Email is the cornerstone of contemporary sales communication, facilitating deal progression, follow-ups, and relationship building.

As teams increasingly depend on automated outreach, multi-channel engagement, and accurate tracking, CRMs are now competing based on the strength of their native email integrations.

Both Freshsales and Pipedrive feature built-in email workflows, but their usability, depth, and impact on daily sales operations vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity and swift, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the cleanest and most effective email integrations available in any CRM, making it effortless to send, track, and automate outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Email Integration Matters?

Robust email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a cohesive communication hub. Instead of toggling between tabs or depending on disjointed tools, sales reps can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement all from one location.

• Centralized communication. All emails—sent or received—are automatically synced to the appropriate contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences ensure reps follow up at the optimal time without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking. Open rates, clicks, and replies are integrated directly into the CRM, informing the next steps.
• Cleaner data. Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with context and conversation history.
• Email templates. Reusable, personalized templates help teams maintain consistency and save time.
• Outreach automation. Send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activities.

When a CRM manages email seamlessly, reps can devote their attention to impactful conversations that drive revenue. This distinction sets apart a good CRM from one that truly enhances sales performance!

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is Freshworks’ intuitive sales CRM tailored for small and mid-sized teams seeking a user-friendly interface coupled with robust automation features. Users can easily connect Gmail or Microsoft 365 and select between one-way or two-way sync to ensure threads remain consistent between their mailbox and the CRM. With tools like templates, bulk emailing, and comprehensive activity timelines, email becomes an integral aspect of how representatives manage their leads and opportunities.

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a sales-centric CRM designed around a visual pipeline, enabling sales representatives to monitor deals from initiation to closure. Its email synchronization integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Outlook, and other IMAP providers, ensuring that every correspondence is automatically logged with the appropriate contact and deal. Featuring a built-in sales inbox along with tracking and fundamental campaign tools, teams can manage outreach and pipeline updates in one centralized platform, eliminating the need for disparate tools.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Pipedrive

Integration Capabilities

Freshsales provides native plugins for both Gmail and Outlook, displaying email threads, scheduling tools, and relevant contact information directly in your inbox. After connecting, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for recognized contacts, logging conversations with ease and minimizing clutter by allowing you to select which folders to sync.

Pipedrive features seamless email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook, using IMAP as a fallback for other providers, ensuring that all inbound and outbound messages are accurately matched to the corresponding contact or deal record. The Smart Email BCC address option allows you to log messages without leaving your email client—simply add the dynamic BCC, and Pipedrive takes care of the rest. Additionally, native calendar integration for Google and Microsoft calendars ensures that all your meetings are automatically reflected on contact timelines, providing a comprehensive view of every customer interaction.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Freshsales establishes a continuous connection to your Gmail or Outlook account through native plugins, enabling real-time synchronization of emails and calendar events. Incoming messages from known leads appear almost instantly, while outgoing emails logged in the CRM are reflected immediately in your email thread. Calendar events synchronize without delay, ensuring that meetings scheduled in Freshsales are promptly visible in your personal calendar.

Pipedrive’s email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook operates every few minutes, striking a balance between speed and system efficiency. Both outbound and inbound messages are captured and linked to relevant contacts or deals in under five minutes, minimizing the chances of missing or delayed logs. Additionally, the IMAP fallback adheres to standard IMAP IDLE protocols for push notifications, providing near-instant updates for compatible providers.

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 tailored to user behavior. With user-friendly drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and analytics dashboards, you can monitor delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Additionally, built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability. However, more advanced functionalities such as heat-map click analysis or AI-driven send-time optimization are available only with an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

Freshsales provides native plugins for Gmail and Outlook, offering the option of two-way or one-way email sync during setup—two-way sync is the default, ensuring that both incoming and outgoing emails seamlessly integrate with your CRM timeline. For calendar synchronization, Freshsales supports bi-directional sync with Google Calendar and Office 365, allowing appointments scheduled in either your inbox or the CRM to mirror each other, ensuring that meeting history is conveniently aligned with email conversations in the same timeline.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

Freshsales features a comprehensive Marketing Campaigns module—simply head to Campaigns > Email to create mass emails or automated Journeys based on user behaviors. With drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and analytics dashboards, you can track delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Additionally, built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability. Keep in mind, however, that more sophisticated tools like heat-map click analysis or AI-driven send-time optimization will require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

For those on Advanced plans and above, Pipedrive’s Group Emailing allows you to choose up to 100 contacts from any list for bulk messaging, complete with merge tags and reply tracking. The Pipedrive Campaigns add-on offers a specialized module for crafting email journeys, audience segmentation, and analyzing open and click rates. All replies are automatically linked to the correct deal or contact. However, be aware that the Campaigns add-on comes with an additional cost, and its reporting capabilities may be more limited compared to dedicated email marketing platforms.

Open and Click Tracking

Freshsales allows you to activate the “Track opens and clicks” feature 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 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, you might encounter underreported statistics.

Pipedrive offers “Track email opening” and “Track link opening” options, allowing each sent message to log opens and clicks, complete with counts and timestamps in the Mail tab. You can toggle tracking on or off for individual emails and see precisely who clicked which link in the deal view. However, Pipedrive’s reporting is somewhat basic, providing only open and click rates—with no built-in funnel visualization or heat-map insights unless you export the data to a BI tool.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Freshsales’ native plugins for Gmail and Outlook seamlessly integrate a CRM sidebar into your inbox, displaying lead profiles, deal values, and past email threads as you write or read messages. You can log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences with a simple one-click sync back to Freshsales. The plugin also incorporates calendar events in the same view, creating a smooth combination of messages and appointments. However, if you prefer a different email client, you'll need to use IMAP sync instead of enjoying the full plugin experience.

Pipedrive’s Gmail Add-on introduces a side panel in your inbox that allows you to view contact and deal information, update stages, and add new activities directly from Gmail. You gain immediate access to Smart Email BCC, templates, and tracking options without leaving your inbox, plus you can create new leads or deals with just a click. It effectively transforms your mailbox into a Pipedrive cockpit. However, do note that this in-inbox functionality is limited to Chrome or Edge, as there is no equivalent add-on available for desktop Outlook.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM Solution

folk empowers teams with a seamless and integrated email workflow they’ve long desired. It centralizes communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing, all within a clean, user-friendly CRM. With a remarkable 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the top lightweight CRMs for contemporary sales and partnership teams.

Specifically designed for startups, agencies, and scaling sales teams of 20-50 members, folk transforms email operations into a streamlined process, avoiding overwhelm.

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 synchronization for Gmail and Outlook, along with AI-driven analysis, teams can:

• Quickly recap past conversations in a single click using folk's Recap assistant, which compiles information from emails and notes to create a summary, providing context in seconds.
• Time follow-ups effectively as AI scans conversations to alert you when it’s time to reconnect with a contact and even drafts a response for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

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

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

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

With folk’s AI Follow-Up feature, no conversation slips through the cracks. It analyzes your email history, alerts you when a contact hasn’t responded, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the ideal moment to re-engage. Essentially, it functions as a built-in assistant that keeps your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without the hassle of manual tracking.

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

Conclusion

In summary, Freshsales excels with a user-friendly interface and robust automation for small teams, while Pipedrive's visual pipeline and reliable email syncing provide a strong sales-centric experience. However, for teams that prioritize effective email integration, automation, and streamlined sequencing, folk stands out as the best choice. With its seamless email management, AI-driven follow-up reminders, and simple automation, folk ensures email is the heart of your sales operation, making it the ideal solution for modern sales teams. Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.