Verified purchaser
Solid potential but too many doubts
I am reviewing this after almost 2 weeks of use in my lead generation agency and I am not sure whether to give 2 star or 3 star.
First, the potential of this tool is immense considering it's a lifetime deal, and it's in the similar space of Clay.
But also be assured that it's miles behind Clay in terms of features & flexibility.
I can see they never claimed to be a clay alternative though, so can't blame them for that.
The biggest issue with such complex tools is how does the founder see the tool ahead. Because the success of this tool will heavily depend on only 2 things: 1. how flexible (regarding cost, usability, connectivity, integrations, etc.) it is to use and 2. how good & consistently it performs with so many connectors in place.
Unfortunately, for both of the points above, Databar falls behind seriously right now.
The UX is simple so far, but I don't see how they will suddenly change their course to become the next Clay. And, without going to the direction of Clay (connecting all the data sources into one table easily) I don't see much future of this tool.
And, the biggest problem with Databar right now is that hardly things work in this tool. And the support is super slow. Even a small bug in such a tool can cause serious delays in outbound projects. I haven't been able to use this tool in any of my live projects yet, but I tried really hard to. Every time some things didn't work, and the support says there is something wrong with their partner, then they fix it (that's good) but it takes them a couple of days.
Overall, I felt this is still in a beta stage, and they just needed very early adopters who are ready to wait maybe another 6 months to finally be able to start using the tool.
The best thing so far of Databar is that you get to use so many data sources without subscribing them individually, and only pay for credits when you need them.
That being said, be ready to pay for recharging API credits regularly if you have a larger use case. I actually liked this model because this ensures the team behind will have a steady revenue, and I am happy to pay per use to load credits in my Databar instead of subscribing separately to so many other sources.
But on that note, the credit cost is soooo high right now that you will feel disturbed sometimes. E.g. Prospeo charges almost $0.02 per email finder credit on their $99 recurring subscription. Databar is selling that for 10 credits, i.e. $0.1!! That means, they are charging 5x more. This is a serious problem right now because cost per data, in the modern outbound space, plays a significant role in strategy building. $0.1 per email means you are spending $100 for just 1000 emails while there are better monthly subscriptions of $99 for 5000 or more emails.
Overall, I am confused about my purchase right now. Because I have low confidence in the tool that it will become 2x better in just the next 60 days, making sure we don't refund. I am confused whether they can survive in such a sophisticated space where data quality, user experience & reliability of the sales tech tool is so important. The current state of Databar is at a very early stage, and it's not easy to find the perfect UX-market fit for such tools while making sure the tool remains rock solid stable with so many moving pieces connected together. When you would want to build lists, you would never be happy even if a single column of data is fucked up because some API thing is gone unstable in the backend, specially when you might be working with 10-20 thousand rows.
In short, the support is slow, the tool breaks down often, the UX is not solid yet, their direction is unclear, their progress & development seems slow compared to the space they are in BUT their idea, potential and specially being a lifetime deal is so lucrative that I could not stop buying, can't take the decision of refunding yet and could not stop writing this review.
I would love to find out what the founder is thinking about the future of this tool and how is he planning to thrive basically. Is Databar going to be a collection of different data sources & APIs like it is now? Or is it going to be going after giants like Clay with new innovations and better UX?
David_Databar
Edited Oct 7, 2024Hey @digital_X_entrepreneur, there's a lot to unpack in your message so here it goes. Also on a separate note, would love to hop on a call and hear what you've tried/didn't try with Databar. Could you email me at info@databar.ai?
Regarding bugs & issues with the product:
I agree, there have been several issues, but we have been working to fix them as fast as possible. The past month we've pushed 100+ issues ranging from small to complex ones. I think we'll never have a day when there's 0 bugs, even very expensive & sophisticated tools have bugs, but it's a matter of a couple of months when everything's ironed out and nothing significant would slow you down
Regarding pricing of APIS:
For Prospeo specifically, that one is overpriced for now, but it's also not been announced yet. We did a silent launch with it as the partnership is relatively new to see how the usage is going to be. If you look at any other API that's been with us pre-August, the pricing is very competitive. When we compare to clay, which charges $0.07 per credit and then a minimum of ~3 credits per email found (that's $0.21!), I think it's no comparison here. + we don't charge $180 per month just to use the tool with minimum features. 🙂
I do agree, Clay has several more features & the product is more ironed out than ours, but also that's why we're doing an LTD. Early users get a sick deal and enjoy the benefits once Databar is miles ahead of anything else! 🚀
Slow support:
Our support can be somewhat slow from time to time, I apologize for that. It's because we're a small team and we got a large influx of users from this launch. It's tough to manage this growth when you're a small team and quite frankly we didn't expect this. It's so awesome that people are trying & using Databar - but a by-product of that is that we just don't have the hands (yet!) to offer truly top-class support. In any case, we're doing our best to respond to Qs here & we'll be improving this over time with videos, tutorials, better docs, and the roadmap soon
Future roadmap & vision:
Funny enough, we were one of the first to come out with the concept of 1 platform, many APIs (see our Product Hunt launch here: https://www.producthunt.com/products/databar-ai) and many of the things you see on Clay (apart from waterfall, AI scraper) were also available on Databar long ago. 🤔 I try to make a distinction between us & Clay, because I don't want us to be seen as another copycat & we have many tricks up our sleeves which we're looking to implement. There's a strong vision for where it's going and this is not one of those deals that will fold in a few months as many have on AppSumo.
In terms of where we're going:
Right now we're focused on sales/prospecting/enrichment use cases, and the next 4 months that's all we want to be good at. We want to make sure you never come across bugs, never have delays in your workflows, and make sure that you have all of the datasets that you need to run your motions. For that we're adding all of the data providers you can dream of, releasing waterfalls/AI Agents, and templates, which will make your interactions with Databar smoother. 😎
That said, it is true we're in an active phase of development and Databar's not perfect yet. But we're working hard to improve the product & make it the best in the industry & hoping people stick for the ride. :)