Instantly vs Nutshell

Instantly and Nutshell are two platforms designed to enhance business outreach and customer relationship management, each catering to distinct needs. Instantly focuses on cold email campaigns and lead generation, providing tools for high-volume outreach and follow-up automation, ideal for teams prioritizing outbound marketing. Nutshell, by contrast, combines CRM capabilities with built-in email marketing and sales automation, offering an all-in-one solution for managing contacts and nurturing relationships. In this blog post, we’ll explore their key features to help you choose the right tool for your outreach strategy. Or if folk might offer a more balanced alternative with its user-friendly contact management and customization options.

What is Instantly?

Instantly is a newer player in the market that focuses on automation and email outreach, helping teams send high-volume personalized emails and track responses. Instantly CRM is geared more toward businesses looking to maximize lead generation and email outreach campaigns, often used by outbound sales teams and marketers.

Key features of Instantly

• Email outreach automation: One of Instantly’s standout features is the ability to automate and send thousands of personalized cold emails at scale.
• Advanced email warm-up: Instantly ensures that your emails land in inboxes rather than spam by providing email warming and reputation management tools.
• AI-based insights: Use AI-powered analytics to gain insights into the success of your outreach and optimize future campaigns.
• Multi-account management: Run multiple email accounts and campaigns seamlessly from one dashboard.
• Performance tracking: Track open rates, click rates, and other key metrics to measure campaign performance in real time.
• Integrations: Instantly CRM integrates with tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, and other productivity apps to help streamline workflows.

What is Nutshell?

Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM specifically designed to help B2B teams close more deals. It combines contact management, pipeline tracking, and email marketing tools to support every stage of the sales process, from lead generation to deal closure. With features like customizable pipelines, activity tracking, and seamless integration options, Nutshell also enables sales teams to stay organized, collaborate, and drive results—all within a user-friendly platform tailored for B2B needs.

Key features of Nutshell

• Contact management: Centralizes customer information and tracks communication history to keep teams organized and informed.
• Pipeline management: Customizable sales pipelines to track leads and deals through every stage of the sales process.
• Email marketing: Built-in email campaign tools that enable targeted outreach and engagement with prospects and customers.
• Activity tracking: Logs all interactions, including calls, emails, and meetings, allowing teams to stay on top of follow-ups and engagement.
• Reporting and analytics: Provides insights into sales performance, forecasting, and team activity, helping to make data-driven decisions.

Instantly vs. Nutshell: 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

Instantly lacks a clear Kanban view for managing deals, focusing instead on lead status within email campaigns, which limits visibility into the overall sales process. In contrast, Nutshell offers a comprehensive pipeline management feature with multiple views, including board, list, map, and chart. This allows for customizable workflows and prioritization of leads. Additional tools such as hot lead identification and customizable lead cards enhance visibility into deal statuses and priorities. Nutshell's approach aims to simplify the management and visualization of the sales process, providing a robust solution for sales teams seeking clarity and efficiency.

2. Ease of use

Instantly CRM is designed with a user-friendly interface that simplifies navigation and task execution, making it accessible for users of all skill levels. Nutshell also offers an intuitive experience, with a focus on basic sales features, easy setup and streamlined sales workflows, allowing teams to quickly adapt and utilize its features.

3. Contact enrichment

Instantly CRM offers contact enrichment features by leveraging a large database of verified contact information. The platform can automatically enhance contact records by adding details such as company names, job titles, and more.

4. Outreach

Instantly provides a strong cold outreach solution, allowing unlimited email connections and rotation for better deliverability, ideal for large-scale campaigns. Nutshell’s outreach includes built-in email marketing and automation, enabling targeted campaigns with basic tracking and metrics, integrating outreach within the sales process.

5. Automation

Instantly CRM focuses on automating email outreach and follow-ups, sending personalized bulk emails and adjusting campaigns based on engagement. Nutshell automates sales and marketing tasks, including follow-up emails and pipeline management, with email marketing automation for drip campaigns and customer engagement.

6. Integration

Instantly CRM integrates with various third-party applications primarily through Zapier, enabling connections with tools for email marketing, lead management, and productivity, such as Google Workspace, Slack, and Salesforce. This is only available from their Hypergrowth plan.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Instantly CRM integrates AI to optimize email outreach by automating tasks like personalization and scheduling based on engagement patterns. Nutshell’s AI enhances productivity with features like timeline summarization, helping users quickly review past interactions and streamline workflows.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Instantly and Nutshell.

Instantly prices

Instantly offers a few types of plans depending on whether or not you're after its CRM product, leads generator, or outreach campaign product. Their CRM price plan comes as either a monthly or annual subscription. Their yearly subscription plan is as follows.

• Growth CRM: Starts from $37.90 per user, per month.
• Hyper CRM: Starts from $77.60 per user, per month.

Nutshell  prices

Nutshell offers several feature-rich plans tailored to different goals and team sizes.

• Foundation: $16 per user, per month.
• Pro: $42 per user, per month.
• Power AI: $52 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $67 per user, per month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Instantly and Nutshell

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. With its highly customizable nature, folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, investor relations and more. You can also use folk as a solopreneur or team.

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.

Instantly vs. Nutshell: What's the verdict?

When comparing Instantly and Nutshell, it's clear that each offers unique strengths tailored to different business needs. Instantly excels in email outreach automation, making it ideal for outbound-focused teams. Meanwhile, Nutshell provides a comprehensive CRM solution with robust pipeline management for B2B sales. 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