Prospex vs business-monitor.ch: an alternative for Swiss prospect lists
business-monitor.ch is a Swiss company-information service published by Novertur International SA in Lausanne. Its Sales hunter plan, at CHF 99 a month, builds filtered prospect lists with contact details and exports up to 200 companies a month to Excel. Prospex builds a list of Swiss companies from a description of the customers you sell to, gives a reason for each company, and follows the list for changes such as register entries and job ads.
Prospex vs business-monitor.ch at a glance
| Your task | business-monitor.ch | Prospex |
|---|---|---|
| Define the target group | More than 30 filters: region (canton, municipality, postcode, radius), NOGA industry, size, email, phone, VAT status, keywords. | A written description of your customers, optional example customers, and filters for canton, municipality, size band, sector group and audience (B2B, B2C). |
| Company record | Register data (UID, address, NOGA code, legal form, size, capital, registration date, managing director), with a generic email and phone number for many companies and decision-makers' emails collected from public sources. | Register data, size and audience, a fit (Core or Explore) and up to two reasons, one of which usually quotes the company's own description with its source. |
| Catch new matches | A notification when a new company matches a saved target group. | A list set to keep finding new matches is rebuilt weekly, and the Monday email says which companies joined. |
| Follow companies | Watch lists with notifications of changes such as leadership or status. | Monitoring of a list's Core companies: register publications, trademark filings, job ads, website changes, funding news and LinkedIn posts. |
| Check creditworthiness | Creditreform solvency reports, discounted with a subscription. | Capital changes, mergers and liquidations from the register; credit reports are outside its scope. |
| Use the data elsewhere | Excel or CSV exports; an API with the Enterprise plan. | CSV export, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Attio sync, JSON and CSV feeds, a REST API and MCP, on every paid plan. |
| Price | Sales hunter CHF 99 a month, Enterprise from CHF 5,000 a year, or addresses bought one by one from CHF 0.90. | A free account, then plans from CHF 49 a month for 250 companies. |
Sources: business-monitor.ch's pricing, Sales hunter and FAQ pages, read on 20 October 2026; Prospex Market Builder, the list monitoring reference and Prospex pricing.
A real list: managed IT providers in French-speaking Switzerland
Say you sell backup software or hardware to the IT firms that run other companies' computers under a monthly contract. On 16 October 2026 we built that list in Prospex from a description written in French, which reads in short: "IT outsourcing and managed service providers that take over other companies' IT, usually SMEs, under a maintenance contract or monthly subscription: hardware and network management, helpdesk, remote monitoring, backup, security, Microsoft 365 and cloud. Not consultancies that place engineers at their clients." The filters kept the six French-speaking cantons and companies that sell to businesses. Three managed-IT firms were added as example customers.
On 20 October 2026 the list held 320 companies in Core and 270 in Explore. In Prospex's own NOGA classification, 289 of the 320 Core companies are in division 62 (computer programming, consultancy and related activities). The other 31 sit mostly in division 63 (hosting and data processing) and 61 (telecommunications), or have no division yet. The same six cantons hold 6,099 active companies in division 62. In a random sample of 20 of those outside the list, most write software or apps, or sell IT and data consulting; one gives computer courses.
| Company in Core | Reason Prospex shows | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| A managed-IT firm in Vaud | Offers managed IT services that optimise and secure its clients' infrastructure (its website); close to one of the three example customers. | A clear fit. Check its size, given as 1–10 employees. |
| An IT support firm in Geneva | IT support and managed services for Mac and Windows (its website). | A fit if your product supports Mac fleets as well as Windows. |
| An IT and telecoms firm in Valais | IT outsourcing and tailored IT services for SMEs across Switzerland (its website). | Classified in telecommunications, so a filter on division 62 leaves it out. |
| An IT audit firm in Geneva | Audits, stabilises and modernises companies' IT systems (its website). | Project work comes first in its description. Read its site before deciding between Core and Explore. |
We checked ten Core companies drawn at random on 20 October 2026. Eight describe running or supporting other companies' IT; the Geneva audit firm and one that leads with business software are worth a second look. At business-monitor.ch, the same target group would start from the six cantons and an industry code. NOGA 2008 has a code for this work, 620300 (computer facilities management), while NOGA 2025 merges it with IT consultancy in 622000, as our NOGA code guide explains. business-monitor.ch's keyword filter, built from company websites, can narrow the result further if you know the words your customers use.
If your customers share one industry code and a region, a business-monitor.ch target group gets you there quickly, with the contact fields in the same file. When they are defined by how they work, such as monthly contracts or a helpdesk, a description finds them across several codes and gives you a reason to check for each one. The method is the same as in our target-account list guide.
What does business-monitor.ch offer?
business-monitor.ch draws on more than 30 public sources, including Zefix, the 26 cantonal commercial registers, the SHAB, the UID and VAT registers and the Federal Statistical Office. Crawlers add product and service descriptions, keywords and contact details from company websites. By its own count, its List-Builder filters 748,660 companies, and every company deleted from the register in the last 15 years stays in the database. business-monitor.ch states the source and date of each email address it shows, and its FAQ gives its own figures for undeliverable contacts: at most 8% for emails and 5% for phone numbers.
Without a subscription you can buy addresses by the company, and the data is yours to use without time limit. Enterprise also includes phone support and training. On team access the pages differ: the FAQ says subscriptions are personal and multi-user access comes with Enterprise, while the Sales hunter page advertises inviting the whole team at no extra cost. Ask which applies before you buy for several people.
What does Prospex follow on a list?
Monitoring follows the Core companies of a list. Prospex reads the commercial register, Swissreg trademark filings, job boards, company websites, the press and LinkedIn posts, and sorts what it finds into topics you can switch off, such as leadership, growth and finance, or products and positioning. A company that joins Core later is monitored from the day it joins.
Changes arrive in one Monday email with a section for each list, and you can add alerts between emails, at most one every three hours per list. Each change links to its public source. business-monitor.ch's watch lists report changes such as a new manager or a change of status; if those are the events you act on, the two services overlap.
What do the plans cost?
| business-monitor.ch | Price, excluding VAT | Included |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | CHF 29 a month | Company and person search, watch lists, discounted credit reports. |
| Sales hunter | CHF 99 a month | Classic, plus the List-Builder, 200 exports a month and new-match notifications. |
| Enterprise | From CHF 5,000 a year | An export quota from 10,000 prospects a year, the API, credit reports and multi-user access. |
| Addresses without a plan | CHF 0.90, 0.70 or 0.40 each | CHF 0.90 for each of the first 500 companies of an order, CHF 0.70 for the next 500, CHF 0.40 from the 1,001st. |
A yearly subscription costs 17% less than paying monthly. Monthly and yearly plans can be cancelled up to the day before they renew; Enterprise runs a year at a time, with one month's notice. The FAQ's own example puts an order of 1,250 addresses at CHF 900.
| Prospex plan | Price per month, excluding VAT | Companies per month | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | CHF 0 | 20 | 1, first ten companies visible |
| Starter | CHF 49 | 250 | 3 |
| Pro | CHF 99 | 1,000 | 10 |
| Business | CHF 499 | 10,000 | Unlimited |
| Enterprise | On request | On request | On request |
Every paid plan includes exports, list monitoring, feeds, the API, MCP and CRM sync. A company counts when you open its full profile, export it or send it to another tool, and it counts once a month however often you do. Browsing lists is free. business-monitor.ch counts exported addresses; Prospex counts companies you take out each month, so a list of 500 companies exported once is 500 of Pro's 1,000 for that month.
Which one should you choose?
business-monitor.ch fits when you need emails and phone numbers in the same file as the register data and an industry code and a region describe your customers well. It also sells a single address file you keep without a subscription. Its Creditreform reports also help if you check the solvency of the companies you sell to.
Choose Prospex if you describe your customers by how they work and want a reason to check beside each company. The list keeps itself current and tells you what changed at each account, and the API, feeds and CRM sync come with every paid plan.
For the wider choice of sources, start with our Swiss company-data comparison. Our Moneyhouse comparison, firmenwatch.ch comparison and easyMonitoring comparison cover three other Swiss services.
Build a free list to see the first ten companies of your own market, with no card required.
Frequently asked questions
- What is business-monitor.ch?
- business-monitor.ch is a Swiss company-information service published by Novertur International SA in Lausanne. It covers every company in the Swiss commercial register, adds contact details collected from company websites, and sells filtered prospect lists, company watch lists and Creditreform credit reports. In October 2026 its plans ran from CHF 29 a month to CHF 5,000 a year and more.
- How much does business-monitor.ch cost?
- In October 2026 business-monitor.ch published three plans, excluding VAT: Classic at CHF 29 a month, Sales hunter at CHF 99 a month with 200 exports a month, and Enterprise from CHF 5,000 a year with the API. Without a plan, addresses cost CHF 0.90 each for the first 500 of an order, CHF 0.70 for the next 500 and CHF 0.40 after that. Paying yearly costs 17% less than paying monthly.
- What is the difference between business-monitor.ch and Prospex?
- business-monitor.ch builds prospect lists from more than 30 filters, such as region, NOGA code, size and keywords, and exports them with contact details. Prospex builds a list from a description of your customers, gives a reason for each company and follows the list in the commercial register, job ads, company websites and the press. business-monitor.ch's API comes with Enterprise; Prospex's API, feeds and CRM sync come with every paid plan, from CHF 49 a month.
- Can I move a business-monitor.ch list to Prospex?
- Yes, on a paid plan. Upload the exported file as a CSV: Prospex matches each row by its UID first, then by website or name, and shows you the matches before it adds them. An imported list holds up to 2,000 companies and can be monitored like a list built in Prospex.
- Does business-monitor.ch have an API?
- Yes, with the Enterprise plan, from CHF 5,000 a year, which includes technical support during the integration. Prospex includes its REST API in every paid plan from CHF 49 a month, and its documentation is open to everyone.