Email is the cornerstone of contemporary sales communication: it facilitates deal progression, follow-ups, and relationship building.

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

While both HubSpot and Monday CRM feature built-in email workflows, their usability, depth, and impact on daily sales operations vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity over complexity and seeking swift, dependable email execution, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful email integrations available in any CRM, simplifying the process of sending, tracking, and automating outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Is Email Integration Important?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a cohesive communication hub. Instead of toggling between tabs or using disjointed tools, sales representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement all in one place.

• Centralized communication. All sent and received emails automatically synchronize with the corresponding contact or deal.
• Intelligent follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences enable reps to follow up at the optimal time without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking. Open rates, clicks, and replies are seamlessly integrated into the CRM, informing subsequent actions.
• Enhanced data. Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with relevant context and conversation history.
• Email templates. Reusable, personalized templates ensure consistency and save time for teams.
• Outreach automation. Facilitate bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activities.

When a CRM manages email effortlessly, sales reps can shift their focus from juggling tools to engaging in conversations that drive revenue. This distinction 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 into a single contact database. With its email integration, users can connect personal Gmail and Outlook inboxes, enabling them to send one-on-one emails, log replies, and trigger sequences directly from the CRM or their inbox. Features like open and click tracking, templates, and shared timelines provide visibility of email activities across the entire revenue team.

What is Monday CRM?

monday sales CRM is built on the monday.com work management platform, offering teams a visually engaging way to manage pipelines alongside their projects. The Emails & Activities app connects Gmail and Outlook, allowing users to send, receive, and log emails directly within boards while tracking opens and replies at the point of work. Templates and automations are available to standardize follow-ups, ensuring lead statuses, tasks, and email histories remain in sync.

Feature comparison of HubSpot and Monday CRM

Integration Capabilities

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

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app links up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts for two-way synchronization, ensuring that sent or received emails appear as items on your boards alongside calls and tasks. Although it lacks native in-CRM calendar syncing, you can create simple automations or utilize Monday’s Calendar view to visualize your upcoming events.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

HubSpot’s email synchronization works in near real-time with Gmail and Outlook, reflecting changes typically within seconds to a minute. After connecting your account, HubSpot keeps a constant connection via OAuth, continuously pushing and pulling message data to ensure your CRM timeline is always current. This reliability is further enhanced by HubSpot’s global cloud infrastructure, which offers 99.99% uptime for its core services.

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app syncs your inbox every few minutes by default, polling Gmail and Outlook for new messages to convert into board items. While this results in a slight delay compared to push-based systems, updates usually show up within two to three minutes. For those requiring quicker updates, you can modify polling intervals or implement custom webhooks for sub-minute responsiveness.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise offer 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. Meanwhile, 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 may encounter limitations on total sends and more basic reporting.

Monday’s Emails & Activities app offers seamless two-way email sync for Gmail and Outlook through easy integration recipes—new messages and replies automatically become pulses on your boards, ensuring your communications remain trackable alongside deals. Calendar items can also be synchronized using Monday’s Calendar Sync feature: date or timeline columns link to Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, or any external calendar, with events appearing on both your board and calendar within minutes.

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 simultaneously and send hundreds of personalized emails per user each day. Its drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, manages delays, and detects replies, while Marketing Hub extends capabilities 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 will encounter limitations on total sends and basic reporting.

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app seamlessly syncs with up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts and includes a Group Emailing feature that enables bulk messaging to board items and contact lists. You can automate follow-ups through monday.com automations or integrate with Mailchimp for a complete email-marketing experience. Remember, without Mailchimp—or a similar add-on—you'll miss out on native campaign analytics, relying only on basic send logs available on your boards.

Open and Click Tracking

HubSpot Sales monitors opens and clicks for every one-to-one email sent from contact records or through the Sales extension, providing real-time desktop notifications and logging each event on the timeline. While click tracking requires a paid Sales Hub seat—free users only see opens—you can view total clicks per link directly in the email activity feed. Advanced attribution features, such as multi-variant link analysis across campaigns, are available in Marketing Hub, meaning pure Sales Hub users will need an add-on for enterprise-level click analytics.

The Emails & Activities app in Monday logs message opens when you send emails through the board interface, but it does not natively track clicked links. To obtain click-through rates, you'll need to embed UTM parameters in your links and pull the data into your board using automations or by integrating with a marketing tool like Mailchimp.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

With the HubSpot Sales extension installed, you can seamlessly view and edit HubSpot records—contacts, companies, and deals—right from Gmail or Outlook. Enroll contacts in sequences and log emails with just one click. A familiar CRM sidebar appears alongside your inbox, allowing you to create tasks, send template replies, and view recent interactions without needing to switch between apps. It even displays lead scores and deal forecasts inline, ensuring that every email action contributes directly to your pipeline. However, note that if you don’t have a paid Sales or Service Hub seat, some features like sequences and call logging remain inaccessible behind a paywall.

On the other hand, monday.com’s Emails & Activities app is integrated into your boards rather than your inbox. When you connect Gmail or Outlook, your emails transform into pulses linked to relevant items, enabling you to reply or add notes directly from monday.com. This setup is excellent for visual teams that manage everything on boards, but keep in mind that it's not a true in-inbox sidebar—you'll be working within monday.com instead of your email client.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM

folk provides teams with the seamless, integrated email workflow they've been longing for. By centralizing communication, automating follow-ups, and simplifying sequencing, it delivers all these features within a clean and intuitive CRM interface. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the top-rated lightweight CRMs tailored for modern sales and partnership teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and scaling sales teams of 20-50 members, folk streamlines email operations without overwhelming users.

Extract Intelligence 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 capabilities for Gmail and Outlook, as well as AI-driven analysis, teams can:

• Quickly access past conversations with a click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers information from emails and notes to create summaries, giving you context in seconds.
• Time your follow-ups perfectly, as AI analyzes conversations to alert you when it’s time to reach out and even drafts replies for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

folk’s built-in sequencing engine simplifies the creation of automated outreach workflows directly within the CRM. You can design 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 deals, folk empowers you with a robust yet straightforward sequencing process that eliminates the need for additional tools.

Set conditions based on your CRM variables for automatic email sending, such as when a deal closes or when a new lead is acquired.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk’s AI Follow-Up feature ensures no conversation slips through the cracks. By analyzing your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn’t responded, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the ideal time to re-engage. It functions like a built-in assistant, helping you keep your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without manual tracking.

folk is available starting at $20 per user per month, featuring native email integration and sequencing, along with a 14-day free trial—no credit card required.

Conclusion

In conclusion, HubSpot excels with comprehensive features and real-time email integration, ideal for larger teams needing deep analytics. Monday CRM offers a visually engaging interface with decent email sync, best for those who prefer a project management approach. However, for teams prioritizing seamless email integration, automation, and effective sequencing, folk stands out as the superior choice. Its intuitive platform simplifies email workflows, centralizes communication, and leverages AI to enhance follow-ups, making it the ultimate CRM solution for modern sales teams.

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