What does your outbound prospecting stack look like in 2026? Especially if you're solo or small team

Trying to understand how solo founders and small teams are handling lead research and cold outreach tooling right now.

A few things I'm curious about:

The data layer
Are people still paying for Apollo or similar? Or have you found a cheaper / more flexible setup? I keep hearing frustration about the credit systems, but also that the database quality matters a lot for your specific niche.

The enrichment workflow
How are you getting from a company name to a useful prospect record? Manually? Scraping? API combination?

The outreach layer
Instantly, Smartlead, Lemlist - or just manual Gmail? For small volume outbound I'm curious whether the cost of a sequencer is worth it.

I built a set of Python scripts to handle the data layer and cut my tooling costs significantly. Using Hunter.io's free tier for email discovery, scraping for the rest. Works well for my volume (50-150 companies/week). Happy to share details if useful.

Mostly interested in what other people have found actually works - there seems to be a big gap between what vendors claim and what solo operators actually use day-to-day.