Lead Forensics Pricing

This page was last reviewed for accuracy in February 2024.

Your time has a cost so let’s cut straight to the core of what interests you …

Lead Forensics pricing in 2024

Lead Forensics pricing varies depending on what they think they can charge you.

As at 2024 you won’t get Lead Forensics for less than a bare minimum of £150 per month (and those are rare), plus you’ll be tied into a contract that’s typically 12-24 months.

It’s more likely that you’ll be quoted upwards of £300-500 per month and will experience a price that gradually decreases until the salesperson is unable to lower the pricing beyond a certain threshold.

That of course will raise questions in your head about whether Lead Forensics would have happily got you to pay the higher price originally).

How Lead Forensics pricing works

We are fortunate to have access to ex-Lead Forensics staff, who have unveiled what actually happens within the business.

Some of those ex-staff white label A1WebStats because it’s much more affordable than Lead Forensics (most people pay £70 + VAT per month after the free 30 day trial).

Some of what we’ve heard from ex-Lead Forensics staff is shocking (if you think about the film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, you’re on the right lines).

The rest are simply aggressive business tactics that get initial results but then huge amounts of churn when customers go elsewhere after their 12 month contract has ended and they realise that the Lead Forensics costs outweighed the benefits.

It’s a cultural issue – the sales people are encouraged to sell at the highest price possible (but given flexibility to decrease, which is insulting to the potential buyer). They also get told that they will benefit when the contract is renewed (which often doesn’t happen, leading to disillusioned sales people).

Here’s the process:

Outreach phone calls and emails capture interest.
Sales staff sell the benefits and set up the free trial.
Sales staff are incentivised by payments linked to how high they can sell Lead Forensics for.
The cost of Lead Forensics decreases in line with how difficult they are finding it to make the sale. There is always a so-called time-sensitive ‘offer’.
The buyer pays and is committed to at least a 12 month contract.
The sales person thinks that they will get a bonus when the customer renews after the year. They are often disappointed when that doesn’t happen, leading to high staff turnover.
The buyer discovers (often too late) that they have paid for something that, in reality, doesn’t fully solve their problem.

What happens when Lead Forensics make a sale

Picture the scene: people within an office at Lead Forensics.

Someone makes a sale and then ring the famous Lead Forensics bell to denote a sale.

They then go round the whole room in a laddish way doing high fives and hugs etc.

We originally had this video on YouTube but Lead Forensics forced YouTube to remove it due to a ‘copyright claim’.

You can understand why when you see it for yourself:

It’s ugly to say the least and sends out a very clear message of: making the sale is all that’s important – someone else parting with their money.

Whoever was stupid enough to film it has probably long since departed the company because it reinforced what their culture is.

Lead Forensics hide their pricing

If you’re considering buying a product or service (either online or offline), do you like to know what it’ll cost before you invest more time in research or making contact with the seller?

The majority of people would say “yes!”.

Every day of the week we have conversations with people who tell us how Lead Forensics are elusive about their pricing while trying to get a free trial set up, then try to charge a high price, followed by reducing that price to make it look like a special deal.

So we thought it made sense to de-mystify this for anyone who is thinking of buying the Lead Forensics product because, frankly, we don’t think it makes sense for companies to squander money that they could be spending on other (non-analytics) products/services that will make their businesses more successful.

Alternatives to Lead Forensics costs

Please don’t misunderstand us – Lead Forensics is a good product.

In fact, it’s great for businesses that have dedicated sales resources who follow up on companies that visited their website AND convert those into sales that far outweigh the costs of Lead Forensics and their time.

The biggest issues we have with Lead Forensics pricing are these:

Lead Forensics focus on locking you into a long contract when the grim reality is that you may discover that following up on companies that visited your website is not actually as fruitful as you thought it would be. End (lack of) result: you’re contracted into at least 12 months of costs to Lead Forensics but the sales don’t cover those.
They will happily charge as high a price as possible, depending on how the sale is going, and then reduce it. That’s insulting to you as the potential customer when you realise they would have charged you more if you hadn’t readily committed to them. It’s the same product regardless of when you buy.

The very fact that they don’t display pricing on the Lead Forensics website also shouts out: TREAD CAREFULLY!

A1WebStats started at the same time as Lead Forensics (although we didn’t know who they were at the time, or vice-versa) and since then there have been many new ‘companies identification’ software providers come into the market.

Some tie you into long contracts, when you probably only want to be committed month to month.

Most offer lower pricing than Lead Forensics.

If you’re interested in identifying companies that visit your website (and what they looked at page by page) then you have plenty of choice (including A1WebStats).

Costs vs return on investment

Products like Lead Forensics and others focus primarily on identifying companies that visit your website.

In reality, here’s what happens:

You pay for a service to identify companies that visit your website.
You THINK that it’s identifying all companies (it’s not – only 5-20% of your website visitors are typically identifiable as companies – something that we at A1WebStats can easily prove to you). The other visitors will often by ‘company people’ but aren’t identifiable (e.g. they’re working from home or a location that can’t be linked to the company they work for).
Of those companies you can identify, your sales people try to follow up on them. They won’t know the name of the person who visited the website so they have to use a range of methods to try and connect to the right person.
Much of the time they get nowhere.
Realisation hits when comparing the cost of the software (whatever system you use) plus the costs of following up on identifiable companies, vs any beneficial outcomes.
Most businesses like the idea of identifying and following up on companies, but don’t want to pay so much for the software (which is where Lead Forensics will typically see cancellations after the first year contract, and why we gain so many customers who like the idea of identifying companies but don’t want to pay a lot for it, nor be locked in for more than a month at a time).

There is also an additional HUGE problem with the concept of chasing companies that visit your website …

Lead Forensics costs vs using analytics data intelligently

Here’s a test you can do by taking a no-obligation and guaranteed no sales pitch 30 day trial of A1WebStats:

Look at the total number of visitors to a product or service page of your website (Lead Forensics won’t show you this – they’ll only show the identifiable companies to that page).
See how many of those were identifiable as companies (typically 5-20% would be the normal range).
Try to follow up with those companies.
Say to yourself: there’s got to be a better answer than this.

The better answer

Within A1WebStats you can see ALL visitors who got to a product or service page of your website.

In some cases you’ll identify company names.

In MOST cases you won’t – you’ll see just the name of their internet provider.

For most businesses, those unidentifiable visitors will still be ‘business people’ who can’t be identified because they are:

Working from home
Accessing the website from a mobile device (not connected to the company internet, so unidentifiable)
At a business location that can’t be identified by IP address.

Those people matter.

Those are (mostly) people looking for what you offer but they (and many of the companies you CAN identify) aren’t making contact with you.

This means that your website is not performing as it could be.

Compare your numbers – how many people got to that product or service page vs how many enquiries you received?

Where A1WebStats is different (apart from massively lower costs) than Lead Forensics (and other similar products) is that we focus on using website visitors data intelligently.

We uncover lost opportunities so that you can fix them (typically with some free advice from us about what you need to do).

THAT is what gains you more enquiries from companies visiting your website – NOT chasing those companies that were identifiable and ignoring all the other visitors to your product or service pages.

You can find out more about how this works on our page 16 reasons why A1WebStats will get you more business than Lead Forensics.

Encouraging an end to Lead Forensics type pricing tactics

We firmly believe that the majority of businesses should at least have a pricing page on their website.

If you don’t believe that applies to you then look at our page about pricing.

Read on for more on our view of Lead Forensics pricing and why they need to come out of the 1980’s …

It’s not the 1980’s and this isn’t Peckham market

If you’re from outside the UK, you may not be aware of the TV programme Only Fools and Horses, which ran throughout the 1980’s (and the regular repeats). If you’re not familiar, then picture a dodgy market trader who would sell anything to anyone at the best price they can get, regardless of whether the buyer would fully benefit.

Picture the scene …

You’re down Peckham market and Del Boy has something for sale. It looks interesting, shiny, and new. He gives you the talk, lets you handle the goods, gets you interested, and then tells you the price. He makes a few sales to some people who didn’t want to pass up on the ‘today only’ offer.

The sensible people go off to other market stalls or elsewhere and see if they can find similar products at a cheaper price.

You can’t blame Del Boy or Lead Forensics for trying

In a way, we don’t blame Del Boy or Lead Forensics for trying their sales and pricing methods. Amazingly, even though this type of website visitors tracking technology has been around for many years, many companies will get a call from Lead Forensics, think “this is fantastic” and will pay the price after the short and limited access trial they’re given. Those companies aren’t stupid – they just weren’t previously aware that such technology existed and there’s more than one provider of similar services.

Some people would say it’s the mark of a good sales person who can interest someone in a product/service and get them to sign up for it on a contract of at least 12 months at a certain price. That, of course, is the choice of the company selling the product or service (in any industry).

But is it ethical?

How much does data actually cost?

Let’s be really clear about this – data does cost money and businesses have overheads to meet. Lead Forensics have large overheads to meet. A1WebStats has a fraction of the overheads.

To use an example, for those who don’t understand the perfume industry, it comes as a surprise to know that the cost to manufacture the actual perfume inside the bottle is pennies. Everything surrounding it is what costs the money (product development, marketing, packaging, etc.). That perfume (or aftershave) smell you put on your face/body actually costs less per bottle than pretty much anything you could try to buy.

In a similar way, website visitors data doesn’t cost as much as it’s portrayed to cost. When you boil it down to basics, to link an IP address to a company name is a tiny tiny little cost. Pennies are what it costs to pull in a few company records.

The costs are in how the data is packaged and any other overheads (staff, technical resources, premises, marketing, etc. etc.). And of course, profit has to come into it.

The changing price of data

At A1WebStats, most of our customers have under 3,000 website visitors each month. Everyone gets a 30 day free trial and, if continuing after the trial, 94% of our customers pay £70 (+ VAT) per month (depending on the level of subscription required). There’s also no contract (unlike Lead Forensics). For customers with more than 3,000 website visitors each month, the costs are slightly higher and all clearly displayed within our pricing page. And yes, we do make a profit on that. Not huge, but still a profit.

We’ve been told by many people (who trial Lead Forensics) that prices vary depending on the amount of traffic that they have to their websites, which is something we find hard to understand within certain ranges. After all, the core data is already stored away in a database – it’s not as if someone is having to actively go out and link all website visitor IP addresses back to company names.

What bugs us (and insults people) the most are the changing prices that people are quoted, based on circumstances. So many people have told us that it seems like this:

They’re contacted by Lead Forensics and have the trial.
They’re taken through their data and are quoted a price that’s apparently beneficial to take advantage of quickly.
Those same people go off to research the market and find A1WebStats and other suppliers, and decide to test what the differences are.
The price from Lead Forensics starts to go down in line with it becoming clear that the business could be lost to a competitor.

In fact, regardless of whether a company decides to buy from A1WebStats, we actively encourage them to trial our system – you’d be amazed what impact it can have on pricing when our tracking code is installed on a website that also has the Lead Forensics tracking code on there! You may still decide to buy Lead Forensics (although we have so many people who realised they’d made a bad decision buying Lead Forensics and then they come to us after they get out of their contract), but we’ll take the satisfaction that we contributed towards you getting a lower price.

But is it ‘right’?

Going back to Only Fools and Horses, if Del Boy down the market offers you a product for £450 and then sees that the market stall next to him is offering a similar product cheaper, Del Boy reduces his price to £300 and then £200, and occasionally cheaper than that. So how do you feel then? Perhaps that Del Boy was originally trying to make a big profit out of you?

Please don’t misunderstand us – we think that Lead Forensics has some great features and for some types of buyers, it’s still the right product at the right price – IF you firmly believe that identifying companies visiting your website is some sort of silver bullet (which it isn’t). In our experience though, many businesses prefer to reserve their budget for other activities that will make them money.

Also in our experience, we often see that those companies that have money to throw at Lead Forenics are also completely blind to how poorly their website converts visitors to enquiries.

In simple terms, every £1 spent on an analytics solution is £1 less to spend on Google Ads or another form of marketing … or making your website stronger.

That’s worth thinking about.

In fact, if we see trial subscribers who have less than 300 website visitors per month, we actively discourage them from buying A1WebStats (or anything similar), and to instead spend budget on driving more traffic to their websites. Lead Forensics wouldn’t be that ethical.

Come out of the 1980’s

At A1WebStats we genuinely care that businesses get the best from their websites. That’s why our system is so much more than purely a way to identify companies who have visited. We want our subscribers to have a cost-effective way to:

Identify website weaknesses in a way that Google Analytics makes it hard to achieve (and then fix those weaknesses, leading to more business gained).
As a backup, know which companies haven’t made contact (primarily, because the website wasn’t strong enough or the online marketing was inefficient) so that something can be potentially salvaged from that visit.

What we are totally against is the concept that it’s “good enough” to be chasing companies who have visited your website, but haven’t made contact.

In the majority of cases, the reasons those people from those companies haven’t made contact is simple: your website isn’t good enough, or your marketing brought in the wrong types of visitors. It’s usually a combination of both.

For years we believed that Lead Forensics would change. Competitors and online content have already forced the prices of this type of software down and many have prices that are highly transparent before someone has even taken a trial with them.

But Lead Forensics haven’t followed that trend. They are stuck in the old ways of selling and will have suffered as a result, when it would have been so much more beneficial to have reduced prices and been transparent about them.

Whether it’s Lead Forensics or any other business that adopts the Del Boy from the 1980’s culture of selling, change needs to happen – come into the 21^st Century where people expect transparency, can easily shop around, and want to feel that they made the right buying decision.

Still reading?

Well thank you for investing the time in this page. We’d welcome you to spend a bit more time with us by looking at our page 16 reasons why A1WebStats will get you more business than Lead Forensics.

Also, if you’d like to comment, please do below.