When trying to find email addresses on LinkedIn I find the simplest solution is to use a Chrome Extension. Recently I decided to compare a few different extensions to see which would be the most useful.

I wanted something that would

1. Find company and personal email addresses, and phone numbers too.
2. Be easy to use and merge well with LinkedIn
3. Allow me to STAY on LinkedIn rather than going to an external site.

Because I was only sourcing email addresses, for candidates saved in Excel spreadsheets I wasn’t interested in any other features, like CRM or full on recruitment tools. I just wanted a simple way to get emails…FULL STOP.

My usual tool of choice is Rocket Reach, and although good, it seems to be struggling of late to find personal emails and to get business emails that don’t bounce back. So I used Rocket Reach as a comparable email finder. Rocket Reach DID find my company email and one of my personal emails when tested on my LinkedIn page.

List of Extensions*

I searched Google for Email finder reviews and choose the following to try:

• ContactOut
• SalesQL
• SignalHire
• Lead Leaper
• Email Finder by Anymail Finder
• Email Finder by Voila Norbert
• Aeroleads
• Lusha

1. CONTACTOUT

ContactOut has a free plan giving you 40 email credits per month and 3 phone number credits. It will only work on standard LinkedIn, unless you pay for a package. I haven’t yet reached an email limit on my credits, so I am not sure how they measure this. Where SalesQL gave me a countdown, I seem to just keep going with ContactOut!

This was my preferred extension. It was very easy to use and showed me if it had found anything before I had to click to show (and use a credit). Rocket Reach does the same and I really like this feature. When you click on the icon in your extension bar it brings up a neat little box that doesn’t cover all the screen.

ContactOut also found as many emails as SalesQL, but each sometimes found personal emails when the other didn’t. I did use my 3 phone credits. Verified phone numbers were not quite as easy to find, but I did get verified numbers when Rocket Reach didn’t.

ContactOut found my own email addresses when tested on LinkedIn. It also found my cell phone number.

ContactOut’s paid plans start at $29 per month.

2. SalesQL

The only reason this is my number 2 is because I have to use a credit to see if it has found anything. With SalesQL’s free version you get 50 credits a month but it is email credits only.

In every other way this extension compared with ContactOut. It was good at finding Company AND personal emails, and kept itself in one corner of the screen. It was very simple to use and found as many emails as ContactOut.

The paid plan starts at $39 per month, but you don’t get as many credits as for ContactOut. However the higher plans work out cheaper than ContactOut.

SalesQL found my own email addresses when tested on LinkedIn.

See SalesQL pricing.

3. SignalHire

After the first two, SignalHire was OK. It only offered 10 credits to begin with, and an ongoing free plan of 5 credits per month which seems a bit stingy. It did work well at finding phone numbers, and found nearly as many emails as the first two. But I felt like I couldn’t really put it through its paces.

SignalHire sits as a round Icon at the side of your screen rather than in the extension tool bar. It slightly obscures the work space when you click on it, but it wasn’t annoying. All of the extensions other than ContactOut and Rocket Reach made you use a credit to see if they had actually found you anything worthwhile. SignalHire found two of my personal emails and the correct company email on my LinkedIn page.

View SignalHire pricing.

I found all of the others had things I didn’t like.

LeadLeaper was OK, although the box it comes up in is huge. It finds business emails OK, but it had no handy little copy function, and wouldn’t let me highlight the email. Very frustrating indeed! However LeadLeaper does offer 100 free credits a month, which is really generous and gives you ample opportunity to see if you would like to pay for a plan. LeadLeaper failed to find any email on my own LinkedIn page.

EmailFinder by Anymail Finder is again business only emails. It does place a handy little GET EMAIL button on each profile you view. This seems like a great feature, however LinkedIn DO NOT like anything that adds to their page or layout, and Sourcers have been banned in the past for using such tools. However it didn’t do anywhere near as well as the others at finding emails. EmailFinder failed to find any of my contact info on my own LinkedIn page.

Voila Norbert’s email finder annoyed me. I had to type in the prospects name and the company name for it to try and find the email. I want quick and easy! I want to click the icon and it do it for me! This one was certainly a big NO NO! Could not find Sourcing Hat as a company so came up with nothing. But that’s OK, it couldn’t find a number of big well known companies either!

Aeroleads lasted about 10 minutes because I found it too confusing to use. I expect, with time I would have figured it out, but I wanted things to work ‘straight out of the box’. This didn’t.

Lusha very quickly became annoying too. As soon as you view a profile it brings up a screen length box and makes your work space smaller. It seems to only find work emails and only offers 5 free credits. I tried Lusha on my own page and it guessed the email from the company name. It got it wrong.

TOP 3 CHROME EXTENSIONS FOR FINDING EMAILS

INFORMATION ON THE REST

In this table I have provided information from each companies website so you can decide which if any, to check out. Although SignalHire seemed as if it might be OK I don’t feel I got enough credits to really know whether it was good at finding what I was after.

Lastly stay clear of Zoominfo unless you absolutely, 100% are interested in their products. Granted, I clicked on the wrong package to join originally, but I received phone calls and LinkedIn messages from them until I had to block them on my phone! I explained on LinkedIn that I wasn’t interested, but was hounded by so many different numbers, including mobiles. So BEWARE!

* This post is my own opinion, as someone not interested in anything but a quick and easy email/phone finder tool. All of these extensions may have tools that make them more attractive to you than me. I would suggest checking out everything they offer for yourself if you require anything more than I do. I have no affiliation to any company in this post, and make no money through links.