Less Annoying CRM vs Clay

Exploring options for a new CRM? Less Annoying CRM and Clay are two well known platforms, each offering distinct features to enhance customer engagement and streamline operations. While both aim to boost sales growth, they cater to different business requirements. In this blog post, we will explore and compare the key features, pricing, and benefits of these platforms. We'll also introduce folk as a noteworthy alternative to consider.

What is Less Annoying CRM?

Less Annoying CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) software designed to be simple. It focuses on simplicity and ease of use, providing a straightforward platform for managing contacts, tracking leads, and staying organized.

Key features of Less Annoying CRM

• Contact management: Less Annoying CRM allows users to store and manage contact information, linking individuals to companies for better organization of customer data.
• Pipeline management: The pipeline management feature enables users to track the progress of leads or deals through customizable stages, helping to monitor sales processes.
• Email logging: This feature allows users to manually log email conversations into the CRM, keeping a record of communication for future reference.
• User permissions: Less Annoying CRM provides user permissions controls, allowing administrators to manage access levels for different users based on their roles.
  

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.

Less Annoying CRM 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

Less Annoying CRM's pipeline management feature is clunky. Users have to attach a pipeline label directly onto a contact's profile. This will then add them to a separate dashboard specifically for your pipeline.  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. This approach provides flexibility but may require more initial setup to align with specific sales processes.

2. Ease of use

Less Annoying CRM is designed for simplicity, making it easy for small businesses to manage customer relationships without a steep learning curve. Clay, while also user-friendly, offers more project-management focussed features that may require a steep learning curve.

3. Contact enrichment

Less Annoying CRM lacks built-in contact enrichment features, relying on third-party integrations like Zapier for limited functionality. In contrast, Clay excels in contact enrichment by pulling data from multiple sources, enhancing user profiles with comprehensive information, and automating data gathering for better prospecting.

4. Outreach

Less Annoying CRM offers basic email outreach and follow-up tracking, integrating with email clients like Gmail and Outlook. Clay is an outreach specific platform  designed for efficient prospecting and personalized communication. It allows users to create targeted lists, pull in enriched data from multiple sources, and send automated, customized emails. Users can set up email sequences to ensure consistent follow-ups and track engagement metrics, such as open and response rates, to refine outreach efforts.

5. Automation

Less Annoying CRM focuses on basic automation, such as task management and reminders, with Zapier integrations for additional functionality. Clay offers advanced automation for outreach tasks, including personalized email sequences and follow-up reminders, though it primarily focuses on email rather than multichannel engagement.

6. Integration

Less Annoying CRM integrates with various third-party applications through Zapier, connecting with tools like Mailchimp, Google Workspace, and Trello for enhanced productivity. Clay’s integration capabilities are more robust, supporting seamless data enrichment and communication workflows.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Less Annoying CRM does not incorporate native AI features, maintaining a focus on simplicity. Clay, however, leverages AI through Claygent for research automation, enabling tasks like domain visits and compliance checks, enhancing its utility for informed decision-making.

Price and plans comparison

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

Less Annoying CRM  prices

Less Annoying CRM offers a single plan of $15 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 Less Annoying CRM  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.

Less Annoying CRM vs. Clay: What's the verdict?

It's clear that while Less Annoying CRM and Clay offer robust features for managing customer relationships, each has its unique strengths. Less Annoying CRM is ideal for those seeking simplicity and affordability, whereas Clay excels in providing a more visually appealing and dynamic interface. 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