Clay Credit Audit + API Replacement POC

Find out exactly where your Clay credits are going — and prove you can cut the biggest one.

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Pricing

$500 flat. Done in 48 hours.

I audit your current Clay setup, identify where credits are burning fastest, and build one working proof-of-concept that replaces your most expensive enrichment step with a direct API call. You see the cost difference with real numbers before deciding whether to go further.

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What You Get

• Credit burn audit: I walk through your Clay tables and map every enrichment step, what it costs in credits, and how often it runs. You get a clear picture of where the $800/mo is actually going.
• Top-cost replacement POC: I take the single most expensive step (likely the AI enrichment at 12 credits per row) and build a direct API replacement that does the same job. You compare output quality side by side.
• Cost-per-contact comparison: Hard numbers showing your current Clay cost-per-contact vs. the API alternative. Not estimates — real data from your actual workflow.
• Go/no-go recommendation: A short writeup on which Clay steps are worth replacing and which ones are fine to keep. Not everything needs to move off Clay — some steps are cheap enough to leave.

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How It Works

1. You screenshare your Clay workflow for 20-30 minutes. I watch you run it and ask questions about each step.
2. I identify the top credit burner and build a replacement script using direct API calls. Takes me about an hour with my tooling.
3. I run both versions (Clay and direct API) against a sample of your real data and document the results.
4. I send you the audit, the working POC script, and the cost comparison. You decide what to do next.

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Success Criteria

• Audit delivered: Every Clay enrichment step documented with credit cost per row.
• POC works: The replacement script produces the same or better output as the Clay step it replaces.
• Cost savings confirmed: The POC step costs at least 50% less per row than the Clay equivalent.

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What the Monthly Engagement Looks Like

If the audit shows real savings and the POC proves the approach works, I roll into a $2,500/mo retainer to replace the remaining high-cost steps and build the full pipeline:

• Waterfall enrichment: Stack multiple providers (cheapest first) so you get better hit rates at lower cost than any single Clay enrichment.
• Email/phone provider optimization: Connect the providers you already trust via direct API instead of Clay credits.
• Full pipeline handoff: You own the system. No recurring SaaS dependency.

Minimum commitment: 90 days. After that, month-to-month.

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What I Need From You

• 30-minute screenshare of your current Clay workflow
• A sample account list (50-100 rows) to test the POC against
• Which enrichment providers you currently use or want to use

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Next Step

Book 30 minutes so I can watch your Clay workflow live. I will have the audit and POC back to you within 48 hours. Pay the $500 here to kick it off.

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Ryan Murphy | UpfrontOps | rmurphy@upfrontoperations.com

What We Discussed

You walked me through how eCore uses Clay today and where the friction is. The short version: you are paying $800/mo for a single feature, and even that feature only gives you about 20% usable output.

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The Clay Problem

You hold a Clay subscription and periodically upgrade to the $800/mo tier to unlock 50,000-row capacity. The only feature you actually use is Find People. You upload large account lists (sometimes 400K+ companies), apply persona filters (function, seniority, title), and pull raw contacts. Then you take those contacts out of Clay, discard roughly 80% as inaccurate or outdated, and enrich the remaining 20% with your own tools before delivering to clients.

You do not use Clay's AI features, their enrichment data, or their CRM sync. You bring your own API keys to avoid Clay's $0.50/call AI charges. The $800/mo plan exists in your stack solely because the lower tier caps you at 5,000 rows.

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Your Data Quality Audit

You showed me a benchmarking analysis you ran on Clay's waterfall data providers. You tested 1,000 contacts, spent over 3,000 credits, and got back 800 emails. The cost-per-valid-email varied wildly across providers. Lead Magic and Find Email performed best. Drop Contact was near the worst.

This matters because Clay has been pushing back on eCore's coverage numbers while their own providers are demonstrably weaker on quality.

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The Build Proposal

I proposed replacing your Clay dependency entirely. Since you already own the data (500M-record database), the enrichment tools, and the LinkedIn scraping providers, the only thing Clay gives you is a UI for Find People. I can build that workflow as a custom pipeline you own, with no recurring SaaS cost.

You confirmed interest and said you want to learn more, specifically around the Find People replacement for large account lists.

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Where We Left Off

I offered to send a one-pager scoping the project, or schedule a follow-up call to go deeper before formalizing anything. You also invited me to explore the eCore product directly, and you mentioned your team is building out internal tooling and considering whether the Clay partnership is still worth pursuing.

What You Do

You run a B2B data company that serves two distinct markets. The first is a high-volume database of 500 million contacts, updated quarterly. The second is a premium data service focused on hard-to-find segments: manufacturing, pharma, and other industries where the people your clients need are not sitting on LinkedIn with polished profiles.

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How Your Premium Service Works

Enterprise clients send you account lists of 400,000+ companies with tight persona specifications. Director of IT, Director of Data, specific seniority levels. They want exactly two contacts per account, not bulk. You pull from your own database first, then fill gaps using Clay's Find People and other sources, clean the results aggressively (keeping about 20% of what Clay returns), enrich with your own validation tools, and deliver verified, premium contacts.

The quality bar is the product. Your clients pay for accuracy in segments where nobody else can deliver it.

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Where You Stand With Clay

You have been in talks with Clay for over a year to become one of their waterfall data providers. They have stalled on coverage thresholds while their existing providers score worse on quality in your own benchmarking. You are reconsidering whether that partnership makes sense at all.

Meanwhile, you are paying Clay $800/mo for a single feature (Find People with 50K-row capacity) and getting diminishing returns on that investment.

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What You Are Building

Your engineering team is developing internal tools for real-time data validation, including a flow that checks whether contacts are still at the company before delivery. You have everything available through API and are debating whether a UI layer even matters, since most of your workflow is programmatic. You are based in Pennsylvania and operate as a lean, technical team that builds its own infrastructure.