Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Capsule CRM and Close CRM are two platforms designed to enhance customer relationship management, each catering to different business needs. Capsule CRM focuses on simplicity and organization, offering tools for contact management, task tracking, and sales pipelines, making it ideal for small teams looking for straightforward functionality. Close CRM, on the other hand, is tailored for fast-paced sales environments, providing features like call tracking, email automation, and pipeline management to optimize the sales process. In this blog post, we’ll explore their key features to help you determine which CRM best fits your needs – or if folk might provide a more balanced alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.
What is Capsule CRM?
Capsule CRM is a user-friendly customer relationship management platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers a clean, intuitive interface that helps users manage customer relationships, track sales pipelines, and organize tasks and communications efficiently.
Key features of Capsule CRM
- Sales pipeline management: Capsule CRM allows users to track opportunities through a customizable sales pipeline, helping businesses monitor the progress of deals.
- Key integrations: Capsule integrates with tools like Google Workspace, Mailchimp, and Xero, allowing users to streamline workflows and manage data across platforms.
- Task management: Users can create and assign tasks related to deals or contacts, ensuring follow-ups and key actions are completed on time.
- Task reminders: Capsule provides task reminders to keep users on top of deadlines and important activities linked to customer relationships or sales opportunities.
- Workflow automation: The platform includes basic automation tools to handle repetitive tasks, such as sending follow-up emails or updating contact records, reducing manual workload.
What is Close CRM?
Close CRM is a sales-focused platform designed to eliminate the complexity of traditional CRMs, offering a streamlined and user-friendly experience tailored for small businesses with ambitious growth goals. Known for its intuitive design, Close provides robust features like automation to reduce manual work, built-in communication tools for faster follow-ups, and powerful integrations to fit seamlessly into any tech stack. Whether you’re managing leads, collaborating with a team, or scaling sales efforts, Close is built to save time and help small businesses succeed.
Key features of Close CRM:
- Fast setup: Simple and quick to implement, allowing teams to start using the platform without delay.
- Intuitive interface: Easy-to-navigate dashboard tailored for speed and productivity.
- Built-in communication: Integrated calling, email, and SMS tools for seamless interaction with leads and clients.
- Automation tools: Includes workflows, smart views, and task automation to streamline repetitive tasks.
- Powerful reporting: Customizable sales and activity reporting for actionable insights into team performance and revenue trends.
- Team collaboration: Features like shared inboxes and task assignments to keep teams aligned and efficient.
- Secure and scalable: Designed with robust security and scalability for growing businesses.
- Integrations: Offers over 100 native integrations and Zapier compatibility to sync seamlessly with existing tools.
Capsule CRM vs. Close CRM: 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
Capsule CRM's pipeline management feature offers a user-friendly approach to tracking sales opportunities through various stages. You can view the sales pipeline as a list, kanban, or dashboard. Close CRM's pipeline offers a streamlined, visual approach to managing sales processes, making it easy to track deals from start to finish. Its 'Powerful Pipeline View' provides a clear snapshot of all active opportunities, enabling teams to focus on what matters most. With features like drag-and-drop deal management, you can easily update the status of leads.
2. Ease of use
Capsule CRM offers a user-friendly interface designed for simplicity, making it easy for teams to manage customer relationships without a steep learning curve. Close CRM, on the other hand, provides a more robust platform with intuitive navigation, ideal for sales teams looking for an efficient, integrated communication tool.
3. Contact enrichment
Capsule CRM's contact enrichment feature automatically enhances contact and company records by pulling in relevant data, such as job titles, email addresses, LinkedIn profiles, and company information. However, it is only available on specific premium plans. Close CRM does not provide its own contact enrichment feature. You can only access this using a third party application, which might incur an additional cost.
4. Outreach
Capsule CRM's outreach solution focuses on simplifying email marketing and automating follow-ups through integration with its email tool, Transpond. This allows users to schedule and automate email campaigns to streamline outreach efforts. Close CRM's outreach features integrate built-in calling, email, and SMS tools, enabling seamless multi-channel outreach without the need for external apps.
5. Automation
Capsule CRM offers automation features that help streamline sales and customer relationship processes, including automating repetitive tasks like follow-ups and data updates. Close CRM's automation features are designed to save time and streamline workflows for sales teams with custom workflows and Smart Views for lead prioritization.
6. Integration
Capsule CRM integrates with a variety of popular third-party applications, including productivity tools like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for email and calendar synchronization. It also connects with accounting software such as Xero. Close CRM offers integrations with various tools to enhance sales workflows and streamline data management.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Capsule CRM has limited AI integrations compared to more advanced platforms, focusing primarily on enhancing efficiency through basic automation. However, it supports integrations with third-party tools that offer AI functionalities. Close CRM does not appear to have an AI integration.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Capsule CRM and Close CRM.
Capsule CRM prices
Capsule's annual subscription plans are as follows.
- Starter plan: Starts from $18 per user, per month.
- Growth plan: Starts from $36 per user, per month.
- Advanced plan: Starts from $54 per user, per month.
- Ultimate plan: Starts from $72 per user, per month.
Close CRM prices
Close CRM offers a monthly and annual payment option. The annual subscription plan is as follows.
- Startup: $49/user/month.
- Professional: $99/user/month.
- Enterprise: $139/user/month.
Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Capsule CRM and Close CRM
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 can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. You can also use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, or large enterprise. Allowing it to scale with you as your business grows.
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.
Capsule CRM vs. Close CRM: What's the verdict?
When choosing between Capsule CRM and Close CRM, it's clear how both platforms offer robust features tailored to small and medium-sized businesses. Capsule CRM excels in simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for managing customer relationships and sales pipelines. Close CRM, on the other hand, focuses on sales efficiency with built-in communication tools and automation. 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.
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses