Choosing a CRM
A CRM that finds leads for you
Almost every CRM organises leads you already have. Very few go and find new ones, and fewer still bring them to you without being asked. Empiraa Signal emails you new companies matching your ideal customer profile every morning, on by default, on every plan. Here is what the alternatives actually do, read from their own documentation.
Competitor behaviour checked against vendor documentation on 22 September 2026.
The real question
Three different things get called the same thing
When a CRM says it finds leads, it usually means one of three jobs, and they are not interchangeable.
The first is working what you already have. Research, enrichment and suggested next actions on records that are in your CRM. Useful, and it sources nothing.
The second is telling you who turned up. Website visitor identification, which matches the IP address of a page view to a company and tells you they were there. Also useful, and it depends entirely on having traffic. If nobody visits, nothing arrives.
The third is going and finding companies that have never heard of you, matched against a description of your ideal customer. That is the one people mean when they say the top of the funnel is empty, and it is the one almost no CRM does.
Signal does the third one, and does it on a standing basis so it happens whether or not anyone remembers to go looking.
What each one does
Read from the vendors, not from a comparison site
Each row below was checked against the vendor's own documentation on 22 September 2026. Where a competitor does something we do not, it says so.
| Sources net-new companies | Runs without being asked | Emails it to you | |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot, Prospects tool | No. Companies that visited your website, identified by IP from the tracking code. | Yes | Yes, a daily summary |
| HubSpot, Breeze prospecting agent | No. Works records already in your CRM. | Yes | No |
| Pipedrive Prospector | Yes, from a database of company and contact profiles. Paid LeadBooster add-on, one credit per prospect. | No. You open it and run each search by hand. | No |
| Apollo, saved search alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes, daily, weekly or monthly |
| Empiraa Signal, Daily Spark | Yes, against your ideal customer profile. | Yes, overnight, on by default. | Yes, every morning |
Two honest readings of that table. Apollo does the same mechanic we do, so anyone telling you that only one product emails you new prospects is overselling. And Pipedrive gets closer than the rest of the CRM field, because it has a real database behind it.
Where the difference actually is
It is the combination, not the email
Two things separate Signal here, and neither of them is the fact that an email arrives.
Apollo does this, but Apollo is not where your pipeline lives. A saved search alert lands in a prospecting tool. The deal, the follow-up, the proposal and the forecast are in your CRM. So the list has to be exported, tidied and re-uploaded, and by Thursday there are two versions of it and neither is right. In Signal the companies arrive in the same system that holds the deal, so accepting one is a click rather than a migration.
Pipedrive has the database but not the standing search. Prospector is something you remember to go and do, and it costs a credit each time. A search you have to remember to run is the first thing dropped in a busy week, which is exactly the failure this feature exists to remove. The whole value of a standing search is that the prompt comes to you.
And a visitor alert is a different job. HubSpot will email you daily about companies that came to your website. Signal emails you companies that have never heard of you. One needs an audience you already have. The other needs a description of who you want. Plenty of teams want both, and they are not substitutes.
What you actually get
On by default, on every plan
No add-on, no credits per prospect and no workflow to build first.
Describe your ideal customer once, in plain words. Overnight, Daily Spark searches against it and emails you the companies it found, with the decision-makers inside them. The same companies sit in the Daily Spark tab in the Prospect Hub, so reading the email on your phone does not lose you anything. You accept the ones worth calling and discard the rest, and nothing enters your pipeline until you do.
Every Signal plan includes unlimited users, and prospects are metered on the workspace rather than per person, so putting a second rep on the list gives you another pair of hands and not another bill. The monthly prospect allowance differs by plan. The standing search and the daily email do not.
The full detail is on the Daily Spark page, and the on-demand version of the same search is Prospect Spark. If you are weighing the cost of running a CRM and a prospecting tool side by side, what a sales stack actually costs runs the arithmetic.
Questions people actually ask
CRMs that find leads, answered
Is there a CRM that finds new leads for you automatically?
Most CRMs do not source new companies at all. They organise the ones you already have. Empiraa Signal runs a standing search called Daily Spark against your ideal customer profile, emails you the new matching companies every morning and keeps them in the app to accept or discard. It is on by default on every plan. How Daily Spark works.
Does HubSpot send you new leads every day?
HubSpot can send a daily summary email, but of companies that visited your website, which it identifies from the IP address its tracking code sees. That is useful and it is a different job. It requires traffic you already have and it tells you who turned up, rather than finding companies that match your profile and have never heard of you.
Does Pipedrive find leads for you?
Pipedrive Prospector does search a database of company and contact profiles, which is closer than most CRMs get. Two things separate it from a standing search. It is part of the paid LeadBooster add-on and costs a credit per prospect, and it is manual: you open Prospector and run a search each time. There is no saved search that arrives on its own. Signal and Pipedrive compared.
Apollo emails me new matches already. Why would I change?
You might not need to. Apollo saved searches do alert you daily when new people or companies match, so the mechanic is not unique to us. The question is where the rest of the job happens. With Apollo the list arrives in a prospecting tool and your pipeline lives somewhere else, which means an export, a re-upload and two versions of the truth. In Signal the list arrives in the system that already holds the deal. Signal and Apollo compared.
Do I have to set up a workflow or an automation to get this?
No. Daily Spark is on by default on every Signal plan. The only thing it needs is an ideal customer profile, because that is what it searches against. Describe who you sell to in plain words and the first list arrives the next morning.
What stops it filling the CRM with companies I do not want?
Nothing enters your pipeline until you accept it. The companies arrive as prospects in the Prospect Hub, you accept or discard each one, and discarded companies do not come back. The search sharpens as you use it rather than accumulating noise.
Is it an extra cost or a higher tier?
Neither. It is on all three Signal plans, and every plan includes unlimited users. The number of fresh prospects included each month differs by plan, but the standing search and the daily email do not. Prospects are metered on the workspace rather than per person, so a second rep is not a second bill.
Question not answered here? Ask ANI and get a straight answer.
Show your working
Where the competitor claims come from
All three read on 22 September 2026. Vendor behaviour changes, so check the date before relying on a row.
- HubSpot, track website visits for the Prospects tool being visitors identified by tracking-code IP detection, and for the daily summary email.
- Pipedrive, Prospector for the database behind it, the LeadBooster add-on, the one credit per prospect, and that each search is run by hand.
- Apollo, save, share and set alerts for searches for saved-search alerts and the daily, weekly and monthly cadences.
Attio, Close, Zoho and Salesforce are not in the table. They were not checked one by one for this page, so rather than assert something about each, the page says most CRMs do not source new companies and names only the ones whose documentation was read.