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Free services might be tempting, but their information might be inaccurate or outdated.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.
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:
- Straight from within LinkedIn with the Chrome extension
- By uploading a CSV with LinkedIn profile URLs
- When sending leads from the leads database to a campaign
- 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
Need help finding phone numbers and adding them to your leads’ contact data in lemlist?
Check out lemlist academy, developed to help you get started and succeed with the sales engagement tool. We have a lesson on finding phone numbers with lemlist.
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.
