Buying a Spanish company database: what to check before you pay

Buying a database looks like the fastest way into the Spanish market. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's the fastest way to spend a few hundred euros on a spreadsheet nobody uses. The difference is asking the right questions first.

1. How old is the data?

Spanish SMEs change phone, email and address constantly. Ask for the data date and how it's updated.

2. Where does it come from?

A serious provider can explain the source. If they can't or won't, don't buy. Under GDPR you need to be able to explain where a contact came from.

3. Company emails or accountant emails?

The most underrated issue in Spanish SME databases. When an accounting firm, agency or operator files paperwork on a company's behalf, it enters its own email, which ends up repeated across hundreds of records. Cleaning our directory, we removed more than 48,000 emails from accounting firms, agencies and operators, plus thousands of phone numbers shared by unrelated companies.

4. Landlines or mobiles?

In small businesses the landline reaches an employee and the mobile reaches the owner. In our directory, 93 % of SME and sole-trader numbers are mobiles.

5. Per record or per useful contact?

If you pay €500 for 10,000 records and only 3,000 have a working phone that fits your customer, each useful contact costs €0.17, if you use them all. If you'll work 300, it's €1.67. The alternative is paying only for the profiles you work: on IberiaData a full profile costs €0.60-€2.90 depending on the pack, and you never pay for data that doesn't exist.

6. What can you do with it?

Read the licence. Most providers, us included, license data for internal use only: no resale or transfer.

Checklist

• Data date and update frequency
• Explainable source
• Emails cleaned of intermediaries
• Share of mobiles
• Cost per useful contact
• Filters by province, size and activity
• Clear licence