The 18+ best lead generation software and tools in 2025

You're here because you want to locate, segment, contact, nurture, convert, and manage precious future customers. Honestly, I'm exhausted just thinking about the number of verbs involved in establishing—and maintaining—a successful lead generation funnel.

It only makes sense, then, to rely on lead generation software to help you with this hugely important, potentially distracting, and labor-intensive work. An off-the-shelf lead-generating tool like HubSpot or Salesforce is a step in the right direction, but to cover all your bases, you're going to need a lead gen software stack: a collection of tools to help you generate leads. Then you can connect them all—that way, you have a set of tools for lead generation unique to your business.

Read on to learn more about the different lead generation software available to help you find more prospects so you can focus on converting them.

The best lead generation tools at a glance

What is lead generation? 

Lead generation is the continuous process of attracting potential customers and capturing their information, all with the end goal of turning them into actual customers. 

There are two main categories of lead generation:  

• Inbound lead generation is when you generate content (e.g., blogs, newsletters, and other gated content) that encourages potential customers to reach out to you. 

• Outbound lead generation is when you actively identify and reach out to prospects—many of whom have little to no knowledge of your company—with things like cold email outreach and direct mail. 

Why is lead generation important? 

Lead generation is key to business growth as it attracts potential customers into the sales funnel, driving revenue and profitability. 

Without a lead generation strategy, businesses risk losing potential customers to competitors who actively engage them. And this loss leads to a harmful ripple effect, including, but not limited to, reduced sales, slower growth, and a diminished understanding of market trends and customer needs.

What is lead generation software? 

Lead generation software is a collection of tools to help you generate leads through a variety of mediums: ads, landing pages, chatbots, webinars, and so much more.

Many platforms offer a handful of these features together to simplify the process, but you may find that they excel in some areas critical to lead generation—and fall flat in others. 

To help you find lead generation software that fits your specific needs, here's a roundup of the best lead generation software and tools for the tasks you might need the most.

The best lead generation software for capturing and managing leads 

HubSpot 

When it comes to capturing leads, you want to make sure that you're grabbing the data that matters most to you. This is where it pays to create your own lead generation forms. With a custom lead gen form, you can be laser-focused on your target prospects while saving yourself the time and effort of wading through a ton of irrelevant data. 

In addition to being a powerful CRM, HubSpot offers built-in form-building capabilities. This way, you can capture and manage your leads with ease. It also has a collection of Hubs spanning sales, marketing, customer support, content management, operations, and commerce, making it a one-stop shop to support every facet of your business. 

The cherry on top is HubSpot's Zapier integration, which allows you to automate your entire lead generation workflows. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot, or get started with one of these premade workflows. 

HubSpot pricing: Free form builder and free CRM available; paid plans for each Hub starts at $20/user/month (billed annually).

Read more: The best CRM software

The best lead generation software for automation

Zapier 

This is the Zapier blog, yes, but we practice what we preach: our lead generation strategy relies heavily on our own product. And if you're adding lead gen tools to your tech stack, you'll want to automate as much as you can. 

Zapier includes an interface builder and database tool that lets you build landing pages, complete with custom lead gen forms, to capture, organize, and follow up with leads—all on one platform. Then, because Zapier connects thousands of apps—including your lead generation tools—you can build automated workflows that work across your entire tech stack. It's an easy way to build a robust lead generation system. And you can use Zapier Canvas to visualize your workflows and see how this will all work together.

Zapier Chatbots even lets you build your own chatbot for free. You can connect your chatbot to your own knowledge sources to tailor the responses for your business or project, restrict your bot from using outside data sources and set custom responses when information doesn't exist, and combine your own data with the power of OpenAI models to generate on-brand responses. Then, make it visually match your brand and embed it on your website. Plus, you can connect it with the rest of your tech stack to automate all of your lead gen workflows.

There's also AI built in to every part of the platform, allowing you to use AI to turn your ideas into solutions and add AI functionality to all the apps you use at work. Learn more about how to automate your entire workflow using Zapier, or try one of these lead generation templates.

Lead Tracker Template

Easily track your sales leads, send custom emails, and close more deals.

Try it

Simple CRM Template

A Simple CRM, without all the bells and whistles.

Try it

Zapier pricing: Free plan available; from $20/month (billed annually) for the Premium plan.

The best lead generation software for paid advertising 

Lead gen ads on LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and Google 

Some of the most popular lead gen forms are actually on social media. It's a form of paid advertising that lets leads give you relevant info without ever leaving the platform they're on—and usually, the platform fills in most of their info for them.

• LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms shows prospects a pre-filled form right in their feed, requiring just two clicks and zero typing to pass along their info. The possibilities for how to use these forms are pretty broad; you can take inspiration from these examples. 

• TikTok Lead Generation does something similar: your lead's information is auto-populated by TikTok (or the lead adds extra details), so they can show interest in what you're offering without clicking away from their For You page.

• Facebook lead ads offer the same thing but on Facebook. And there's a slew of strategies for engaging prospects and boosting your form response rates. (Instagram is owned by Meta, so Instagram lead ads work pretty similarly.)

• Google Ads lead forms let advertisers add a lead generation form directly to a search ad, allowing potential customers to fill out their contact details without leaving Google's warm cocoon. 

With Zapier, you can integrate your entire tech stack with LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Google lead ads, so you can get your lead details where they need to be and follow up on them without the manual data management chores. Here are a few automated workflows to get you started. 

The best lead generation software for SEO 

seoClarity

SEO software can help you determine how effective your websites and content are at reaching your target audiences through specific search terms, allowing you to home in on what's working and fix what isn't.

seoClarity offers robust SEO analysis features, including rank monitoring, search trend insights, and performance scoring, page error and inefficiency detection, competitor analysis, and topic exploration. In addition to all those tools, seoClarity has an equally impressive suite of content creation tools, including Sia—an AI feature that helps you generate article outlines and optimize key elements, like the title and metadata. 

seoClarity pricing: Plan pricing varies; lowest plan starts at $2,500/month for the Research & Content plan.

Read more: The best SEO tools

The best lead generation software for building landing pages 

Carrd 

So, you've reached your prospect and gotten their attention. Now it's worth thinking about where you're asking them to go. Just like lead gen forms and advertising, landing page lead generation isn't a one-size-fits-all proposition. Are you focused on mobile traffic? Selling products? Looking to grow your subscriber base? Maybe it's a combination of all three. Whatever your needs, you don't have to build from scratch. 

Carrd is one of the best landing page builders out there—and most of its core features are available for free. If you want to add forms to collect email addresses or embed third-party widgets like Stripe or Paypal, you'll need to upgrade to a paid account. The good news is it's still ridiculously affordable: plans with those features start at just $19/year.

If you're looking for something simpler, Zapier Interfaces lets you build landing pages that easily connect to all your other lead gen and lead management tools.

Carrd pricing: Free plan available; paid plans with advanced features like embeds, forms, and custom domains start at $19/year for the Pro Standard plan. 

Read more: The best landing page builders 

The best lead generation software for chatting with leads 

Intercom 

Engaging prospects is another key piece of the online lead generation puzzle. If a lead has to submit a query and then sit around and wait for your reply, odds are that they'll be as cold as ice by the time you reach them—if you ever do.

Live chat apps give you the power to interact with your leads in real time. You can go fully automated with chatbots or choose a more personalized approach. Opt for built-in lead nurturing and lead scoring features, or pick and choose your favorite features a la carte.

Intercom is one of the best options, but since it's pretty feature-packed, Fin AI agent is the specific tool you're looking for. It can automatically do things like route customers, request contact information, suggest help articles, and collect additional issue information. (If you don't need something so robust, Zapier Chatbots is a great way to build an embeddable and automated chatbot.)

Intercom also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically add leads to your CRM or email marketing app, send form responses to Intercom, and much more. Learn more about how to automate Intercom, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Intercom pricing: Plans start at $29/user/month (billed annually) plus $0.99/resolution with Fin AI Agent. 

Read more: The best chatbot builders, the best live chat apps, and the best sales chat apps

The best lead generation software for hosting webinars and events  

Demio

Of course, when it comes to engaging prospects, even the most sophisticated chatbots can only take you so far down the yellow brick funnel. You're most in control of your messaging when you're delivering it yourself—and webinars and other promotional events offer a human touch to that messaging.

Demio is a webinar hosting platform that offers a no-frills, intuitive interface where you can create a live, scheduled webinar, a series of scheduled sessions, or an on-demand, pre-recorded webinar. Of course, there are additional features to help you customize your webinar, including a branded registration page, custom thank-you pages, and automated email reminders. 

You can do more with Demio when you connect it with Zapier. Automatically register customers for your webinar, put registrants into your marketing campaign, and more. These pre-made workflows are examples to get you started.

Demio pricing: From $42/month (billed annually) for the Starter plan with 50 attendees per webinar.

Read more: The best webinar software for marketers

The best lead generation software for email newsletters 

Benchmark 

Email is one of the best tools for lead generation because it follows your prospects down the funnel. Whether you're looking to send small-scale personal notes or massive campaigns to your email list, email newsletter software can get the job done. 

Benchmark is one of the most well-rounded (but not bloated) email newsletter tools on the market. It includes dynamic templates, tailored segmentation, as well as analytics and reporting to give you detailed insights into just what's moving the needle for your prospects.

You can do even more when you connect Benchmark with Zapier, automating tasks like adding new subscribers to your email list and validating email addresses. Here are some workflows to get you started.

Benchmark pricing: Free for up to 500 contacts and 3,500 sends/month; paid plans start at $13/month (billed annually) for 7,500 sends/month and more advanced features. 

Read more: The best email newsletter platforms and software 

The best lead generation software for drip email campaigns 

Mailchimp  

Drip email marketing software offers another great way to reach leads at the best possible time with a relevant, engaging message. 

Mailchimp is the app to beat in this category. Choose from their library of automation templates to create your drip campaign—there are campaigns to find and welcome contacts, nurture leads, re-engage your audience, and manage your list. You can also leverage Intuit Assist—Mailchimp's built-in AI assistant to help you generate brand-appropriate emails and build customer journeys. And if you want to keep more of your lead gen within one app, Mailchimp also has a form builder and a social media ad feature.

To automate things even more, connect Mailchimp with Zapier to do things like get subscribers into Mailchimp automatically from wherever your lead gen happens. Learn more about how to automate Mailchimp, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Mailchimp pricing: From $20/month for the Standard email marketing plan, which includes up to 500 contacts and 6,000 sends per month.

Read more: The best email drip campaign software

The best lead generation software for cold emails 

Hunter

Cold emails can be awkward—it's like approaching a stranger at a networking event, just without your dazzling smile. But also like networking, cold email works. Plus, there are some relationships you can build only by sending a cold email. It's time-consuming work, though, to send highly personalized outreach emails to potential customers. That's where cold email software comes in.

Hunter is a solid choice, especially if you're just starting out or have a limited marketing budget. The free plan offers a basic suite of email and lead generation tools, including a lead searcher, lead verifier, and campaign creator. As you scale your outreach, you can upgrade your plan to access more advanced features like domain search to help you find email addresses from a company name or website. 

You can also connect Hunter with Zapier to automate all your cold email workflows like validating new leads from any source. Here are some examples to get you started.  

Hunter pricing: Free plan lets you run one 500-recipient campaign at a time; paid outreach plans start at $34/month (billed annually) for the Starter plan, which includes more campaigns and recipients. 

Read more: The best cold email software

The best lead generation software for texting leads 

SimpleTexting

If you need to hit a moving target, there's no better choice than SMS marketing. SMS apps reach leads where they live: on their phones. SMS apps offer unique advantages that conventional email marketing doesn't have—namely, high open rates. And you can still engage in seamless, two-way conversations with prospects using your choice of automated or personal responses. 

SimpleTexting is the best option if you're looking for easy-to-run marketing campaigns where you text the same message to every prospect on your list. There are a lot of other nice features, too: you can run surveys and polls, configure autoresponse messages, and leave notes on conversations or assign them to your teammates. All in all, it just checks a lot of boxes.

SimpleTexting also integrates with Zapier, so you can automatically do things like send texts to leads you get from Facebook or any other lead generation tool. 

SimpleTexting pricing: Paid plans from $33.20/month (billed annually), which includes 6,000 credits (enough for 6,000 short texts) with the ability to add extra credits. 

Read more: The best SMS apps

The best lead generation software for scheduling meetings 

Calendly   

Once you've had success with your outreach, you'll be ready to close the deal with a good old-fashioned face-to-face. Got time for an endless back and forth to find a mutually convenient time to meet? I didn't think so. Use a meeting scheduler app to simplify your scheduling workflows.

Calendly is the default meeting scheduler for a reason. It's reliable, easy to use on both sides, and the free plan is robust enough to get the job done no matter your tech stack. Beyond just managing your calendar, it also gives you the power to set up video calls, send follow-up emails, and add reminders so that you're never caught unprepared. 

By connecting Calendly to Zapier, you can do things like create new Zoom calls whenever a new meeting is scheduled or add new meeting attendees to your email marketing list. Learn more about how to automate Calendly, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Calendly pricing: Free plan with limited features available; paid plans from $10/month (billed annually). 

Read more: The best meeting scheduler apps

Other lead generation tools 

You'll need a combination of the lead gen tools above to make your funnel run smoothly, but that's nowhere near an exhaustive list of possibilities. You never know where you'll find the best lead gen tool for your business, so be sure to think outside the box.

• Survey tools and form builders like Google Forms and Jotform allow you to embed forms on your website and capture lead data. If you're a WordPress user, you can use WPForms or Gravity Forms, or another WordPress form plugin. 

• Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads help drive traffic to your lead gen forms. 

• Video hosting sites like YouTube allow you to get in front of millions of viewers and generate clicks. 

• Sales tools like lemlist can take you from zero leads to booked meetings using a suite of prospecting tools including email enrichment, message sequencing, and reporting. 

• Greeting card apps like Handywrytten are just one small-scale marketing strategy you can use that doesn't require a massive digital footprint to help get more leads through the door. 

How to find the best lead generation software

The best tool for lead generation software is going to depend on your business's needs, so review all the categories above to identify which apps you're missing from your tech stack. Then click through Zapier's lists of the best apps in each category to decide which one makes the most sense for you.

Once you have the apps you want, connect all your lead generation software together to automate your entire lead funnel.

Related reading:

• The best digital marketing tools

• How to grow your business with marketing automation

• How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to generate leads

• What is lead enrichment?

This article was originally published in February 2023 by Toby Peterson. The most recent update was in January 2025.