Attio vs Clay: A Comprehensive Comparison of Two Leading CRMs

Time for a CRM change? Attio and Clay are two prominent contenders in this space, each offering distinct features tailored to different organizational needs. This article aims to provide a detailed comparison of Attio and Clay, evaluating their functionalities, pricing structures, and overall benefits. We'll also introduce folk – a popular alternative to consider.

Attio vs Clay: A Detailed Overview (+ folk CRM)

👉 Try folk CRM for free

What is Attio?

Attio is a customizable platform designed for flexibility in managing customer relationships and workflows. It allows users to create tailored pipelines, manage customer data, and track interactions within an intuitive interface.

Key features of Attio

• Customizable pipelines: Attio allows users to fully customize sales pipelines, creating deal stages that match specific business processes.
• Contact and company management: It centralizes contact and company data, automatically tracking emails, notes, and tasks for a comprehensive view of interactions.
• Workflow automation: Users can automate tasks such as data entry and follow-ups based on specific triggers, improving efficiency.
• Task manager and reminders: Built-in tools help users stay on top of tasks and follow-ups, ensuring important activities are not missed.
  

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.

Attio 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

Attio's pipeline management system is highly customizable, allowing users to create tailored stages that reflect their specific sales processes. The system supports a Kanban-style view for visualizing deal progression and includes automation triggers at each stage to enhance productivity. On the other hand, 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 on this data.

2. Ease of use

Attio offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation, making it accessible for teams of all sizes. Clay focuses on a streamlined design tailored for efficient data management, ensuring users can quickly access and organize information. But with all its functions, users may face a steep learning curve.

3. Contact enrichment

Attio automatically enriches people and company records with useful data points like logos and profile pictures. This feature ensures that users have a comprehensive view of their contacts, enhancing the quality of interactions and decision-making processes. Clay’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 connect Clay's enrichment feature with your existing CRM.

4. Outreach

Attio has an Outreach integration that allows users to trigger responses to email sequences and send messages directly from the platform. Clay’s outreach feature is 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

Attio's automation feature streamlines workflows by automating tasks like data entry and follow-ups, improving efficiency. Clay focuses on simplifying outreach with automated workflows for data gathering and email sequencing, though it lacks advanced multichannel engagement options found in some traditional CRM tools.

6. Integration

Attio integrates with various tools to enhance CRM functionalities, while Clay offers seamless connections with platforms to enrich data and streamline communication, ensuring users can leverage existing systems effectively.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Attio CRM integrates AI to automate complex tasks, like classifying unstructured data and qualifying leads. Clay's AI, through Claygent, focuses on research automation, allowing users to gather domain information and verify compliance, offering a specialized approach to data-driven insights.

Price and plans comparison

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

Attio prices

Attio has a free plan limited to three seats per month. After that, an annual subscription is as follows.

• Plus: $34/seat/month.
• Pro: $69/seat/month.
• Enterprise: $119/seat/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 Attio 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Attio vs. Clay: What's the Verdict?

Between Attio and Clay, there's no doubt that both platforms offer unique advantages tailored to different business needs. Attio shines with its customizable pipelines and workflow automation, ideal for businesses seeking flexibility in managing customer relationships. On the other hand, Clay is robust with its comprehensive contact management and integration capabilities. 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.