Connect the Dots (CTD) Alternatives in 2026

Short answer: Connect the Dots (CTD) is a strong warm introduction product, and for many buyers it is the right one. People look for alternatives when per-user pricing gets awkward at team scale, when they want asks triggered by live deals, or when they want raw relationship data rather than a workflow. Boomerang is the closest alternative for B2B sales teams. Vieu suits strategic enterprise pursuits. The Swarm suits builders who want data and an API. Draftboard suits small teams that want to pay per path.

Comparing directly? See Boomerang vs Connect the Dots, side by side on scoring, intros and pricing.

We make Boomerang, so read this with that in mind. Competitor facts below are as of September 2026, from each company's own site and public records. Products change quickly in this category, so check anything that matters to your decision.

What CTD does well

CTD, at ctd.ai, turns the networks people connect (email, CRM and LinkedIn) into a scored relationship graph and shows the shortest warm path to a person or company. It has raised $20M in total, with a Series A in December 2021, and holds a 4.9 rating on G2.

• It shows paths before anyone connects anything. CTD infers relationships from public career overlap: same company, same period, similar seniority.
• A free tier that recruits connectors. Board members, investors and customer champions can join as free external members, and their networks feed your company graph.
• A real intro workflow. Ghost emails in the connector's voice, outreach approvers, approved connectors and weak-relationship warnings. Champion job-change tracking arrived in January 2026.
• Surfaces. Native iOS (July 2026) and Android (August 2026) apps, a Chrome extension for Gmail and LinkedIn, plus an API and MCP. It is SOC 2 Type II.
• Breadth. About ten use cases, including dedicated pages for venture capital and private equity firms.

Why teams look for CTD alternatives

The reasons we hear most are about fit, not quality:

• Per-user pricing at team scale. CTD is Free, $20 a month for Professional, which is an individual plan, and custom for Business. CRM integration, company-wide search and the public-data paths sit on Business, so a team rollout means a quote.
• Asks triggered by deals. Some teams want software that reads the CRM, calendars and call recordings and proposes an ask when a deal stalls or goes single-threaded, rather than waiting for a rep to search.
• Connector types with owner approval. Some teams want investors, board members and partners handled as structured groups, each with its own cadence, with the internal relationship owner approving every ask.
• Slack as the workspace. Teams that run deals in Slack channels want the warm path answered in the thread.
• The reverse: data, not workflow. Builders sometimes want a relationship data API to feed their own tools, not an intro product.

The alternatives

1. Boomerang

What it is: software for B2B revenue teams. Its AI agent, Rudy, maps who your executives and employees, investors, advisors and board members, customer champions and partners know, using 80+ relationship signals from systems the company already has and public sources. Connectors never have to install or join anything. Rudy watches deals through the CRM, calendars, call recordings and Slack, proposes who should ask whom, and drafts the ask. The rep approves, the internal relationship owner approves, and the connector accepts or declines and sends from their own account. Rudy never sends. It delivers requests, nudges when things go quiet, and tracks each ask to the booked meeting. Each connector's preferences on deal size, channel and cadence are enforced on every ask.

Rated 4.6 out of 5 on G2 from 31 user reviews (October 2026). Read Boomerang reviews on G2.

Best for: sales teams working open deals who want warm asks proposed from the pipeline, with approvals built in. On Team and above, Rudy works in Slack deal channels.

Where it falls short versus CTD: there is no free-forever tier, only a 7-day free trial on Starter with no card. CTD's mobile apps and Gmail and LinkedIn extension meet people in more places; Boomerang meets them in Slack and in their AI assistant through MCP. And Boomerang is scoped to B2B revenue teams, with no dedicated venture capital or private equity workflows.

Pricing: Starter $80 a month billed annually ($100 month to month) with 3 Primary Super Connectors, 3 users and 75 connectors mapped; Team $600 ($720) with 10 Primary Super Connectors, 10 users and 500 connectors mapped; Company $2,000 ($2,400) with 50 Primary Super Connectors, 30 users and 2,500 connectors mapped; Enterprise custom. Users are included, connectors are never billed, and MCP and API are on every plan. Setup is about 30 minutes of admin work, with warm paths the same day.

Proof: Armis created 26,000 warm intro paths, saw 10x ROI on revenue in year one and eliminated 1,400+ hours of research. Storylane saw a 12 percent reply rate on champion re-engagement against about 1 percent for cold, and booked 2 meetings in its first 2 weeks.

2. Vieu

What it is: a business graph built from public sources such as shared employment, board seats, co-authored patents, school cohorts and conference speaking, across what Vieu says are more than 30 sources. It has a Chrome extension that overlays relationship data on LinkedIn, and an MCP server in public beta.

Best for: enterprise teams running a short list of strategic, high-value pursuits who want broad coverage on day one and AI account plans.

Where it falls short: pricing is not published, so budgeting starts with a sales conversation. Research points to a platform fee plus an outcome-based component, so ask for a written quote.

Pricing: not published as of September 2026.

3. The Swarm

What it is: relationship data for builders. A large people and company dataset, an AI Network Mapper, and an API that The Swarm licenses to Clay and other tools, so you may already be using its data inside a tool you pay for. Documentation and MCP access are well developed.

Best for: RevOps and GTM engineering teams that want to build their own workflow on relationship data, and small teams that want a free way to see who they know.

Where it falls short: it is a data layer first. As of September 2026 we could not find intro drafting in the connector's voice, approval routing or Salesforce and Slack integrations.

Pricing: a free plan; Premium at $99 a month per company; a 14-day trial.

4. Draftboard

What it is: a small warm-intro tool, relaunched in November 2025, from a team of about 8 to 15 people that raised a $4.1M seed in May 2024. Its "Scan my network" feature shows warm-path counts before you sign up, and a Chrome extension captures your network in the browser.

Best for: founders and small teams that want to try warm paths with no commitment and pay only for what they use.

Where it falls short: as of September 2026 we could not find CRM or collaboration integrations or structured connector types, and it has no G2 presence yet.

Pricing: usage-based, about $0.30 per quality path.

5. LinkedIn Sales Navigator TeamLink

What it is: the feature in Sales Navigator that shows when a colleague on your contract is connected to a prospect on LinkedIn. Many sales teams already pay for it.

Best for: teams that want a quick first check on who knows whom without buying anything new.

Where it falls short: it sees LinkedIn connections among licensed colleagues, not investors, board members, customers or partners, and it leaves deciding who should ask, and how, to the rep.

Pricing: part of Sales Navigator, which is licensed per user. Check LinkedIn for current rates.

Side by side

How to choose

• Stay with CTD if you want a free tier, mobile apps, a Gmail and LinkedIn extension, paths inferred from public career data on day one, or venture capital and private equity workflows. It is the product closest to Boomerang, and on those points it wins.
• Choose Boomerang if you are a B2B sales team and the goal is meetings on open deals: asks proposed from the CRM, calendars and calls, investors, board members, customer champions and partners mapped without asking them to join anything, owner approval on every ask, Rudy in Slack, and pricing that does not rise with headcount.
• Choose Vieu if you are working a handful of strategic enterprise accounts and want broad public-data coverage plus account planning.
• Choose The Swarm if you want data and an API to build on.
• Choose Draftboard if you are small and want to pay per path.
• Start with TeamLink if you already own Sales Navigator and only need a first look.

A practical test: put five open deals into two shortlisted tools. See which surfaces the better path, who it suggests should ask, how the approval reaches your CEO or a board member, and whether you can see which asks became meetings.

Further reading

For the detailed head-to-head, read Boomerang vs Connect the Dots (CTD): the honest comparison. See also Boomerang vs Vieu and Boomerang vs The Swarm. Compare plans on the pricing page, or start a 7-day free trial on Starter, no card needed.

How to evaluate data accuracy specifically

If data accuracy is the primary reason you're moving off Connect The Dots, ask any tool you're evaluating:

1. What data sources do you ingest? LinkedIn-only is the most stale. Email and calendar metadata are dramatically fresher.
2. How do you score relationship strength? Tools that score by recency + frequency + bidirectionality (not just connection-existence) produce sharper outputs.
3. How often does the graph refresh? Real-time (Boomerang) or weekly (some tools) or never (worst case).
4. How do you handle relationship decay? Tools that surface decaying relationships before they go cold are dramatically more useful than tools that show snapshot-only state.
5. What's the false-positive rate? Ask for benchmarks. Tools that surface warm paths that turn out to be cold (because the LinkedIn connection is from 2018) cap conversion.

A tool that answers "yes" to multi-source ingestion, recency-weighted scoring, real-time refresh, and decay surfacing has fundamentally better data accuracy than a LinkedIn-only graph.