Clay vs Pipeliner CRM

Looking for a new CRM system? Clay and Pipeliner CRM are two popular options, each offering something a little different. While Clay is an outreach tool that excels in outreach and lead generation, Pipeliner CRM is more of a traditional CRM, known for its visual sales management tools and AI-driven insights. In this blog post, we’ll compare their features, pricing, and usability to help you find the right fit. We'll also introduce folk which is a firm favourite.

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 has some CRM elements in the way it 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 Pipeliner CRM?

Pipeliner is an AI-powered sales CRM designed for small, mid-sized, and enterprise organizations, focusing on simplicity and scalability. It offers a visual approach to sales management, allowing teams to track pipelines, forecast outcomes, and automate workflows.

Key features of Pipeliner CRM

• Sales force automation: Automates routine sales tasks, helping teams focus on selling while ensuring consistency across workflows.
• Key account management: Provides tools to manage and track relationships with high-value clients, ensuring personalized attention and strategy.
• Communications and activities tracking: Logs and organizes all interactions, calls, and emails, providing a centralized view of customer communication.
• Reporting engine: Offers customizable reports and dashboards to deliver insights into sales performance and team productivity.
• Process and workflow automation: Automates repetitive workflows, such as task assignments and approvals, to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.

Clay vs. Pipeliner CRM: Feature Comparison

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

1. Sales Pipeline Management

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. Pipeliner CRM’s pipeline feature offers a visual interface to track sales opportunities through different stages. The drag-and-drop functionality allows you to move deals across stages, providing an overview of your sales progress. While the feature is functional and adaptable, its focus is primarily on sales tracking, which may limit its utility for broader business needs.

2. Ease of use

Clay and Pipeliner CRM both offer user-friendly interfaces, but Clay is often praised for its intuitive design, making it particularly appealing for users new to CRM systems. Pipeliner CRM, while also accessible, provides a more structured approach that may require a learning curve for those unfamiliar with its features.

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 holistic view of contacts, enhancing the effectiveness of sales and marketing strategies. Pipeliner CRM offers a contact enrichment feature through its Auto Profiling integration, which automatically populates additional data for contacts and accounts. It's important to note that the Auto Profiling integration is an add-on and must be activated through the Pipeliner Automation Hub, making it a more selective and optional tool for contact enrichment.

4. Outreach

Clay’s outreach feature excels in personalized communication, offering targeted lists and automated email sequences with enriched data. Pipeliner CRM provides basic outreach through mass email campaigns, focusing on existing sales processes. For advanced outreach, Pipeliner may require third-party tools, whereas Clay offers a more robust in-house solution.

5. Automation

Clay’s automation streamlines email outreach with automated workflows and reminders, focusing on personalized communication. Pipeliner CRM automates sales tasks like task assignments and deal updates, with integration options for enhanced functionality. Clay is more email-centric, while Pipeliner offers broader sales process automation.

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. Pipeliner CRM integrates with over 50 popular applications, including Google Suite, Microsoft Suite, and various marketing, email, and data synchronization tools, to streamline workflows and enhance productivity.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Clay's AI integration is research-focused, enabling automated domain research through Claygent. Pipeliner CRM's Voyager AI Gen provides sales insights, offering data-driven recommendations and forecasts to enhance decision-making. Clay focuses on research automation, while Pipeliner emphasizes sales insights and task prioritization.

Price and plans comparison

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

Pipeliner CRM prices

Pipeliner offers several versions of its CRM, tailored to different price points.

• Starter: Starts from $65/seat/month.
• Business: Starts from $85/seat/month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $115/seat/month.
• Unlimited: Starts from $150/seat/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Clay and Pipeliner 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 be used across the business, from sales and marketing to recruitment, investor relations and more. folk can also scale with you as your business grows, thanks to its ability to support solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams, and large enterprises.

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. Pipeliner CRM: What's the verdict?

Both Clay and Pipeliner CRM offer distinct advantages tailored to specific business needs. As an outreach tool, Clay excels in lead generation and personalized outreach, making it ideal for businesses focused on prospecting. As a more traditional CRM sytem, Pipeliner CRM provides a robust platform for sales management with its visual approach and automation capabilities. However, for companies seeking a more personalized and flexible CRM solution, folk emerges as a compelling alternative. With its user-friendly interface and customizable features, folk bridges the gap between simplicity and functionality. Try folk today, free.