Instantly vs HIghLevel: Which CRM is the Best?

Instantly and HighLevel are two platforms designed to support businesses in their marketing and lead management efforts. Instantly specializes in cold email outreach with features focused on email automation and deliverability, making it ideal for businesses seeking to scale their outbound campaigns. HighLevel, on the other hand, offers a broader set of tools for lead capture, nurturing, and sales automation, primarily catering to agencies. In this comparison, we’ll examine their features, usability, and pricing to help you decide which platform aligns better with your goals. We'll also introduce folk CRM, which happens to be a popular alternative.

What is Instantly?

Instantly is a newer player in the market that focuses on automation and email outreach, helping teams send high-volume personalized emails and track responses. Instantly is geared more toward businesses looking to maximize lead generation and email outreach campaigns, often used by outbound sales teams and marketers.

Key features of Instantly

• Email outreach automation: One of Instantly’s standout features is the ability to automate and send thousands of personalized cold emails at scale.
• Advanced email warm-up: Instantly ensures that your emails land in inboxes rather than spam by providing email warming and reputation management tools.
• AI-based insights: Use AI-powered analytics to gain insights into the success of your outreach and optimize future campaigns.
• Multi-account management: Run multiple email accounts and campaigns seamlessly from one dashboard.
• Performance tracking: Track open rates, click rates, and other key metrics to measure campaign performance in real time.
• Integrations: Instantly CRM integrates with tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, and other productivity apps to help streamline workflows.
  

What is HighLevel?

HighLevel is a comprehensive platform designed to streamline digital marketing efforts for agencies and businesses. It offers features such as lead capture, automated booking, customer nurturing, and membership site creation. The platform provides tools to help agencies build their digital marketing engine, automate workflows, and drive business growth. It also includes a white-label option for agencies.

Is HighLevel a CRM?

Yes, HighLevel is a CRM — specifically designed for agencies, with features like client management, sales funnels, email/SMS marketing, and automation.

Key features of HighLevel

• Lead capture tools: HighLevel provides customizable forms, surveys, and landing pages to help businesses effectively capture and manage leads.
• Automated workflows: Automate tasks like follow-ups, appointment scheduling, and reminders, saving time and ensuring consistent communication.
• Customer nurturing tools: Engage with leads through email campaigns, text messages, and automated drip sequences to convert them into loyal customers.
• Membership site creation: Build and manage membership sites directly within the platform, offering valuable resources or courses to clients.
• White-label platform: Agencies can fully brand HighLevel as their own, delivering a seamless experience to their clients.

Instantly vs. HighLevel: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of Instantly and HighLevel to take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience and more.

1. Sales Pipeline Management

Instantly lacks a clear Kanban view of all your deals, focusing instead on lead status within email campaigns, which can limit visibility into the overall sales process. In contrast, HighLevel CRM offers a robust sales pipeline management feature that allows businesses to create customized pipelines aligned with their sales processes. It provides tools for tracking leads, monitoring deal progress, and viewing opportunities through an intuitive dashboard. This feature is designed to streamline sales workflows and enhance visibility into the sales cycle, making it a more comprehensive solution for businesses looking to optimize their sales management.

2. Ease of use

Instantly CRM is designed with a user-friendly interface that simplifies navigation, making it accessible for users of varying technical expertise. HighLevel, while feature-rich, may require a steeper learning curve due to its extensive customization options, which can be overwhelming for new users looking for straightforward CRM solutions.

3. Contact enrichment

Instantly CRM offers contact enrichment by leveraging a large database of verified information, automatically enhancing records with details like company names and job titles. HighLevel does not emphasize contact enrichment as a core feature, focusing more on communication and automation tools rather than augmenting contact data.

4. Outreach

Instantly provides a robust cold outreach solution, allowing unlimited email connections and rotation for optimal deliverability, tailored for outreach at scale. HighLevel includes diverse outreach tools such as email campaigns and text messaging, offering multiple communication methods but requiring time to configure for specific strategies.

5. Automation

Instantly CRM automates email outreach and follow-ups, adjusting campaigns based on recipient behavior to optimize engagement. HighLevel offers comprehensive automation for lead follow-ups and scheduling, but setting up complex workflows may demand additional effort to configure effectively.

6. Integration

Instantly CRM integrates with various third-party applications through Zapier, connecting with tools like Google Workspace and Salesforce, available from their Hypergrowth plan. HighLevel offers direct integrations with numerous platforms, enhancing its connectivity for diverse business needs.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Instantly CRM leverages AI to automate email personalization and follow-up sequencing, optimizing campaigns based on engagement metrics. HighLevel does not prominently feature AI integration, focusing more on manual configuration and automation rather than AI-driven optimization or decision-making.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Instantly and HighLevel.

Instantly prices

Instantly offers a few types of plans depending on whether or not you're after its CRM product, leads generator, or outreach campaign product. Their CRM price plan comes as either a monthly or annual subscription. Their yearly subscription plan is as follows.

• Growth CRM: Starts from $37.90 per user, per month.
• Hyper CRM: Starts from $77.60 per user, per month.

HighLevel prices

High Levels has two price tiers for you to choose from.

• Starter: $97/seat/month.
• Unlimited: $297/seat/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Instantly and HIghLevel

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can scale with you as your business grows, thanks to its ability to support solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams, and large enterprises. You can also use folk across your business. With its specific user permissions, teams across sales, marketing, recruitment and more can collaborate in one space.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

Instantly vs. HighLevel: What's the verdict?

It's clear that both Instantly and HighLevel, each CRM offers distinct advantages tailored to specific business needs. Instantly excels in email outreach automation, making it ideal for outbound sales teams. HighLevel, on the other hand, provides comprehensive marketing solutions. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk emerges as a flexible alternative, blending ease of use with customization. Its intuitive features and competitive pricing make it a compelling choice for businesses aiming to streamline their CRM processes. Try folk today, free.