Data.com vs. D&B Hoovers (vs. ZoomInfo): Where Should Former Data.com Users Go in 2026?

If you're searching for Data.com vs. D&B Hoovers, here's what you need to know first: Data.com no longer exists. Salesforce retired Data.com on July 31, 2020, and by February 2021, all contact data had been removed. If you relied on Data.com for CRM enrichment and prospecting inside Salesforce, that door is closed.

So this isn't a traditional comparison. It's a migration guide. The real questions are:

• Do you need a standalone prospecting database, or a platform that also handles outreach, intent signals, and pipeline execution?

• How important is global company coverage and corporate hierarchy mapping for your sales motion?

• Do you want your data tool to sit alongside your CRM, or to power AI-driven workflows across your entire go-to-market operation?

• Is your priority replacing what Data.com did, or upgrading to what Data.com could never do?

Here's what we recommend:

Data.com was Salesforce's native data solution, built on Jigsaw's crowd-sourced model of 1.2 million community members maintaining contact records. Its appeal was tight CRM integration: search, clean, and enrich records without leaving Salesforce.

But the crowd-sourced approach created serious data quality problems (accuracy estimates as low as 25-50%), and GDPR compliance concerns made the model untenable. Salesforce shut it down and directed users to Lightning Data on the AppExchange, a marketplace of third-party data providers.

D&B Hoovers is the natural successor for teams that valued Data.com's Dun & Bradstreet company data, since Data.com itself used D&B as a data source.

Built on 184 years of commercial data collection and anchored by the D-U-N-S Number system, D&B Hoovers provides access to 330M+ companies and 520M+ contacts with corporate family tree mapping that few competitors match. It excels at global coverage across 256 countries and territories and company intelligence.

However, it lacks native outbound sequencing, charges for intent data as paid add-ons, and its credit-based pricing can feel restrictive for high-volume teams.

D&B Hoovers fills the data gap Data.com left behind. But if you're replacing Data.com in 2026, you can do more than replace it. You can upgrade your entire go-to-market infrastructure.

ZoomInfo is an AI-powered GTM platform built on a large B2B dataset: 500M contacts, 100M companies, 135M+ verified phone numbers, and 200M+ verified business emails.

That data fuels ZoomInfo's GTM Context Graph, an intelligence layer that unifies your CRM records, conversation transcripts, and behavioral signals with the 1.5B+ data points ZoomInfo processes daily.

This captures why deals move or stall, so the AI drafting your next email follow-up understands the concern behind the conversation, your next GTM play targets accounts matching your actual win patterns, and your next forecast reflects buying evidence rather than rep optimism.

Your team can use this intelligence through the GTM Workspace for sellers, GTM Studio for marketers and RevOps, or APIs and MCP in any front-end.

If you're ready to move beyond data replacement to a complete go-to-market platform, see how ZoomInfo works with a free trial.

Data.com vs. D&B Hoovers vs. ZoomInfo at a glance

Data.com's retirement left a gap that needed filling

Data.com pioneered something valuable: the idea that contact data should live inside your CRM, not in a separate tool. Salesforce acquired Jigsaw in 2010 for $142 million precisely because of this vision.

At its best, Data.com let sales reps search for contacts, clean stale records, and prospect for new leads without leaving Salesforce.

The problem was the data itself. The crowd-sourced model that enabled rapid growth also undermined quality. Community members could upload bad data to earn points for additional exports, creating a cycle where the database grew in size but shrank in reliability. By the time Salesforce announced the retirement, accuracy estimates had dropped to 25-50%.

GDPR made things worse. Crowd-sourced data arrives without clear liability, and once it enters a system, ensuring its hygiene becomes difficult. Rather than investing in compliance, Salesforce chose to retire Data.com the same month GDPR took effect and shift to a marketplace model through Lightning Data on the AppExchange.

That transition scattered Data.com's user base across multiple replacement providers. The two strongest options serve different needs.

D&B Hoovers carries the D&B data legacy forward

If Data.com's most useful feature for your team was the Dun & Bradstreet company data, D&B Hoovers is the direct continuation. Data.com combined crowd-sourced contacts with D&B company data. D&B Hoovers removes the crowd-sourced layer and gives you direct access to the full D&B Data Cloud.

The scale difference is significant. Where Data.com peaked at 21 million contacts across 3 million companies, D&B Hoovers provides 330M+ companies and 520M+ contacts, with 190M+ decision-makers, 70M+ emails, and 60M+ direct dials. The underlying D&B Data Cloud spans 600M+ businesses across 200+ countries.

What makes D&B Hoovers distinctive is its heritage data. The D-U-N-S Number, introduced in 1963, provides a universal business identifier that enables corporate family tree mapping with individual subsidiary identification.

Features like Decision HQ (identifying purchasing authority within corporate hierarchies), Spend Capacity (ranking spending levels relative to peers), and Growth Trajectory (predicting 12-18 month business trajectory) draw on proprietary commercial credit and financial data accumulated over 184 years.

For teams selling into complex enterprise accounts where corporate hierarchies and financial health matter, this depth is hard to find elsewhere.

ZoomInfo goes beyond data replacement

ZoomInfo approaches the problem from a different angle. Rather than replacing Data.com's data access alone, it replaces the entire workflow Data.com was part of, and then extends it.

Where Data.com gave you contacts to export into Salesforce and D&B Hoovers gives you contacts to export into your CRM, ZoomInfo provides the contacts, the intent signals telling you which ones are in-market, the AI that drafts personalized outreach, and the execution tools to send it.

The GTM Context Graph processes 1.5B+ data points daily, unifying your CRM records, conversation transcripts, and behavioral signals with ZoomInfo's third-party intelligence to surface not just what happened in an account, but why it happened and what to do next.

Source: ZoomInfo

This matters because the market has changed since Data.com's era. In 2010, when Salesforce acquired Jigsaw, having a contact database inside your CRM was a competitive advantage.

In 2026, contact data is table stakes. The advantage comes from knowing which contacts are actively researching solutions, what they care about, and reaching them before your competitors do.

ZoomInfo's data foundation supports that: 500M contacts, 100M companies, 135M+ verified phone numbers, and 200M+ verified business email addresses, verified through a pipeline backed by 300+ human researchers and achieving up to 95% accuracy on first-party data.

In a Fortune 500 competitive RFP analyzing 25 million contacts across vendors, the independent consultant concluded that "no other competitor came even close."

Company intelligence and corporate hierarchy mapping

Both active platforms provide company data, but with different strengths.

D&B Hoovers offers the deepest corporate structure data. The D-U-N-S Number system links every subsidiary, branch, and division to its ultimate parent company, creating navigable corporate family trees with three million corporate families in the database.

Company profiles include 40+ reports covering financials, history, SWOT analysis, and the CRUSH Report for Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies.

Source: D&B Hoovers

For teams targeting large enterprises with complex subsidiary structures, this hierarchy intelligence matters.

ZoomInfo takes a broader approach. Beyond company attributes and org charts, ZoomInfo profiles the tech stack of 30+ million companies across 30,000+ technologies, tracks parent-child hierarchy relationships, and layers in Buyer Intent data tracking signals from 210 million IP-to-Organization pairings.

Source: ZoomInfo

The company context isn't static attributes; it includes live signals showing what accounts are doing right now.

Data.com offered basic company data through its D&B partnership and crowd-sourced contacts, but nothing approaching the depth of either current platform. Its company intelligence was a subset of what D&B Hoovers now provides directly.

Intent data and buying signals

This is where the gap between the Data.com era and today's platforms becomes clear.

Data.com had no intent data. You got contact records and company data. Knowing whether an account was actively researching solutions required separate tools or manual research.

D&B Hoovers offers three intent data options: Bombora Intent (covering 7,000+ topics through a cooperative network with 86% exclusively shared data), D&B Custom Intent (a proprietary NLP model trained on customer-specific keywords), and Visitor Intelligence (website de-anonymization resolved to D-U-N-S Numbers).

Marketing teams using D&B Buyer Intent reported a 37% increase in email open rates. The limitation: all three are paid add-ons requiring separate purchase.

ZoomInfo includes intent data in its Advanced and Enterprise plans. ZoomInfo Intent tracks signals from 6 trillion+ new keyword-to-device pairings sourced monthly, and its Guided Intent feature identifies topics historically correlated with deal success rather than requiring manual topic selection.

Source: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Intent Data Providers B2B (Q1 2025), receiving the highest possible scores across eight criteria.

For teams that relied on Data.com's "find contacts, export to CRM" workflow, intent data is a fundamental upgrade. Instead of cold-calling through a list, you focus on accounts already showing buying behavior.

CRM integration and workflow

Data.com's greatest strength was its native Salesforce integration. Everything happened inside the CRM. No separate login, no data export, no context-switching.

D&B Hoovers integrates with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and HubSpot through native connectors. The Salesforce integration includes a full AppExchange package with importing, record updating, and Quickview Company Profiles.

The D&B Hoovers Everywhere Chrome Extension surfaces company and contact intelligence while browsing company websites and LinkedIn.

However, D&B Hoovers is a prospecting and intelligence tool. It does not include built-in email sequences, a dialer, or outbound automation. SmartMail AI drafts messages but doesn't send them.

ZoomInfo connects to 120+ integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, plus sales engagement platforms like Outreach and Salesloft.

Beyond CRM connectors, ZoomInfo provides native workflow automation, a dialer, email sending, and through its partnership with Salesloft, a direct signal-to-sequence pipeline.

Source: ZoomInfo

GTM Workspace consolidates the seller's workflow into a single surface, with AI agents handling account research, outreach drafting, CRM updates, and signal monitoring.

For Data.com users who valued the "never leave Salesforce" experience, both platforms integrate with Salesforce. The difference is what happens after you find the contact. With D&B Hoovers, you export to CRM and switch to a separate tool for outreach. With ZoomInfo, you move from discovery to engagement without leaving the platform.

AI capabilities reflect different product philosophies

Data.com had no AI capabilities. It was a search-and-export tool with automated cleaning jobs.

D&B Hoovers added AI features in 2024: SmartSearch AI lets users build prospect lists through natural language conversation instead of navigating 200+ filters manually. SmartMail AI generates personalized emails in up to 19 languages using D&B contact intelligence.

At launch, 4,000 customers were using these capabilities. These features simplify existing workflows but don't change what the platform does.

ZoomInfo embeds AI across the entire go-to-market operation. The GTM Context Graph doesn't just store data; it unifies signals across your CRM, conversations, and third-party data to surface why deals move or stall.

GTM Workspace gives sellers AI agents that research accounts, draft personalized outreach, and surface the next best action.

Source: ZoomInfo

GTM Studio lets marketers and RevOps teams describe audiences in natural language and launch multi-channel plays.

Source: ZoomInfo

For teams building custom applications, ZoomInfo's MCP server connects AI models directly to ZoomInfo's B2B data with no custom coding required.

Source: ZoomInfo

The difference in AI philosophy: D&B Hoovers uses AI to make its existing search-and-draft workflows faster. ZoomInfo uses AI to change how go-to-market teams operate.

Pricing models serve different buyers

Data.com used a hybrid model: crowd-sourced points for contacts (earn by contributing, spend by downloading) and subscription pricing for Clean ($25/user/month) and Prospector ($150/seat/month, according to available sources).

D&B Hoovers publishes pricing only for its SMB tier: D&B Hoovers Essentials at $49/month or $529/year, including 150 Company Credits and 150 Contact Credits monthly. Enterprise tiers (Explore, Focus, Predict) require contacting sales.

The dual-credit system separates company exports and contact unlocks into different credit pools, adding complexity to usage planning. Intent data, Audience Builder, and Advanced Insights all require separate purchases.

ZoomInfo uses custom-quoted, seat-and-credit-based pricing with no publicly listed dollar amounts.

The entry point is ZoomInfo Lite, a permanent free tier (not a trial) with access to ZoomInfo's database, 10 monthly export credits, and basic search and enrichment tools.

Paid plans span Professional, Advanced, and Enterprise tiers for both Sales and Marketing product lines. A 7-day free trial of paid features is available with no credit card required.

For teams replacing Data.com on a limited budget, D&B Hoovers Essentials provides an accessible starting point. For teams willing to invest in a platform that handles more than data access, ZoomInfo's broader capabilities can consolidate multiple tool subscriptions.

Global coverage and compliance

Data.com operated primarily in the US market. Its crowd-sourced model provided inconsistent coverage internationally, and the GDPR compliance challenges that contributed to its retirement underscore the risks of that approach.

D&B Hoovers has the deepest global coverage, drawing on D&B's Data Cloud of 600M+ businesses across 200+ countries and 256 countries and territories.

The company holds ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type 2, and SOC 3 certifications and maintains GDPR and CCPA compliance. For companies selling internationally, particularly in non-English-speaking markets, D&B Hoovers' geographic depth is a clear advantage.

ZoomInfo provides 34M+ company profiles outside North America, 200M+ professional profiles outside NA, and 45M+ mobile numbers outside NA.

In 2025, ZoomInfo expanded international mobile coverage by 1.8 million numbers across six European markets.

The compliance infrastructure includes ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II, TRUSTe GDPR and CCPA certifications, all renewed annually. ZoomInfo is a registered data broker in California and Vermont.

Source: ZoomInfo

Both active platforms take compliance seriously. D&B Hoovers' advantage is deeper international company coverage, particularly in developing markets. ZoomInfo's advantage is the breadth of contact data paired with that coverage.

Data.com vs. D&B Hoovers vs. ZoomInfo: Which should you choose?

The choice depends on what you're trying to accomplish, not just what you're trying to replace.

Data.com is no longer an option.

Salesforce retired it in 2020 and directs former users to Lightning Data on the AppExchange. If you're still searching for Data.com alternatives, both D&B Hoovers and ZoomInfo are proven replacements that far exceed what Data.com offered.

Choose D&B Hoovers if:

• Corporate hierarchy intelligence and D-U-N-S Number mapping are essential to your sales motion

• You need the deepest global company coverage across 200+ countries

• Your team primarily needs prospecting data and company intelligence, and already has separate tools for outreach

• You're in a regulated industry where D&B's institutional credibility and DUNS-based identity carry weight

• You want a lower-cost entry point ($49/month Essentials) to start

Choose ZoomInfo if:

• You want to consolidate prospecting, intent signals, outreach, and pipeline management into one platform

• AI-powered selling and automated workflows matter more than data depth in any single dimension

• You need execution tools (sequences, dialer, conversation intelligence) alongside your data

• Your team is ready to move from manual list-building to signal-driven go-to-market

• You want programmatic access to B2B data through APIs and MCP for custom applications and AI agents

See how ZoomInfo replaces and upgrades what Data.com used to do with a free trial, or start with ZoomInfo Lite at no cost.

Data.com proved that sales teams want data embedded in their workflow, not siloed in a separate tool. That insight was right. The execution, built on crowd-sourced data with declining accuracy, was not.

Both D&B Hoovers and ZoomInfo deliver on Data.com's original promise with data quality and scale the crowd-sourced model could never sustain.

The difference between them is scope: D&B Hoovers provides the data foundation; ZoomInfo provides the data foundation and the go-to-market engine built on top of it.