Streak vs Clay

In the market for a new CRM? Streak and Clay are two well known contenders. Each offering distinctive features tailored to enhance business operations. While both aim to streamline processes and boost customer engagement, they cater to different organizational needs. This blog post will provide a detailed comparison of their features, pricing, and advantages, helping you determine which CRM aligns best with your business objectives. Additionally, we'll explore folk, a popular alternative offering flexible CRM solution.

What is Streak?

Streak is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that integrates directly with Gmail, allowing users to manage their sales pipeline and customer interactions from within their email inbox. Designed to simplify CRM tasks, Streak offers features such as email tracking, mail merge, task management, and pipeline visualization, all seamlessly embedded in Gmail’s interface.

Key features of Streak

• Contact Management: Streak's contact management feature organizes and tracks communications with individual contacts, directly within Gmail.
• Email tracking: Streak’s email tracking feature allows users to see when and if their emails are opened, providing basic insights into recipient engagement.
• Snippets: The snippets feature enables users to create reusable templates for frequently used email content, which helps to streamline communication.
• Link tracking: Streak's link tracking monitors whether recipients click on links within emails, offering data on engagement with specific content.
• Deep Google Workspace integration: Streak is integrated with Google Workspace, allowing users to manage emails, tasks, and pipelines within the Gmail interface.
  

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 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.

Streak vs. Clay: Feature Comparison

When comparing CRM solutions like Streak and Clay, it's essential to consider their unique features and how they cater to different business needs, particularly in sales pipeline management, email marketing, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

Streak CRM's pipeline management is seamlessly integrated with Gmail, allowing users to track, organize, and manage their sales processes directly from their inbox. Its visual layout, akin to a spreadsheet, offers automation features that streamline workflow and enhance productivity. This integration makes it particularly appealing for businesses that rely heavily on email communication and need a straightforward way to manage their sales pipeline without switching platforms.

Clay doesn't feature a traditional pipeline dashboard. Instead, it allows users to connect with inbound lead forms and automatically creates a dashboard based on this data. This approach is beneficial for businesses that prioritize lead generation and want a dynamic, data-driven view of their sales activities. While it may not offer the same level of integration with email as Streak, Clay's flexibility in handling leads can be a significant advantage for companies looking to leverage their inbound marketing efforts effectively.

2. Ease of use

Streak CRM is seamlessly integrated within Gmail, making it intuitive for users familiar with Google's interface. Its design focuses on simplicity, allowing users to manage pipelines and tasks directly from their inbox. Clay, on the other hand, offers a standalone platform emphasizing user-friendly navigation and efficient data management for outreach tasks.

3. Contact enrichment

Streak CRM's contact enrichment feature automatically enhances contact records by extracting relevant information from email interactions. The system can populate fields with details like company logos, profile pictures, and social media links. This automation reduces manual data entry and ensures up-to-date contact information for effective communication. Clay’s enrichment feature automatically gathers detailed lead information from various sources, creating comprehensive contact profiles that can be integrated with your existing CRM.

4. Outreach

Streak CRM's outreach solution is designed around email communication directly within Gmail, leveraging its integration to manage sales and customer engagement. It allows users to send personalized mass emails, track email opens and replies, and set automated follow-up sequences. Clay’s outreach feature focuses on efficient prospecting, enabling targeted lists, enriched data integration, and automated, personalized emails.

5. Automation

Streak CRM, integrated directly within Gmail, offers automation features that streamline workflow by automating tasks such as email tracking, follow-ups, and pipeline updates. Clay’s automation simplifies outreach tasks with automated workflows for data gathering and email sequencing, though it primarily focuses on email outreach, lacking advanced multichannel automation.

6. Integration

Streak CRM integrates with various third-party applications to extend its functionality, particularly through its deep integration with Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar. It also connects with tools like Zapier to provide access to more applications. Clay's integrations supports various CRMs, email platforms, and data sources, allowing users to sync enriched contact information with existing tools.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Streak CRM has limited native AI integrations, focusing on essential features within Gmail rather than advanced AI-driven functionalities. Clay's AI integration is research-focused, using Claygent to automate research tasks, visit domains, and report findings, providing insights like SOC-II compliance status.

Price and plans comparison

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

Streak prices

• Pro: Starts from $49 per user, per month.
• Pro +: Starts from $69 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $129 per user, per month.

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.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Streak and Clay

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.

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.

Streak vs. Clay: What's the verdict?

Between Streak and Clay, there's no doubt that both offer unique strengths tailored to specific business needs. Streak excels with its seamless Gmail integration, making it ideal for email-centric workflows. Meanwhile, Clay provides a more comprehensive CRM solution with robust features. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk emerges as a flexible alternative, blending ease of use with customization. Its ability to integrate social media and manage communications directly within the CRM sets it apart. Try folk today, free