Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
In the search for a CRM solution, Nutshell and Brevo stand out for their distinct features and functionalities. Both platforms aim to optimize operations, boost customer engagement, and enhance sales performance. However, they serve different business needs and priorities. In this blog post, we'll delve into their offerings, comparing key features, pricing, and benefits to guide you in choosing the right CRM for your business. Additionally, we'll introduce folk as a viable alternative.
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.
What is Brevo?
Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing platform tailored for small to mid-sized businesses. Brevo offers a wide range of tools, including email and SMS marketing, chat, CRM, and marketing automation to help businesses effectively engage with their audience across multiple channels.
Key features of Brevo
- Marketing platform: Provides tools for email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns, as well as marketing automation to improve multi-channel campaign engagement and streamline marketing efforts.
- Sales platform: Helps manage pipelines and track sales activities with tools like automated deal tracking, meeting scheduling, and call recording, making it easier for teams to follow leads and close deals.
- Conversations platform: Allows businesses to offer customer support through live chat, a shared inbox, and multi-channel communication solutions, ensuring seamless customer interaction.
- Customer data platform: Enables businesses to unify, manage, and analyze customer data across platforms with a multi-table data model, sourcing library, and customer analytics, improving data-driven decisions.
- Messaging API: Provides APIs for sending emails, SMS, and WhatsApp messages, with features for transactional emails, inbound parsing, and integrations with other applications for customized communication.
Nutshell vs. Brevo: 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
Nutshell’s pipeline management offers a versatile approach with tools for tracking leads and deals through various stages. Users can visualize their sales process using board, list, map, and chart views, all customizable to fit specific workflow needs. Features like hot lead identification and customizable lead cards enhance visibility and prioritization, supporting sales teams without unnecessary complexity.
Brevo's pipeline feature focuses on managing the sales process with custom deal pipelines. It allows teams to track deals across stages and organize tasks for follow-ups. Users can customize deal stages to align with their sales cycle and automate repetitive tasks. While Brevo supports bulk contact import and basic analytics, it may require additional customization to fully meet specific needs. Both platforms offer unique strengths, with Nutshell emphasizing visualization and simplicity, and Brevo focusing on customization and automation.
2. Ease of use
Nutshell is known for its user-friendly interface, designed to minimize the learning curve and streamline CRM adoption. It offers intuitive navigation and straightforward features that cater to small to mid-sized businesses. Brevo provides a more comprehensive suite of tools, which may require a steeper learning curve for new users.
3. Contact enrichment
Nutshell’s contact enrichment feature is focused on minimizing manual data entry by allowing users to import contacts, emails, and calendar events from various sources. This streamlines the process of maintaining up-to-date contact information, reducing administrative workload. Brevo includes contact enrichment capabilities as part of its Customer Data Platform. This feature allows businesses to unify, manage, and sync customer data, making it easier to create a more complete customer profile.
4. Outreach
Nutshell’s outreach feature includes built-in email marketing and automation capabilities, enabling users to create and send campaigns directly within the platform. Brevo excels in multi-channel outreach, offering tools for email, SMS, and WhatsApp marketing. Brevo's automation options allow for strategic message timing based on customer behavior.
5. Automation
Nutshell focuses on automating basic sales and marketing tasks, including follow-up emails and task reminders. Brevo provides broader automation across its platforms, offering personalized campaigns based on customer actions. Brevo's AI-driven personalization further enhances its automation capabilities.
6. Integration
Nutshell offers integrations with major productivity platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack, facilitating seamless management of emails, calendars, and team communication. This enhances workflow efficiency by allowing users to operate within familiar tools. Brevo offers extensive integration options, connecting with over 150 digital tools, including CRM, CMS, e-commerce, and analytics platforms. This allows businesses to easily sync data across systems and streamline their workflows.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Nutshell’s AI features include timeline summarization, aiding users in quickly reviewing historical records. Brevo’s AI integration focuses on enhancing email marketing, offering personalized content optimization to boost engagement and effectiveness.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Nutshell and Brevo.
Nutshell prices
Nutshell provides a few feature-rich plans depending on the size of your team and automation requirements. You can choose from an annual or monthly subscription plan. The following is a high level overview of their annual price plan.
- 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.
Brevo prices
Brevo has a limited free version that gives you access to 300 emails. After that, the price plans provide you with the number of emails you can send per month. As well as other features. You then also have the option of customizing your plan, so that it can be based on the number of emails you send a month. And, the number of contacts. The following is an overview of their annual plan.
- Starter: Starting from $8.08/month.
- Business: Starting from $16.17/month.
- Enterprise: Undisclosed.
Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Nutshell and Brevo
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 is versatile, thanks to its highly customizable dashboards. This means it can support sales, marketing, recruitment, investment relations and more. You can also use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, and 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.
Nutshell vs. Brevo: What's the verdict?
When comparing Nutshell and Brevo, it's apparent how each offers unique strengths tailored to different business needs. Nutshell excels in providing an all-in-one CRM solution designed for B2B teams with robust pipeline management and reporting features. On the other hand, Brevo stands out with its comprehensive email marketing capabilities. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, Folk offers a flexible alternative. It combines ease of use with customization, making it a compelling choice for those looking for a versatile CRM solution. Try folk today, free
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses