HubSpot vs Clay

In the market for a CRM solution? HubSpot and Clay are two prominent platforms, each offering distinct features to streamline business operations and boost customer engagement. While both aim to drive sales growth, they cater to different business needs. In this blog post, we will explore their key features, pricing, and benefits. We'll also introduce folk which is a popular alternative, thanks to its flexibility.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot CRM is a user-friendly, scalable platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations efficiently.

Key features of HubSpot

• Marketing hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools.
• Sales hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting.
• Service hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases.
• Operations hub: Syncs and automates business processes across different systems.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring to improve sales efficiency.
  

What is Clay?

ClayNAME 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.

HubSpot vs. Clay: 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

HubSpot's pipeline management feature provides a visual overview of deals, allowing users to track the progress of sales opportunities, customize stages, and automate tasks for a more efficient sales process. Clay doesn't have a pipeline dashboard per se, but allows you to connect with your inbound lead form and then creates a dashboard based off this data.

2. Ease of use

HubSpot is known for its intuitive interface, making it easy for users to navigate and manage their CRM tasks efficiently. Clay offers a more streamlined approach focused on prospecting and outreach, which might appeal to users who prioritize these functions.

3. Contact enrichment

HubSpot's Breeze Intelligence enhances data collection by automatically populating known information, reducing form fields. This streamlines workflows and improves user experience. CClay’s enrichment feature automatically gathers additional information on leads by pulling data from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn, social media, and public databases. This feature builds detailed profiles for each contact, including information like job titles, company details, and social links, providing a comprehensive view without manual data entry. You can also connect Clay's enrichment feature with your existing CRM.

4. Outreach

HubSpot's email marketing tool allows users to create campaigns using a drag-and-drop interface, enabling A/B testing and email personalization. Clay emphasizes efficient prospecting with targeted lists and automated, personalized emails, offering robust tracking of engagement metrics to refine outreach strategies.

5. Automation

HubSpot provides comprehensive automation for marketing, sales, and customer service, focusing on tasks like lead nurturing and email campaigns. Clay's automation is tailored for outreach, allowing personalized email sequencing and follow-up reminders, and has broader multi-channel outreach solutions.

6. Integration

HubSpot's App Marketplace features over 1,500 integrations, offering extensive connectivity options with various tools, enhancing its CRM platform's versatility and functionality. Clay's integration library includes CRMs you can connect the platform to, and other applications for your workflow.

7. Artificial intelligence

HubSpot leverages AI for tasks like lead scoring and email personalization, enhancing sales and marketing efficiency. Clay's AI, through Claygent, focuses on automating research tasks, such as verifying SOC-II compliance, offering a unique approach to data-driven insights.

Price and plans comparison

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

HubSpot prices

At a glance, HubSpot's sales hub prices are as follows.

• Starter: $20 per user, per month.
• Professional: $100 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $150 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 HubSpot and Clay

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. There is a reason why folk is 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.

HubSpot vs. Clay: What's the verdict?

Between HubSpot and Clay, it's clear that both platforms offer unique strengths tailored to different business needs. HubSpot excels with its comprehensive suite of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service, making it ideal for larger enterprises seeking an all-in-one solution. On the other hand, Clay offers a more streamlined approach, focusing on key CRM functionalities with a user-friendly interface, suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. 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