HubSpot vs Clay

In the market for a new CRM? HubSpot and Clay tend to stand out with their distinct features and capabilities. Both platforms are tailored to optimize business operations, boost customer engagement, and accelerate sales growth, yet they cater to different organizational needs. In this blog post, we'll do an in-depth comparison of HubSpot and Clay, examining their key features, pricing structures, and benefits. We'll also explore folk which is a popular alternative.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot CRM is a user-friendly, scalable platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations efficiently.

Key features of HubSpot

• Marketing hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools.
• Sales hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting.
• Service hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases.
• Operations hub: Syncs and automates business processes across different systems.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring to improve sales efficiency.
  

What is Clay?

Clay 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

• 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.

HubSpot vs. Clay: 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

HubSpot's pipeline management feature provides a visual overview of deals, allowing users to track the progress of sales opportunities, customize stages, and automate tasks for a more efficient sales process.
Clay does not offer a dedicated pipeline management feature as part of its core functionality. While users can organize contacts and tasks, the platform lacks specific tools for tracking deals or leads through stages in a sales pipeline.

2. Easy of use

HubSpot is known for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible even for beginners. Its intuitive design ensures that users can quickly navigate and utilize its features. Clay also has a user-friendly interface, that is similar to an address book.

3. Contact enrichment

HubSpot's AI feature, Breeze Intelligence enhances contact enrichment by automatically populating known information, streamlining data collection and reducing form length. This feature simplifies the user experience and ensures that data is consistently accurate and up-to-date. Clay offers a contact enrichment feature that automatically gathers additional information about contacts from various sources, such as social media profiles, public databases, and professional networks. This feature helps users build more comprehensive profiles by pulling in data like job titles, company information, and social links.

4. Outreach

HubSpot offers a robust email marketing tool with a drag-and-drop editor, allowing for A/B testing and email personalization. Clay CRM lacks a dedicated outreach feature but supports tracking interactions and setting reminders for individual follow-ups.

5. Automation

HubSpot excels in automation, offering tools to streamline marketing, sales, and service processes, including lead nurturing and email campaigns. Clay CRM provides basic automation for repetitive tasks like contact updates and follow-up reminders, triggered by specific conditions.

6. Integration

HubSpot's App Marketplace features over 1,500 integrations, enabling seamless connectivity with a variety of tools to enhance its CRM capabilities and expand its functionality. Clay also supports integrations with various third-party tools, allowing users to connect external applications for enhanced functionality.

7. Artificial Intelligence

HubSpot leverages AI for optimizing sales and marketing through automated data entry, lead scoring, and personalized emails. It provides insights for sales forecasting and content recommendations. Clay CRM currently lacks dedicated AI integration.

Price and plans comparison

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

HubSpot prices

Prices and plans on the CRM suite for an annual subscription are as follows.

• Starter: $20 per user, per month.
• Professional: $100 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $150 per user, per month.

Clay 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.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to HubSpot and Clay

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. There is a reason why folk is a multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system.

Key features

• 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.

HubSpot vs. Clay: What's the verdict?

Both HubSpot and Clay offer robust CRM solutions tailored to different business needs. HubSpot stands out with its comprehensive suite of marketing, sales, and service tools, ideal for businesses seeking an all-in-one platform. Clay, on the other hand, excels in contact management and automation, providing a more streamlined approach. However, for companies that need 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.