Brevo vs Close CRM

Brevo and Close CRM are two platforms designed to enhance customer engagement and sales workflows, each with a unique focus. Brevo specializes in multi-channel communication, offering tools for email marketing, SMS campaigns, and customer engagement. Close CRM, on the other hand, is built for sales teams, providing features like call tracking, email automation, and pipeline management to streamline the sales process. In this blog post, we’ll explore their key features to help you decide which platform suits your business needs—or if Folk might be a more flexible alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.

What is Brevo?

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing platform tailored for small to mid-sized businesses. Brevo also offers a wide range of tools, including email and SMS marketing, chat, CRM, and marketing automation to help businesses effectively engage with their audience across multiple channels.

Key features of Brevo

• Marketing platform: Provides tools for email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns, as well as marketing automation to improve multi-channel campaign engagement and streamline marketing efforts.
• Sales platform: Helps manage pipelines and track sales activities with tools like automated deal tracking, meeting scheduling, and call recording, making it easier for teams to follow leads and close deals.
• Conversations platform: Allows businesses to offer customer support through live chat, a shared inbox, and multi-channel communication solutions, ensuring seamless customer interaction.
• Customer data platform: Enables businesses to unify, manage, and analyze customer data across platforms with a multi-table data model, sourcing library, and customer analytics, improving data-driven decisions.
• Messaging API: Provides APIs for sending emails, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, with features for transactional emails, inbound parsing, and integrations with other applications for customized communication.
  

What is Close CRM?

Close CRM is a sales-focused platform designed to eliminate the complexity of traditional CRMs, offering a streamlined and user-friendly experience tailored for small businesses with ambitious growth goals. Known for its intuitive design, Close provides robust features like automation to reduce manual work, built-in communication tools for faster follow-ups, and powerful integrations to fit seamlessly into any tech stack. Whether you’re managing leads, collaborating with a team, or scaling sales efforts, Close is built to save time and help small businesses succeed.

Key features of Close CRM

• Fast setup: Simple and quick to implement, allowing teams to start using the platform without delay.
• Intuitive interface: Easy-to-navigate dashboard tailored for speed and productivity.
• Built-in communication: Integrated calling, email, and SMS tools for seamless interaction with leads and clients.
• Automation tools: Includes workflows, smart views, and task automation to streamline repetitive tasks.
• Powerful reporting: Customizable sales and activity reporting for actionable insights into team performance and revenue trends.
• Team collaboration: Features like shared inboxes and task assignments to keep teams aligned and efficient.
• Secure and scalable: Designed with robust security and scalability for growing businesses.
• Integrations: Offers over 100 native integrations and Zapier compatibility to sync seamlessly with existing tools.

Brevo vs. Close CRM: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of Brevo and Close CRM and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience, and more.

1. Sales pipeline management

Brevo's Pipeline feature offers custom deal pipelines to streamline the sales process. It allows teams to track deals across various stages, organize tasks for follow-ups, and customize deal stages to match their sales cycle. Automation of repetitive tasks and bulk contact import further enhance efficiency, though it may require additional customization for specific analytics needs.
Close CRM provides a visual and streamlined approach to managing sales processes. Its Powerful Pipeline View offers a clear snapshot of all active opportunities, enabling teams to focus on priorities. With its intuitive drag-and-drop deal management, you can easily update lead statuses, making it a user-friendly option for dynamic sales environments.

2. Ease of use

Brevo offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation, making it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise. Close CRM is designed with simplicity in mind, providing an easy-to-use platform that focuses on minimizing the learning curve for sales teams.

3. Contact enrichment

Brevo includes contact enrichment capabilities as part of its Customer Data Platform, allowing businesses to unify, manage, and sync customer data for more complete profiles. Close CRM does not specifically highlight contact enrichment features, focusing instead on core CRM functionalities.

4. Outreach

Brevo's outreach capabilities are centered around its Marketing Platform, offering tools for email, SMS, and WhatsApp marketing with automation options. Close CRM integrates built-in calling, email, and SMS tools for seamless multi-channel outreach, eliminating the need for external apps and streamlining follow-ups.

5. Automation

Brevo provides automation across its platforms, including marketing and sales, with tools for setting up automated campaigns and task reminders. Close CRM offers customizable workflows to automate repetitive tasks and Smart Views for organizing leads, enhancing efficiency for sales teams.

6. Integration

Brevo offers extensive integration options with over 150 digital tools, facilitating seamless data syncing across systems. Close CRM also supports integrations but focuses on enhancing core CRM capabilities.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Brevo integrates AI into its Marketing Platform, enhancing email marketing with tools for personalized and optimized content. Close CRM does not appear to have AI integration, focusing on straightforward CRM functionalities.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Brevo and Close CRM.

Brevo  prices

Brevo has a limited free version that gives you access to 300 emails. After that, the price plans provide you with the number of emails you can send per month. As well as other features. You then also have the option of customizing your plan, so that it can be based on the number of emails you send a month. And, the number of contacts. The following is an overview of their annual plan.

• Starter: Starting from $8.08/month.
• Business: Starting from $16.17/month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

Close CRM prices

Close CRM offers a monthly and annual payment option. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Startup: $49/user/month.
• Professional: $99/user/month.
• Enterprise: $139/user/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Brevo  and Close CRM

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. You can also use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, and large enterprise. Allowing it to scale with you, as your business grows.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

Brevo vs. Close CRM: What's the verdict?

From our comparison of Brevo and Close CRM, it's clear how both platforms offer distinct advantages tailored to specific business needs. Brevo excels in marketing automation and multi-channel engagement, making it ideal for businesses seeking comprehensive customer interaction solutions. Close CRM, on the other hand, streamlines sales processes with its intuitive interface and built-in communication tools, perfect for small businesses aiming for growth. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach, folk stands out as a versatile alternative, combining user-friendliness with extensive customization. Try folk today, free.