Capsule CRM vs Clay

It's no secret that choosing the right CRM platform is crucial for business relationships. Capsule CRM and Clay are two popular options, each offering distinct features tailored to different business needs. Capsule CRM is celebrated for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive tools for small to medium-sized enterprises, while Clay focuses on innovative integrations and customization options. In this blog post, we'll explore the core features, pricing structures, and unique advantages of both platforms, providing you with the insights needed to make an informed decision. Additionally, we'll introduce folk as a compelling alternative.

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: Capsule CRM provides a sales pipeline feature that helps users track opportunities and manage leads through various stages of the sales process.
• Key Integrations: Capsule integrates with popular tools like Google Workspace, Xero, and Mailchimp, enabling users to connect external applications for a more streamlined workflow.
• Task Management: The task management feature allows users to create, assign, and track tasks related to contacts, sales, or projects within the CRM.
• Task Reminders: Capsule CRM offers task reminders to help users stay on top of deadlines and follow-ups by sending notifications when tasks are due.

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.

Capsule 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

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. 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

Capsule CRM offers a user-friendly interface with straightforward navigation, making it accessible for users of varying technical skills. Clay, while also intuitive, focuses on a streamlined approach to prospecting and outreach, which may appeal more to users prioritizing these tasks. If you're after a traditional CRM, you might find Clay hard to use.

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. Clay’s enrichment feature automatically gathers detailed lead information from various sources, creating comprehensive contact profiles that can be integrated with your existing CRM.

4. Outreach

Capsule CRM's outreach solution simplifies email marketing and automates follow-ups through its integration with Transpond, enabling users to schedule and automate email campaigns. Clay's main focus is outreach – providing efficient prospecting and personalized communication, enriched data and automated, customized emails with tracking capabilities for refining outreach efforts.

5. Automation

Capsule CRM streamlines sales processes with automation for tasks like follow-ups and data updates, using workflow triggers based on sales pipeline changes. Clay automates outreach tasks with workflows for data gathering and email sequencing, focusing on email communication but lacking broader multichannel engagement capabilities.

6. Integration

Capsule CRM integrates with various popular third-party applications, including productivity tools like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for email and calendar synchronization, and accounting software such as Xero. Clay offers integrations with various CRMs, email marketing platforms, and data sources, allowing users to sync enriched contact profiles and streamline outreach workflows across tools.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Capsule CRM has limited AI integrations, focusing on efficiency through basic automation and supporting third-party AI tools. Clay's AI integration is research-focused, using Claygent for automated research tasks like checking SOC-II compliance.

Price and plans comparison

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

Capsule CRM prices

Capsule CRM provides a few plans.

• 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.

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 Capsule 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. On top of your social selling efforts, folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, fundraising and more.

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. Clay: What's the verdict?

In comparing Capsule CRM and Clay, it's clear that both platforms offer unique features catering to different business needs. Capsule CRM shines with its intuitive interface and robust task management, ideal for small to medium-sized enterprises. On the other hand, Clay presents a more visual approach, which might appeal to teams looking for a fresh perspective on CRM. 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.