audience
square-xmark
square-check
square-check
square-check
square-check
Very close connection with your audience
Pro
Little effort
Higher credibility thanks to your niche
Long-lasting and scalable
Con
Paid ads cost a lot
Potential for bias since you don’t use the thing you promote
Require time, effort, and dedication

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