Email is the cornerstone of contemporary sales communication, where deals progress, follow-ups occur, and relationships thrive.

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

While HubSpot and Attio both provide built-in email workflows, their depth, usability, and impact on daily sales operations vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity and seeking fast, reliable email performance, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful email integrations in any CRM, facilitating easier sending, tracking, and automation of outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Does Email Integration Matter?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a cohesive communication hub. Rather than toggling between tabs or relying on disparate tools, representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement all from one location.

• Centralized communication. All emails—whether sent or received—automatically sync to the appropriate contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences enable representatives to follow up at optimal moments without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking. Metrics like open rates, clicks, and replies feed directly into the CRM, informing the next steps.
• Cleaner data. Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with relevant context and conversation history.
• Email templates. Reusable, personalized templates ensure teams remain consistent while saving time.
• Outreach automation. Send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activity.

When a CRM manages email seamlessly, representatives can shift their focus from juggling tools to engaging in meaningful conversations that drive revenue. This distinction sets a good CRM apart from one that truly accelerates sales!

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that integrates marketing, sales, and customer service into a single contact database. Its email integration allows representatives to connect their personal Gmail and Outlook accounts, enabling them to send one-on-one emails, log responses, and initiate sequences directly from the CRM or their inboxes. With features like open and click tracking, email templates, and shared timelines, email activities are visible to the entire revenue team.

What is Attio?

Attio is an innovative, customizable CRM designed as a shared workspace where teams can consolidate contacts, companies, and deals in one dynamic database. It seamlessly connects with Gmail and Microsoft 365 to automatically sync emails and calendar events, ensuring that every communication is associated with the correct contact or opportunity timeline. Users can compose emails from their linked inboxes within Attio, utilize templates, and track engagement without ever leaving the CRM.

Feature comparison of HubSpot and Attio

Integration Capabilities

HubSpot provides seamless two-way email integration with Gmail, Outlook, and any IMAP-compatible provider, allowing you to send individual emails directly from contact records while automatically logging every reply in your CRM timeline. Its native scheduler syncs meeting events back to Google Calendar or Office 365, complete with automatic guest invites and timeline entries for comprehensive visibility.

In contrast, Attio doesn't feature a built-in inbox or calendar plugin; instead, it utilizes Zapier’s Email by Zapier or Pipedream to capture both inbound and outbound emails, reflecting them in Attio’s contact timelines. You can easily set up triggers such as “New Email Received” or “Send Email” and map fields like subject, body, and attachments to Attio properties.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

HubSpot’s email synchronization works in near real-time with Gmail and Outlook, typically updating changes within seconds to a minute. After connecting your account, HubSpot uses OAuth to maintain a continuous connection, consistently pushing and pulling message data to ensure your CRM timeline is always current. The reliability of this system is further enhanced by HubSpot’s global cloud infrastructure, which guarantees an impressive 99.99% uptime for its core services.

In contrast, Attio depends on Zapier or Pipedream to capture email and calendar events, meaning the sync frequency is determined by the plan you choose with your automation platform.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise offer robust one-to-one sequences, enabling you to enroll up to 50 contacts at once and send hundreds of personalized emails per user each day. Its intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, managing delays, and detecting replies. Meanwhile, Marketing Hub can scale to thousands of recipients, featuring segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most advanced campaign functionalities reside in Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users without this add-on encounter limitations on total sends and basic reporting.

Attio sets itself apart by seamlessly ingesting your email and calendar data during onboarding: simply connect your Google or Microsoft account, and Attio automatically pulls in email events and calendar appointments as CRM activities in real-time.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise offer powerful one-to-one sequences, allowing you to enroll up to 50 contacts at once and send hundreds of personalized emails per user each day. Its intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder facilitates template creation, manages delays, and detects replies, while the Marketing Hub scales to thousands of recipients, featuring segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most advanced campaign features are exclusive to Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users without this add-on encounter limitations on total sends and access to more basic reporting.

Unfortunately, Attio lacks a native mail-merge or campaign module, requiring you to subscribe to an automation tool like Zapier for these functionalities.

Open and Click Tracking

HubSpot Sales meticulously tracks opens and clicks for every one-to-one email sent from contact records or through the Sales extension, delivering real-time desktop notifications and logging each event on the timeline. Note that click tracking is available only with a paid Sales Hub seat; free users can only see opens. You can easily view total clicks per link directly within the email activity feed. For advanced attribution features, such as multi-variant link analysis across campaigns, you'll need to turn to Marketing Hub, as pure Sales Hub users won't have access to enterprise-level click analytics without the additional add-on.

In contrast, Attio does not feature built-in open or click tracking. Instead, email events are captured through Zapier or Pipedream triggers, requiring you to establish your own pixel-and-webhook workflows to track opens and clicks and associate them back to contacts. While this approach offers maximum flexibility, it lacks a straightforward analytics dashboard; you'll have to create custom reports using your automation platform or business intelligence tool.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

With the HubSpot Sales extension installed, you can easily view and edit HubSpot records—such as contacts, companies, and deals—right within Gmail or Outlook. You can enroll contacts in sequences and log emails with just one click. A user-friendly CRM sidebar appears alongside your inbox, allowing you to create tasks, send template replies, and view recent interactions without needing to switch applications. Additionally, it displays lead scores and deal forecasts inline, ensuring that every action you take via email directly contributes to your pipeline. However, the caveat is that if you don’t have a paid Sales or Service Hub seat, some of these in-inbox features, like sequences and call logging, remain inaccessible due to the paywall.

On the other hand, Attio doesn’t integrate directly into your inbox. Instead, you utilize Zapier or Pipedream to log emails and events back to Attio’s timeline. While this provides a streamlined, contact-focused view in Attio, it lacks the sidebar functionality within Gmail or Outlook for on-the-fly record editing. This offers flexibility but falls short of delivering a truly seamless in-inbox experience.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM

folk provides teams with the effortless, connected email workflow they’ve longed for. It consolidates communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing, all within a clean and user-friendly CRM. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the highest-rated lightweight CRMs tailored for modern sales and partnership teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and scaling sales teams of 20-50, folk ensures email operations are seamless and manageable.

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 sync for Gmail and Outlook, alongside AI-driven analysis, teams can:

• Quickly recap past conversations with a click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers information from emails and notes to create a summary, providing context in seconds.
• Follow up at the optimal time, as AI scans conversations to alert you when to reach out to 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 directly within the CRM. Easily craft multi-step email sequences, customize messages using CRM fields, and automatically log every interaction. Whether you’re nurturing leads, executing outbound campaigns, or re-engaging inactive deals, folk provides a powerful yet straightforward 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 finalized or when a new lead is acquired.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

With folk’s AI Follow-Up feature, no conversation falls through the cracks. By analyzing your email history, folk alerts you when a contact hasn’t responded, highlights cold conversations, and identifies the ideal moments 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 $20 per user per month, features native email integration and sequences, and includes a 14-day free trial—no credit card required.

Conclusion

HubSpot excels with its comprehensive email integration and powerful tracking features, making it ideal for larger teams focused on vast outreach.

Attio offers a unique, customizable workspace but falls short on native email functionalities, relying on third-party automation tools.

Conversely, folk stands out as the best alternative for teams reliant on email. Its seamless email integration, automation, and intuitive sequencing empower sales professionals to streamline their outreach, making it the perfect choice for modern, email-driven sales teams. Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.