Email remains the cornerstone of contemporary sales communication; it’s where deals progress, follow-ups are initiated, and relationships strengthen.

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

While Freshsales and Clarify both feature built-in email workflows, their depth, usability, and impact on daily sales operations vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity over complexity and seeking fast, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the cleanest and most powerful email integrations in any CRM, streamlining the process of sending, tracking, and automating outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Does Email Integration Matter?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a cohesive communication hub. Rather than toggling between tabs or relying on disjointed tools, sales representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement—all from a single platform.

• Centralized communication. All emails—whether sent or received—synchronize automatically with the corresponding contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences enable reps to follow up at optimal moments without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking. Open rates, clicks, and replies feed directly into the CRM to inform next steps.
• 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. Dispatch bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activity.

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

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is Freshworks' sales CRM tailored for small to mid-sized teams seeking a user-friendly interface with robust automation features. Users can seamlessly connect their Gmail or Microsoft 365 accounts, choosing between one-way or two-way synchronization to ensure that communication remains synchronized between their mailbox and the CRM. With the integration of email templates, bulk emailing capabilities, and activity timelines, email becomes an essential tool for sales representatives as they engage with leads and opportunities.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an AI-driven CRM designed for startups and agile sales teams looking to consolidate email, meetings, and deal context into a single, streamlined platform. It integrates with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, automatically syncing emails, calendars, and meeting insights, which are then utilized to enhance timelines and generate AI-suggested follow-ups. Users can create and send emails directly from Clarify, ensuring that all engagement is recorded back to contacts and deals, preventing important information from getting lost in individual inboxes.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Clarify

Integration Capabilities

Freshsales provides native plugins for Gmail and Outlook, displaying email threads, scheduling tools, and relevant contact information directly within your inbox. Once connected, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for known contacts and logs conversations, minimizing clutter by allowing you to select which folders to sync.

Clarify integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, enabling sales teams to automatically capture Gmail, Outlook, calendar, and meeting activities within the CRM. Additionally, it connects with tools like Zapier, Segment, Posthog, and webhooks to facilitate the transfer of customer and product usage data in and out of the database. A forthcoming integration with Loops aims to send Clarify events to a SaaS-oriented email platform without replacing it. Overall, Clarify prioritizes consolidating essential inbox and meeting data rather than providing an extensive native marketing ecosystem.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Freshsales establishes a seamless connection through native plugins that ensure a continuous link to your Gmail or Outlook account, allowing for real-time syncing of emails and calendar events. Incoming messages from recognized leads appear almost instantly, while outgoing emails logged in the CRM are immediately reflected in your email thread. Calendar events also synchronize right away, guaranteeing that meetings scheduled in Freshsales are promptly visible in your personal calendar without any delays.

Clarify focuses on the automatic capture of email and calendar data, eliminating the need for manual entry. Once connected to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, messages, events, and meeting details are synced in the background and matched with the appropriate contacts, companies, and deals. The product copy mentions features like “auto-capture,” “auto-sync,” and the continuous updating of the CRM, but it does not disclose detailed, user-facing sync schedules. As a newer tool, Clarify’s integrations may not yet have the robust reliability of established CRMs, even though the essential email and calendar sync functionalities are presented as standard features.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

Freshsales features a comprehensive Marketing Campaigns module—simply go to Campaigns > Email to create email blasts or automated Journeys based on user behaviors. The platform offers drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segmentation, and analytics dashboards that monitor delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Enhanced deliverability is achieved through built-in retry logic and ISP throttling. However, note that advanced capabilities like heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization necessitate an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

Clarify seamlessly connects to Gmail and Outlook, allowing inbound and outbound emails to be integrated into contact and deal timelines, which the AI agent utilizes for follow-up recommendations. Following the July 2025 update, users will be able to send emails directly from Clarify, with these sends and their replies automatically recorded in the relevant records. Additionally, calendar events and meeting summaries from platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams are integrated into the same timelines, providing teams with a straightforward two-way view of conversations and meetings. This functionality primarily supports routine sales follow-up rather than complex marketing automation.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

Freshsales features 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 analytics dashboards, you can track delivery rates, open rates, clicks, and unsubscribes. Built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability. However, advanced features like heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

Clarify enables representatives to send personalized follow-up emails directly from the CRM, often crafted with context from meetings and emails by its AI agent. Nevertheless, external reviews and Clarify’s positioning indicate that the product currently lacks full multi-channel sequences and classic mail merge-style bulk campaigns. For nurture streams and onboarding journeys, teams are expected to use external tools like Loops or other marketing platforms through integrations. Consequently, Clarify remains focused on sales communication and pipeline management, while more established CRMs take on more extensive campaign tasks.

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 logs open events and link clicks in the contact timeline. Delivery, open, and click metrics are visible in both the Deal dashboard and the Campaigns module. Keep in mind that open rates depend on image-based pixels—if a recipient blocks images or views links in preview panes, your stats may be underreported.

Clarify positions itself as a CRM email tracking solution, featuring content focused on tools that track opens, clicks, and replies for sales emails. The goal is to capture essential engagement signals from emails sent via connected inboxes or through Clarify, displaying that activity on timelines and in follow-up suggestions. This enables sales teams to identify who is engaging and determine the best time to follow up, all without transforming Clarify into a comprehensive analytics platform. In contrast to specialized email platforms, the reporting on these events is relatively straightforward, focusing more on deal workflows than on extensive marketing analytics.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Freshsales offers native plugins for Gmail and Outlook that integrate your CRM sidebar directly into your inbox, allowing you to view lead profiles, deal values, and past email threads while composing or reading messages. You can log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences with a single click that syncs back to Freshsales. The plugin also incorporates calendar events into the same interface, providing a smooth integration of messages and appointments. However, if you prefer a different email client, you'll need to opt for IMAP sync instead of enjoying the complete plugin experience.

In contrast, Clarify maintains most functionalities within its own web app and macOS app, linking to Gmail and Outlook without serving as a full CRM sidebar inside the inbox. Users can access timelines, meeting summaries, and AI-generated follow-ups within Clarify, enabling them to send or schedule emails while utilizing their preferred mail clients. For teams that primarily operate in Gmail or Outlook, this approach feels more like a cohesive workspace rather than a conventional 'CRM inside the inbox' extension. The roadmap is geared toward centralizing tasks and AI actions within Clarify itself rather than creating extensive UI add-ons for every email client.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM

folk provides teams with the seamless and connected email workflow they’ve long desired. By centralizing communication, automating follow-ups, and simplifying sequencing, it delivers everything in a clean and intuitive CRM environment. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the highest-rated lightweight CRMs tailored for contemporary sales and partnerships teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and growing sales teams of 20-50, folk streamlines email operations without the complexity.

Extract Insights from Emails

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

• Quickly access conversation recaps with a click through folk's Recap assistant, which synthesizes intel from emails and notes to generate a summary, giving you context in seconds.
• Time your follow-ups effectively; AI scans conversations to remind you when to reach out and even drafts responses for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

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

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

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

With folk’s AI Follow-Up feature, no conversation slips through the cracks. By analyzing your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn’t replied, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the optimal time to re-engage. It serves as your built-in assistant, keeping your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without any manual oversight.

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

Conclusion

In conclusion, Freshsales excels with its user-friendly interface and robust automation features, making it ideal for small to mid-sized teams. Clarify stands out with its AI-driven insights and seamless integration for context-rich communication. However, for teams that prioritize email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk is the ultimate choice. It offers a clean and intuitive platform that centralizes communication and automates outreach efficiently, making it the best CRM for sales teams focused on maximizing their email workflows.

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