Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Freshsales and HighLevel are two platforms designed to support businesses in managing customer relationships, each catering to distinct needs. Freshsales focuses on AI-driven insights, sales automation, and integrated communication tools, making it ideal for teams looking to streamline their sales processes. HighLevel, on the other hand, specializes in digital marketing automation and client management, offering features tailored for agencies. In this blog post, we’ll compare their key features to help you decide which platform fits your business needs—or if Folk might provide a more balanced alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.
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. With its focus on reducing manual tasks and delivering actionable insights, Freshsales caters to teams looking for a smarter way to manage customer relationships and close deals faster.
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.
What is HighLevel?
HighLevel is a comprehensive platform designed to streamline digital marketing efforts for agencies and businesses. It offers features such as lead capture, automated booking, customer nurturing, and membership site creation. The platform provides tools to help agencies build their digital marketing engine, automate workflows, and drive business growth. It also includes a white-label option for agencies.
Key features of HighLevel
- Lead capture tools: HighLevel provides customizable forms, surveys, and landing pages to help businesses effectively capture and manage leads.
- Automated workflows: Automate tasks like follow-ups, appointment scheduling, and reminders, saving time and ensuring consistent communication.
- Customer nurturing tools: Engage with leads through email campaigns, text messages, and automated drip sequences to convert them into loyal customers.
- Membership site creation: Build and manage membership sites directly within the platform, offering valuable resources or courses to clients.
- White-label platform: Agencies can fully brand HighLevel as their own, delivering a seamless experience to their clients.
Freshsales vs. HighLevel: Feature Comparison
Let's break down the key features of Freshsales and HighLevel and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience and more.
1. Sales Pipeline Management
Freshsales offers a visual sales pipeline that helps you track deals through various stages in real time. Its drag-and-drop functionality allows for easy movement of deals, providing a clear overview of progress. Integrated tools like lead scoring and AI insights enhance deal management by identifying priorities and predicting outcomes. However, its focus on sales workflows may limit flexibility for broader project tracking.
HighLevel CRM’s sales pipeline management enables businesses to create pipelines tailored to their sales processes. It provides tools to track leads, monitor deal progress, and view opportunities through a dashboard, helping organize sales workflows and offering visibility into the sales cycle.
2. Ease of use
Freshsales offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation, making it easy for teams to manage customer relationships without a steep learning curve. HighLevel, while offering a range of features, may require more time to navigate and configure due to its comprehensive suite of tools.
3. Contact enrichment
Freshsales provides a robust contact enrichment feature that automatically gathers and updates lead information from public sources, offering a complete view of contacts. This reduces manual data entry. HighLevel lacks a comprehensive contact enrichment feature, requiring more manual input to maintain detailed contact records.
4. Outreach
Freshsales facilitates outreach with integrated email, phone, and chat tools, focusing on sales communication. HighLevel offers email, text messaging, and automated sequences, providing diverse communication methods but requiring more setup. Freshsales excels in sales-focused outreach, while HighLevel offers broader multi-channel options.
5. Automation
Freshsales automates tasks like lead assignments and follow-up emails, enhancing workflow efficiency. HighLevel offers extensive automation for lead follow-ups and campaigns, but setup can be complex. Both platforms streamline tasks, with Freshsales focusing on sales processes and HighLevel offering broader automation capabilities.
6. Integration
Freshsales integrates seamlessly with tools like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, enhancing functionality through email, calendar, and support integrations. HighLevel's integration options are less extensive, focusing more on internal tools rather than broad third-party integrations.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Freshsales includes Freddy AI, providing predictive analytics and lead scoring to enhance decision-making. HighLevel does not emphasize AI features, focusing instead on manual configurations and automation. Freshsales leverages AI for efficiency, while HighLevel relies on user-driven processes.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Freshsales and HighLevel.
Freshsales prices
Freshsales has three price plans for you to choose from.
- Growth: Starts from $9/user/month.
- Pro: Starts from $39/user/month.
- Enterprise: Starts from $49/user/month.
HighLevel prices
High Level has two price tiers for you to choose from.
- Starter: $97/seat/month.
- Unlimited: $297/seat/month.
Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Freshsales and HIghLevel
Looking for an affordable alternative? Consider folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform celebrated for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play system. folk is versatile, supporting teams across sales, marketing, recruitment, and more, thanks to its highly customizable design. It’s also built to scale with your business, whether you’re a solopreneur, a small to mid-size team, or a large enterprise.
Key features
- Contact management: Centralize all your contacts effortlessly, importing from social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and X, as well as email services such as Gmail and Outlook.
- Sales pipeline dashboard: Track your entire sales cycle and leads with a customizable pipeline dashboard, available in both Kanban board and list views to suit your workflow.
- Notes and reminders: Add notes directly to a contact’s profile in Folk and access them anytime, anywhere. Set reminders to stay on top of follow-ups and never miss important tasks.
- 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.
Freshsales vs. HighLevel: What's the verdict?
In comparing Freshsales and HighLevel, it's apparent how both CRM platforms offer robust features tailored to different business needs. Freshsales excels in AI-driven sales insights and workflow automation, making it ideal for sales-focused teams. HighLevel stands out with its comprehensive digital marketing tools and white-label options, catering to agencies and marketing-centric businesses. However, for companies seeking a more personalized and flexible CRM solution, folk emerges as a compelling alternative, offering ease of use and extensive customization. Try folk today, free.
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses