Email continues to be the cornerstone of modern sales communication: it’s the platform where deals progress, follow-ups take place, and relationships strengthen.

As teams increasingly depend on automated outreach, multi-channel engagement, and precise tracking, CRMs are now competing fiercely based on the quality of their native email integrations.

Both Freshsales and Attio provide built-in email workflows, but their depth, usability, and overall impact on daily sales activities vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity and seeking quick, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful email integrations in any CRM, facilitating effortless sending, tracking, and automating outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Email Integration Matters?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a cohesive communication hub. Instead of switching between tabs or depending on disjointed tools, sales representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement all from a single location.

• Centralized communication. All emails—whether sent or received—automatically sync with the appropriate contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences enable reps to follow up at the perfect moment without requiring manual effort.
• Real-time tracking. Open rates, clicks, and replies are directly fed into the CRM, guiding subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data. Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with relevant context and conversation history.
• Email templates. Reusable, personalized templates help teams maintain consistency and save time.
• Outreach automation. Easily send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activity.

When a CRM manages email seamlessly, sales representatives can shift their focus from juggling tools to engaging in conversations that generate revenue. This distinction is what sets a good CRM apart from one that truly accelerates sales!

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is Freshworks’ sales CRM tailored for small and mid-sized teams seeking an intuitive interface combined with robust automation. Users can seamlessly integrate Gmail or Microsoft 365, opting for either one-way or two-way sync, ensuring consistent alignment between their mailbox and the CRM. With features like templates, bulk emailing, and activity timelines, email becomes central to how representatives manage their leads and opportunities.

What is Attio?

Attio is a contemporary, customizable CRM designed as a collaborative workspace where teams can consolidate contacts, companies, and deals into a single, live database. It integrates with Gmail and Microsoft 365 to automatically sync emails and calendar events, ensuring that every thread is displayed correctly on the relevant contact or opportunity timeline. Users can send emails from their connected inboxes within Attio, utilize templates, and monitor engagement without departing from the CRM.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Attio

Integration Capabilities

Freshsales provides native plugins for Gmail and Outlook that display email threads, scheduling tools, and relevant contact information directly within your inbox. Once connected, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for known contact addresses, logging conversations while allowing you to select which folders to sync, thus minimizing clutter.

In contrast, Attio lacks a built-in inbox or calendar plugin; instead, it utilizes Zapier’s Email by Zapier or Pipedream to capture both inbound and outbound emails, seamlessly integrating them into Attio’s contact timelines. You can easily set up triggers like “New Email Received” or “Send Email” and map fields such as subject, body, and attachments to the appropriate properties in Attio.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Freshsales seamlessly integrates with your Gmail or Outlook account through native plugins, ensuring a continuous connection that syncs email and calendar events in real time. Incoming messages from recognized leads appear within seconds, while outgoing emails logged from the CRM are instantly reflected in your email thread. Calendar events are also updated immediately, allowing meetings scheduled in Freshsales to appear in your personal calendar without any delay.

In contrast, Attio depends on Zapier or Pipedream to capture email and calendar events, meaning the sync frequency relies on the plan you choose with your automation platform.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

Freshsales offers a comprehensive Marketing Campaigns module—simply go to Campaigns > Email to create email blasts or automated Journeys based on user behaviors. With drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and detailed analytics dashboards, you can track delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Enhanced deliverability is ensured through built-in retry logic and ISP throttling. However, note that more advanced features, such as heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization, require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

Attio sets itself apart by seamlessly integrating your email and calendar data right from onboarding: by connecting your Google or Microsoft account, Attio instantly imports email events and calendar appointments as CRM activities in real time.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

Freshsales offers a comprehensive Marketing Campaigns module—simply navigate to Campaigns > Email to create email blasts or automated Journeys based on user behaviors. With user-friendly drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and detailed analytics dashboards, you can track delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability. However, keep in mind that more advanced features, such as heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization, require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

On the other hand, Attio lacks a native mail-merge or campaign module, so you'll need to rely on an automation tool like Zapier to fill the gap.

Open and Click Tracking

Freshsales allows you to enable “Track opens and clicks” in Settings > Email Settings, ensuring that every email sent through the native plugin records open events and link clicks directly in the contact timeline. You can view delivery, open, and click metrics in both the Deal dashboard and Campaigns module. However, keep in mind that open rates depend on image-based pixels; if a recipient blocks images or views links in preview panes, you may see underreported statistics.

In contrast, Attio does not provide built-in open or click tracking—email events are captured through Zapier or Pipedream triggers. This requires you to set up your own pixel-and-webhook workflows to track opens and clicks and link them back to your contacts. While this approach offers maximum flexibility, it lacks a straightforward analytics dashboard, so you'll need to create custom reports using your automation platform or BI tool.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Freshsales offers native plugins for Gmail and Outlook that embed your CRM sidebar right in your inbox, allowing you to view lead profiles, deal values, and previous email threads while composing or reading messages. You can log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences with just one click, syncing everything back to Freshsales effortlessly. With calendar events integrated into the same view, you enjoy a seamless combination of messages and appointments. However, if you prefer a different email client, you will need to use IMAP sync instead of the full plugin functionality.

In contrast, Attio doesn't directly embed into your inbox. Instead, it relies on Zapier or Pipedream to log emails and events into Attio’s timeline. While Attio provides a clean, contact-centric view, it lacks a sidebar in Gmail or Outlook for on-the-fly record editing. This approach offers flexibility, but it doesn't deliver the same seamless in-inbox experience.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM

folk provides teams with the streamlined and connected email workflow they've been longing for. It centralizes communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing, all within a user-friendly CRM. With a remarkable 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the highest-rated lightweight CRMs designed for modern sales and partnership teams.

Tailored specifically for startups, agencies, and expanding sales teams of 20-50 members, folk ensures that email operations are effortless rather than overwhelming.

Extract Intelligence from Emails

One of folk’s standout features is its capacity to centralize communication and convert every email and call into actionable insights. With native email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook, coupled with AI-driven analysis, teams can:

• Instantly recap past conversations with a click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers intelligence from emails and notes to create a summary, providing context in seconds.
• Time follow-ups perfectly as AI scans conversations to alert you when it's time to reconnect with a contact and even drafts replies for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

folk’s built-in sequencing engine simplifies the creation of automated outreach flows directly within the CRM. You can craft multi-step email sequences, personalize messages using CRM fields, and automatically log every interaction. Whether nurturing leads, executing outbound campaigns, or re-engaging inactive deals, folk provides a powerful yet straightforward sequencing workflow without the need for additional tools.

Set conditions based on your CRM variables to automatically trigger emails, such as when a deal closes or a new lead is acquired.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk’s AI Follow-Up feature ensures that no conversation slips through the cracks. By examining your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn't responded, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the optimal times to re-engage. It operates like a built-in assistant, keeping your inbox organized and your pipeline active—eliminating the need for manual tracking.

folk starts at just $20 per user per month, includes native email integration and sequencing, and offers a 14-day free trial—no credit card required.

Conclusion

Freshsales excels with its intuitive interface and robust email automation, making it ideal for small to mid-sized teams.

Attio shines as a customizable workspace with effective email tracking, though it requires third-party automation tools for full functionality.

However, for teams heavily reliant on email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk stands out as the ultimate choice. Offering seamless email workflows, AI-driven follow-ups, and native sequencing, folk empowers sales teams to streamline their outreach and drive revenue effectively.

Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.