Freshsales vs Insightly: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with maintaining consistent pipeline execution while ensuring that client delivery remains on schedule. When vital prospect information gets scattered across inboxes, calendars, and spreadsheets, it becomes all too easy for follow-ups to slip through the cracks, handoffs to falter, and forecasting to turn into mere speculation. A CRM for agencies should not only keep new business flowing swiftly but also preserve enough account history to facilitate renewals, upsells, and referrals seamlessly.

Freshsales and Insightly approach this challenge from distinct perspectives. Freshsales offers a straightforward CRM solution that emphasizes lead management, customizable pipelines, and integrated automation to streamline follow-ups and transitions. In contrast, Insightly brings a project-oriented focus, integrating sales records with delivery tasks to ensure that deals and client engagements are synchronized, particularly in project-driven environments.

The ideal CRM choice hinges on the complexity of your processes, the level of customization required, and how much ongoing maintenance your agency is prepared to commit to setup and administration.

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is a CRM solution from Freshworks that specializes in handling leads, deals, and activities through integrated automation features. It's ideal for agencies seeking standard CRM functions, customizable pipelines, and workflow rules for follow-ups and transitions. The activity timelines ensure that interactions are linked to the correct records in both sales and account management. Additionally, the reporting tools facilitate pipeline tracking and performance analysis based on recorded data. This platform is often chosen by agencies desiring a straightforward CRM that also provides automation and reporting capabilities.

What is Insightly?

Insightly is a CRM that incorporates project-oriented features, connecting sales records with delivery and post-sale tasks. It's particularly beneficial for agencies where managing deals and client delivery must be intertwined, especially in project-based engagements. The pipelines monitor opportunities, while tasks and activity sets help standardize internal processes across various stages. Configured reporting and dashboards provide visibility into both sales and execution metrics. This CRM is commonly chosen by agencies looking for a solution that bridges CRM functionalities with delivery workflows.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Insightly

Multi-pipeline and Custom Stages

Freshsales enables the use of multiple deal pipelines, each with its unique set of stages. These pipelines and their stages are managed within the admin settings, allowing you to add, reorder, and customize stages to fit various sales processes. This flexibility lets you separate agency motions like new business, renewals, or partnerships into distinct pipelines while ensuring that stage definitions are specific to each motion. For newly created pipelines, the default outcomes are set to Won and Lost.

Insightly's pipeline setup also facilitates the definition of pipelines and stage lists tailored to different sales motions. You can establish separate pipelines to differentiate agency flows such as new business, renewals, and partner referrals, while maintaining unique stages for each pipeline. As processes evolve, stages can be modified to ensure that opportunity tracking accurately reflects current qualification criteria and delivery handoffs. Insightly enforces pipeline logic at the record level, ensuring that each opportunity adheres to a defined stage flow.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

With Freshsales, you can log activities such as calls, meetings, notes, emails, and tasks, all linked to contacts, accounts, and deals. The record timelines display both past interactions and upcoming actions, ensuring that handoffs are contextual and include clear next steps. Additionally, Freshsales allows for the configuration of various activity types, including custom ones, to align with a team's workflow. You can filter timelines to concentrate on specific activity categories when reviewing an account.

Insightly’s activity tracking is based on tasks, events, and logged interactions connected to contacts, organizations, and opportunities. Activity Sets in Insightly facilitate the creation of repeatable task and event sequences from templates, standardizing follow-ups after discovery calls, proposals, or onboarding processes. Timelines and related lists keep both completed actions and upcoming steps visible in the record, making it easy to review account history and current commitments during internal handoffs.

Automation and Workflows

In Freshsales, you can create reports and dashboards using CRM data, including deals, activities, and stage movements, allowing you to effectively monitor pipeline status and performance. The analytics features enable you to track progress through various stages and analyze conversion patterns over time based on logged data. Additionally, reporting options include scheduling reports for email delivery, contingent on your analytics setup. The metrics available are determined by the configuration of your pipelines, stages, and properties.

Insightly's Workflow Automation can initiate actions when specific record criteria are met, such as updating fields, assigning tasks, or creating new tasks. This automation can seamlessly integrate with pipeline-driven processes; for instance, you can apply Activity Sets when an opportunity advances to a certain stage in Insightly. The execution of workflows hinges on how triggers and actions are set up in your account, facilitating smooth handoffs like transitioning a deal to onboarding and generating the corresponding task checklist.

Reporting and Analytics

Freshsales enables the creation of reports and dashboards using CRM data, including deals, activities, and stage transitions, to effectively monitor pipeline status and performance. Its analytics features facilitate the tracking of progression through stages and the analysis of conversion trends over time based on logged data. Additionally, reporting options include scheduling reports for email delivery, depending on the analytics configuration. The available metrics will vary based on how pipelines, stages, and properties are set up.

Insightly’s reporting capabilities encompass dashboards and custom reports derived from CRM objects such as opportunities, activities, and projects. Users can filter reports by owner, pipeline, stage, and time range, and save them for regular review. Insightly also allows for the scheduling of reports, ensuring stakeholders receive updates without the need for manual exports. The accuracy of pipeline reporting relies on consistent use of stages and thorough activity logging by the team.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

Freshsales allows users to enhance their CRM experience by adding integrations through the Freshworks Marketplace, enabling connections to external tools for improved workflows and record management. Its duplicate management features effectively identify and merge duplicate leads or contacts, ensuring that reporting and automation work with consolidated data. Additionally, import settings can help minimize duplicate entries by matching incoming information with existing records, while enrichment capabilities may vary based on the selected edition and configuration.

Insightly offers integration options via its integration layer and connected apps, contingent on the chosen plan and setup. Its data hygiene features include processes for managing duplicates, which assist in identifying and merging duplicate contacts, organizations, or leads to maintain clean records. The behavior during data import can also affect duplicate occurrences, depending on the matching rules applied during the upload. Maintaining tidy records enhances reporting accuracy and reduces conflicts during automation.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM that centralizes contacts, conversations, and deal context without complicating setup. It’s ideal for agency teams where multiple members engage with the same account during prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. The system maintains a clear relationship history, ensuring that transitions are seamless and not reliant on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and custom stages tailored for various agency workflows
• Contact and deal timelines consolidating interaction history in one location
• Email and calendar synchronization to link conversations to the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to ensure standardized next steps
• Contact enrichment to complete missing company and contact information
• Deduplication tools to merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• Simple pipeline reporting to track stage health and deal progression
• Integrations and automation connectors to minimize manual updates

For agencies, the fundamental advantage is operational clarity across concurrent 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. Features that enhance data hygiene, like enrichment and deduplication, help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, keeping pipeline reporting relevant over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Freshsales excels with its straightforward lead management and customizable automation, making it ideal for agencies seeking simplicity. Insightly shines with its project-oriented features that synchronize sales and delivery tasks. However, for teams prioritizing email integration, automation, and seamless sequencing, folk stands out as the best alternative. It centralizes contact histories, simplifies follow-ups, and enhances data hygiene, ensuring clarity and efficiency across client relationships. Choose folk for a CRM that truly supports agency workflows.

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