Freshsales vs Clarify: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with keeping pipeline execution consistent while delivery stays on track. When prospect context lives across inboxes, calendars, and spreadsheets, follow-ups slip, handoffs break, and forecasting becomes guesswork. A CRM for agencies has to keep new business moving fast while preserving enough account history to support renewals, upsells, and referrals.

Freshsales and Clarify tackle these challenges from unique perspectives. Freshsales is a CRM solution designed to streamline lead management and enhance team collaboration through customizable pipelines and automation features. In contrast, Clarify integrates AI-driven insights to minimize manual data entry, ensuring that teams can focus on strategic interactions rather than administrative tasks.

The right choice for your agency hinges on your specific workflow needs, the level of automation you desire, and how effectively you can maintain data integrity with your chosen solution.

Why Agencies Need a CRM in 2026?

Agencies don’t lose revenue because of a lack of demand. Revenue leaks when lead context gets scattered across inboxes, calendars, Slack threads, and spreadsheets, and when follow-ups depend on memory instead of a system. A CRM creates a single source of truth for prospects, clients, partners, and renewals, so next steps stay visible and ownership is clear.

✔️ Pipeline visibility and forecasting without spreadsheets

✔️ Centralized prospect and client context across email, calls, and meetings

✔️ Standardized follow-ups, handoffs, and next steps across the team

✔️ Clear ownership on every lead, deal, and account to avoid drops

✔️ Performance tracking by source, service line, and stage conversion

In 2026, agencies run more channels, shorter decision cycles, and more stakeholders per deal, with clients expecting faster response times and tighter coordination. Without a CRM, proposals stall, warm leads go cold, renewals happen late, and referrals are handled inconsistently because the team can’t see the full history and the current plan in one place.

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is a CRM solution from Freshworks designed to efficiently manage leads, deals, and activities, featuring built-in automation options. It caters to agencies seeking standard CRM functionalities, customizable pipelines, and workflow rules for seamless follow-ups and handoffs. Activity timelines ensure that interactions are linked to the correct records for both sales and account management. Additionally, reporting tools facilitate pipeline monitoring and performance evaluations based on recorded data, making it an ideal choice for agencies that prefer a straightforward CRM while still benefiting from automation and reporting capabilities.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an innovative, AI-native CRM designed to keep records up-to-date through ongoing communications and meetings. It appeals to agencies looking to reduce manual data entry while still maintaining a functional pipeline, contact history, and actionable next steps. The product's messaging highlights the importance of capturing meeting context, follow-ups, and deal updates in real time. Integrations and automated connections can facilitate routing updates throughout the broader system, depending on the setup. This CRM is particularly suited for teams exploring modern workflows built around conversational context and automated record maintenance.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Clarify

Multi-pipeline and custom stages

Freshsales offers support for multiple deal pipelines, each with its own distinct stages. These pipelines and stages are easily managed through admin settings, allowing users to add, reorder, and customize stages to fit various sales processes. This flexibility enables the separation of agency motions—such as new business, renewals, or partnerships—into individual pipelines, while ensuring that stage definitions are tailored to each specific motion. By default, 'Won' and 'Lost' are set as the outcome options for newly created pipelines.

Deal tracking in Clarify revolves around Deals, with a focus on identifying opportunities and keeping deal stages current as activities occur. Clarify emphasizes a straightforward pipeline structure and aligns stages with genuine progress, incorporating probability thinking for better forecasting. Additionally, pipeline hygiene is a key aspect of how Clarify maintains usable records without requiring frequent manual updates.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

Freshsales allows users to log activities—such as calls, meetings, notes, emails, and tasks—while associating them with contacts, accounts, and deals. Record timelines provide a clear view of past interactions and upcoming actions, ensuring that handoffs are seamless and include necessary context and next steps. Additionally, Freshsales enables the configuration of activity types, including custom options, to align with how a team monitors their work. Users can filter timelines to hone in on specific activity categories during account reviews.

The record experience in Clarify consolidates emails, meetings, notes, and record details in a single location, making activity context readily available alongside the contact and deal information. Product materials highlight the platform's meeting capture capabilities, including recording sessions and creating summaries that are linked back to records. Changelog notes regarding record pages and updates to Deals reflect ongoing improvements in how activities and deal contexts are presented together.

Automation and Workflows

In Freshsales, you can create reports and dashboards using CRM data such as deals, activities, and stage transitions to effectively monitor pipeline status and performance. The analytics features facilitate tracking progress through stages and analyzing conversion trends over time based on logged information. You can also schedule reports for email delivery, depending on your analytics setup, with available metrics varying based on your pipeline, stage, and property configurations.

In Clarify, follow-ups and updates are automated tasks managed by agents, including drafting follow-ups, capturing tasks, and updating records based on interactions from calls or emails. Clarify integrates writing frames into workflow automation as a key component of modern CRM operations, with a dedicated product post outlining automatic meeting notes and follow-up reminders within CRM workflows. This ultimately minimizes manual data entry and reduces routine administrative tasks, contingent on the workflows you enable.

Reporting and Analytics

In Freshsales, you can create reports and dashboards using CRM data, including deals, activities, and stage movements, to effectively monitor your pipeline's status and performance. The analytics features enable you to track progress through various stages and analyze conversion patterns over time based on the logged data. Additionally, reporting options allow for scheduling reports to be delivered via email based on your analytics setup. The available metrics will vary depending on the configuration of your pipelines, stages, and properties.

In Clarify, pipeline visibility is characterized by the tracking of deals that are updated and reflected in real time, and external reviews highlight the dynamic nature of dashboards and forecasts that adjust as records change. Clarify also shares valuable content on CRM analytics dashboards and reporting concepts, emphasizing the importance of using CRM data to monitor pipeline health and trends over time. The specific reports available depend on the reporting layer and configurations outlined in product updates and documentation.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

Freshsales allows you to enhance your CRM experience by adding integrations through the Freshworks Marketplace, seamlessly connecting external tools to your CRM records and workflows. Its duplicate management features effectively identify and merge duplicate leads or contacts, ensuring that reporting and automation rely on consolidated records. Moreover, import settings can help minimize duplicate creation by matching incoming data to existing records, while enrichment capabilities may vary based on the edition and configuration you choose.

The Clarify integrations catalog offers a comprehensive list of categories and integrations, with dedicated pages detailing Slack notifications for pipeline updates and a Zapier connector for broader automation. Notably, Zapier’s listing highlights Clarify’s ability to connect with thousands of apps, enabling efficient workflow triggers and data movement. Additionally, Clarify’s product messaging underscores the importance of pipeline hygiene and record maintenance, ensuring the system remains up-to-date as new activities occur.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM that streamlines the management of contacts, conversations, and deal context without complicating the setup process. It’s tailored for agency teams where multiple members engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. With a comprehensive record of relationship history, transitions between team members are seamless, relying less on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline support and customizable stages catering to various agency processes
• Centralized contact and deal timelines for tracking interaction history
• Email and calendar synchronization to link conversations with the appropriate records
• Task management, reminders, and follow-up tracking to ensure consistent next steps
• Contact enrichment features to supplement missing company and individual data
• Deduplication tools for merging duplicates, maintaining a clean database
• Intuitive pipeline reporting to assess stage health and deal progression
• Integration and automation capabilities to minimize manual data entry

For agencies, the key advantage lies in achieving operational clarity across multiple relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams, including retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure consistent follow-ups across the team. Robust data hygiene features, such as enrichment and deduplication, help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, maintaining the usability of pipeline reporting over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Freshsales excels in lead management and customizable pipelines, while Clarify offers AI-driven insights that streamline data entry. However, for agencies prioritizing email integration, automation, and seamless sequencing, folk stands out as the optimal solution. It facilitates smooth transitions across team members and maintains a centralized record of interactions, ensuring consistent follow-ups and operational clarity. As agencies face increasing demands, folk delivers the agility and context necessary to drive successful outcomes.

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