Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
AI isn’t just a feature anymore: It’s the engine behind smarter pipelines, faster decisions, and stronger customer relationships.
From predictive insights to automated workflows, CRM platforms now compete on how deeply they embed AI into every touchpoint.
HubSpot and Freshworks both promise intelligent sales assistance, but their AI depth, usability, and business impact vary significantly. For teams seeking simplicity over complexity and bloated dashboards, folk offers deep AI integration that helps you follow up at the right time and extract insights from your calls and emails. It’s the most powerful use of AI integrated into a CRM.
Why AI Integration Matters?
AI transforms CRMs from static databases into proactive sales assistants. Instead of waiting for reps to dig through contacts or write follow-up messages, AI now automates key actions, predicts outcomes, and enriches data instantly.
- Faster decisions. AI highlights which leads to prioritize based on intent signals or deal velocity.
- Smarter outreach. Tools suggest message templates, timing, and even detect tone or sentiment.
- Cleaner data. No more manual entry. AI fills in missing info and flags duplicates or outdated records.
- Sales forecasting. Predictive models help teams spot pipeline risks before they happen.
- B2B data enrichment. AI pulls company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact info to complete lead records instantly.
- AI-powered sequences. Personalized cold emails generate and schedule automatically based on deal stage, persona, or interaction history.
When AI is deeply embedded in a CRM, reps spend less time on admin and more time on actual selling. That’s what separates a good CRM from one that truly drives revenue!
What is Hubspot?
HubSpot's Breeze AI suite incorporates generative copilot tools across its Marketing, Sales, and Service Hubs. Breeze Copilot swiftly drafts emails, social media posts, and blog content, while Breeze Intelligence enhances predictive lead scoring, forecasting, and data enrichment directly within your CRM. With features like Agents for Content, Customer, and Social, routine tasks such as note-taking, follow-ups, and report generation are automated. Additionally, ChatSpot’s conversational interface allows you to query your database in plain English for instant insights—no need to switch contexts.
What is Freshworks?
Freshworks’ Freddy AI encompasses both sales and support, functioning as a copilot, agent, and analyst. In Freshsales, Freddy scores leads, categorizes deals as 'Likely to Close' or 'At Risk,' and presents a Kanban-style pipeline overview alongside auto-generated email sequences. Meanwhile, in Freshdesk, Freddy Copilot formulates reply suggestions, translates and summarizes tickets in real-time, and fuels chatbots for self-service. Freddy Insights also provides proactive alerts, root-cause analyses, and trend spotting, enabling you to address service issues before they escalate.
Feature comparison of Hubspot and Freshsworks
AI Follow-ups
HubSpot Copilot swiftly drafts your follow-up emails by leveraging context from recent calls, notes, and CRM records. You receive suggested subject lines, engaging opening hooks, and effective CTAs directly within your sequence editor—just adjust the tone and hit send. It optimally times your sends for peak engagement, ensuring you never miss a critical window. Plus, if you require conditional branching like “send this if the prospect doesn’t open,” you can easily integrate Workflow AI Actions or a Zapier connection for multi-step logic.
Freshworks' Freddy monitors your inbox for meeting requests or date mentions, instantly suggesting tasks or calendar events as soon as it detects them. Whenever a prospect says “Let’s chat Tuesday” or “I’ll get back to you next week,” Freddy analyzes the text, recognizes the correct date and time zone, and prompts you to schedule the follow-up—eliminating the need for manual copy-pasting. You can modify the reminder or meeting invite on the go, guaranteeing you never overlook a crucial email follow-up.
Automated Contact Enrichment
When a new lead arrives in your inbox, Breeze Intelligence automatically matches it against a database of over 200 million profiles, filling in key details—such as job title, company, phone number, and website—without any need for manual imports. This ensures your lists remain accurate, current, and ready for outreach. For specialized data like technographics or funding rounds, you can easily integrate third-party enrichers like Clearbit through the App Marketplace, maintaining hands-free data hygiene to keep your sales efforts on track.
Freshsales enhances this with its built-in auto profile enrichment, which accesses public records and social profiles to enrich every new lead in real time. Freddy AI automatically adds names, titles, company information, phone numbers, and even social media links to your contact records immediately upon arrival—ensuring your CRM stays clean without any additional imports. For more in-depth firmographic or technographic insights, such as tech stack or funding rounds, you can effortlessly incorporate marketplace enrichers like Clearbit or InsideView for instant, hands-free data hygiene.
Smart Fields
Simply instruct Copilot to “build a 5-step outreach for [your persona],” and it will generate a comprehensive sequence—including subject lines, body text, and send cadences—specifically designed for the deal stage and engagement history. Within minutes, you'll have ready-to-send templates that sound like they were crafted by you. Just drop them into Sales Hub, and let Workflow AI Actions automatically trigger subsequent steps based on emails opened, clicks, or property changes. It’s full-funnel automation that eliminates the hassle of copywriting.
Although Freshsales might not specifically label them as “Smart Fields,” you still have complete control over custom fields, with Freddy ensuring they remain updated. Create any custom property you need, and let Freddy automatically populate these fields by analyzing incoming emails, public data, and your CRM history. The outcome? Forms and records that adapt dynamically, featuring AI-sourced values primed for segmentation, scoring, or personalized outreach.
AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation
Simply instruct Copilot to “build a 5-step outreach for [your persona],” and it will generate a complete sequence—subject lines, body content, and sending cadences—customized to fit the deal stage and engagement history. Within minutes, you'll have ready-to-send templates that appear as if you crafted them yourself. Just drop them into Sales Hub, and let Workflow AI Actions automatically trigger the next steps based on opens, clicks, or property changes. Enjoy seamless full-funnel automation without the hassle of copywriting.
Activate Freddy’s Email Generator along with the “Generate Sales Emails” feature to effortlessly create subject lines, email bodies, and follow-up cadences using a few straightforward prompts. Simply specify the persona and objective—like “5-step outreach to ISVs” or “post-demo recap email”—and it will deliver polished, on-brand templates in seconds. Save these as templates or integrate them into Freshsales’ workflow automation to send each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates—achieving full-funnel outreach with no copy block hassle.
Next Best Action
Sales Hub’s AI-Guided Selling evaluates deal health, engagement signals, and historical win patterns to suggest your most impactful next step—be it a call reminder, a personalized content share, or a LinkedIn nudge. These recommendations can appear directly in your sales workspace or be integrated into your pipelines and workflows. The outcome? Sales representatives always know precisely what to do next, removing uncertainty and increasing their chances of success.
Freddy’s Deal Insights and AI View analyze your pipeline data—considering 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 in your deal board or as task prompts: whether it’s call reminders, content shares, or tailored nudges aimed at making progress. By incorporating them into your workflow rules, reps will always have clarity on the next step to take, eliminating guesswork and enhancing win rates.
Triggers and Notifications in Your Workflow
Freddy’s Deal Insights and AI View crunch your pipeline data—deal size, stage, past win rates, recent activity—and tag every opportunity as “Likely to Close,” “Trending,” or “At Risk.” Those insights power Next Best Action recommendations right in your deal board or as task suggestions: call reminders, content shares, or personalized nudges designed to move the needle. Embed them in your workflow rules so reps always know exactly which step to take next, eliminating guesswork and boosting win rates.
Sales Hub’s AI-Guided Selling analyzes deal health, engagement signals, and win‑pattern history to recommend your highest‑impact next step—whether that’s a call reminder, a personalized content share, or a LinkedIn nudge. You can surface these recommendations directly in your sales workspace or embed them in your pipelines and workflows. The result? Reps always know exactly what to do next, eliminating guesswork and driving more wins.
folk CRM: The Best AI CRM
folk acts like the sales assistant teams wish they always had. It’s a simple, integrated, and proactive CRM that takes care of the busy work—so sales reps can focus on building real relationships. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk ranks among the most trusted AI-powered CRMs for lean teams.
Designed for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk makes AI practical, not overwhelming.
Extract intel from call and emails
One of Folk’s most powerful features is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, which helps sales and investment teams extract key insights from recorded conversations. By integrating with dialers like Ringover, Aircall, or call recording tools such as Grain for Google Meet, users can automatically import transcripts into Folk. From there, they can create Magic Fields, a built-in AI feature that lets you define prompts to extract specific information from the transcript. For example, sales teams can automatically pull details like contract value, number of users, decision-makers, budget, or next steps—without manual note-taking. Investment teams can retrieve insights such as founder background, fundraising stage, or what a startup is looking for. These fields are fully customizable: just write a prompt, map it to the transcript, and Folk’s AI does the rest. The result is a structured, searchable CRM enriched with high-value data from your calls—making follow-ups, qualification, and reporting faster and more accurate.
AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders
folk’s AI Follow-Up feature is designed to ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks. Natively built into the platform, this intelligent assistant analyzes your email conversations to identify when a follow-up is needed. For example, if you asked a question in an email and the lead hasn’t replied, Folk will automatically detect the lack of response and prompt you to follow up at the right time.
But it doesn’t stop there. The feature also works in reverse—surfacing leads you might have forgotten about or conversations that have gone cold. By scanning past interactions, Folk helps you prioritize the right contacts to re-engage and move deals forward. This smart, contextual follow-up system saves time, reduces manual tracking, and improves your chances of closing more deals.
AI features in folk CRM summury
- Suggested actions: Get proactive reminders and AI suggestions based on recent activity or deal stage.
- Extract intel from calls: Leverage AI to extract next steps, decision makers, your leads' budget, and everything you need.
- AI-generated message: Save time with context-aware outreach suggestions tailored to each contact.
- Duplicate management: AI detects duplicates and cleans messy contact lists to keep your CRM organized.
folk starts at $20 per user per month, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required!
Conclusion
In evaluating HubSpot and Freshworks, HubSpot excels with its comprehensive AI tools for drafting and enriching contacts, while Freshworks provides robust support automation and lead scoring features. Both CRMs significantly enhance sales strategies through effective follow-ups and smart workflows. However, for a seamless AI integration that consolidates all communications, folk stands out as an excellent alternative. With automated message logging and AI-driven insights, folk empowers teams to optimize their sales efforts without the hassle of manual data entry.
Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.
Discover folk CRM - Like the sales assistant your team never had
