Pipedrive vs Clarify: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with keeping pipeline execution consistent while delivery stays on track. When prospect context lives across inboxes, calendars, and spreadsheets, follow-ups slip, handoffs break, and forecasting becomes guesswork. A CRM for agencies has to keep new business moving fast while preserving enough account history to support renewals, upsells, and referrals.

In this article, we will delve into two leading CRM solutions—Pipedrive and Clarify—that address these challenges from unique perspectives. Pipedrive offers a visual pipeline and activity-driven follow-ups, engineered to facilitate deal progression with minimal operational friction. On the other hand, Clarify brings innovation through AI-driven features, emphasizing real-time communication and automatic updates to streamline workflows and enhance record accuracy.

The right choice between Pipedrive and Clarify hinges on the complexity of your processes, the customization required, and the level of ongoing management your agency is ready to commit to for effective implementation.

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a sales CRM designed around a visual pipeline and activity-based selling, making it a favorite among agencies seeking straightforward deal tracking, clear next steps, and streamlined process management. Users can create multiple pipelines to distinguish between new business, renewals, or partnerships, while scheduled activities ensure follow-ups are organized and visible. Automations help minimize administrative tasks by handling repetitive updates and reminders. This solution is ideal for teams that value quick pipeline execution over an extensive suite of features.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an innovative, AI-native CRM focused on keeping records updated through ongoing communication and meetings. It appeals to agencies looking to reduce manual data entry while preserving a functional pipeline, contact history, and actionable next steps. The platform highlights the importance of capturing meeting details, follow-ups, and deal updates in real-time. With flexible integrations and automation options, it can effectively channel updates into a broader system based on user configurations, making it a great fit for teams exploring modern CRM workflows centered on conversation context and automated maintenance.

Feature comparison of Pipedrive and Clarify

Multi-pipeline and custom stages

Pipedrive allows users to create multiple deal pipelines directly from the pipeline view, with each pipeline featuring its own unique set of stages. You can easily edit stage attributes, such as names and probabilities, and adjust the stages by adding or removing them as your processes evolve. This flexibility enables you to organize agency activities—like new business, renewals, and partnerships—into separate pipelines, while ensuring that each pipeline's stage definitions remain tailored to its specific workflow.

In Clarify, deal tracking centers around Deals, with the product designed to identify opportunities and maintain up-to-date deal stages as activities unfold. Clarify emphasizes the importance of a streamlined pipeline, aligning stages with tangible progress and incorporating probability thinking for accurate forecasting. Maintaining pipeline hygiene is integral to Clarify's approach, ensuring records remain usable without the need for constant manual intervention.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

In Pipedrive, activities encompass scheduled actions related to people, organizations, leads, deals, or projects—this includes calls, meetings, and follow-ups. You can configure calendar sync as either one-way or two-way, ensuring that Pipedrive activities and external calendar events remain aligned according to your preferences. Logged activities are displayed on the relevant records, facilitating the tracking of past actions and upcoming schedules for accounts or deals.

The Clarify record experience aggregates emails, meetings, notes, and other record details in a single location, providing visibility into activity context alongside contacts and deals. Additionally, product materials outline meeting capture features within the platform, including recording and summarizing meetings linked back to records. Changelog notes regarding record pages and updates to Deals reflect ongoing enhancements in how activities and deal context are integrated.

Automation and Workflows

In Pipedrive, reporting is managed through Insights, which offers custom reports, dashboards, and goal tracking. Dashboards can be shared with teammates internally, and when permissions permit, public links can be created, allowing stakeholders to view a dashboard without needing direct account access. Goals within Insights monitor progress across deals, activities, and forecasts, tailored to the specific configuration and plan limitations.

In Clarify, follow-ups and updates are automated by an agent, which includes drafting follow-ups, capturing tasks, and updating records based on call or email interactions. Clarify’s writing frames enhance workflow automation, integral to modern CRM operations. A dedicated product post elaborates on features like automatic meeting notes and follow-up reminders, seamlessly integrated into CRM workflows. This automation significantly minimizes manual data entry and routine administrative tasks related to 'next steps,' depending on the activated workflows.

Reporting and Analytics

Pipedrive's reporting features are integrated within Insights, offering custom reports, dashboards, and goal tracking. Dashboards can be shared with team members, and if permissions permit, public links can be created for stakeholders to access the dashboard without needing a direct account. Insights' goals monitor progress across deals, activities, and forecasts, tailored to your configuration and plan limits.

Clarify provides visibility into pipelines by tracking deals that update in real-time, with external reviews highlighting the dynamic nature of dashboards and forecasts as records are modified. Additionally, Clarify shares valuable content on CRM analytics dashboards and reporting concepts, emphasizing the importance of using CRM data to assess pipeline health and identify trends over time. The availability of specific reports depends on the reporting layer and configuration outlined in product updates and documentation.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

Pipedrive integrations are available through the Pipedrive Marketplace, featuring apps and integrations that can be easily installed from your account. To ensure data hygiene, the Merge Duplicates feature identifies potential duplicate contacts and organizations, offering a streamlined workflow for merging records. Pipedrive also outlines how its duplicate identification process adheres to rules based on import logic, influencing how duplicates are detected and suggested for merging.

The Clarify integrations catalog showcases various categories and specific integrations, including dedicated pages for Slack notifications regarding pipeline updates and a Zapier connector that facilitates broader automation. Zapier's listing highlights Clarify's compatibility with thousands of apps for triggering workflows and transferring data. Additionally, Clarify emphasizes the importance of maintaining pipeline hygiene and record accuracy to ensure the system remains up-to-date with incoming activities.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM crafted to centralize contacts, conversations, and deal context without turning setup into a lengthy project. It seamlessly accommodates agency teams where multiple individuals interact with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. This system maintains a visible relationship history, ensuring that handoffs are not reliant on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and custom stages tailored for various agency operations
• Contact and deal timelines that consolidate interaction history in one accessible location
• Email and calendar sync to link conversations to the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to standardize next steps
• Contact enrichment to supplement missing company and contact information
• Deduplication tools to merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• Simple pipeline reporting to track stage health and deal progression
• Integrations and automation connectors to minimize manual updates

For agencies, the primary benefit is operational clarity across parallel relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure consistent follow-ups across the team. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication help to eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, making pipeline reporting reliable over time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Pipedrive excels with its visual pipeline and straightforward task management, ideal for teams focused on quick deal progression. Clarify's AI-driven automation enhances real-time communication, streamlining workflows with minimal manual input. However, for agencies that prioritize seamless email integration, automation, and efficient sequencing, folk stands out as the best alternative. Its centralized contact management, robust pipeline features, and commitment to data hygiene ensure that teams can maintain operational clarity and consistency across all client interactions.

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