Clay can work just fine when you’re experimenting with GTM engineering. But it gets expensive and hard to manage when you try to scale.
Every enrichment costs credits. Every refresh costs more. Build a waterfall once, then pay for it again and again.
ZoomInfo’s GTM Studio delivers a pre-built, QA’d, high-quality data waterfall at a predictable price.
And it doesn’t trade power for simplicity. GTM engineers can still customize signals, AI columns, and integrations. Sales and marketing teams can build audiences and activate them in minutes, without touching a complex workflow.
That’s the difference. GTM Studio is built to scale execution, not just assemble data.
Clay is a Tool. GTM Studio is a System
Clay is optimized for technical operators. It’s powerful if you know exactly what you’re doing, have time to maintain it, and are comfortable owning the complexity that comes with it.
Most workflows in Clay are:
Built manually
Dependent on multiple third-party vendors
Prone to breaking when APIs change
Locked behind technical skillsets
That’s fine for GTM engineers who want full control. It’s not fine when execution needs to happen every day, across sales, marketing, and operations.
GTM Studio was built from the opposite starting point. It’s a unified platform designed for the entire GTM organization, with native orchestration, enrichment, insights, and activation. The goal isn’t to help you build workflows. The goal is to help you run go-to-market plays from idea to execution in minutes.
That difference matters more as your team grows.
The Real Cost of “Flexible” Data Waterfalls
One of the first places teams feel pain with Clay is cost.
Every enrichment step costs credits.
Mobile phone? Credits.
Revenue data? Credits.
Email verification? More credits.
By the time you’ve built a “basic” person-and-company record, you can be 15-20 credits deep for a single contact.
Now scale that to 5,000 people. You’re not just spending money. You’re constantly deciding what data to skip because refreshing everything is too expensive.
GTM Studio flips that model.
ZoomInfo has already sourced, unified, QA’d, and standardized data from top vendors across contacts, companies, and signals. That full enrichment — including things like intent, job postings, technographics, website activity, and custom attributes — is delivered for the cost of one ZoomInfo credit.
You don’t get charged every time data changes. You don’t rebuild waterfalls. You don’t guess which refresh is worth the cost.
You get a high-quality data foundation that stays usable at scale.
Data Quality, Compliance, and Who Owns the Risk
Here’s the part most teams underestimate until it bites them.
Clay is a data aggregator. That means you own:
Data verification
Cleaning and standardization
Privacy and compliance
Vendor accountability
When something is wrong, it’s your problem to diagnose and fix.
GTM Studio is different because ZoomInfo owns the data end to end.
Data quality, unification, and compliance are fully managed by an established B2B data provider. That matters when you’re activating data across CRM, email, ads, sales engagement, and AI-driven workflows.
The more automated your GTM motion becomes, the more dangerous bad data gets. GTM Studio is built to be AI-ready and enterprise-safe by default.
Buying Signals: Basic Events vs. Predictive Intelligence
Clay can surface basic signals and simple triggers, like funding announcements and job changes. That’s useful, but it’s table stakes.
GTM Studio layers predictive insights, advanced buying signals, and custom attributes so teams can prioritize accounts and contacts with real confidence.
GTM Studio is designed to tell you:
Which accounts matter now
Why they matter
What action should happen next
And then actually execute that action.
Orchestration is Where Most Tools Break
Most GTM tools stop at “here’s the data.” GTM Studio is built for orchestration.
You can:
Design GTM plays
Enrich audiences
Trigger workflows
Push segments to ad platforms, email tools, CRMs, Snowflake, or CSV
Activate data natively across your existing stack
Clay can automate, but orchestration usually requires building everything from scratch and relying heavily on external tools. At scale, that means more maintenance, more failure points, and more human oversight.
GTM Studio is designed to be an agent-ready foundation, not a collection of brittle workflows.
Flexibility for GTM Engineers. Simplicity for Everyone Else
Here’s the misconception that blocks adoption. GTM engineers assume GTM Studio must be less flexible because it’s easier to use.
It’s not. GTM Studio supports:
Custom AI columns
Advanced signals
Third-party integrations beyond ZoomInfo
Deep enrichment control
The difference is that flexibility doesn’t come at the expense of usability.
Growth marketers and demand teams don’t want to learn Clay. They want to launch audiences fast, push them to channels, and move on to the next campaign. GTM Studio lets GTM engineers go deep while letting everyone else move fast.
The Bottom Line
Clay is a powerful tool for technical operators who want to build everything themselves and are willing to own the complexity that comes with it.
GTM Studio is the infrastructure layer for modern go-to-market teams who need:
Predictable costs
High-quality, compliant data
Advanced buying signals
Built-in orchestration
A platform the entire GTM org can actually use
At some point, every GTM team has to choose between flexibility that slows execution and a system that turns ideas into action.
GTM Studio exists for that moment.
