Email is the cornerstone of contemporary sales communication: it's where deals progress, follow-ups occur, and relationships flourish.

As teams increasingly depend on automated outreach, multi-channel engagement, and precise tracking, CRMs are vying for attention based on the effectiveness of their native email integrations.

Both Freshsales and Monday CRM feature built-in email workflows, but their depth, usability, and influence on daily sales activities vary significantly. For teams prioritizing a streamlined approach and seeking fast, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the sleekest and most robust email integrations in any CRM, simplifying the process of 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. Rather than toggling between tabs or relying on disjointed tools, sales representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and track engagement all from a single platform.

• Centralized communication. All emails—both sent and received—automatically synchronize with the corresponding contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences enable reps to follow up at optimal times without manual effort.
• Real-time tracking. Open rates, clicks, and replies are fed directly into the CRM to inform subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data. Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with context and conversation history.
• Email templates. Reusable and personalized templates aid teams in maintaining consistency while saving time.
• Outreach automation. Send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activities.

When a CRM manages email efficiently, reps can focus on meaningful conversations that generate revenue instead of juggling multiple tools. This distinction is what 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 an intuitive interface with robust automation capabilities. Users can easily integrate Gmail or Microsoft 365, opting for either one-way or two-way sync to ensure seamless alignment between their mailbox and the CRM. With features like templates, bulk email options, and activity timelines, email becomes a central tool for representatives as they engage with leads and opportunities.

What is Monday CRM?

monday sales CRM is integrated into the monday.com work management platform, providing teams with a visual approach to managing pipelines alongside their projects. The Emails & Activities app connects seamlessly with Gmail and Outlook, enabling users to send, receive, and log emails directly from their boards while tracking opens and replies right where the work occurs. Features like templates and automation help ensure standardized follow-ups, keeping lead statuses, tasks, and email histories synchronized.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Monday CRM

Integration Capabilities

Freshsales provides native plugins for Gmail and Outlook, displaying email threads, scheduling tools, and related contact information directly in your inbox. After connecting, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for recognized contacts and logs conversations, allowing you to minimize clutter by selecting which folders to sync.

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app enables two-way sync for up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts, ensuring that sent and received emails appear on your boards alongside calls and tasks. Although it lacks native calendar syncing within the CRM, you can create simple automations or utilize Monday’s Calendar view to visualize your scheduled events.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Freshsales utilizes native plugins to establish a continuous connection with your Gmail or Outlook account, enabling real-time synchronization of emails and calendar events. Incoming messages from known leads are displayed within seconds, while outgoing emails logged in the CRM are instantly reflected in your email thread. Calendar events also sync immediately, ensuring that meetings scheduled in Freshsales are promptly visible in your personal calendar.

In contrast, Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app syncs your inbox every few minutes by default, periodically checking Gmail and Outlook for new messages to convert into board items. Although this introduces a slight delay compared to push-based systems, updates typically appear within two to three minutes. If you require sub-minute responsiveness, you can modify polling intervals or incorporate custom webhooks for quicker updates.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

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

Monday’s Emails & Activities app provides seamless two-way email sync for Gmail and Outlook through straightforward integration recipes—new messages and replies automatically turn into pulses on your boards, ensuring your communications remain linked to your deals. Calendar items sync effortlessly via Monday’s Calendar Sync feature: date or timeline columns connect to Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, or any external calendar, with events reflecting on both your board and calendar within minutes.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

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

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app allows you to sync up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts, along with a Group Emailing feature that enables bulk messaging to board items and contact lists. You can automate follow-ups using monday.com automations or integrate with Mailchimp for comprehensive email marketing functionality. Keep in mind, though, that without Mailchimp or a similar add-on, you’ll only have basic send logs for campaign analytics on your boards.

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. You'll find delivery, open, and click metrics displayed in both the Deal dashboard and 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 statistics may be underreported.

The Emails & Activities app in Monday logs message opens when you send emails directly through the board interface; however, it does not natively track which links were clicked. To obtain click-through rates, you need to embed links with UTM parameters and pull the data into your board via automations, or you can integrate a marketing tool like Mailchimp.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Freshsales’ native plugins for Gmail and Outlook integrate your CRM sidebar directly into your inbox, displaying lead profiles, deal values, and past email threads while you compose or read messages. You can effortlessly log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences with a single click, syncing everything back to Freshsales. Additionally, by incorporating calendar events into the same view, it creates a smooth combination of messages and appointments. However, if you prefer using a different email client, you’ll need to opt for IMAP sync instead of enjoying the full plugin experience.

On the other hand, monday.com’s Emails & Activities app is designed to reside on your boards rather than your inbox. When you connect it with Gmail or Outlook, emails transform into pulses linked to relevant items, allowing you to reply or add notes directly within monday.com. This feature is particularly beneficial for visual teams that manage tasks on boards, though it doesn’t offer a true in-inbox sidebar; instead, you’ll be operating within monday.com rather than your email client.

folk CRM: The Best Email CRM

folk provides teams with the seamless, integrated email workflow they’ve been longing for. It centralizes communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing—all within a clean, intuitive CRM. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the top-rated lightweight CRMs, ideal for modern sales and partnership teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and scaling sales teams of 20-50, folk streamlines email operations without overwhelming users.

Extract Intel from Emails

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

• Easily recap past conversations with just a click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers information from emails and notes to craft a summary, providing context in seconds.
• Follow up at the optimal time as AI scans conversations and notifies you when to reach out again, even drafting replies for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

folk’s built-in sequencing engine allows you to create automated outreach workflows directly within the CRM. Build multi-step email sequences, personalize messages with CRM fields, and automatically log every interaction. Whether you're nurturing leads, executing outbound campaigns, or re-engaging dormant deals, folk offers a robust yet simple sequencing workflow that eliminates the need for additional tools.

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

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

The AI Follow-Up feature in folk ensures that no conversation slips through the cracks. By analyzing your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn't responded, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the best times to re-engage. It functions like a built-in assistant that keeps your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without any 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 needed.

Conclusion

To conclude, Freshsales excels with its intuitive interface and advanced automation capabilities, making it a solid choice for small to mid-sized teams. Meanwhile, Monday CRM offers a visual approach to project management with integrated email tracking, suitable for teams that prioritize task management alongside communication. However, for teams heavily reliant on email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk stands out as the best alternative. Its seamless email workflows, AI-driven follow-ups, and intuitive design truly optimize sales communication, making it the preferred choice for modern sales teams.

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