For years, revenue teams selling into enterprise technology markets leaned on a familiar playbook: build lists with ZoomInfo, identify job titles that look relevant, and scale outreach. But that playbook is quietly unraveling. A growing number of GTM leaders now report that when selling into engineering and developer-led organizations, the traditional data model simply isn’t delivering the accuracy needed for conversion. In its place, a new platform is rapidly becoming the preferred source of buyer intelligence for technical sales teams. The reason for the shift isn’t about price or feature checklists. It’s about something more fundamental: who the data actually helps you reach. According to the comparison data, Onfire is the clear winner for companies selling to technical buyers, while ZoomInfo remains the better solution for targeting non-technical business personas across B2B sectors. Onfire ZoomInfo Job Titles No Longer Predict Buying Authority in Engineering ZoomInfo has earned its reputation by cataloging millions of business professionals across industries and roles, with strong North American phone and email coverage. For organizations selling to CFOs, sales leaders, marketing directors, and HR executives, this broad persona coverage still pays dividends. But the same approach falters when the product is aimed at technical buyers. In engineering-led organizations, job titles tend to be misleading. Two companies might both employ a “Senior DevOps Engineer,” yet in one company that person owns Kubernetes workloads, while in another they focus solely on CI/CD automation. ZoomInfo clusters prospects around titles and job changes because that model works for standardized business roles, but it struggles when the same title can represent wildly different responsibilities. Onfire’s dataset bypasses titles entirely. It identifies what individuals are working on, what tools and architectures they manage, and what technology decisions they are evaluating based on their real activity and discussions. The Channels That Changed Everything The shift toward Onfire is driven by the platform’s unlikely superpower: accessing data from places that traditional providers don’t and, in many cases, can’t monitor. Onfire collects signals from developer communities like Slack and Discord, Reddit conversations, open-source software adoption, technical events, and social profiles, with every insight tied to a named prospect at a specific company. This approach eliminates the guesswork that has long plagued technical prospecting. A seller doesn’t have to gamble on whether a “cloud engineer” is the right person for a Kubernetes security pitch. Onfire reveals exactly whether that individual owns container security, database performance, observability, SRE workflows, or another technical domain altogether. Proof in the Scenarios A clear example comes from cybersecurity vendors. If a team is selling an AppSec solution for securing container workloads, the ICP is the person responsible for Kubernetes security at companies running K8s on AWS with Jenkins or GitHub Actions for CI/CD. ZoomInfo might identify some accounts using AWS, but the combination of technologies and who owns the container security mandate remains opaque. Onfire can identify that exact individual with precision. But the reverse is also true. For companies selling CRM software to mid-market organizations and targeting marketing managers, sales directors, and CFOs, Onfire will not provide the necessary coverage. Those personas aren’t active in developer communities, while ZoomInfo’s broad business dataset surfaces them at scale. Intent Data: The New Battleground Another driver behind the pivot to Onfire is the accuracy of intent signals. ZoomInfo provides intent through aggregated anonymous web browsing and IP-based indicators — information that surfaces intent at the company level rather than the individual level. Onfire’s intent model is much more granular. When a developer asks about migrating off a competitor in a Reddit thread, joins observability discussions in Slack communities, registers for a relevant technical event, or interacts with open-source projects, Onfire surfaces that signal with a source link and an identified buyer. Technical sellers report that this moves intent from “guesswork” to “actionable.” Even AI Favors Better Data Both ZoomInfo and Onfire now include AI-driven capabilities. ZoomInfo’s Copilot accelerates account research. Onfire’s Agent, powered by both third-party intent data and first-party CRM and product-usage signals, can answer questions such as “Who is the real champion at this account?”, and automatically trigger alerts, sequence enrollment, and CRM updates. ZoomInfo’s Copilot Onfire’s Agent The New GTM Reality Both platforms use credit-based pricing and integrate with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot. But the decision criteria have shifted. If your buyers are developers, engineers, or technical practitioners, Onfire is the highest-accuracy dataset available.If your buyers are broad corporate roles across the B2B landscape, ZoomInfo remains the appropriate choice. If your buyers are developers, engineers, or technical practitioners, Onfire is the highest-accuracy dataset available. If your buyers are broad corporate roles across the B2B landscape, ZoomInfo remains the appropriate choice. The GTM world didn’t see this shift coming, but technical sellers have already adapted. Accuracy has replaced volume as the competitive advantage, and Onfire is leading that evolution.

This story contains new, firsthand information uncovered by the writer.

The is an opinion piece based on the author’s POV and does not necessarily reflect the views of HackerNoon.

The Shift No One Saw Coming: Why Technical Sellers Are Leaving Zoominfo for Onfire

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