Lead generation is one of the pillars of a marketing program, and the technology to support it keeps evolving. Lead generation attracts prospective customers and captures their information, bringing them into the sales funnel, making it an always-on process. Depending on the industry, attracting high-quality leads can be challenging, especially with consumers’ divided attention in our busy digital landscape.
Lead-generation software has evolved to offer tons of features, encompassing much more than form fills or email captures. There’s probably a perfect software tool for your lead gen needs, but it takes a bit of research to understand what’s available and how to choose the right one. You’ll also likely need to explore whether you need one tool or several, or how lead gen software can and should integrate with the other pieces of your company’s marketing stack.
Lead generation can quickly become time-consuming for a marketing team, so automation with software is key in this discipline. Here, I’ll run down the best lead generation tools, and who they’re for.
Best Lead Generation Tools in 2025
Choosing the right lead generation software is an important decision for just about any business. Some tools focus entirely on lead generation, while others are tangential to lead generation, or part of the broader marketing stack and potentially managed by other teams within marketing.
Primary lead generation software generally includes customer relationship management (CRM) integration, lead capture forms, email marketing, analytics and reporting, automation tools, and customer segmentation features. Here’s an overview of some popular lead generation tools to consider.
Hubspot
Marketing software veteran Hubspot, known for bringing inbound marketing to wide use, offers a full CRM suite, with a CMS, sales tools, and more. Smaller businesses may not be able to afford Hubspot, though there is a limited free plan. Hubspot is usually a good fit for e-commerce, healthcare, manufacturing, and tech companies.
Salesforce
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement tool (formerly Pardot, which Salesforce acquired) can help with lead management, email marketing automation, landing pages and forms, and more. As a giant in the marketing space, Salesforce offers a lot of features, but the lead generation tool doesn’t integrate with the Marketing Cloud itself, and the learning curve can be steep (as well as the cost). Make sure to tap in-house or outside expertise to make the most of the features.
realize:
This new offering vastly increases performance marketers’ options, taking them beyond the more easily-exhausted search and social channels. realize: generates leads using high-quality creative options and a dedicated performance AI working from over 17 years’ worth of proprietary data. Realize also allows you to quickly import and repurpose existing assets, as well as offering a landing page builder and a helpful AI assistant. Rather than attempt to cover the full funnel, realize: is focused purely on the consideration and action stages.
Zapier
Zapier supports the process of lead generation and capture with automated actions and tasks. It also offers email marketing and CRM tools. Zapier’s platform is user-friendly and offers a range of paid plans for varying budgets, but the free plan is limited, and there’s no mobile app. Zapier is particularly useful for businesses in IT, finance, and e-commerce.
Carrd
Carrd helps you easily build professional landing pages, and you can use many features for free. For a small business, it’s worth using in terms of both its low cost and its no-code setup if IT resources aren’t available. For more complex websites, Carrd might not be your best pick.
Unbounce
Use Unbounce tool for custom, drag-and-drop landing pages, or try one of the templates. You can also A/B test and optimize pages easily as you go. It’s not robust enough if you want to build a site beyond simple landing pages, though, and Unbounce can be too expensive for smaller companies.
Intercom
AI chatbots are popular with marketers, and an automated solution like Intercom can be especially useful if you’re strapped for resources and can’t staff a chat function. Intercom also provides lead nurturing and scoring features, though it can get costly quickly with a per-user charge. It’s best used for high-volume customer support, such as the e-commerce or SaaS industries.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign automates email marketing along with CRM and sales, and you can also use it for segmentation and building landing pages. For a smaller or newer company, ActiveCampaign might not be necessary for sending basic emails. It’s probably a good fit if you’re sending out a high volume of emails or have to automate sales, such as for agencies, creators and influencers, real estate, and other highly interactive fields.
BDOW! (formerly Sumo)
BDOW! helps to create forms and capture emails on a website, as well as featuring social sharing options and detailed reporting on site traffic, such as a heat map showing visitor activity. This tool also employs pop-ups, though, which can annoy users.
ProProfs
There are easy-to-use, free tools to create basic surveys, like Google Forms, but ProProfs is geared toward capturing leads and identifying their challenges through specific, tailored questions. Users report that it can be challenging to make questions required, and that image support is lacking, leading to a less than optimal visual experience.
Best Lead Generation Tools for Marketers Compared
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Tool
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Best for
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Features
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HubSpot
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Full-service CRM.
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Lead capture and lead gen platform; email followup.
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Salesforce
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Full-service CRM.
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Sales-focused, full-funnel lead capture and sales support.
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Realize
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Performance marketing, maximizing ad budgets on the open web.
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AI-based audience targeting, real-time campaign optimization, fast and easy content creation tools.
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Zapier
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Lead capture and automation.
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Easy form creation, chatbots to capture and track leads.
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Carrd
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Building landing pages.
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Dedicated landing pages, customized to audiences.
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Unbounce
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Building landing pages.
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Templates, A/B testing, and lead captures.
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Intercom
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Live and AI-driven chat.
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Chatbots that start conversations with site visitors.
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ActiveCampaign
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Automating email marketing.
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Segmentation, targeting, building landing pages.
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BDOW
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Forms and email collection.
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List building, social sharing, traffic metrics.
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ProProfs
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Creating surveys.
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Templates, flexible question types, real-time analytics.
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Other Lead GenerationTools
Within the lead generation market, depending on your needs and industry, you might consider social media platforms for paid ads, as well as newer options like texting or SMS messaging to reach prospects. Events like webinars hosted on your site or other live, virtual events (Instagram Live, LinkedIn Live stream, etc.) will likely be important in your lead generation plan.
Considerations Your Business Should Take Into Account Before Choosing Lead Generation Software
Broadly, when choosing lead generation software, it’s helpful to consider how much inbound vs. outbound lead generation you plan to do. Lead generation platforms can be designed for either inbound or outbound, or both.
Inbound Lead Generation Platforms
Inbound lead generation is when your company produces content — including blogs, newsletters, and gated assets — that encourage potential customers to reach out to you. Inbound lead generation requires an engaging website experience, so that when a prospect lands on your site, they’re likely to spend more time there.
Inbound lead generation software focuses on collecting data about visitors who have shown an interest in what you’re selling. That could include tracking email interactions, landing page visits, and social media engagements. There are plenty of lead generation tech providers who help build tailored lead gen landing pages and measure conversion rates for those pages. Inbound software can also help tailor sales outreach to prospects.
Outbound Lead Generation Platforms
Outbound lead generation is when you reach out to prospects across channels with cold emails, cold calls, direct mail, and other methods, such as LinkedIn messages. These prospects might not know anything about your company or products, or only have a passing knowledge.
Outbound lead generation software focuses more on the top of the funnel, attracting net-new potential customers to build awareness and develop new leads. These software tools take information from databases to help you build contact lists, perform lead scoring, and offer different ways to contact leads.
How to Choose the Right Lead Generation Tool
As with any marketing technology decision, choosing the right lead generation tool depends on your business needs. Lead generation is so essential, though, that you should make sure to do thorough research before buying and subscribing. What’s called “lead generation” may vary, and include a long list of marketing areas and tasks. Here are a few tips to consider.
Avoid Feature Overload
Lead generation software can cover just one area of this function — such as landing page creation — or offer many features that you can either use now, or as your business grows. It’s easy to buy too much or too little lead gen technology. Look at the features of each tool carefully to gauge how it meets your current needs, and which features may be useful within a year or so. You can always add more features later as needed, consolidate several free tools into one, or upgrade to a full-featured platform.
Match Tasks and Features
Lead generation tools primarily promise time savings through automation. What’s taking up the bulk of your team’s time right now? Consider the available resources of budget, expertise, and time when you’re deciding which lead generation tool to adopt for which current and near-future tasks.
Best Practices For Using Lead Generation Tools Effectively
Once you’ve decided on the right lead generation software, whether it’s a single platform or a collection of tools, these best practices will help you get the most out of your tools and your time.
Know Your Audience
Your audience may be a small, specific group of people, or could encompass thousands or even millions of people. Either way, make sure you have a handle on who you’re targeting with lead generation tools. This includes knowing what problems your product or service can help solve, and which channels or formats your audience likes to frequent and consume.
Use Marketing Best Practices
The same best practices apply to lead generation as to other areas of marketing. Only publish high-quality content, always keep your users front and center, and communicate clearly at all times. That means creating engaging landing pages, including clear calls to action (CTA) in every interaction, using plain language, and centering prospects and their challenges rather than your business or its products.
Test, Learn, and Optimize
Lead generation software should provide you with plenty of data on what’s working and what’s not. Take every opportunity to try something different, such as offering a free trial or using video instead of written content, if your current tactics aren’t capturing enough leads.
Talk to Sales
Communication about lead generation wins and losses must be shared across marketing and sales teams to make sure you’re aligned and getting the most from lead generation software. If you’re using an all-in-one platform, take full advantage of its features to share data with sales. If not, make sure your lead gen and CRM tools are integrated so that sales can effectively pick up and move leads along.
Lead Generation Software vs. Lead Generation Systems
These terms might sometimes be used interchangeably, but lead generation software refers to the specific technology used by a business to capture and manage its sales leads. A lead generation system is broader, and includes all the tasks involved in acquiring and nurturing prospects.
Lead generation software acts in service to the lead generation system. The system is the overall strategy you’re using to capture and pursue prospective customers and includes the processes, the tactics, the workflows, and the tools you use. It will change over time depending on how your efforts pay off and how business needs and goals change. The lead generation software stack you create and maintain may also change over time as the business grows or the areas of focus change, such as if your company decides to grow its B2C audience more than B2B.
Key Takeaways
Lead generation technology is a large and constantly expanding field of marketing tech. Generating new leads, then getting them into the sales funnel, is one of marketing’s key objectives, so choosing the right lead gen technology is essential. Take time to consider the best platform for your company’s needs, whether that’s a full-featured suite or a collection of targeted capabilities.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Are paid tools better than free lead generation software?
As with any technology, paid lead generation software generally offers more features for more users than any free option. Paid lead generation tools may also include more customization options and a larger list of potential leads to target. Paid software probably will also provide more in-depth analytics, detailed lead targeting, and improved lead-nurturing options. However, if your business has limited or no budget, a free lead generation tool is better than none.
What is the most effective lead generation tool for small businesses?
Small businesses often have small budgets, so you might be looking for the most cost-effective lead generation tools. Kaspr, Wiza, and HubSpot are lead generation software options that are either free or offer free plans. As a small business employee, make sure to take advantage of other low-cost or more organic lead gen methods, such as social media platforms, Google Forms, and email marketing.
How do I measure the effectiveness of a lead generation tool?
Lead generation tools have a pretty simple primary success metric: Number of leads discovered and captured. There are of course many factors that go into this number, such as how much time or effort went into getting those leads, or whether the number exceeds lead generation goals. Beyond new leads, lead generation effectiveness can be measured with conversion rate, cost per lead, lead quality, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and click-through rate (CTR).
Can I use AI to generate leads?
AI can be useful to marketing teams working to generate leads, particularly smaller or resource-strapped teams. AI can help identify prospects as well as personalize and automate outreach. AI chatbots can also be useful as another contact option for website users. AI tools that can help with lead generation include Toffu AI and Jasper.
