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 precise tracking, CRMs are competing more vigorously based on the quality of their native email integrations.

While both HubSpot and Freshsales feature built-in email workflows, their effectiveness, user experience, and influence on daily sales tasks vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity and swift, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful email integrations found in any CRM, simplifying the process of sending, tracking, and automating outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Email Integration Matters?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM beyond a mere database, transforming it into a cohesive communication hub. Rather than toggling between tabs or depending on disparate tools, sales 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 empower reps to follow up at the ideal moment without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking: Open rates, clicks, and replies are integrated into the CRM, guiding subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data: Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with relevant context and conversation histories.
• Email templates: Reusable, personalized templates enable teams to maintain consistency and save time.
• Outreach automation: Send bulk emails, sequences, or trigger messages based on deal stages or contact activity.

When a CRM manages email seamlessly, sales reps can stop juggling various tools and instead concentrate on the conversations that generate revenue. This distinction is what sets apart a good CRM from one that genuinely accelerates sales!

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that integrates marketing, sales, and customer service through a unified contact database. With its email integration, users can connect personal Gmail and Outlook accounts, allowing representatives to send individual emails, log responses, and initiate sequences right from the CRM or their inbox. Features such as open and click tracking, templates, and shared timelines enhance visibility of email activities across the entire revenue team.

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales is the sales CRM from Freshworks tailored for small to mid-sized teams seeking a user-friendly interface with robust automation features. Users can link their Gmail or Microsoft 365 accounts and opt for either one-way or two-way synchronization, ensuring that email threads remain consistent between the mailbox and the CRM. Coupled with templates, bulk email capabilities, and activity timelines, this integration makes email an essential tool for representatives managing their leads and opportunities.

Feature comparison of HubSpot and Freshsales

Integration Capabilities

HubSpot provides seamless two-way email integration with Gmail, Outlook, and any IMAP-compatible provider, enabling you to send one-to-one emails directly from contact records while automatically logging every reply in your CRM timeline. Its built-in scheduler updates Google Calendar or Office 365 with meeting events, including automatic guest invitations and timeline entries for complete visibility.

Freshsales features native plugins for Gmail and Outlook that display email threads, scheduling tools, and relevant contact details right in your inbox. After connecting, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for known contact addresses and logs conversations, reducing clutter by allowing you to select which folders to sync.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

HubSpot synchronizes emails with Gmail and Outlook in near-real-time, typically reflecting updates within seconds to a minute. After connecting your account, HubSpot establishes a persistent OAuth connection, continuously pushing and pulling message data to keep your CRM timeline up to date. Its reliability is further enhanced by a robust global cloud infrastructure, offering an impressive 99.99% uptime for core services.

Freshsales connects through native plugins that create a constant link to your Gmail or Outlook account, allowing for real-time syncing of emails and calendar events. Incoming messages from known leads appear almost instantly, while outgoing emails logged in the CRM are immediately reflected in your email thread. Additionally, calendar events sync without delay, ensuring that meetings scheduled in Freshsales are promptly visible in your personal calendar.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise provide powerful one-to-one sequences, allowing you to enroll up to 50 contacts simultaneously and send hundreds of personalized emails per user each day. The intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, manages delays, and detects replies, while Marketing Hub can scale to thousands of recipients with features like 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 basic reporting functionalities.

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

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. The intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, manages delays, and detects replies, while the Marketing Hub accommodates thousands of recipients with features like segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most advanced campaign functionalities reside in the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users without this add-on encounter limits on total sends and more basic reporting options.

Freshsales boasts a complete Marketing Campaigns module—simply go to Campaigns > Email to create email blasts or automated Journeys based on user behaviors. Its drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and analytics dashboards provide insights into delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability, but note that advanced features like heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.

Open and Click Tracking

HubSpot Sales monitors opens and clicks for every one-to-one email sent from contact records or the Sales extension, providing 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 track opens. You can easily view total clicks per link directly in the email activity feed. For advanced attribution features, such as multi-variant link analysis across campaigns, you'll need to use Marketing Hub, as pure Sales Hub users lack access to enterprise-level click analytics without the add-on.

Freshsales allows you to enable “Track opens and clicks” in Settings > Email Settings, ensuring that every email sent through the native plugin records open events and link clicks in the contact timeline. Metrics for delivery, opens, and clicks are displayed in both the Deal dashboard and the Campaigns module. Keep in mind that open tracking relies on image-based pixels; if a recipient blocks images or views links in preview panes, you might encounter underreported statistics.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

With the HubSpot Sales extension, you can seamlessly view and edit HubSpot records—such as contacts, companies, and deals—right in Gmail or Outlook. You'll be able to enroll contacts in sequences and log emails with a single click. A user-friendly CRM sidebar appears alongside your inbox, allowing you to create tasks, send template replies, and access recent interactions without needing to switch apps. It even displays lead scores and deal forecasts inline, ensuring that every email action directly contributes to your pipeline. However, keep in mind that without a paid Sales or Service Hub seat, certain in-inbox tools (like sequences and call logging) will be inaccessible due to a paywall.

Freshsales’ native Gmail and Outlook plugins integrate your CRM sidebar directly into your inbox, showcasing lead profiles, deal values, and previous email threads while you compose or read messages. You can log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences all in one place, with one-click synchronization back to Freshsales. Additionally, since the plugin brings calendar events into the same view, you enjoy a smooth blend of messages and appointments. If you prefer a different email client, however, you'll need to rely on IMAP sync instead of the full plugin experience.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM

folk provides teams with a seamless, interconnected email workflow that they've long needed. It consolidates communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing, all within a sleek and user-friendly CRM. With an impressive 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the top lightweight CRMs for contemporary sales and partnership teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and sales teams scaling from 20 to 50, folk streamlines email operations without creating overwhelm.

Extract Intel from Emails

One of folk’s standout features is its capability 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 with a simple click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers insights from emails and notes to draft a summary, enabling you to grasp the context in seconds.
• Follow up at the optimal time as AI scans conversations to notify you about the best moments to reconnect with a contact and even drafts replies for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

folk’s built-in sequencing engine enables you to easily create automated outreach flows right within the CRM. You can craft multi-step email sequences, personalize messages using CRM fields, and automatically log every interaction. Whether you're nurturing leads, executing outbound campaigns, or re-engaging dormant opportunities, folk offers a robust yet straightforward 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 closed or when a new lead is acquired.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk’s AI Follow-Up feature ensures that no conversation slips through the cracks. Analyzing your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn't responded, brings to light conversations that have cooled off, and pinpoints the ideal times to re-engage. It functions like a built-in assistant, keeping your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without any manual tracking.

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

Conclusion

In conclusion, HubSpot excels with its comprehensive features and powerful tracking capabilities, making it suitable for larger teams. Freshsales offers a user-friendly interface with effective automation for small to mid-sized teams. However, for those heavily reliant on email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk stands out as the superior choice. Its seamless email workflow, AI-powered follow-up reminders, and robust sequencing capabilities streamline outreach while keeping the focus on actionable insights, positioning folk as the ultimate solution for modern sales teams.

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