Freshsworks x Clarify: Which AI CRM is the best?

AI has evolved beyond a mere feature; it now powers smarter pipelines, enables faster decision-making, and fosters stronger customer relationships.

Today, CRM platforms compete on the extent to which they integrate AI into every interaction, offering everything from predictive insights to automated workflows.

While Freshworks and Clarify both claim to provide intelligent sales assistance, their levels of AI integration, ease of use, and overall business impact differ considerably. For teams that prefer simplicity over cumbersome interfaces, folk delivers robust AI integration that assists you in following up at the optimal time and extracting valuable insights from your calls and emails, representing the most effective application of AI within a CRM.

Why AI Integration Matters?

AI revolutionizes CRMs, transforming them from static databases into proactive sales assistants. No longer do reps need to sift through contacts or craft follow-up messages; AI now automates essential actions, predicts outcomes, and enriches data in real-time.

• Faster decisions: AI identifies which leads to prioritize based on intent signals and deal velocity.
• Smarter outreach: Tools recommend message templates, optimal timing, and can even assess tone or sentiment.
• Cleaner data: Say goodbye to manual entry; AI automatically fills in missing information and flags duplicates or outdated records.
• Sales forecasting: Predictive models help teams anticipate pipeline risks before they arise.
• B2B data enrichment: AI swiftly gathers company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact information to complete lead records.
• AI-powered sequences: Personalized cold emails are generated and scheduled automatically based on deal stage, persona, or interaction history.

With AI seamlessly integrated into a CRM, reps can devote less time to administrative tasks and focus more on selling, distinguishing a good CRM from one that genuinely drives revenue!

What is Freshworks?

Freshworks’ Freddy AI serves as a copilot, agent, and analyst across sales and support. In Freshsales, Freddy evaluates leads, categorizes deals as “Likely to Close” or “At Risk,” and provides a Kanban-style overview of your pipeline along with auto-generated email sequences. Meanwhile, in Freshdesk, Freddy Copilot offers draft reply suggestions, translates and summarizes tickets in real-time, and powers chatbots for self-service. Additionally, Freddy Insights sends proactive alerts, conducts root-cause analyses, and identifies trends to help you address service issues before they escalate.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an AI-driven, autonomous CRM designed to serve as a smart copilot for sales teams and founders. It automatically records meetings and calls, converting them into structured notes while updating contacts, deals, and pipelines without the need for manual data entry. Its AI analyzes conversations to highlight key points, risks, and next steps, ensuring reps always know their next move. Clarify can also draft follow-up emails, summarize calls, and suggest actions based on real-time context, allowing teams to focus more on selling while the AI manages administrative tasks and keeps the CRM updated.

Feature comparison of Freshsworks and Clarify

AI Follow-ups

Freshworks' Freddy keeps an eye on your inbox for meeting requests or date mentions, instantly suggesting a task or calendar event as soon as they appear. When a prospect says, “Let’s chat Tuesday” or “I’ll get back to you next week,” Freddy analyzes the text, identifies the appropriate date and time zone, and prompts you to schedule a follow-up—eliminating the need for manual copy-pasting. You can easily modify the reminder or meeting invite on the spot, ensuring you never miss an important email follow-up.

Clarify can generate follow-up drafts based on recent meetings and email exchanges related to a contact or deal. The tool utilizes information already captured in the recap, such as dates, next steps, and stakeholders, to automatically populate the message. Users can review, adjust, and send the follow-up directly from within the CRM, avoiding the hassle of starting from scratch. All follow-ups are recorded on the timeline, allowing teams to maintain a clear and traceable history of communications.

Automated Contact Enrichment

Freshsales’ auto profile enrichment feature utilizes public records and social media profiles to enhance every new lead in real time. Freddy AI seamlessly adds names, titles, company information, phone numbers, and social links to your contact records as soon as they arrive—ensuring your CRM remains pristine without requiring additional imports. For comprehensive firmographic or technographic insights, such as tech stacks or funding rounds, simply integrate marketplace enrichers like Clearbit or InsideView for instant, hands-free data hygiene.

Clarify extracts context from connected calendars, mailboxes, and meetings to ensure that contact and company records are always up-to-date. When new individuals emerge in calls or conversations, the system automatically creates or updates records with standardized names, roles, and associations. This process aims to minimize manual data entry while maintaining the accuracy of contact information. All proposed changes are documented in the record timeline, allowing teams to track how a profile has evolved over time.

Smart Fields

Activate Freddy’s Email Generator and the “Generate Sales Emails” features to effortlessly create subject lines, email bodies, and follow-up cadences with just a few prompts. Simply specify the persona and objective—like “5-step outreach to ISVs” or “post-demo recap email”—and receive polished, on-brand templates in seconds. You can save these as templates or integrate them into Freshsales’ workflow automation to trigger each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates—full-funnel outreach without the hassle of copy blocks.

Clarify enhances AI field suggestions, ensuring that key CRM fields stay aligned with conversation content. When calls or emails reference budgets, dates, or new stakeholders, the system can recommend updates to the relevant properties, eliminating the need for solely manual edits. Users have the option to review or modify these suggestions before implementation, complete with an audit trail detailing changes and their reasons. This approach makes Clarify's “smart” fields more about leveraging call and email context to maintain accurate core data, rather than just relying on custom logic.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

Activate Freddy’s Email Generator and the “Generate Sales Emails” feature to create subject lines, email bodies, and follow-up sequences with just a few prompts. Simply specify the persona and objective—like “5-step outreach to ISVs” or “post-demo recap email”—and receive polished, brand-aligned templates in seconds. You can save these as templates or integrate them into Freshsales’ workflow automation to trigger each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates—achieving full-funnel outreach without any copy blocks.

Clarify also incorporates AI email drafting, enabling users to create and send follow-ups, introductions, or updates directly from the CRM. Drafts are generated using the context of existing deals and contacts, minimizing the need for copy-pasting from notes and timelines. Additionally, bulk or multi-recipient sending is supported, allowing teams to maintain a similar structure while adding a touch of personalization. Emails sent through Clarify are tracked within the record, ensuring a comprehensive message history across the pipeline.

Next Best Action

Freddy’s Deal Insights and AI View analyze your pipeline data—deal size, stage, past win rates, and recent activity—to categorize every opportunity as “Likely to Close,” “Trending,” or “At Risk.” These insights drive Next Best Action recommendations right within your deal board or as task suggestions, including call reminders, content shares, and personalized nudges aimed at driving progress. By integrating these recommendations into your workflow rules, reps gain clarity on the next steps to take, eliminating guesswork and enhancing win rates.

Clarify’s agent monitors meetings, emails, and pipeline data to suggest actions like sending follow-ups, updating close dates, or creating tasks. These prompts are conveniently displayed in the workspace, allowing sellers to determine their next move without the need to manually review each deal. Features such as autonomous task creation, automatic nudges for stagnant deals, and deal detection approvals all enhance this “next step” guidance. Clarify also maintains an audit trail of accepted or rejected suggestions, enabling teams to fine-tune their reliance on these recommendations.

folk CRM: The Ultimate AI CRM

folk serves as the sales assistant teams have always desired. This streamlined, integrated, and proactive CRM handles the tedious tasks—allowing sales representatives to concentrate on nurturing genuine relationships. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk stands out as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs for lean teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk simplifies AI into a practical tool rather than an overwhelming experience.

Extract Insights from Calls and Emails

A standout feature of folk is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, which empowers sales and investment teams to extract vital insights from recorded conversations. By integrating with dialers like Ringover, Aircall, or call recording tools like Grain for Google Meet, users can effortlessly import transcripts into folk. From there, they can utilize Magic Fields, an innovative AI feature that allows you to set prompts for extracting specific information from the transcripts. For instance, sales teams can automatically gather details such as contract value, number of users, decision-makers, budget, or next steps—bypassing the need for manual note-taking. Investment teams can extract insights like founder backgrounds, fundraising stages, or specific needs of a startup. These fields are entirely customizable: simply create a prompt, map it to the transcript, and let folk's AI handle the rest. The outcome is a structured, searchable CRM enriched with valuable data sourced from your calls—streamlining follow-ups, qualification, and reporting to be both faster and more accurate.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk's AI Follow-Up feature ensures that no opportunity is overlooked. Built right into the platform, this intelligent assistant analyzes your email exchanges to determine when a follow-up is necessary. For example, if you ask a question in an email and the lead hasn't responded, folk will automatically recognize the lack of reply and remind you to follow up at the optimal time.

But it doesn’t end there. The feature also works in reverse, highlighting leads you may have forgotten or conversations that have gone stale. By reviewing past interactions, folk enables you to prioritize the right contacts for re-engagement and progression of deals. This intelligent, context-aware follow-up system saves time, minimizes manual tracking, and boosts your chances of closing more deals.

Summary of AI Features in folk CRM

• Suggested Actions: Receive proactive reminders and AI-driven suggestions based on recent activities or deal stages.
• Extract Insights from Calls: Utilize AI to gather next steps, decision-makers, your leads' budgets, and everything necessary.
• AI-Generated Messages: Save time with context-aware outreach suggestions customized for each contact.
• Duplicate Management: AI identifies duplicates and cleans up messy contact lists, keeping your CRM organized.

folk starts at just $20 per user per month, offering a 14-day free trial with no credit card required!

Conclusion

Both Freshworks and Clarify showcase advanced AI features that streamline sales processes. Freshworks excels with its comprehensive AI-driven lead analysis and proactive alerts, while Clarify stands out for its autonomous data management and insightful conversation analysis. However, folk offers a great alternative by simplifying AI integration, empowering teams with proactive follow-up reminders and insightful call analysis. With its user-friendly design, folk ensures your sales team can focus on building meaningful relationships without the administrative burden.

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