Phantombuster vs Dux-Soup: LinkedIn Prospecting Tool Comparison

Software tools like Phantombuster and Dux-Soup have both emerged as top LinkedIn prospecting tools for teams that manage social selling activities at scale.

With the power of LinkedIn automation tools, it’s possible to extract large quantities of data, develop targeted online audiences, and generate a consistent supply of new sales conversations.

However, every software comes with its advantages and drawbacks. For teams considering Phantombuster or Dux-Soup, it’s important to understand how they stack up against each other.

In this post, we provide a detailed overview of both software tools and offer a comparison of how they differ in features, capabilities, and pricing.

What is Phantombuster?

The Phantombuster software is a powerful API tool that claims to automate any action a user can normally do on the web for many popular websites.

Similar to Zapier, Phantombuster allows users to customize specific automation workflows that can be executed manually or queued based on schedules or triggers.

While LinkedIn automation is a major focus for Phantombuster, their software also automates activities for a wide variety of other apps, websites, and social media platforms:

• Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, & TikTok
• Google & YouTube
• Reddit & Quora
• Craigslist, Product Hunt, & Yellow Pages
• Slack, GitHub, & Medium
• Zapier
• Hubspot, Pipedrive, & Lemlist

Phantombuster provides the ability to combine multiple actions that can expand beyond a single platform or automation. For marketing and sales teams, this advanced customizability allows activities for social selling to be chained together into multi-step workflows.

To seamlessly automate activities, Phantombuster uses a cookie-based Chrome extension that mimics human behaviors and allows users to complete actions, whether online or offline.

For more information about how Phantombuster works, check out the amazing tutorials and guides available in their Help Center.

What is Dux-Soup?

Dux-Soup is a social automation tool designed to automate activities on LinkedIn with a specific emphasis on empowering lead generation for sales and marketing teams.

With this software, users can find new qualified leads, extract data from LinkedIn, automate social selling activities, and construct multi-step drip campaigns for targeted lists of prospects.

Dux-Soup includes several third-party integrations with other popular sales & marketing tools, providing a powerful way to connect its social automation to other channels and activities:

• Hubspot
• Pipedrive
• Zapier
• LeadFuze
• Integromat
• Zymplify

To automate activities on LinkedIn, Dux-Soup uses a Chrome extension to complete actions on behalf of a user automatically whenever their browser is active.

For guidance on how to get started, Dux-Soup has several online webinars available to help onboard users and maximize the value of their software.

Software Comparison

Phantombuster and Dux-Soup are popular LinkedIn prospecting tools. Audience development, social selling, and LinkedIn data scraping are all possible to automate with both software tools.

However, several differences exist between the two software platforms that impact how effectively a user can accomplish tasks on LinkedIn.

Customization

LinkedIn provides a lot of ways to engage with people on their platform: connections, endorsements, recommendations, comments, likes, profile views, shares, messages, and more.

However, Phantombuster and Dux-Soup are different in how users can customize interactions on LinkedIn.

Dux-Soup is a lead generation software, which means their capabilities are focused on automating outreach to people (not companies) on LinkedIn.

Beyond profile visits, endorsements, connections, and in-app messages, the software’s functionality is relatively limited compared to its alternative.

With 49 different automatable actions available for LinkedIn, Phantombuster goes above and beyond to offer more control over what activities can be accomplished with their software.

Not only can users interact with company data, but it’s possible to combine multiple LinkedIn automations and create customized, trigger-based workflows for almost any action.

Integrations

Both software tools provide third-party integrations to align LinkedIn prospecting activities with other parts of a technology stack, including popular CRM software like Hubspot and Pipedrive.

However, Dux-Soup exclusively focuses on LinkedIn automation for sales and marketing teams with all integrations devoted to CRMs, sales engagement, and lead list software.

Phantombuster offers a wide variety of integrations with many popular online and social platforms but provides limited compatibility with sales or marketing software.

Fortunately, both Dux-Soup and Phantombuster connect with Zapier and give users access to a large catalog of software integrations.

Outreach & Cadence

LinkedIn is a diverse tool for sales and marketing teams. It’s possible to build an online audience, drive brand awareness, nurture prospects, or generate new sales conversations.

Dux-Soup focuses its automation on lead generation and nurturing activities with multi-step drip campaigns, follow-up cadences, and CRM enrollment capabilities built into the app experience.

Phantombuster users can construct a cadence with multi-step outreach, but it requires multiple LinkedIn automation and a complex chain of customized workflows.

Dux-Soup is a better alternative for users trying to create a sales cadence and manage outreach for prospects.

Pricing & Costs

While pricing for Phantombuster and Dux-Soup are different, both software tools require access to LinkedIn and a LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription is preferred for optimal results.

Phantombuster provides metered access to its software based on the amount of time used. Their free plan allows users to run one active automation for up to 10 minutes per day.

Beyond these limits, Phantombuster offers plans that increase the number of automations that can be active and scale the amount of daily time that can be used to automate activities. Phantombuster plans range from $30 to $900 per month, depending on the needed capacity.

Dux-Soup’s pricing is tiered based on the specific features available to a user. Their free plan enables users to automate LinkedIn profile visits and manually tag up to 100 profiles.

From there, Dux-Soup unlocks new features with each paid plan, including more LinkedIn activities, data and lead management capabilities, and drip campaign automation.

Dux-Soup offers two paid plans at $11.25 and $41.25 per month, depending on the features needed.

Pros & Cons

Phantombuster

Pros	Cons
Free Plan Available Free Access to All Features Compatible with Multiple Social Platforms Customizable Activities & Automations Usable Even if Offline	Metered Pricing Based on App Usage Automation Capacity Limited by Plan Complicated Automations & Workflows Some Complex Automation Chains Required Limited Compatibility with CRMs & Sales Tools

Dux-Soup

Pros	Cons
Free Plan Available LinkedIn Profile Tagging & Categorization Multi-Step Drip Campaigns CRM & Sales Tool Integrations	Only LinkedIn Compatible Cannot Be Used for Companies Features Limited by Plan Cannot Be Used When Browser is Idle/Inactive

Conclusion

LinkedIn prospecting tools are an important part of today’s sales and marketing technology stack.

Access to data, audiences, and sales conversations are just a few of the many benefits behind using automation software like Phantombuster or Dux-Soup.

Both tools come with advantages and disadvantages for social selling, which is why it’s important to clearly understand the differences between them.

By providing a comparison between Phantombuster and Dux-Soup, sales and marketing teams can make more informed decisions on the best LinkedIn automation tool for their situation.