HubSpot vs Clarify: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with maintaining consistent pipeline execution while ensuring that delivery stays on track. When crucial prospect context is scattered across inboxes, calendars, and spreadsheets, follow-ups slip through the cracks, handoffs break down, and forecasting becomes nothing more than guesswork. A CRM for agencies must facilitate swift movement of new business while retaining enough account history to support renewals, upsells, and referrals.

HubSpot and Clarify tackle this challenge in distinct ways. HubSpot serves as a comprehensive all-in-one CRM platform, integrating sales, marketing, and service tools to streamline processes and enhance collaboration. On the other hand, Clarify offers a modern, AI-native approach designed to minimize manual data entry while capturing real-time updates through ongoing communications. Each platform caters to the unique needs of agencies, providing varying degrees of automation and customization.

The right choice ultimately hinges on the complexity of your processes, the level of customization required, and how much ongoing management your agency can allocate to setup and administration.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform that seamlessly integrates sales, marketing, and service tools within a single ecosystem. It is particularly beneficial for agencies requiring pipeline tracking alongside lead capture, email campaigns, and lifecycle reporting, all in one centralized location. Depending on the selected plan, teams can define pipelines, log activities, and automate follow-up processes through workflows. The app marketplace accommodates popular agency tools and client-facing systems, making it a preferred choice for agencies desiring CRM and complementary go-to-market tools from one vendor.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is a modern, AI-native CRM designed to keep records up-to-date through ongoing communications and meetings. It is particularly attractive to agencies that prefer minimal manual data entry while still maintaining a functional pipeline, contact history, and next steps. The product highlights the importance of capturing meeting context, follow-ups, and deal updates in real-time. Integrations and automation can enhance the routing of updates throughout the broader tech stack, depending on configuration. This makes it ideal for teams exploring contemporary CRM workflows centered around conversation context and automated maintenance.

Feature comparison of HubSpot and Clarify

Multi-pipeline and Custom Stages

HubSpot enables the creation and management of deal pipelines tailored to specific stages, which can be adjusted in the pipeline settings. Deals progress through these defined stages, and agencies can modify the stage definitions to align with their unique processes for qualifying and closing work. Separate pipelines can effectively track various processes, such as new business versus renewals or different service lines, while maintaining distinct stages for each pipeline.

In Clarify, deal tracking revolves around Deals, with the product designed to identify opportunities and keep deal stages current as activities unfold. Clarify emphasizes a straightforward pipeline setup, aligning stages with tangible progress and incorporating probability assessments for accurate forecasting. Additionally, pipeline hygiene is crucial in Clarify's approach, ensuring that records remain efficient and require minimal manual updates.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

HubSpot effectively organizes activities on record timelines, enabling users to log and associate calls, emails, meetings, notes, and tasks with contacts, companies, and deals. This activity data can populate properties such as the last activity date by leveraging logged interactions. Additionally, activity timelines can be filtered, allowing for the association of activities across related records, ensuring that both a deal and its corresponding contact share the same context.

In Clarify, the record experience consolidates emails, meetings, notes, and detailed information in one accessible location, making the activity context readily visible alongside the contact and deal. Moreover, product materials highlight how meeting capture is integrated within the platform, encompassing recordings and summaries linked back to records. Changelog notes concerning record pages and Deal updates reflect ongoing efforts to enhance the display of activities and deal context together.

Automation and Workflows

HubSpot offers comprehensive sales reporting through dashboards, the sales analytics suite, and custom reporting tools. Reports can easily be saved to dashboards and shared with authorized users. With the report builder, custom reports can be created to analyze CRM objects and activities, allowing for tailored filtering and dataset selection based on specific reporting needs.

In Clarify, follow-ups and updates are treated as automation managed by an agent, which includes drafting follow-ups, capturing tasks, and updating records based on interactions from calls or emails. Clarify’s writing frames incorporate workflow automation as a core component of modern CRM operations, with a product post detailing features like automatic meeting notes and follow-up reminders integrated into CRM workflows. The overall benefit is a significant reduction in manual data entry and routine administrative tasks, depending on the activated workflows.

Reporting and Analytics

HubSpot offers comprehensive sales reporting through its dashboards, an analytics suite, and customizable reporting tools. You can save reports to dashboards and share them with users who have access. The report builder allows you to create custom reports to analyze CRM objects and activities, with filtering and dataset selection tailored to your reporting needs.

In Clarify, pipeline visibility is focused on tracking deals, with updates reflected in real-time; external reviews highlight how dashboards and forecasts adjust as records change. Clarify also shares valuable content on CRM analytics dashboards and reporting concepts, emphasizing the use of CRM data to monitor pipeline health and identify trends over time. The availability of specific reports hinges on the reporting layer and configurations outlined in the product updates and documentation.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

HubSpot seamlessly integrates with external tools via its app marketplace, which features a variety of integrations tailored to sales, marketing, and operations. To ensure data hygiene, HubSpot offers essential data quality tools, including deduplication workflows for identifying and managing duplicates, formatting issue detection, and enrichment coverage, depending on your plan. These functionalities fall under Data Management and Data Quality, where teams can assess issues and implement fixes for records and properties.

The integrations catalog for Clarify outlines various categories and integrations, with dedicated pages detailing Slack notifications for pipeline updates and a Zapier connector for enhanced automation. Zapier’s listing further highlights Clarify's ability to connect with thousands of apps, enabling workflow triggers and data movement. Additionally, Clarify’s product messaging underscores the importance of pipeline hygiene and record maintenance to ensure the system remains up-to-date with new activities.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM crafted to centralize contacts, conversations, and deal contexts without the hassle of complicated setups. It seamlessly integrates into agency teams where multiple members engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. This system maintains a clear record of relationship history, ensuring smooth handoffs that don't rely on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and custom stages tailored for various agency operations
• Contact and deal timelines that consolidate interaction history
• Email and calendar synchronization to link conversations with the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to ensure consistent next steps
• Contact enrichment to fill in missing company and contact details
• Deduplication tools to merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• Simple pipeline reporting to assess stage health and deal progression
• Integrations and automation connectors to minimize manual updates

For agencies, the primary advantage is operational clarity across multiple relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue models such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure that follow-ups remain consistent across the team. Features like data enrichment and deduplication help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, keeping pipeline reporting effective over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while HubSpot excels as a comprehensive, all-in-one platform for agencies needing tight integration of sales, marketing, and service tools, and Clarify offers a modern, AI-driven CRM focused on minimizing manual entry, folk stands out as the premier choice for teams prioritizing email integration, automation, and streamlined sequencing. With its ability to centralize contacts and maintain operational clarity across multiple pipelines, folk ensures seamless collaboration and effective follow-ups, making it the ultimate CRM solution for relationship-focused agency environments.

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