If you’ve ever put in the work writing cold emails and running campaigns, then you’re well aware of all its complexities. Enter: my Hunter.io review.
Identify the right companies and decision-makers to contact, find their email addresses, write (actually) engaging email copy they’ll wanna open & respond to… THEN doing it all at scale while landing in people’s primary inbox. Sounds kinda daunting, right? When I first starting running manual cold email campaigns it was lol.
Luckily, tools like Hunter now exist, and they’re built around helping you nail your cold outreach campaigns at scale, guiding you every step of the way:
Hunter is an all-in-one cold email tool that supports you at every step—from finding companies that match your ideal customer profile (ICP) and valid email addresses of decision-makers to sending personalized cold email campaigns at scale.
In this review, I’ll explain all its features and explore what makes Hunter a great solution if you’re engaged in cold emails.
Pros | Cons |
✅ Simple and very intuitive to use | ⛔️ No omnichannel outreach functionalities |
✅ Provides a complete set of features for successful outreach campaigns | ⛔️ Doesn’t scrape social media profiles |
✅ Reliable email verification | ⛔️ Data depth for some prospects/companies |
✅ GDPR compliant | |
✅ Useful Chrome and Google Sheets extensions | |
✅ Awesome customer support | |
✅ No credits are used if Hunter can’t find an email or can’t verify an email |
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products and services I’ve personally used and stand behind. When you use one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep my in-depth content free of charge for readers (like you).
Hunter.io Review: Every Feature Explained
First up, let’s break down my favorite features in the extensive tool stack Hunter offers—all with the goal os showing you how Hunter can solve the challenges you’ll face while running cold email campaigns.
Discover
Discover is a pretty impressively comprehensive B2B database that helps you find companies that match your ICP (based on a set of available filters) right here:
- Company name
- Companies similar to
- Headquarters location
- Industry
- Company Type
- Keywords
- Technologies
- Funding data
- Job posting data
Let’s see the Discover feature in action:
In this case, I want to find small to mid-sized video game companies in LA. Hunter’s output is a list of companies that match my ideal customer profile (ICP). The cool thing here is that Hunter shows all their available email addresses and specific signals, such as whether they are hiring or have received funding.
Along with the holistic view, you can dive deeper into each company from the list for more details. Additionally, you can follow the company to get notified about any news, such as:
- New funding round
- New job posting
- New email address found
- New technology used
Overall, Discover is an excellent tool for lead generation as it blends Hunter’s features into an intuitive solution:
- Let you find companies relevant to your ICP, along with their more intricate details
- Find email addresses associated with each company
- Shows the validity score of each email address
- Let you know if the company is hiring or looking for funding
Signals
Signals leverage the intent data that allows you to find companies that need your solution right now. You can find:
- Companies that raised money recently
- Companies that are hiring
- Changes in a specific company
It works similarly to Discover, as you can use various filters to refine the companies based on your ICP.
Once you create the signal, it will refresh regularly with more companies that fit your criteria. You’ll also get a notification via email if there is a new company matching your signal configuration. Most of these companies will have available email addresses in Hunter’s database, so you can easily reach out to the relevant people.
This feature is awesome if you are a job seeker or just looking for new clients. It saves much time otherwise spent on manual research for companies that received funding or have job openings.
Domain Search
Domain Search is the bread-and-butter of Hunter – and is probably the feature you will use the most. It lets you find all email addresses related to a specific domain. Hunter finds these email addresses by scraping public mentions of the email address, either on the searched domain or other websites.
In 2024, Hunter expanded their data ingest pipelines and data sources, leading to more than double the total volume of profiles available in Hunter. The total increase was 211% from January to October. In 2025, Hunter’s team planned expansions that should lead to an increase between 50%-100% of total available profiles. All profiles in Hunter are validated. While profiles with accept-all/catch-all email addresses are available in Hunter, these are not included in the data count.
For Domain Search, this improvement means there will be 60% more profiles that include a job title, location, and LinkedIn profile URL.
💡Keep in mind that Hunter won’t scrape social media profiles for emails, which can limit the number of emails found associated with a certain company.
You can search by typing an individual domain or upload a list of domains to speed up the process.
The output will show the verification score of the email addresses, provide their sources, and the person’s position within a company, and also include a link to their LinkedIn or X accounts if available.
Another cool thing is that Domain Search is seamlessly integrated with other Hunter features, as it allows you to save leads and add them to campaigns, find similar companies to the ones you scraped, and follow the company for updates.
I found the “Similar companies” sub-feature helpful when I wanted to find more companies that fit my ICP. For example, if your ideal client is Hunter.io, you can easily build a list of similar companies and find the email addresses of decision-makers.
Adding leads to Hunter’s Campaigns can be done in just two clicks. You either add a lead to an existing campaign or create a new campaign, and you’re good to go.
You can also refine the output by filtering the results by type or department or by showing results that satisfy specific criteria.
Domain Search does what it sets out to do almost perfectly, packed in an appealing user interface, but we have one nitpick. Hunter won’t always associate a position with a certain contact, so you must find it manually. This can sometimes be a time-waster, especially if you are doing large-scale outreach campaigns.
💡Another great thing about Domain Search is that finding up to ten email addresses will cost you only one credit, which can save money drastically if you do outreach at scale.
Email Finder
If you are looking for contact details for a particular person in a specific company, Email Finder is the tool to use. Enter the person’s full name and the company URL, and Hunter will return the contact details.
While the Domain Search will only return email addresses that Hunter found on the web, the Email Finder can find significantly more data. The trade-off is that you need to know the full name of the person you want to contact.
The main caveat of the Email Finder? You need to know the full name and the company of the person you want to get an email from. Still, it can be a cool way to find emails from people you found on LinkedIn or from company websites, as you can find full names and companies from those data sources.
💡All email addresses found by Email Finder come pre-verified, meaning you don’t need to spend an extra credit to verify the email address. And to top it off, you only spend credits with this tool if Hunter successfully found a matching email address.
Email Verifier
This is a very important tool as it provides information about whether an email is valid. This helps prevent your emails from bouncing and maintains a high deliverability rate.
Email Verifier is very simple to use – just enter an email address, and you will get its status along with a confidence score.
Hunter checks the email validity by its format, type, server status, and email status.
The “Email status” field is the most important and will return one of the four results:
- Valid – This means that there is a high possibility that the address can receive email messages and is most likely to be functional.
- Accept All – This means that the email domain is configured to accept all emails, even if they’re sent to non-existent mailboxes on that domain. Because of that, Hunter cannot be certain that the address is valid, and there is a chance your emails will bounce.
- Blocked – This means that the SMTP server prevented Hunter from verifying the address, so there is no way to confirm the validity of the email address.
- Invalid – This means the email address can’t receive emails.
This information helps you lower your bounce rate as much as possible. Hunter recommends focusing on Valid email addresses and Accept_All addresses with a confidence score of at least 85%.
Bulks
The Bulks feature is extra useful for finding contact details based on a list of domains, names, and companies – and verifying all the found contacts.
You can add the list of domains or company names manually or from a file. Afterward, you can set filters, such as:
- Email type
- Departments
- Required fields
Along with that, you can also verify these email addresses and include the sources in the output.
Once your Bulk list is filled with prospect data, you can easily add them to the list of leads for the Campaigns feature, by clicking on the “Import” button. This is quite handy for speeding up the preparation process for email outreach campaigns.
The Bulk feature is quite simple to grasp. It allows you to process up to 25k domains or company names in a single batch. In just about a minute, you will get all the important info about a prospect, such as full name, position in the company, email address, and more.
Campaigns
Hunter’s Campaigns helps you to create personalized email sequences that seamlessly integrate with other features.
Crafting email sequences is very simple in Campaigns. It provides a subject line and email body fields – and you can use a variety of custom attributes to personalize emails and seamlessly scale them.
There is also a spam checker tool that analyzes your email copy and gives you feedback on whether your subject line and email copy are well-written, along with suggestions for improvement.
You can add follow-ups to your sequence and set their timing. All of these email sequences can be saved as templates for future use.
Once your email messages are done, you can add recipients to your campaign either from leads saved in Hunter, from a .csv file, or manually.
Remember that your list of leads can have more attributes that directly connect to those you use in your email content. This is great for large-scale email outreach.
Once you are done with that, you can adjust the sending window for a campaign, and an unsubscribe sentence (to be GDPR-compliant). You can also start your campaign on specific date in the future. This is a great feature if you want to launch a campaign for specific events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but have the campaign prepared a few months earlier.
After confirming the settings, you can do a final check of your campaign and how it will look when sent to the chosen leads.
Other than crafting email outreach campaigns, the Campaigns come with amazing features that will help you send better campaigns:
- Engagement
- Inbox
- Reporting
The Engagement tab serves as a dashboard where you can check how recipients engage with your emails:
- Did they open your emails (and how many times)?
- Did they click on your emails (and how many times)?
You can also add leads in an existing or new campaign, or cancel scheduled emails in bulk – based on the leads from the Engagement tab.
Apart from the holistic view, you can also access the detailed view, where you can:
- See more details of a specific lead
- Check how the associated custom attributes have been filled
- Add notes if you want to differentiate a specific lead
- Look at what campaign the lead is assigned to
- Check the timeline of the recent lead activity
Hunter Campaigns has an integrated inbox feature, where you can read and reply to emails like you would inside any ESP. You can also filter emails by campaigns and email accounts you use for outreach, which makes the organization much easier than some mainstream ESPs.
The biggest benefit of the the Inbox feature is that you have all the conversations in one place, no matter how many email accounts you have. This not only saves time but also helps you be laser-focused on recipients who responded to your emails and increases team collaboration.
The reporting tab is especially useful for tracking the performance of your email campaigns over a certain period. You can filter the reports by campaigns, team members, email accounts, and email domains you use with Hunter.
You can track metrics such as:
- Sent emails
- Bounce rate
- Open rate
- Click rate
- Reply rate
- Success rate
These are all important metrics to have in a visually attractive and intuitive way – that can help you determine if you need to improve your email copy or campaign settings.
Extensions and Integrations
Apart from Hunter’s primary app, they have extensions and integrations that’ll help streamline your lead generation and outreach processes.
Hunter Chrome Extension
Hunter.io’s Chrome extension allows you to scrape the emails of the website you are currently browsing. You can also save the desired emails as leads inside Hunter’s app. Keep in mind that you cannot send emails with this extension.
Hunter for Sheets
The Google Sheets extension is extra useful. It has three main features:
- Finding emails by domain
- Finding emails by name and company
- Verifying emails
By installing the free extension, you’ll be able to perform these actions on leads you store in Google Sheets without having to export and import data between tools.
API Access
Hunter supports developers by allowing them to install various features to enhance their apps.
Hunter provides API for these features:
- Domain Search
- Email Finder
- Email Verifier
- Leads
- Campaigns
Integrations
Hunter has a wide array of integrations that can optimize your outreach process. You can integrate Hunter with your favorite CRM platform and enrich the CRM leads with all Hunter activity.
Additionally, you can integrate Hunter with various spreadsheet tools to perform actions such as scraping emails from domains or verifying emails inside a spreadsheet.
Finally, Hunter supports integration with various automation tools, such as Zapier, which allows you to connect Hunter to dozens of apps and create useful automations. I won’t list all of the integrations for the sake of this Hunter review, but here’s a snapshot of them:
Hunter.io Pricing
No Hunter.io review would be complete without a breakdown of their pricing & plans:
Hunter offers four all-in-one outreach platform pricing options:
- Free ($0)
- Starter ($34/month)
- Growth ($104/month)
- Business ($349/month)
Yearly plans give you 30% savings compared to monthly plans, and credits last for 12 months with no monthly resets—way more flexible than many competitors. Plus, both plans include free integrations and unlimited team members, making Hunter the perfect fit for growing teams.
Hunter also has a free plan that you can use indefinitely. Although it doesn’t seem like much, it can be a great option for trying it out or for small-scale outreach.
For example, you can use the Campaigns relatively unrestricted, as you can create as many campaigns as you want for 500 recipients each (minus the advanced reporting). Along with that, you can use the Discover and Signals features as much as you want. You can also use the Email Finder and Verifier tools, albeit with a limited amount of credits.
Another pricing option is Data Platform, suitable for users who need access to Hunter data only (via API or Bulk file processing). This pricing option doesn’t provide access to Discover, Campaigns, and other features available in the All-in-one plan.
The search credits are counted in this way:
- 1 search credit is counted from 1 to 10 email addresses found per domain with a Domain Search. This allows you to get up to 100 email addresses for 10 search credits.
- 1 search credit is counted for every email found with the Email Finder. A verification is included at no extra cost.
- 1 verification credit is counted for each email processed in the Email Verifier (except for Unknown and Disposable emails that are skipped). No credits are counted if Hunter can’t find an email. You only pay for verified emails.
In my opinion, Hunter offers a very innovative pricing plan by allowing users lifetime free plan access, one-time payment options, and yearly subscription discounts. This pricing structure sets it apart from its competitors as a more accessible option.
What Other Hunter Reviews Have to Say
Let’s check out what Hunter.io users have to say about the tools, from various other review platforms:
These are the things most other Hunter users like about the platform:
- Intuitive user interface
- Accurate email finder and verification tools
- Seamless integration of the outreach tool
Now, let’s dive into a few of these positive (and negative) Hunter reviews from otherplatforms:
And now for some less than stellar reviews, highlighting where some users feel the platform has room for improvement:
- Outdated email database in some cases
- No LinkedIn integration
- Focus on scraping email addresses from websites
Hunter.io’s Customer Support Experience
If you want to learn how to use Hunter’s tool stack, they have a useful help center that helps you get started with Hunter and become its power user.
We wanted to get a grasp of how their support works by asking them about a specific pricing case:
Once you place your query, a chatbot will try to solve your problem by linking to relevant help center articles. That didn’t solve the issue, so we used the “Something else” option, which connects you to a human support agent.
While Hunter states their usual reply time (if you are not on a payment plan with priority support) is around a few hours – I got a response within 20 minutes. The response was clear and straight to the point, which solved the issue.
The user feedback on their customer support is mostly positive:
All in all, based on my experience and from other users, Hunter has top-notch customer support which won’t leave you disappointed. This alone is a standout feature of their team that made my Hunter.io review a delight to compile.
Hunter.io & GDPR
Hunter is GDPR-compliant, and it allows its users to comply with GDPR in two main ways:
First, all of the email addresses inside Hunter’s database are publicly available. In some cases, you can see the email sources as well. If there are no publicly available sources – Hunter will find the pattern for a specific domain and guess the email address of that person.
Secondly, all of the emails sent via Hunter’s campaign feature have an opt-out link, which makes your outreach GDPR-compliant.
Hunter.io vs. Other Cold Email Tools
As a suite of tools specialized for finding email contacts and reaching out to them, Hunter has numerous competitors on the market. Let’s wrap this Hunter.io review up by seeing how they compare to some of their biggest competitors.
Hunter.io vs Apollo.io
Apollo.io is much more than a lead finder tool – it’s a full marketing suite, so that might put it ahead of Hunter for some users. It has most of Hunter’s features, along with more robust analytics and reporting.
Its database quality is not comparable to Hunter’s. Still, if you are looking for a unified platform for finding leads and reaching out to them – Apollo.io is a great choice. But if you are mainly interested in finding verified leads – Hunter wins in this comparison.
Hunter.io vs Snov.io
Snov.io is in many parts equal to Hunter. It has a similar stack of tools like Hunter but also provides LinkedIn prospecting, multichannel outreach, and email warmup.
Still, it doesn’t have a robust B2B database feature, and overall – Snov.io hasn’t got such a strong lead database as Hunter.
Snov.io is a better tool if you are looking for a full email marketing suite, while Hunter is better if you are focused on finding leads that are more likely to be valid.
Hunter.io vs FindThatLead
Although very similar, FindThatLead allows you to look up emails based on a list of LinkedIn profiles. That is a useful new email source, and Hunter currently doesn’t have that feature.
Another difference is in the pricing structure. While Hunter offers a free plan that is quite limited regarding Email Finder and Verifier credits – you have access to all of its features. On the other hand, FindThatLead only has a 7-day free trial, no unlimited free plan.
Hunter.io wins not because it has one feature less, but because it allows you to use its free plan as long as you want.
My Final Verdict on My Hunter.io Review: 👍👍
Two thumbs up. Hunter has been an essential tool in my own email marketing stack for 5+ years.
It has one of the most accurate email address finders (and verifiers) on the market, which is the go-to feature I use most often. I love these two tools so much because they can be used a lot even with their Free Plan.
Along with these two favorite features, Hunter also provides you with an extensive company database that can level up your lead generation options when you’re ready to take your outreach seriously.
Couple the lead generation with email outreach campaigns—and you have a pretty complete outreach solution at your fingertips.
Hunter’s unique pricing structure is friendly to both casual and power users (another win) and even free users have access to fully functional email outreach campaigns.
Unless your company has a huge marketing team that relies on email outreach, Hunter is the perfect email outreach tool.
You’ll unlock all the tools you need in order to find and reach out to your prospects—in a way that actually works.
And this concludes my Hunter.io review! Go try their tools with a free account today, you won’t be disappointed.