Question 1

Is this actually free?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq is free to use at 1 company profile per week without an account, and 3 per week with a free account. No card either way. Anonymous runs are limited by IP. Paid plans start at $39/mo (Insight, 200 credits) and scale to $119/mo (Pro, 800 credits). Extra credits you buy never expire.

Question 2

Does Kustiq work for solo founders or small teams?

Accepted Answer

Solo founders and small B2B teams are Kustiq's core user. No per-seat pricing, no minimum team size, and no annual contract. Free plan is 3 profiles a week with no card. Insight at $39/mo gets you 200 credits: 200 individual profiles, or Discover + Research runs across your prospect lists. The full 5-phase pipeline (3 credits per prospect) unlocks on Pro. You pay for what you use, not for seats you might not need.

Question 3

Can I use Kustiq without HubSpot?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq works standalone with no CRM connected, which is how most users run it. Direct domain entry, CSV upload, or the public API all work on their own, and profiles export to CSV, Excel, JSON, or PDF. HubSpot sync is available on all plans if you want it, but it has always been optional.

Question 4

What is Kustiq?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq is an AI sales intelligence platform that profiles a B2B company end-to-end in about 35s. You paste a domain and get back a verified contact, the buying signal that matters this quarter, and a first line tied to it. Apollo and ZoomInfo will sell you a row in their database. Kustiq spends the 35s figuring out why this particular row is worth your week. Coverage is 22 B2B verticals and 88 canonical segments, with HubSpot sync and CSV export. Built for founders, AEs, and CS leads who'd rather know one thing about ten companies than ten things about none.

Question 5

How does Kustiq work?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq takes one domain in and returns one strategic profile out. Kustiq reads the actual website, recent press, and signals on the open web (not a static dataset that's already 18 months stale), runs SMTP verification on the contact, and scores fit and churn risk against your ICP using a deterministic rule engine. You see what each factor contributed to the score, so it's not a black box you have to trust on faith. The output is a structured JSON profile with 20 fields and every signal traceable to its source.

Question 6

How long does a profile take?

Accepted Answer

A Kustiq profile takes about 35s end-to-end (live median from the last 90 days of real runs). Most of that is Kustiq reading the actual website, not just a meta description. You'll see live progress in the UI: planning, web analysis, search intelligence, fallback research, classification.

Question 7

How accurate are Kustiq profiles?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq passes every contact through a live SMTP handshake before delivery, and failed profiles auto-refund, so accuracy is enforced rather than estimated. Each profile also carries an AI-calibrated confidence score across all classification fields, so you can prioritize high-confidence results for automation and review the rest manually. The 5-stage profile pipeline (planning, web analysis, search intelligence, fallback research, classification) grounds every field in real-time web data instead of a single AI call.

Question 8

Is my data secure?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq encrypts all data at rest and in transit, stores API keys as SHA-256 hashes (never plaintext), signs webhooks with HMAC-SHA256, and enforces role-based access control with 6 permissions. HubSpot OAuth tokens are encrypted at rest and never shared with third parties. Kustiq is GDPR compliant with a Data Processing Agreement available at kustiq.com/dpa. Kustiq has not pursued SOC 2 for 2026 and answers SIG-Lite, CAIQ-Lite, and standard vendor-risk questionnaires within two business days. Kustiq only reads publicly available web content and does not access private databases or harvested social media data.

Question 9

How is Kustiq different from Clay?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq hands you the finished answer. Clay hands you a workflow to build it yourself: you wire up data providers, write enrichment recipes, and end up with a spreadsheet. If your team has the ops cycles to build those pipelines, Clay is a real option. Otherwise Kustiq does the same job in 35s, with credit-based pricing instead of per-seat.

Question 10

How is Kustiq different from ZoomInfo or Clearbit?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq profiles each company on demand the day you ask, where ZoomInfo and Clearbit (now Breeze by HubSpot) sell access to a licensed database. Kustiq licenses no lists: every record gets SMTP verification at delivery and signals from real-time web reads (funding, hiring, tech stack, competitive moves). A database tells you a company has 200 employees and sits in "Software." So when a Kustiq email bounces, it's because the person left yesterday, not because the data was harvested two years ago.

Question 11

How is Kustiq different from Apollo?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq is the research layer that runs before a sequencer, where Apollo is a contacts database with a sequencer attached (275M+ static records). Kustiq gives you the verified contact plus the actual reason this company is worth a slot in your week (a hire, a funding round, a product launch, a churn signal), and an opener tied to that reason. Apollo solves the reach problem. Most of the time the actual problem isn't reach, it's having something worth saying when you get there.

Question 12

How is Kustiq different from RocketReach?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq treats the verified email as one of 20 fields. For RocketReach, that one field is the whole product (700M+ static profiles). Kustiq spends most of its time on the harder question: whether you should bother emailing this person at all. Every profile also includes buying signals, growth trajectory, rule-based churn risk, and a contextual engagement hook. If you already have your list, RocketReach gets the job done cheaper. The case for Kustiq is earlier in the funnel, when you're still deciding who's on the list.

Question 13

What are the best alternatives to Apollo for B2B sales?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq is the Apollo alternative for teams that need fewer companies with deeper context rather than more contact rows: 35s strategic profiles with SMTP-verified contacts, rule-based churn risk, and an opener tied to the buying signal. Clay, ZoomInfo, and Clearbit/Breeze are the like-for-like swaps if high-volume contact lookup plus sequencing is genuinely the bottleneck, though that gets you a different vendor with the same shape. Pick the tool that matches the actual problem, not the loudest comparison post.

Question 14

How is Kustiq different from using ChatGPT to research companies?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq adds the verification, scoring, and freshness layers that raw ChatGPT research lacks. ChatGPT can summarize a website if you paste enough into it, but it can't verify the contact actually works (no SMTP), score fit consistently across 50 companies the same way (no rule engine), or tell you what's changed since training. Every Kustiq profile uses the same 88-segment taxonomy across 22 verticals, so your data stays comparable across thousands of companies.

Question 15

What is Kustiq's Targeted Outreach pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq's Targeted Outreach is a 5-phase pipeline that turns an ICP description into qualified prospects with verified contacts and a 4-touch draft sequence ready to push to your sender. Discover finds up to 30 similar companies from any seed domain (1.00 credits). Research reads each one and pulls signals via live web scraping (0.50). Qualify scores them against your ICP and drops the bad fits (0.50). Enrich delivers up to 3 SMTP-verified contacts per prospect with email and LinkedIn (0.50). Emails drafts a 4-touch sequence with two subject variants per touch, hook-led off the qualified evidence (0.50). Drafts land on the prospect record; Kustiq does not send. Total is about 3.00 credits per delivered prospect. Pro users (800 credits/month) can run up to 266 prospects through the full pipeline. Disqualified companies stop after Qualify, so you only pay the phases that actually ran.

Question 16

Does Kustiq integrate with HubSpot?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq integrates with HubSpot via OAuth. You can import companies from HubSpot, profile them (every email SMTP-verified, churn scored by the rule engine), and sync the intelligence back as 33 custom company properties and 6 contact properties. The properties are organized into seven groups: core intelligence (segment, vertical, account tier, churn risk, growth signal), scores (confidence, fit score), sales context (engagement hook, company summary, business model, etc.), signals (buying signals, pain signals, competitors, detected tools), outreach data (ICP tier, sales priority, outreach hooks), market intelligence (price range, customer industries, org sophistication), and competitive + revenue (funding stage, existing solution, competitive position, revenue tier, expansion potential). All of it lands in standard HubSpot lists, workflows, and reports.

Question 17

What data does a Kustiq profile include?

Accepted Answer

Each Kustiq profile includes 20 fields: company name, domain, vertical (one of 22 B2B verticals), segment (one of 88 canonical segments), confidence score (0-100%), account tier (A/B/C), churn risk (Low/Medium/High), growth signal (e.g. Recently Funded, Hiring Surge), business model, company scale, pricing model, price range, target market, customer industries, persona profile, engagement hook, competitors detected, detected tools, company summary, and market intelligence narrative.

Question 18

Does Kustiq have an API?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq provides a full RESTful API covering profiles, batch processing, churn data, outreach, and integrations. API access is available on the Pro plan ($119/month). Authentication uses Bearer tokens with API keys generated from the dashboard.

Question 19

How does Kustiq predict customer churn?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq includes the 12-factor rule-based churn risk score (0-100, with a Low/Medium/High/Critical band) on every profile on every plan: scored from public signals like growth trajectory, competitive pressure, and hiring patterns, with zero LLM calls at scoring time. The Pro plan adds the churn dashboard on top, with a calibrated 90-day churn probability layer (confidence interval included) sitting alongside the rule-based score, plus usage signals (login frequency, payment failures, NPS), HubSpot CRM data (deal count, contact depth, record age), and Stripe billing signals (MRR, dunning, downgrades) feeding into the same engine. Scores update automatically. No SDK installation, no product instrumentation, no waiting for a model to train.

Question 20

Does Kustiq forecast customer lifetime value (CLTV)?

Accepted Answer

On the Pro plan with Stripe Connect linked, Kustiq returns a per-customer CLTV band (low / high range) clamped to the revenue you've already collected from that customer, with a deterministic floor and a cohort-based lookup driving the forecast. Bands refresh nightly. The output sits next to the churn probability layer on /dashboard/churn so you can sort accounts by lifetime-revenue at risk, not just churn likelihood.

Question 21

How is Kustiq different from Gainsight or ChurnZero?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq scores churn risk from the open web, where Gainsight and ChurnZero score it from in-product telemetry you already collect (logins, NPS, support tickets, feature usage). Those tools only see customers still engaged enough to leave a trail. Kustiq catches the leadership change or the pivot before it shows up in your usage logs. It pairs well with either and doesn't replace them. Every Kustiq profile includes the 12-factor rule-based churn risk score from day one on every plan, no SDK install required. Pro plans add the churn dashboard with a calibrated 90-day churn probability layer and Stripe-grounded CLTV bands per customer.

Question 22

Does Kustiq use Google Analytics or third-party trackers?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq runs zero third-party tracking scripts. Zero Google Analytics, zero Facebook Pixel, zero Mixpanel or Segment. No third-party cookies either. All product analytics are collected through Kustiq's own first-party infrastructure built on PostgreSQL. The only cookies set are strictly necessary for authentication and session management. Open your browser DevTools on any Kustiq page to verify.

Question 23

Does Kustiq sell or share my data with third parties?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq never sells, rents, or shares your account data, profile results, or usage data with third parties for any purpose. Kustiq generates revenue from subscriptions and credits only. Kustiq uses Stripe for payment processing and Supabase for database hosting, both under standard data processing agreements, but your business data is never exposed to advertising networks, data brokers, or other third-party services.

Question 24

Where is my data stored and processed?

Accepted Answer

Your data is stored in PostgreSQL databases hosted by Supabase (US East region) and on Kustiq's own dedicated server infrastructure. All connections use TLS encryption in transit. API keys are stored as SHA-256 hashes, never in plaintext. HubSpot OAuth tokens are encrypted at rest. The full sub-processor register (11 vendors) with region and legal basis per vendor is at kustiq.com/trust and kustiq.com/dpa.

Question 25

How is Kustiq's data approach different from ZoomInfo or Clay?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq differs from ZoomInfo and Clay on three points. Kustiq licenses no third-party lists, so every record is profiled fresh the day you ask. Emails get a real SMTP handshake at delivery, not a confidence score from a vendor. And the churn and fit scores come from a rule engine you can audit, not an opaque model. The tradeoff: Kustiq is slower than a database lookup, 35s rather than 60 milliseconds. Your profile results and customer data belong to you and are never shared with other customers.

Question 26

What are free company snapshots?

Accepted Answer

Kustiq gives every company in its B2B directory at kustiq.com/directory a free snapshot covering tech stack, funding stage, team size, competitors, customers, news, and classification into 88 segments. There are 2,669 snapshots already, and you can generate a new one for any domain in about 10-15 seconds. Full profiles with verified contacts, rule-based churn risk, growth signals, and calibrated confidence require credits.

Tool	Per-contact cost	Per-seat fee	Free tier	SMTP-verified
ZoomInfo	Bundled in contract	Custom seats, ~$15k/yr contract minimum	None	Confidence score
Apollo	Bundled in seat	$49 to $119 / seat / mo	Free plan, capped	Confidence score
Kustiq	$0.15 to $0.30 / profile	$0	1 / week no signup, 3 with account	Every email

Feature	Kustiq	Apollo	RocketReach	Clay	ZoomInfo	Clearbit
Real-time growth signals	Yes	Add-on	No	User-configured	Add-on	No
Tells you WHY to reach out	Engagement hooks + buying signals	No	No	No	No	No
Tells you WHEN to reach out	Growth signals + churn timing	No	No	No	No	No
Built-in Targeted Outreach pipeline	Yes	Email sequences	No	Via workflows	No	No
Time to first insight	35s	Minutes (account setup)	Minutes (account setup)	Hours (workflow setup)	Weeks (onboarding)	Minutes (HubSpot setup)
Per-profile cost at volume	$0.15 to $0.30 / profile	Bundled per seat	Contact-only; no profile	$0.56 to $1.11 / company (tier-dependent)	~$1.20+ / record (annual)	Bundled in HubSpot Pro ($800+/mo)

Feature	Kustiq	Apollo	RocketReach	Clay	ZoomInfo	Clearbit
What you get	AI profiles + SMTP-verified emails + churn dashboard with lifetime-revenue (CLTV) forecasts based on what each customer has already paid (Pro)	275M contacts, email sequences, intent add-on	700M+ profiles, contact lookup, Chrome extension	200+ data integrations, visual workflow builder	Enterprise database, intent data, conversation intelligence	Real-time firmographic enrichment, Salesforce native
Built-in churn dashboard + lifetime-revenue (CLTV) forecasts based on what each customer has already paid (Pro)	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
ICP fit scoring (0-100)	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Segment granularity	88 segments / 22 verticals	~30 industries	~20 industries	User-defined	~50 industries	~150 categories
Intelligence depth per company	20 fields (AI classification + SMTP verification)	Basic firmographics	Contact info only	Varies by workflow	Firmographic fields	Basic firmographics
Native HubSpot integration	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Built into HubSpot
Full company profile per credit	Yes	1 credit = 1 contact reveal	1 credit = 1 contact lookup	1 credit = 1 data lookup	No	No
Starts at (per month)	$0 free / from $39	$49/seat	$53/user	$167	Custom ($$$$)	Bundled with HubSpot
Per-seat pricing	No seat fees	Yes, per seat	Yes, per user	No	Yes, per seat	No
Full outreach prospect (Discover→Research→Qualify→Enrich→Emails)	$0.45 to $0.60 / prospect, SMTP-verified	Sequences bundled, contacts only	No	$1.11 to $6 / prospect via workflow	No	No

Paste a domain.
Get the sales call sheet.

Every profile, fresh and verified at delivery

The Apollo and ZoomInfo alternative for small B2B teams.

You spend half your selling time researching, not selling.

Contact lists with 40-70% accuracy

Buying signals scattered across 20+ sources

How does Kustiq compare to Apollo, Clay, and ZoomInfo?

Not a data record. A reason to call.

From domain to action in 35s

Add your company data

Deep company research in 35s

Act on profiles and discover prospects

From one domain to a pipeline of ready-to-call prospects.

Discover

Research

Qualify

Enrich

Emails

How much does Kustiq cost?

What numbers does Kustiq publish live?

Built by someone who uses it daily.

Free sales intelligence for 2,669 B2B companies

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Common questions about Kustiq

Profile your first company. See why it’s different.

Paste a domain.Get the sales call sheet.