Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Airtable as a CRM is a popular choice for small businesses as a CRM tool, but it may not offer all the core functionalities that businesses need. It's great as it offers a high degree of customization and collaboration, but it's falling short when it comes with contact management functionalities: mainly integration with communication tools, enrichment (find contacts email), contacts deduplication, email marketing, among other things.
In this article, we'll explore the best alternatives to Airtable as a CRM, including folk, Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Monday.
tl;dr: Choose folk CRM is you're looking for a simple, lightweight and customizable CRM system. Prefer Hubspot if you're interested by newsletter marketing. Opt for Monday if your main interest is project management.
Airtable CRM
Airtable is a powerful tool that offers a variety of features to support a small business's CRM needs. These include pipeline management, collaboration tools, and a customizable database. However, Airtable lacks some core CRM functionalities such as email marketing, mail merge, and enrichment of contacts.
folk CRM
Folk is a new CRM platform designed for small businesses. It offers a simple and intuitive interface and provides features such as pipeline management, team collaboration, and integrations.
Pipeline Management & Sales process
folk offers a simple and intuitive pipeline management system that allows users to track people and companies and collaborate with team members. It is easy to customize and can be adapted to different types of relationships.
Email Marketing
Folk CRM offers a powerful mail merge system directly in the CRM software. It helps small businesses do email marketing and CRM all in one tool. This mail merge software draws directly from the data stored in the CRM to write ultra-personalized emails to leads, prospects, or any other type of contact. Folk CRM also offers readymade email templates that you can use and save directly in the tool.
folk CRM also allows to track customer interactions and the results of the last campaigns sent, in order to follow-up properly with the ones that opened or clicked the campaign.
Integrations & Customer interactions
Folk CRM integrates with the most popular apps, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Zapier, and more. This helps easily have context about the status of a given relationship.
It also offers a really powerful chrome extension to bring contacts from any website and update it in one click. This chrome extension works on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Twitter, Gmail, Instagram, Tiktok, among others.
Hubspot CRM
Hubspot CRM offers a suite of cloud-based tools designed to help businesses grow their revenue. Its famously free CRM can be enhanced with various Hubs for Marketing, Sales, Service, and CMS.
Pipeline Management
HubSpot CRM has a more advanced pipeline management system that allows users to track deals, automate tasks, and get insights into sales performance. It's built for very advanced sales teams.
Email Marketing
HubSpot CRM works great for teams that need advanced usage in terms of marketing automation and newsletter management. It offers email scheduling, email tracking and notifications, email reply tracking, and email templates.
It's very elaborated in the sense that it's primarily built for newsletter marketing.
Integrations
HubSpot integrates natively with over 800 apps and even has its own Operations Hub, which allows users to connect apps bi-directionally, so any data generated both on HubSpot and out is updated everywhere.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive CRM is an integrated CRM platform for salespeople who need an easy view of their business systems. It provides an intuitive interface to create pipelines, with key features including tools to interact with leads via email, chat, and social media and do follow ups. For modern teams and user, the interface might be perceived as being slightly clunky.
Pipeline Management
Pipedrive CRM provides an intuitive interface to create pipelines. It follows a drag-and-drop system that is straightforward and accessible to use.
Email Marketing
Pipedrive CRM users benefit from an email marketing feature and also integrate with several email marketing service providers such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor.
Integrations
Pipedrive CRM integrates with Gmail, Google Contacts, and Outlook.com. It also offers API integrations with third-party applications such as Mailchimp, Quickbooks, and Zapier.
Monday CRM
Monday CRM is a project management software that offers a library of templates to help users design their boards based on their needs. It also integrates with other tools such as Pipedrive CRM, Shopify, Gmail, Outlook, and Slack. It's mostly built for project management but they recently launched a CRM template.
Pipeline Management
Monday.com CRM has a more customizable pipeline management system that allows teams to manage their sales processes in a more efficient way.
Email Marketing
Monday CRM lacks a dedicated campaign element, but it has some basic email functionality. You can send emails and run automations by opening the details of your contacts and navigating to the email and activities dashboard.
Integrations
Monday.com CRM integrates with various sources where businesses can import their contacts. With Monday.com CRM, businesses can integrate with Google Sheets and Excel for contact imports. It also offers API integrations with third-party applications such as Mailchimp, Quickbooks, and Zapier.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between folk and Airtable?
Folk is a dedicated CRM tool designed specifically for managing customer relationships, sales pipelines, and communication automation. Airtable, while versatile and capable of functioning as a CRM though with limited CRM features, is primarily a flexible database and project management tool that can be customized for various tasks beyond CRM functions.
Why is folk the best alternative to Airtable as a CRM?
folk is the best alternative to Airtable as a CRM because it is purpose-built for customer relationship management. It offers specialized features such as contact and lead management, sales pipeline visualization, and communication automation, which are tailored to enhance CRM efficiency. Unlike Airtable, folk is designed with CRM-specific workflows in mind, providing a more intuitive and streamlined experience for managing customer interactions and sales processes.
What features are useful in a traditional CRM?
Useful features in a traditional CRM include:
- Contact and lead management: Centralize and organize customer data and interactions.
- Sales pipeline management: Track and visualize the sales process from lead generation to closing deals.
- Email integration: Sync with email platforms for seamless communication tracking.
- Task and activity management: Schedule and manage tasks and follow-ups.
- Automation: Automate repetitive tasks like emails and data entry.
- Analytics: Generate insights to track performance and inform decision-making.
- Customizable dashboards: Tailor views and data presentations to specific business needs.
Conclusion
While Airtable CRM is a powerful tool, it may not offer all the core functionalities that businesses need in a CRM. The alternatives presented in this article all offer pipeline management, email marketing, and integrations, but each has its strengths. Folk CRM is a great option for those looking for an affordable CRM solution with powerful mail merge functionalities, pipeline management and tracking. Hubspot CRM is a good fit for teams that need advanced usage in terms of marketing automation and newsletter management.
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
