Clay vs Close CRM

Clay and Close CRM are two platforms designed to support customer relationship management, each with a distinct approach. Clay focuses on data enrichment and outreach automation, helping teams streamline lead generation and personalize prospecting efforts. Close CRM, on the other hand, is built for sales teams, offering tools like call tracking, email automation, and pipeline management to optimize the sales process. In this blog post, we’ll explore their key features to help you decide which platform best suits your needs—or if Folk might provide a more balanced alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.

What is Clay?

Clay is an outreach and lead generation tool designed to help businesses streamline prospecting and customer outreach. It automates data enrichment by gathering information from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn and other social platforms, to build detailed contact profiles. Clay enables users to create targeted lists, personalize outreach efforts, and manage communication workflows, focusing on improving efficiency in lead generation and outreach campaigns.

Key features of Clay

• Automated data enrichment: Clay pulls data from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn and public databases, to build comprehensive profiles on prospects, reducing the need for manual data entry.
• Prospecting and list building: Users can create targeted lists of leads by filtering and segmenting prospects based on specific criteria like location, industry, or role.
• Personalized outreach: Clay enables tailored outreach by allowing users to customize messages and emails based on the enriched profile data of each lead.
• Email sequencing: Users can set up automated email sequences for follow-ups, ensuring consistent communication without manual scheduling.
• Template management: The platform offers tools for creating and saving message templates, which helps maintain consistency in outreach efforts.
• LinkedIn integration: Clay connects with LinkedIn, allowing users to gather data directly from profiles and track LinkedIn interactions as part of their outreach strategy.
  

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.

Clay vs. Close CRM: Feature Comparison

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

1. Sales pipeline management

As an outreach tool, Clay doesn't have a pipeline dashboard per se, but allows you to connect with your inbound lead form and then creates a dashboard based off this data. However, it might require additional setup and integration efforts to achieve a fully functional pipeline view.
As a traditional CRM, Close CRM's pipeline offers a streamlined, visual approach to managing sales processes, making it easy to track deals from start to finish. The Powerful Pipeline View provides a clear snapshot of all active opportunities, enabling teams to focus on what matters most.

2. Ease of use

Both Clay and Close CRM prioritize user-friendly interfaces, but Clay's features and interface requires marketing expertise. Close CRM, while also user-friendly, offers a more robust set of features that are more suitable for those looking for a traditional CRM.

3. Contact enrichment

Clay’s enrichment feature automatically gathers detailed lead information from various sources, creating comprehensive contact profiles that can be integrated with your existing CRM. This allows for a more informed approach to customer interactions, enhancing the overall sales strategy. Close CRM does not provide its own contact enrichment feature. You can only access this using a third party application, which might incur an additional cost.</p

4. Outreach

Clay’s outreach feature is their main focus. It's designed for efficient prospecting and personalized communication, allowing users to create targeted lists and send automated emails. Close CRM's outreach feature integrates built-in calling, email, and SMS tools, enabling seamless multi-channel outreach without the need for external apps, thus offering a more integrated communication solution.

5. Automation

Clay’s automation features focus on simplifying outreach tasks with automated workflows for email sequencing. Close CRM's automation capabilities are more comprehensive, allowing for custom workflows that automate various sales tasks, ensuring efficient lead management and engagement through Smart Views and task automation features.

6. Integration

Clay offers integrations with various CRMs, email marketing platforms, and data sources, allowing users to sync enriched contact profiles and streamline outreach workflows across tools, enhancing overall operational efficiency. Close CRM offers integrations with various tools to enhance sales workflows and streamline data management.<

7. Artificial Intelligence

Clay's AI integration is research-focused, utilizing Claygent for automating research tasks such as domain visits and compliance checks. Close CRM does not appear to have an AI integration, which may limit its capabilities in automating research-driven tasks.

Price and plans comparison

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

Clay prices

Besides a free plan, Clay has a few premium plans to choose from depending on the features you need, credits, and number of people/company searches you want to make. Below is a high level overview of their annual subscription.

• Starter: Starting from $134 per month for 24k credits per year.
• Explorer: Starting from $314 per month, for 120k credits per year.
• Pro: Starting from $720 per month, for 600k credits per year.
• Enterprise: Price undisclosed. Custom credits option.

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 Clay 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 supports multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. You can use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, or large enterprise.

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 vs. Close CRM: What's the verdict?

While both Clay and Close CRM offer robust features for businesses, it's apparent how they cater to different needs. Clay excels in data enrichment and personalized outreach, making it ideal for lead generation. Close CRM, on the other hand, simplifies 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 to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free.