How to build a Hunter.io Alternative

I saw someone on Twitter today who is planning to build a Hunter.io alternative and his strategy is to have more data and make it cheaper.

Currently building a https://t.co/fe3gSOgO1u alternative, on track to have more data than them in the next few months, and I am gonna make it cheaper, much cheaper 🙂

— Marin (@marinthedev) June 26, 2022

People don’t just switch platforms because they found a cheaper alternative.

And even if they do, what happens when a new competitor pops up and offers everything you have and more for a cheaper price than you?

These customers will switch to this new competitor and will keep switching.

Do you want customers like that?

I know, I don’t. So what should we do?

Instead of trying to offer more at a cheaper price, we should focus on the problems that people have with the current platform and focus on solving those problems with our platform.

How do we do that?

There are review platforms like G2, Trust Pilot, Capterra, etc.

Visit the review page of the product you’re trying to build an alternative for and focus on 1,2 and 3-star reviews.

I’m going to do this exercise for Hunter.io on G2 in this article so you get the idea.

Here is the review page: https://www.g2.com/products/hunter/reviews

Let’s go through the 1-star reviews:

Problem 1: The email finder algorithm is a mess now. Bounce rates of up to 35% might become common. Which ruins your domain reputation.

Can your tools offer better accuracy and help them save their domain reputation?

Problem 2: A lot of websites have blocked hunter and so the domains show up as errors even if they are sometimes right.

Can you find data for domains that show up as errors on Hunter? Make sure to stay GDPR compliant while doing that.

Problem 3: I dislike that they took away the integration with LinkedIn. Without it, the resource has limited use and is cumbersome to use.

Hunter.io removed this integration because of changes in LinkedIn TnC. Can you find a workaround to offer LinkedIn integration with your platform?

Let’s go through the 3-Star reviews:

I am doing 3-star reviews instead of 2-star reviews because this is where you find the most gold in. These are the kind of users who will report problems and help you solve them too.

Let’s dive into the problems now.

Problem 1: No choices for corporates, cannot search with designations

Can you offer “search with designations” on your tool?

Problem 2: I don’t like that the paid version (starter plan) is still limited with the number of verifications, especially for the price. I’m only able to verify 1000 emails a month. I also don’t like that I can’t see specific metrics on emails sent out like the number of times an email is read. I’ve noticed that when I click on an email that I’ve sent out from my own sent box, it shows up in Hunter as ‘read’ so it’s not the most accurate.

Can your tools offer better tracking and accuracy to help them know how many times their email was read and when?

Problem 3: I’ve had a hard time with their list feature. I find its easier to just copy and paste into an excel/google doc.

Can your tool offer a better list feature and make the process easier and time-saving for users?

You can go through more reviews and note down all these problems and possible solutions.

After going through a few reviews, You will start seeing a pattern.

In this case, People want LinkedIn integrations and better data accuracy with current information.

If your platform solved these two problems, You should have a winner in your hand.

I like going through all reviews on all 3 mentioned platforms and then deciding what to build, how to price, and how to market it.

Give it a go and let me know how it works out for you.