Email continues to be the cornerstone of modern 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 heavily based on the effectiveness of their native email integrations.

Pipedrive and Monday CRM both feature integrated email workflows, but their functionality, user experience, and influence on daily sales operations vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity and needing efficient email execution, folk offers one of the most streamlined and robust email integrations available in any CRM, simplifying the process of sending, tracking, and automating outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Email Integration Matters?

Robust email integration elevates a CRM from merely a database to a cohesive communication hub. Instead of toggling between tabs or using disjointed tools, sales reps can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement all from a single platform.

• Centralized communication: All emails—both sent and received—are automatically synced with the appropriate contact or deal.
• Smarter 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 fed directly into the CRM, informing subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data: Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with valuable context and conversation histories.
• Email templates: Reusable, personalized templates ensure teams maintain consistency while saving time.
• Outreach automation: Easily send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activities.

When a CRM seamlessly manages email, reps can shift their focus from juggling tools to engaging in conversations that drive revenue. This distinction is what sets apart an ordinary CRM from one that genuinely accelerates sales!

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a sales-centric CRM designed around a visual pipeline, enabling sales representatives to track deals from initial contact to closing. Its email sync feature integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Outlook, and other IMAP providers, ensuring every message is automatically logged to the appropriate contact and deal. With an integrated sales inbox, tracking capabilities, and basic campaign tools, teams can manage outreach and pipeline updates all in one place, eliminating the need for multiple tools.

What is Monday CRM?

monday sales CRM leverages monday.com’s work management platform to provide teams with a visual method for managing pipelines in conjunction with their projects. The Emails & Activities app integrates with Gmail and Outlook, allowing users to send, receive, and log emails directly from their boards while tracking opens and replies where their work occurs. With templates and automation, teams can streamline follow-ups and keep lead statuses, tasks, and email histories in alignment.

Feature comparison of Pipedrive and Monday CRM

Integration Capabilities

Pipedrive seamlessly syncs with Gmail and Outlook, utilizing IMAP fallback for other providers, ensuring every inbound and outbound message is accurately tied to the respective contact or deal record. With the Smart Email BCC address feature, you can log messages without leaving your email client—just add the dynamic BCC, and Pipedrive handles the rest. Furthermore, native calendar integration for Google and Microsoft calendars guarantees that all your meetings appear automatically on contact timelines, providing a comprehensive view of every customer interaction.

Monday CRM's Emails & Activities app allows you to connect up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts for two-way synchronization, so emails sent or received are visible as items on your boards alongside calls and tasks. While it lacks native in-CRM calendar syncing, you can create simple automations or utilize Monday’s Calendar view to visualize your scheduled events.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Pipedrive’s email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook is engineered to operate every few minutes, striking a perfect balance between immediacy and system performance. Outbound and inbound messages are captured and linked to relevant contacts or deals in under five minutes, minimizing the chances of missing or delayed logs. The IMAP fallback adheres to standard IMAP IDLE protocols for push notifications, providing near-instant updates for compatible providers.

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app, by default, syncs your inbox every few minutes, polling Gmail and Outlook for new messages to transform into board items. Although this results in a small delay compared to push-based systems, updates typically appear within two to three minutes. If you require faster updates, you can customize polling intervals or implement webhooks for responsiveness under a minute.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

With Advanced plans and higher, Pipedrive’s Group Emailing allows you to choose up to 100 contacts from any list to send bulk messages complete with merge tags and reply tracking. Additionally, Pipedrive Campaigns (an optional add-on) offers a specialized module for crafting email journeys, segmenting audiences, and analyzing open and click rates. All responses are automatically linked to the corresponding deal or contact. However, it's important to note that the Campaigns add-on comes with an extra cost, and its reporting capabilities are more limited compared to dedicated email marketing platforms.

On the other hand, Monday’s Emails & Activities app provides seamless two-way email sync for both Gmail and Outlook through straightforward integration recipes—new messages and replies are instantly transformed into pulses on your boards, ensuring your communications remain trackable alongside your deals. Calendar items are synced using Monday’s Calendar Sync feature: date or timeline columns connect to Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, or any external calendar, with events reflecting on both your board and calendar within minutes.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

For users on Advanced plans and above, Pipedrive’s Group Emailing feature allows you to choose up to 100 contacts from any list to send bulk messages, complete with merge tags and reply tracking. Additionally, Pipedrive Campaigns (available as an add-on) offers a specialized module for creating email journeys, segmenting your audience, and analyzing open and click rates. All replies are automatically linked to the corresponding deal or contact. However, it's important to note that the Campaigns add-on comes with an extra cost and provides more limited reporting compared to dedicated email-marketing platforms.

On the other hand, Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app can sync with up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts. It includes a Group Emailing feature that enables bulk messages to be sent to board items and contact lists. You can also automate follow-ups using monday.com automations or connect with Mailchimp for comprehensive email-marketing capabilities. Keep in mind that if you aren’t using Mailchimp or a similar add-on, you’ll miss out on native campaign analytics beyond basic send logs on your boards.

Open and Click Tracking

Pipedrive offers “Track email opening” and “Track link opening” toggles, allowing you to capture opens and clicks for every sent message, complete with counts and timestamps in the Mail tab. You can easily enable or disable tracking for each email and view exactly who clicked which link in the deal view. However, Pipedrive’s reporting is limited to basic open and click rates; there’s no built-in funnel visualization or heat-map insights without exporting the data to a BI tool.

In contrast, the Emails & Activities app from Monday logs message opens when you send emails directly from the board interface, but it doesn't track link clicks natively. To obtain click-through rates, you need to embed links with UTM parameters and automate data retrieval into your board or integrate a marketing tool like Mailchimp.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Pipedrive’s Gmail Add-on seamlessly adds a side panel to your inbox, allowing you to view contact and deal information, update stages, and add new activities directly from Gmail. You gain immediate access to Smart Email BCC, templates, and tracking toggles without leaving your inbox, and you can create new leads or deals with just one click. It effectively transforms your mailbox into a Pipedrive cockpit. However, this in-inbox functionality is only available on Chrome or Edge—there's no similar add-on for desktop Outlook.

In contrast, monday.com’s Emails & Activities app operates from your boards instead of your inbox. By connecting Gmail or Outlook, emails are transformed into pulses associated with relevant items, allowing you to reply or add notes directly within monday.com. This setup is ideal for visual teams that manage everything on boards, but it doesn’t offer a true in-inbox sidebar; you’re primarily working within the monday.com platform instead of your email client.

folk CRM: The Best Email CRM

folk provides teams with the seamless, interconnected email workflow they've been missing. It centralizes communication, automates follow-ups, and simplifies sequencing, all within a clean and user-friendly CRM. With a remarkable 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the top lightweight CRMs for modern sales and partnership teams.

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and growing sales teams of 20-50 members, folk simplifies email operations without causing overwhelm.

Extract Intel from Emails

Among folk’s most impressive features is its ability to centralize communication and convert every email and call into actionable insights, thanks to native email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook, along with AI-driven analysis. Teams can:

• Quickly recap past conversations with a click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers insights from emails and notes to create a summary, providing context in seconds.
• Follow up at the ideal time, as AI scans conversations to remind you when to reach out to a contact and helps draft a reply.

Email Sequencing & Automation

With folk’s native sequencing engine, creating automated outreach flows directly within the CRM is effortless. 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 offers a powerful yet straightforward sequencing workflow that eliminates the need for separate tools.

Set conditions based on your CRM variables to automatically send emails, such as when a deal closes or when you acquire a new lead.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk’s AI Follow-Up feature guarantees that no conversation slips through the cracks. By analyzing your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn’t responded, brings to light cold conversations, and pinpoints the optimal time to re-engage. It functions like a built-in assistant, keeping your inbox tidy and your pipeline active—without any manual tracking.

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

Conclusion

To conclude, Pipedrive excels with its visual pipeline and seamless integration, making it ideal for teams that value organized deal tracking. Monday CRM leverages its project management strengths for effective email and task alignment. However, for teams heavily reliant on email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk stands out as the superior choice. Its user-friendly interface, AI-driven follow-up reminders, and robust email workflows transform email into a powerful tool for driving revenue, making it the ultimate CRM for email-centric teams.

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