BeenVerified Reviews—Does the Platform Work as Advertised?

Author
Authors
Clay Team
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Date
Apr 2, 2024

BeenVerified has been around for over 15 years and has amassed a considerable user base. Unfortunately, the platform’s long existence in the market doesn’t necessarily translate into high authority as its reputation has taken some notable hits.

We’ve gathered a collection of BeenVerified reviews to show you why this is the case and whether you should use the platform regardless of its mishaps. We also consulted our extensive network of industry experts and influencers to hear their opinions, after which we spent some time with the platform to assess its strengths and weaknesses first-hand.

Before diving into them, though, we should briefly address BeenVerified’s main features and selling points.

BeenVerified—Review of the Platform’s Features

BeenVerified is a background check platform that draws data from billions of records to let you find someone’s contact details, social media profiles, and similar information. It’s mainly intended for personal use, and you can perform seven types of searches:

  1. People search
  2. Reverse phone search
  3. Email lookup
  4. Address lookup
  5. Username search
  6. Unclaimed money search
  7. Vehicle lookup

Thanks to such a wide variety of features, BeenVerified has many use cases. Whether you need a sales lead’s email, information on the previous owner of a used car, or the name of someone who keeps spam-calling you, you can use the platform to find the data you need.

Besides the web app, BeenVerified has dedicated apps for various operating systems and devices, such as:

  • Android
  • iOS
  • Apple Watch

Regardless of your chosen platform, getting started with BeenVerified is easy—select the type of search you wish to perform and enter the details you have. If your chosen data is available, BeenVerified should return the results instantly.

Source: BeenVerified

Unfortunately, what happens next isn’t as effortless. When you click on a search result, you’ll see a screen with the progress chart indicating that the information is being gathered. In the meantime, you’ll have to go through the mandatory signup process, which BeenVerified states is necessary for revealing the requested data.

After a few minutes, the search is complete, but you don’t get the data immediately. Instead, BeenVerified asks you to sign up for a paid trial. 💸

Source: BeenVerified

You’re not notified that you’ll need to pay before you start your search, so the whole process is quite misleading. Sadly, this isn’t the only issue you’ll encounter.

BeenVerified Reviews on BBB

Due to somewhat shady practices, many users have wondered whether BeenVerified is even legit. When having such a dilemma, one of the first things you can do is check the Better Business Bureau (BBB). The better the grade, the higher the chances the platform is credible.

The BBB’s rating of BeenVerified is C, which isn’t great. While the platform is legitimate, it has a low grade for two reasons:

  1. Over 290 customer complaints filed so far
  2. Failure to address some of the most severe recurring issues

The most common problems users have reported include the following:

  • Difficulties with canceling their subscription
  • Ongoing billing even after closing the account
  • Inability to opt out of having their information sold to third parties

While many of the issues have been resolved through refunds and similar remedies, a reputable company should prevent them from happening in the first place. With that in mind, BeenVerified’s BBB rating doesn’t come as a surprise, and you should consider these experiences when deciding whether you should use the platform. ⚠️

Other Customer Reviews of BeenVerified

You can find plenty of review sites that give you an idea of users’ experiences with BeenVerified, and we’ve looked at some of the best-known ones. The following table breaks down the platform’s overall ratings on these:

Review Site Rating Number of Reviews
Trustpilot ⭐ 3.5/5 1,915
Sitejabber ⭐ 2.4/5 313
ConsumerAffairs ⭐ 4.8/5 620

The ConsumerAffairs rating seems like the odd one out as it’s significantly higher than average. If you look at the five-star reviews, you’ll see that most of them discuss responsive customer support instead of describing the actual platform and its usability. With that in mind, the rating might not paint an accurate picture of BeenVerified’s capabilities.

This doesn’t mean users haven’t had positive experiences—some claim the platform helped them find useful information and stay safe from scammers. One user also said the platform is worth the cost as it gave them accurate emails and phone numbers.

Still, there have been some notable issues in three domains:

  1. Data accuracy
  2. Ease of use
  3. Misleading advertising

🎯 Data Accuracy

Many BeenVerified users have reported significant issues with data accuracy. One customer said the information was outdated—but this isn’t the main concern. BeenVerified also doesn’t always seem to provide the criminal records of those who have one, which can be quite dangerous when doing background checks.

Users have said that the reliability problem has gotten worse over time as the platform seems to output increasingly inaccurate data.

⚙️ Ease of Use

Usability issues are another common concern among BeenVerified users. Many have commented on the fact that it takes too long to get the requested information, which then ends up being full of errors. 

Some customers were even unable to sign up for the platform. Customer service didn’t seem to be particularly helpful, leaving users frustrated. 👎

🗣️ Misleading Advertising

BeenVerified seems to claim it can provide the data you actually can’t get from the platform, as reported by some customers

One user said the platform promised to offer an individual’s photos, social life data, and similar information. But when they went through the signup process, the information wasn’t there. 🚫

While having a mixed bag of reviews of any platform is normal, BeenVerified surely has a few notable red flags you should factor in when making the final decision. 

💡 Bonus read: See what users had to say about other data platforms:

Is BeenVerified Worth Your Money?

After examining all the features and reviews, we can safely conclude that BeenVerified is a hit-and-miss platform. While we don’t advise against it, you should be aware of the aforementioned issues.

That being said, it could still be helpful in discovering contact information and light background checks. Though you shouldn’t take the result by heart—inaccurate and outdated information doesn’t seem to be uncommon.

What To Use Instead of BeenVerified

If you need a background check or data gathering platform for personal use, there are several alternatives to BeenVerified you can consider. A good example is TruthFinder, which has a slight edge over the platform due to a better BBB rating (A+). Still, it shares some of BeenVerified’s main issues, such as:

  • A similar method of asking for payments before revealing the search results
  • Data accuracy issues
  • Trouble closing the account

Those looking for a data collection platform for business use (e.g., sales or go-to-market efforts) most likely won’t find what they’re looking for with either BeenVerified or TruthFinder. This is especially true if you want to gather or enrich data at scale—these platforms don’t support bulk searches or have sufficient company data. 

If you want a simple way of getting all the B2B and B2C data you need while avoiding all the risks associated with BeenVerified, Clay can be your go-to solution. 🚀

Clay—No-Hassle Data Enrichment

Clay is a robust data enrichment and sales automation platform that lets you effortlessly find verified prospect information, such as:

  • Emails and phone numbers 💌
  • Company data 📑
  • Social media accounts 🌐
  • News and updates 🗞️

When you create a list of leads or upload an existing one, you can use Clay to access data from over 50 providers without having to create separate accounts or spend money on expensive databases.

Using waterfall enrichment, Clay will examine data sources one by one until it finds the information you’re looking for. You won’t encounter any unpleasant surprises along the way as you would with BeenVerified—your data will be available immediately, and you only pay once the search is complete and you get the information you need.

Source: Clay

When your data is ready, you can export it to your CRM or sales execution software effortlessly, thanks to 100+ integrations. If a platform you use isn’t supported natively, you can use Clay’s Zapier integration to connect it. 🧩

Put Your Data to Good Use With Clay’s AI-Powered Automation

Clay doesn’t only help you find contact information and other details—it also uses various AI solutions to help you get the most out of it. The following table shows some of Clay’s most powerful AI features:

Feature Overview
🤖 Claygent An AI web scraper and assistant that scours every corner of the web to find the information you’re looking for without the need for manual research
🦾 AI enrichment Lets you summarize prospect research, qualify leads, and streamline many processes that would otherwise involve lots of manual labor
📩 AI email builder A comprehensive email builder powered by GPT-4 that uses the data you gather to create hyper-personalized drafts in no time

With Clay, you can boost your outbound campaigns and remove inefficiencies from your pipelines to get results faster. If you need proof, see how ChatMetrics used Clay to trim all the fat from their sales cycle.

Source: Notion Wall of Love

Flexible Pricing, No Long-Term Obligations

Clay offers cost-effective tiers for everyone’s budget, including a free plan that lets you test its features first-hand. You get 100 credits per month to enrich your data and see if the platform is worth investing in. 💰

Should you decide to upgrade, you can choose from four paid plans shown in the following table:

Plan Cost/Month Credits/Month
Starter $149 2,000
Explorer $349 10,000
Pro $800 50,000
Enterprise Custom Custom

Within each plan, you can opt for more credits depending on your data needs. This way, you can rest assured you’ll neither run out nor overpay. Each plan comes with a 14-day free trial that lets you explore the platform’s additional benefits, from using your own API keys to leveraging email tool integrations.

You can create a free Clay account in only three steps:

  1. Go to the signup page
  2. Enter your name, email, and password
  3. Explore Clay’s supported data providers and features

To learn more about Clay’s use cases and real-life results, feel free to visit the platform’s Learn hub or join the Slack community. If you want actionable advice on boosting your outbound campaigns delivered right to your inbox, you can also sign up for Clay’s newsletter. 💌

BeenVerified has been around for over 15 years and has amassed a considerable user base. Unfortunately, the platform’s long existence in the market doesn’t necessarily translate into high authority as its reputation has taken some notable hits.

We’ve gathered a collection of BeenVerified reviews to show you why this is the case and whether you should use the platform regardless of its mishaps. We also consulted our extensive network of industry experts and influencers to hear their opinions, after which we spent some time with the platform to assess its strengths and weaknesses first-hand.

Before diving into them, though, we should briefly address BeenVerified’s main features and selling points.

BeenVerified—Review of the Platform’s Features

BeenVerified is a background check platform that draws data from billions of records to let you find someone’s contact details, social media profiles, and similar information. It’s mainly intended for personal use, and you can perform seven types of searches:

  1. People search
  2. Reverse phone search
  3. Email lookup
  4. Address lookup
  5. Username search
  6. Unclaimed money search
  7. Vehicle lookup

Thanks to such a wide variety of features, BeenVerified has many use cases. Whether you need a sales lead’s email, information on the previous owner of a used car, or the name of someone who keeps spam-calling you, you can use the platform to find the data you need.

Besides the web app, BeenVerified has dedicated apps for various operating systems and devices, such as:

  • Android
  • iOS
  • Apple Watch

Regardless of your chosen platform, getting started with BeenVerified is easy—select the type of search you wish to perform and enter the details you have. If your chosen data is available, BeenVerified should return the results instantly.

Source: BeenVerified

Unfortunately, what happens next isn’t as effortless. When you click on a search result, you’ll see a screen with the progress chart indicating that the information is being gathered. In the meantime, you’ll have to go through the mandatory signup process, which BeenVerified states is necessary for revealing the requested data.

After a few minutes, the search is complete, but you don’t get the data immediately. Instead, BeenVerified asks you to sign up for a paid trial. 💸

Source: BeenVerified

You’re not notified that you’ll need to pay before you start your search, so the whole process is quite misleading. Sadly, this isn’t the only issue you’ll encounter.

BeenVerified Reviews on BBB

Due to somewhat shady practices, many users have wondered whether BeenVerified is even legit. When having such a dilemma, one of the first things you can do is check the Better Business Bureau (BBB). The better the grade, the higher the chances the platform is credible.

The BBB’s rating of BeenVerified is C, which isn’t great. While the platform is legitimate, it has a low grade for two reasons:

  1. Over 290 customer complaints filed so far
  2. Failure to address some of the most severe recurring issues

The most common problems users have reported include the following:

  • Difficulties with canceling their subscription
  • Ongoing billing even after closing the account
  • Inability to opt out of having their information sold to third parties

While many of the issues have been resolved through refunds and similar remedies, a reputable company should prevent them from happening in the first place. With that in mind, BeenVerified’s BBB rating doesn’t come as a surprise, and you should consider these experiences when deciding whether you should use the platform. ⚠️

Other Customer Reviews of BeenVerified

You can find plenty of review sites that give you an idea of users’ experiences with BeenVerified, and we’ve looked at some of the best-known ones. The following table breaks down the platform’s overall ratings on these:

Review Site Rating Number of Reviews
Trustpilot ⭐ 3.5/5 1,915
Sitejabber ⭐ 2.4/5 313
ConsumerAffairs ⭐ 4.8/5 620

The ConsumerAffairs rating seems like the odd one out as it’s significantly higher than average. If you look at the five-star reviews, you’ll see that most of them discuss responsive customer support instead of describing the actual platform and its usability. With that in mind, the rating might not paint an accurate picture of BeenVerified’s capabilities.

This doesn’t mean users haven’t had positive experiences—some claim the platform helped them find useful information and stay safe from scammers. One user also said the platform is worth the cost as it gave them accurate emails and phone numbers.

Still, there have been some notable issues in three domains:

  1. Data accuracy
  2. Ease of use
  3. Misleading advertising

🎯 Data Accuracy

Many BeenVerified users have reported significant issues with data accuracy. One customer said the information was outdated—but this isn’t the main concern. BeenVerified also doesn’t always seem to provide the criminal records of those who have one, which can be quite dangerous when doing background checks.

Users have said that the reliability problem has gotten worse over time as the platform seems to output increasingly inaccurate data.

⚙️ Ease of Use

Usability issues are another common concern among BeenVerified users. Many have commented on the fact that it takes too long to get the requested information, which then ends up being full of errors. 

Some customers were even unable to sign up for the platform. Customer service didn’t seem to be particularly helpful, leaving users frustrated. 👎

🗣️ Misleading Advertising

BeenVerified seems to claim it can provide the data you actually can’t get from the platform, as reported by some customers

One user said the platform promised to offer an individual’s photos, social life data, and similar information. But when they went through the signup process, the information wasn’t there. 🚫

While having a mixed bag of reviews of any platform is normal, BeenVerified surely has a few notable red flags you should factor in when making the final decision. 

💡 Bonus read: See what users had to say about other data platforms:

Is BeenVerified Worth Your Money?

After examining all the features and reviews, we can safely conclude that BeenVerified is a hit-and-miss platform. While we don’t advise against it, you should be aware of the aforementioned issues.

That being said, it could still be helpful in discovering contact information and light background checks. Though you shouldn’t take the result by heart—inaccurate and outdated information doesn’t seem to be uncommon.

What To Use Instead of BeenVerified

If you need a background check or data gathering platform for personal use, there are several alternatives to BeenVerified you can consider. A good example is TruthFinder, which has a slight edge over the platform due to a better BBB rating (A+). Still, it shares some of BeenVerified’s main issues, such as:

  • A similar method of asking for payments before revealing the search results
  • Data accuracy issues
  • Trouble closing the account

Those looking for a data collection platform for business use (e.g., sales or go-to-market efforts) most likely won’t find what they’re looking for with either BeenVerified or TruthFinder. This is especially true if you want to gather or enrich data at scale—these platforms don’t support bulk searches or have sufficient company data. 

If you want a simple way of getting all the B2B and B2C data you need while avoiding all the risks associated with BeenVerified, Clay can be your go-to solution. 🚀

Clay—No-Hassle Data Enrichment

Clay is a robust data enrichment and sales automation platform that lets you effortlessly find verified prospect information, such as:

  • Emails and phone numbers 💌
  • Company data 📑
  • Social media accounts 🌐
  • News and updates 🗞️

When you create a list of leads or upload an existing one, you can use Clay to access data from over 50 providers without having to create separate accounts or spend money on expensive databases.

Using waterfall enrichment, Clay will examine data sources one by one until it finds the information you’re looking for. You won’t encounter any unpleasant surprises along the way as you would with BeenVerified—your data will be available immediately, and you only pay once the search is complete and you get the information you need.

Source: Clay

When your data is ready, you can export it to your CRM or sales execution software effortlessly, thanks to 100+ integrations. If a platform you use isn’t supported natively, you can use Clay’s Zapier integration to connect it. 🧩

Put Your Data to Good Use With Clay’s AI-Powered Automation

Clay doesn’t only help you find contact information and other details—it also uses various AI solutions to help you get the most out of it. The following table shows some of Clay’s most powerful AI features:

Feature Overview
🤖 Claygent An AI web scraper and assistant that scours every corner of the web to find the information you’re looking for without the need for manual research
🦾 AI enrichment Lets you summarize prospect research, qualify leads, and streamline many processes that would otherwise involve lots of manual labor
📩 AI email builder A comprehensive email builder powered by GPT-4 that uses the data you gather to create hyper-personalized drafts in no time

With Clay, you can boost your outbound campaigns and remove inefficiencies from your pipelines to get results faster. If you need proof, see how ChatMetrics used Clay to trim all the fat from their sales cycle.

Source: Notion Wall of Love

Flexible Pricing, No Long-Term Obligations

Clay offers cost-effective tiers for everyone’s budget, including a free plan that lets you test its features first-hand. You get 100 credits per month to enrich your data and see if the platform is worth investing in. 💰

Should you decide to upgrade, you can choose from four paid plans shown in the following table:

Plan Cost/Month Credits/Month
Starter $149 2,000
Explorer $349 10,000
Pro $800 50,000
Enterprise Custom Custom

Within each plan, you can opt for more credits depending on your data needs. This way, you can rest assured you’ll neither run out nor overpay. Each plan comes with a 14-day free trial that lets you explore the platform’s additional benefits, from using your own API keys to leveraging email tool integrations.

You can create a free Clay account in only three steps:

  1. Go to the signup page
  2. Enter your name, email, and password
  3. Explore Clay’s supported data providers and features

To learn more about Clay’s use cases and real-life results, feel free to visit the platform’s Learn hub or join the Slack community. If you want actionable advice on boosting your outbound campaigns delivered right to your inbox, you can also sign up for Clay’s newsletter. 💌

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