Freshsales vs Copper: 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.

In the digital landscape of CRM solutions, Freshsales and Copper emerge as two formidable contenders, each addressing these challenges from unique vantage points. Freshsales is tailored for agencies that prioritize a straightforward CRM experience, emphasizing automation and reporting capabilities to optimize follow-ups and transition processes. On the other hand, Copper seamlessly integrates with Google Workspace, making it an ideal choice for teams already embedded in the Google ecosystem, offering a structured CRM experience that enhances daily workflows.

The right choice between Freshsales and Copper hinges on an agency's specific operational needs, existing tools, and the level of customization required to ensure effective pipeline management and client engagement.

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 by Freshworks designed to manage leads, deals, and activities, featuring integrated automation tools. It's ideal for agencies seeking standard CRM functionalities, customizable pipelines, and workflow rules for efficient follow-ups and transitions. Activity timelines ensure that interactions are linked to the appropriate records in sales and account management, while reporting tools facilitate pipeline tracking and performance assessments based on recorded data. This platform is often chosen by agencies looking for a straightforward CRM that still offers automation and reporting capabilities.

What is Copper?

Copper is a CRM that seamlessly integrates with Google Workspace, allowing users to keep their CRM activities close to Gmail and Google Calendar. It's well-suited for agencies that manage most of their client communications and scheduling within Google tools, providing a structured CRM experience without significant changes to daily workflows. Pipelines help track opportunities, while contact and account records preserve the context of relationships. Workflow automation and integrations can minimize repetitive administrative tasks, making it a perfect fit for teams that prefer a CRM framework layered onto a Google-centric workflow.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Copper

Multi-pipeline and Custom Stages

Freshsales allows for multiple deal pipelines, each utilizing its own unique set of stages. Admin settings provide full management of these pipelines and stages, enabling users to add, reorder, and customize stages for different sales processes. This flexibility facilitates the segregation of agency motions—such as new business, renewals, or partnerships—into distinct pipelines, while maintaining specific stage definitions for each motion. The default outcomes for newly created pipelines are set to Won and Lost.

Copper also supports the creation of multiple pipelines, tailored for processes that require different stage flows. Users can edit pipeline stages to ensure the opportunity board reflects how an agency qualifies, scopes, and closes work for each motion. Separate pipelines can effectively distinguish renewals, retainers, and project-based sales, all while leveraging the same CRM data model. Adjustments are made in the pipeline settings and are specific to the selected pipeline.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

With Freshsales, you can log activities like calls, meetings, notes, emails, and tasks, linking them seamlessly to contacts, accounts, and deals. The recorded timelines provide a comprehensive view of past interactions and outline upcoming actions, ensuring that handoffs are informed with necessary context and next steps. Additionally, Freshsales allows for the customization of activity types, enabling teams to align tracking with their specific workflows. You can filter timelines to highlight particular activity categories when reviewing an account.

Copper maintains deal context by integrating with common Google Workspace tools, displaying related communications and activity details for contacts and opportunities. Calendar synchronization enables the creation and syncing of events between Copper and Google Calendar, with changes reflecting across both platforms based on the chosen sync feature. You can review activity and relationship histories on records to facilitate handoffs and outline next steps for accounts and opportunities.

Automation and Workflows

Freshsales allows you to create reports and dashboards from CRM data such as deals, activities, and stage movements, enabling you to track pipeline status and performance effectively. Its analytics features facilitate monitoring progression through stages and examining conversion patterns over time using logged data. Reporting options also include scheduling reports for email delivery, contingent on your analytics setup, with available metrics influenced by the configuration of pipelines, stages, and properties.

Copper Workflow Automation employs a trigger-action model to automatically update or create records based on specified events. Automation recipes can, for instance, generate tasks from certain triggers, helping to standardize follow-ups and streamline internal handoffs. The behavior of workflows is contingent upon the trigger conditions and configured actions, operating according to the account's automation settings.

Reporting and Analytics

In Freshsales, you can create reports and dashboards using CRM data, including deals, activities, and stage movements, to effectively monitor pipeline status and performance. The analytics features enable you to track progression through stages and analyze conversion trends over time based on logged data. Additionally, reporting allows for scheduling reports for email delivery, depending on your analytics configuration. The metrics available will vary based on how pipelines, stages, and properties are set up.

Copper reporting revolves around customizable dashboards, metrics, and insights that can be shared or exported, with options for emailing or integrating dashboards within reporting workflows. The reporting setup includes dashboard templates, filters, and editing controls to customize KPIs and views according to the pipeline and activity data being monitored. Scheduled delivery and alerting are also integral components of the reporting features.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

Freshsales allows for seamless integration with external tools through the Freshworks Marketplace, enabling connections to 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. Additionally, import settings help minimize duplicate creation by matching incoming data to existing records. Depending on the edition and configuration used, enrichment capabilities may also be available.

Copper provides integrations with various common tools, highlighted by its Zapier integration, which connects Copper to a vast array of external apps for automation and data transfer. To maintain data hygiene, Copper features a duplicate management workflow that empowers teams to select and merge duplicate People, Companies, or Leads, thereby consolidating records. This process ensures that contact history and account context remain attached to a single record, even when duplicates arise from imports or manual entries.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-powered CRM that centralizes contacts, conversations, and deal context without transforming setup into a daunting project. It seamlessly integrates into agency teams where multiple members engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. The record maintains a visible history of relationships, ensuring that handoffs rely on documented information rather than memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline support and customizable stages tailored for diverse agency workflows
• Comprehensive contact and deal timelines that consolidate interaction history
• Email and calendar synchronization to link conversations with the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to ensure standardized next steps
• Contact enrichment to automatically fill in missing company and contact information
• Deduplication tools to merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• User-friendly pipeline reporting to track stage health and deal progress
• Integrations and automation connectors to minimize manual updates

For agencies, the primary value lies in operational clarity across parallel relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure consistent follow-ups across the team. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication help prevent duplicate records and missing fields, keeping pipeline reporting reliable over time.

Conclusion

In summary, Freshsales offers straightforward automation and reporting capabilities ideal for agencies seeking an uncomplicated CRM experience, while Copper excels with its seamless Google Workspace integration, enhancing productivity for teams entrenched in that ecosystem. However, for agencies that prioritize email integration, automation, and efficient sequencing of client interactions, folk stands out as the best alternative. It centralizes communication and context across pipelines, ensuring smooth handoffs and consistent follow-ups, making it the perfect fit for relationship-driven agency work.

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