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

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

While both Freshsales and Streak provide built-in email workflows, their depth, usability, and influence on daily sales activities vary significantly. For teams that prioritize simplicity and seek efficient, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful email integrations within any CRM—allowing for effortless sending, tracking, and automation of outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Does Email Integration Matter?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a basic database to a comprehensive communication hub. Rather than toggling between tabs or relying on disjointed tools, sales representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and track engagement all in one location.

• Centralized communication. All emails—both sent and received—automatically sync to the appropriate contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences enable reps to follow up at the optimal time without any manual effort.
• Real-time tracking. Open rates, clicks, and replies are directly integrated into the CRM to inform subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data. Emails instantly enhance contact profiles with context and conversation history.
• Email templates. Reusable, personalized templates assist teams in maintaining consistency and saving 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 shift from juggling tools to concentrating on conversations that generate revenue. This distinction is what elevates a good CRM to one that genuinely accelerates sales!

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is Freshworks’ sales CRM tailored for small to mid-sized teams looking for an intuitive interface combined with robust automation capabilities. Users can seamlessly integrate with Gmail or Microsoft 365 and opt for either one-way or two-way sync, ensuring that email threads remain consistent between their inbox and CRM. With features like templates, bulk emailing, and activity timelines, email becomes an integral part of how representatives manage their leads and opportunities.

What is Streak?

Streak is a lightweight CRM embedded directly within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. This integration allows users to manage deals, monitor stages, and collaborate on threads without leaving the familiar Gmail environment. At its core, Streak emphasizes email functionality, featuring real-time tracking and pipeline visuals superimposed over existing Gmail conversations.

Feature comparison of Freshsales and Streak

Integration Capabilities

Freshsales seamlessly integrates with Gmail and Outlook through native plugins, bringing email threads, scheduling tools, and pertinent contact information directly to your inbox. Once connected, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for recognized addresses and logs conversations, allowing you to minimize clutter by selecting which folders to sync.

Streak completely integrates within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without needing additional windows or applications. Every email you send or receive is automatically recorded in the corresponding pipeline and shared across your team’s workspace, providing you with a real-time timeline for each deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

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

Streak achieves real-time email sync by operating within Gmail's own infrastructure. As soon as you send or receive a message, Streak logs it instantly to the relevant pipeline, keeping your team updated with the latest activity without any lag. There’s no queuing—message and thread updates are visible immediately in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. By integrating directly with Gmail, you gain the advantage of Google's exceptional uptime and reliability.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

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

Streak seamlessly integrates within Gmail, meaning your inbox and CRM are one and the same. Every email sent or received is automatically logged in real time to the appropriate box, providing effortless two-way email sync without additional configuration. As for calendar integration, Streak facilitates a one-way push of tasks to Google Calendar: tasks scheduled or completed in Streak instantly appear on your calendar, but any edits or new tasks created in Google Calendar won’t sync back to Streak.

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, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Enhanced deliverability is ensured through built-in retry logic and ISP throttling. However, be aware that more advanced features, such as heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization, necessitate an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is conveniently integrated within Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in less than two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables (like first name, company, and deal data) from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences on the same thread, and even conduct A/B tests on subject lines to enhance reply rates. Each sent message and follow-up is automatically logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign features fall short in providing advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without integrating an additional tool.

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 can view delivery, open, and click metrics 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 accesses links through preview panes, the statistics may be underreported.

Streak integrates a small tracking pixel and link tracker directly into Gmail, providing real-time “eye” icons that indicate each time an email is opened or a link is clicked in a specific thread. By hovering over the green eye, you can access timestamps, locations, and individual link click data without leaving your inbox. Since it's built entirely on Gmail’s API, setup is minimal and feedback is immediate; however, you won't find aggregated campaign dashboards or multi-link heat-mapping beyond the view of individual messages.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Freshsales’ native plugins for Gmail and Outlook seamlessly integrate your CRM sidebar into your inbox, displaying lead profiles, deal values, and previous email threads as you compose or read messages. You can easily log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences, all with a simple one-click sync back to Freshsales. Additionally, by incorporating calendar events into the same view, it provides a smooth combination of messages and appointments. If you prefer using a different email client, you'll need to opt for IMAP sync instead of the complete plugin experience.

Streak operates exclusively within Gmail, granting you comprehensive CRM capabilities—such as pipelines, contact details, and email logging—without leaving your inbox. The sidebar reveals deal stages, custom fields, and shared notes alongside each thread, ensuring you always have context readily available. You can effortlessly drag and drop emails into various pipelines or update statuses on the fly, creating a unified feel between your inbox and CRM. However, since Streak is limited to Gmail, you won't enjoy this integrated experience if you decide to switch to Outlook or another email client.

folk CRM: The Best Email CRM

folk provides teams with a seamless and connected email workflow that they’ve long needed. It centralizes communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing, all within a clean and intuitive CRM. With an impressive 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the top lightweight CRMs for contemporary sales and partnerships teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and growing 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 and convert every email and call into actionable insights, utilizing native email sync with Gmail and Outlook, along with AI-driven analysis. Teams can:

• Quickly recap past conversations with a simple click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers information from emails and notes to create a summary, enabling you to grasp the context in seconds.
• Follow up at the optimal time as AI scans conversations to notify you when to reach out and even drafts replies.

Email Sequencing & Automation

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

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

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk’s AI Follow-Up feature ensures every conversation is tracked. 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 the hassle of manual tracking.

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

Conclusion

In summary, Freshsales excels with its robust automation and user-friendly interface, making it ideal for small to mid-sized teams. Streak offers a streamlined experience directly within Gmail, perfect for those who prioritize real-time tracking and collaboration. However, for teams that heavily rely on email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk emerges as the superior choice. With its seamless email workflows, AI-driven follow-up reminders, and intuitive interface, folk transforms email into a powerful sales engine that drives results efficiently.

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