When to replace ZoomInfo: 6 signs your team has outgrown it

ZoomInfo is a default, not always the right choice

ZoomInfo became the default B2B data vendor for enterprise because it was, for a long time, the only credible option at scale. The brand recognition is strong, the sales motion is polished, and the multi-year contract structure makes it feel like a decision you don't need to revisit.

But the data landscape has changed significantly. 95% contact accuracy is achievable from newer platforms. Multi-source enrichment has become table stakes. And the question enterprise RevOps teams are increasingly asking isn't "which contact database should we use?" -- it's "should we be building our GTM infrastructure on a contact database at all?"

If you're asking whether it's time to replace ZoomInfo, here are the six signals that suggest the answer is yes.

1. Your reps are constantly hitting bad data

ZoomInfo's contact accuracy is frequently cited in customer reviews as a pain point. When bounce rates climb and reps start manually verifying emails before using them, the platform's core value proposition has eroded. If your team is spending material time validating data that ZoomInfo is supposed to have already validated, you're paying for a problem -- not a solution.

Modern multi-source enrichment platforms validate data across 150+ providers simultaneously, with 95% contact accuracy maintained at scale. The comparison is uncomfortable for any vendor relying on a single proprietary database.

2. Your contract is up for renewal and the math doesn't work

ZoomInfo pricing typically runs $15K+ per user annually for full platform access. At enterprise scale with a 20-person sales team, that's $300K+ per year for a contact database. If your team is also maintaining separate contracts for enrichment automation, intent signals, and CRM hygiene tools, the total spend on the data stack often exceeds $500K annually for capabilities that a modern Revenue Data Platform consolidates into one contract.

Renewal negotiations are the natural moment to re-evaluate. Multi-year lock-in is ZoomInfo's biggest moat -- and it disappears the moment the contract expires.

3. Your enriched data lives in ZoomInfo, not in your CRM

ZoomInfo's architecture is fundamentally outbound-oriented: find contacts, run sequences, track results in ZoomInfo. But if your single source of truth is Salesforce, the disconnect creates real operational problems. Enriched data that lives in ZoomInfo -- and not in the CRM -- means your reps are toggling between platforms, your marketing team can't act on the data, and your RevOps reports don't reflect reality.

The right architecture pushes enriched data back into Salesforce automatically, in real time, so the CRM is always the authoritative record. That's reverse ETL -- a capability ZoomInfo doesn't provide natively.

4. You're not acting on signals -- you're just receiving reports

ZoomInfo surfaces intent signals and job change alerts. But surfacing a signal and acting on it are different things. If your workflow is "rep gets a Slack notification → rep logs into ZoomInfo → rep manually updates Salesforce → rep builds a sequence in Outreach," you have a signal notification system, not a signal activation system.

The teams generating outsized pipeline from signal data in 2026 are the ones where the signal triggers an automated chain: account research, CRM update, rep notification with context, sequence enrollment -- all in one agentic workflow that runs without a human in the loop. ZoomInfo doesn't do this. A Revenue Data Platform with agentic RevOps workflows does.

5. Your GTM team spends more time maintaining data pipelines than using them

ZoomInfo requires ongoing admin work: list management, data export scheduling, integration maintenance, deduplication clean-up. If your RevOps team is spending significant hours per week keeping the ZoomInfo integration working rather than using the output, that's a tax on the platform's value.

The forward-deployed model -- where vendor engineers own the configuration and maintenance of the data platform alongside your team -- eliminates this entirely. Your RevOps team focuses on revenue strategy, not pipeline plumbing.

6. You can't explain what ZoomInfo is doing for pipeline

If your CRO asks "what's ZoomInfo's contribution to pipeline this quarter?" and you can't answer with confidence, that's a problem. It means the tool isn't integrated deeply enough into your workflow to be measurable -- which typically means it's also not creating enough value to justify the cost.

The $7.6M pipeline number from Shubh Sinha, VP -- generated in the first 60 days on Lantern -- is a specific, attributable outcome. That specificity is only possible when the platform is deeply integrated into your workflow, enriched data lives in your CRM, and the agents' activity is logged and traceable. That's the standard enterprise RevOps teams should hold their data platform to.

What to do next

If three or more of the above apply to your situation, the case for replacing ZoomInfo is strong. The more productive question at that point isn't which contact database to use next -- it's whether to move to a platform architecture that handles enrichment, activation, and CRM hygiene as a unified system rather than separate point solutions.

If you're working through that evaluation, Lantern's team can show you what the consolidation looks like for your specific stack.