Clay CRM vs Freshsales

Choosing the right CRM can significantly impact your business operations and growth. Clay CRM and Freshsales are two prominent platforms offering distinct features tailored to various business needs. While Clay CRM emphasizes automation and contact enrichment, Freshsales provides a comprehensive suite for sales management. This article will explore the features, pricing, and benefits of each to guide your decision-making process. Additionally, we'll introduce folk as a compelling alternative, offering a unique blend of functionality and affordability. Dive in to discover which CRM aligns best with your organizational goals.

What is Clay CRM?

Clay CRM is a customer relationship management tool designed to help users organize and manage contact information and interactions, with a focus on automation and contact enrichment.

Key features of Clay CRM

• Contact management: The platform allows users to organize and manage contacts by consolidating information in one place. Users can add custom fields, notes, and tags to categorize and track interactions with each contact, making it easier to manage customer relationships.
• Automation: Clay CRM includes automation tools that handle repetitive tasks like contact updates and reminders, helping users streamline their communication and workflow processes.
• Search and filtering: The platform provides advanced search and filtering functionality, allowing users to segment their contact database based on various criteria such as engagement history, tags, or custom fields.
• Real-time updates: The platform provides real-time updates for contact records and tasks, ensuring that users have the latest information on their contacts and projects at all times.
  

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is a CRM platform by Freshworks designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes with AI-powered tools and automation. It provides features like lead scoring, deal tracking, email and call management, and workflow automation to enhance efficiency and drive conversions. Freshsales also integrates communication and sales in one place, offering tools for personalized outreach and detailed insights to improve sales strategies.

Key features of Freshsales

• AI-powered insights: Freshsales leverages AI to provide recommendations, predict deal outcomes, and offer actionable insights to improve sales strategies.
• Lead scoring: Automatically prioritizes leads based on their engagement and likelihood to convert, helping sales teams focus on high-value opportunities.
• Deal tracking: Provides a visual sales pipeline to track deals through various stages and monitor progress in real time.
• Email and call management: Integrates email and phone communication, allowing users to manage interactions directly from the platform.
• Workflow automation: Automates repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails or updating deal statuses, reducing manual work and improving efficiency.

Clay CRM vs. Freshsales: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

Clay CRM lacks a dedicated pipeline management feature, limiting its ability to track deals through distinct stages. Users can organize contacts and tasks, but the absence of specific pipeline tools may hinder comprehensive sales tracking.
Freshsales offers a visual sales pipeline with real-time updates, allowing users to track deals through various stages using intuitive drag-and-drop functionality. This feature provides a clear overview of sales progress, enhanced by integrated tools like lead scoring and AI insights for prioritizing deals and predicting outcomes. While Freshsales excels in managing sales workflows, its pipeline may not offer the flexibility required for broader project or task tracking needs.

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2. Ease of use

Clay CRM offers a straightforward interface that emphasizes simplicity, making it easy for users to navigate and manage contacts efficiently. Freshsales, on the other hand, provides a more feature-rich interface, which may require a learning curve but offers greater functionality for managing complex sales processes.

3. Contact enrichment

Clay CRM's contact enrichment feature automatically gathers additional data from sources like social media and public databases to build more comprehensive contact profiles. This helps users gain deeper insights into their contacts without manual data entry. Freshsales offers a contact enrichment feature that automatically gathers additional information about leads and customers from public sources and integrated tools. This feature populates profiles with details such as job titles, social media profiles, and company information, reducing manual data entry and providing a more complete view of each contact.

4. Outreach

Clay CRM does not have a dedicated outreach feature specifically designed for managing customer communication. Freshsales includes outreach tools for managing communication through email, phone, and chat, allowing users to send personalized campaigns and track engagement metrics, providing a more integrated approach to customer outreach.

5. Automation

Clay CRM includes automation features to streamline repetitive tasks like updating contact information and sending follow-up reminders. Freshsales offers more advanced automation, allowing for lead assignment, deal stage updates, and workflow management, though setting up these automations may require familiarity with the system.

6. Integration

Clay CRM supports integrations with various third-party tools, enabling users to connect external applications for enhanced functionality and a more seamless workflow. Freshsales integrates with tools like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Mailchimp, as well as Freshworks products such as Freshdesk and Freshchat, to streamline workflows. These integrations support email, calendar, marketing, and customer support, enhancing the platform’s functionality.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Clay CRM does not currently offer dedicated AI integration. Freshsales, however, includes AI integration through Freddy AI, providing predictive analytics, lead scoring, and actionable insights to enhance decision-making and prioritize sales opportunities.

Price and plans comparison

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

Clay CRM prices

Clay has a free plan for personal use, for up to 1,000 contacts. After that premium plans are as follows on an annual subscription.

• Pro: $10 per user, per month.
• Team: $40 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

Freshsales prices

The following is a high level overview of the Freshsales price plan.

• Growth: Starts from $9/user/month.
• Pro: Starts from $39/user/month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $49/user/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Clay CRM and Freshsales

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 supports multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. folk can be used by solopreneurs, small to mid-sized teams and large enterprises. 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.

Clay CRM vs. Freshsales: What's the Verdict?

In comparing Clay CRM and Freshsales, it's apparent how both platforms offer robust features tailored to enhancing customer relationship management. Clay CRM excels with its automation and contact enrichment capabilities, while Freshsales provides comprehensive sales pipeline management and analytics. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk offers a flexible alternative, blending ease of use with extensive customization options. With its intuitive interface and powerful integrations, folk stands out as a compelling choice. Try folk today, free.