Clay CRM vs Dex CRM: which is the best CRM for your personal and professional relationships?

It's no secret that a good CRM system can improve your customer interactions, automate your business processes, and help you run your business more efficiently. With a lot of CRMs out there to choose from, it can be hard to know which one is the best for you.

In this article, we'll compare two popular CRM systems, Clay and Dex, and introduce you to folk.

TL;DR: Clay and Dex are both great options, but folk comes with more powerful workflow and collaboration options. 

Presentation of Clay CRM

Clay launched their CRM in 2021. Their CRM is in-between an address book and a sales and pipeline-focused system. It offers a wide range of standard features, including contact management, sales pipeline management. Clay's user interface is sleek and modern.

Key features

• Apple iOS integration, if you use Apple products, you’ll appreciate Clay’s integration with iMessage. 
• Digital rolodex concept, with newly launched team collaboration feature.

Pros 

• AI navigator ‘Nexus’: lets you search across your entire network with smart search and ask any question.
• Daily suggestions for reconnections: provides intelligent prompts and daily suggestions to stay connected with your network.
• Contact-related updates: including job changes, location changes, news mentions and more.

Cons

• Apple iOS design: no Android-friendly integrations. 
• Potentially overwhelming for beginners: The broad range of features can be daunting for new users.

Presentation of Dex CRM

Dex was founded in 2019. Their name was inspired by their ambition to be the modern rolodex of today. The CRM offers targeted solutions specifically for MBA students, investors and creators.

Key features

• Superhuman integration, if you use Superhuman for email you can integrate this with Dex CRM.
• Shortcuts, to help you get round your CRM quickly.

Pros

• Mobile and desktop applications: Access Dex CRM on the go from the Apple app store and Google Play. 
• Integrations: Include iCloud integration for Apple iOS users, Superhuman and various social media platforms.

Cons

• Pricing: Some users find Dex to be expensive compared to other options​.
• Performance issues: There are reports of the software being slow and buggy at times.

Presentation of folk CRM: for professional and personal CRM software

folk was founded in 2020. They have quickly become a firm favourite thanks to its Notion-like and intuitive user interface. You can use the folk CRM as a personal CRM to grow your personal network, or for your business relationships and work collaboratively with your team thanks to its sales-friendly pipeline management function.

folk offers flexible pricing plans, and simple but powerful features making it a favourite amongst busy professionals. They also offer a variety of integrations with third-party software, including Gmail, Outlook, and access to more via Zapier so that you can easily sync folk with your favourite tools.

Key features

• Smart notifications, assign reminders to teammates so they know exactly when it’s time to follow up with someone. 
• Solo use or team collaboration, folk scales with you by supporting solo users or team collaborations. 
• Build one source of truth, take notes collaboratively so that your team can pick up where you left off and avoid confusion with a single source of truth.

Pros

• AI support: ‘Magic Field’  leverages the data you have on your contacts in folk, so you can use a variable to generate this information in your Messages. Saving you time by helping you personalize messages seamlessly.
• Pipeline management: folk’s pipeline management goes beyond supporting sales teams. You can use it to nurture business relationships across multiple business functions including sales, recruitment, investment, fundraising and more.
• Chrome extension: folkX, allows you to import search lists and individual contact details directly from the source into the folk CRM without interrupting your workflow. 

Cons

• A reporting feature is not available on folk yet, even though analytics are available. But it’s coming soon.

Comparison of the CRMs for personal and professional networks

Let's unpack some key features each CRM has to offer so you can figure out which one is best for your needs.

Contact Management

All three CRM systems offer robust contact management features, including the ability to import/export contacts, add custom fields, and sort/search contacts which can help nurture both professional and personal relationships.

Clay Contact Management

Clay's CRM allows you to import your contacts from a variety of sources, including Google Contacts, Microsoft Outlook, and CSV files. You can also create custom fields to store additional information about your contacts, and easily sort and search your contacts list.

Dex Contact Management

Similar to Clay, Dex is a personal relationship management software that lets their users see all their contact data in one place. It can import contacts from social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as Gmail.

folk Contact Management

folk's CRM is an intelligent contact manager that has all the features above and more. You can easily import your whole LinkedIn network and sort contacts into different groups manually, or make use of a new feature that does this automatically for you. If you like keeping your contacts organized but hate the manual and time consuming approach this often requires, you can look forward to folk's automatic deduplicating feature, and contact enrichment feature that helps fill in any missing information.  Their handy Chrome extension, folkX is also firm favourite amongst users as it allows you to add contacts from your social media accounts or any website in moments.  

Pipeline Management

Pipeline management is a crucial feature regardless if you're using the platform as a personal relationship management app or for your business contacts. Done well, it should allow users to have a custom visual representation that aligns their needs and goals.

Clay Pipeline Management

Clay does not offer pipeline management. Its more of a personal CRM app that allows you to see unlimited life updates across your network from job changes, to location changes, news mentions and more.

Dex Pipeline Management

Similar to Clay, Dex does not offer a traditional pipeline management view. Instead, there are a few ways you can organize your contacts, including by timeline, dashboard or with their Keep In Touch view. Which is a drag-and-drop system that allows you to categorize your contacts by columns that reflect how often you want to keep in touch with them.

folk Pipeline Management

folk's Pipeline Management system stands out for its intuitive and user-friendly design. So you won't have to worry about facing a steep learning curve. There is a comprehensive overview of the sales process, mapping out each deal in visual stages from inception to closure with a simple drag-and-drop Kanban view. It also offers customization options, allowing organizations to tailor their pipelines to their unique sales processes. Additionally, it incorporates features for setting tasks and reminders, ensuring you stay proactive and on top of their sales activities.

Integrations

All three CRM systems offer integrations with a variety of third-party software. However, some of the CRMs only offer this on a premium plan.

Clay Integration

With Clay, you only get access to the ability to add custom integrations with their premium plan which starts at $40 a month per user. They also have a new contacts integration system for iOS app users, but it is unclear whether or not this is available with the free version.

Dex Integration

Dex offers integrations from the usual suspects such as Gmail and social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Interestingly, they offer an integration specifically for Superhuman to help their users build a personal CRM using their email account.

folk Integration

folk's integration capability is powerful, connecting seamlessly to Outlook and Gmail so that all contacts, emails, and calendar are events are synched with folk. Users also have the option to connect with thousands of other apps through Zapier.

User Experience

A good CRM should be easy to use and intuitive, whether you want to use it as a personal or professional relationship manager,

Clay User Experience

Clay does not offer the standard user experience you might expect from a CRM. Its user interface has a strong focus on each interaction you've had with a contact. There is a timeline attached to each contact that tells you exactly when you last messaged them, any notes you've saved, precisely how many times you've met them and more.

Dex User Experience

Dex's user interface is clean. A lot of functions are manual, with some automation. They have a lot of clever built-in shortcuts designed to save users time in the long term, which might involve a steep learning curve in the short run.

folk User Experience

folk is well known for its intuitive user interface and Notion-like experience. It packs a powerful punch for solo users who need a user-friendly personal CRM tool and teams who want that collaborative experience for customer relationship management across sales, marketing, and more. Users can get the help of AI to save time personalizing emails to multiple recipients.

Mail Merge

Besides having all your contacts in one place, a good CRM should have a useful mail merge function that can help you save time and streamline your workflow process.

Clay Mail Merge

Clay's email preferences work differently in their iOS app and desktop and web applications. In iOS, if you open an email, you can start a new email, and choose what domain you want to send it from. In their desktop and web application, you have to set your device's default email client to change where new emails are opened from Clay due to limitations in mail client capabilities. However, it does not seem to have analytics capabilities.

Dex Mail Merge

While Dex's Browser extension allows you to send emails, there doesn't seem to be a full mail merge function.

folk Mail Merge

folk has the ultimate mail merge function. It helps you streamline your workflow process by allowing you to send emails from within the web application, and has an intelligent AI feature called 'Magic Field' that helps you save time sending ultra-personalized emails to multiple recipients. Users also get access to all the data to their email campaigns so they know exactly how well an email performs, and where to make improvements.

Customer Support

Getting access to good customer support can make or break a negative experience you have with any CRM.

Clay Customer Support

While all customers get access to a library that is full of support articles, it might not suit their user's learning preferences. Only customers on Clay's Enterprise plan get a dedicated success manager.

Dex Customer Support

Dex users get access to support materials divided into 'Documentation' for more technical queries and 'Getting Started with Dex' for onboarding issues. Premium users get priority support.

folk Customer Support

folk offers an extensive library of self-serve support materials in the form of articles and videos to suit different learning styles. folk premium users get priority support and a dedicated customer success manager. Their highest-tier users get access to a dedicated point of contact, as well as a dedicated Slack channel.

Pricing and Plans

When it comes to pricing and plans, flexibility is key to ungate access to a good CRM for small businesses.

Clay Pricing and Plans

Clay offers a free trial. Their premium plans start from $10 per month for access to unlimited contacts and goes up to $40 per month per user for admin tools and controls plus more. There is also an enterprise price plan at an undisclosed price for users who want access to a dedicated success manager.

Dex Pricing and Plans

Dex offers a seven-day free trial, but users only have the option of one price plan. This starts from $12 a month and is billed annually.

folk Pricing and Plans

You can try folk for free with a 14 day free trial. After that, a monthly or annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month
• Premium: $40 per user, per month
• Custom: Starts from $60 per user, per month

Conclusion

A good CRM can help you maintain strong relationships and nurture new ones. After comparing Clay, Dex, and folk CRM systems, we believe that folk is the best option for businesses of all sizes. folk offers a clean and intuitive user interface, flexible pricing plans, and powerful features that make it easy to manage your customer relationships - alone and with your team. If you're looking for a CRM system that can help you automate your business processes and improve your customer interactions, we highly recommend giving folk a try.