Salesforce vs Freshsales: 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.

Salesforce and Freshsales provide effective solutions for managing customer relationships, but they cater to different needs and operational styles. Salesforce is a robust and highly customizable CRM platform that excels in handling complex business processes, extensive data management, and long-term scalability. Conversely, Freshsales offers a more straightforward approach, focusing on streamlined lead management, automation, and intuitive reporting features that can benefit agencies seeking efficiency without the complexity.

The right choice between Salesforce and Freshsales ultimately depends on the agency's specific requirements, including the complexity of their processes, the level of customization needed, and how much administrative effort they can commit to ongoing management.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a powerful enterprise CRM platform designed for extensive customization, intricate data models, and large-scale sales operations. It is ideal for organizations that require advanced permissions, multiple business units, or highly specific processes integrated into record types and automation. Its reporting and dashboard capabilities facilitate multi-level pipeline management, provided that data is organized consistently. Additionally, integrations are readily available via AppExchange and custom development. Agencies typically choose Salesforce when they anticipate a need for significant customization, governance, and long-term scalability.

What is Freshsales?

Freshsales, developed by Freshworks, is a CRM solution geared toward efficiently managing leads, deals, and activities, complete with built-in automation features. It is well-suited for agencies seeking standard CRM functionalities, customizable pipelines, and workflow rules for follow-ups and handoffs. The activity timelines ensure that interactions are linked to the appropriate records throughout the sales and account management processes. Its reporting tools enable effective pipeline monitoring and performance assessments based on logged data. Agencies often opt for Freshsales when they want a straightforward CRM that still offers automation and reporting capabilities.

Feature comparison of Salesforce and Freshsales

Multi-pipeline and Custom Stages

In Salesforce Sales Cloud, opportunity stages are configured, enabling the implementation of various pipelines through Sales Processes and Opportunity Record Types. A Sales Process serves as a filtered list of opportunity stages, while Record Types allow different teams or motions to be assigned distinct sales processes. This approach empowers organizations to maintain unique stage sets tailored to specific services or regions, all while ensuring the Opportunity object remains uniform. Stage probability is integrated into the stage setup and can be utilized in pipeline views and reporting.

Freshsales facilitates multiple deal pipelines, with each pipeline featuring its own unique set of stages. Admin settings allow for the management of pipelines and stages, enabling the addition, reordering, and customization of stages for different sales processes. This functionality allows for the separation of agency activities—such as new business, renewals, or partnerships—into distinct pipelines, while keeping stage definitions aligned with each specific motion. The default outcomes for newly created pipelines remain Won and Lost.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

Salesforce monitors activities through tasks and events that appear on record activity timelines. Depending on configuration, permissions, and licensing, email and calendar activities can be captured via Einstein Activity Capture and displayed on related records. Activities can be linked to accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities, providing deal context that includes both scheduled and completed actions. However, the exact behavior may differ based on setup choices and the activity capture mode employed.

In Freshsales, users can log activities such as calls, meetings, notes, emails, and tasks, associating them with contacts, accounts, and deals. Record timelines showcase past interactions alongside upcoming actions, ensuring handoffs are contextual and include next steps. Additionally, Freshsales allows for the configuration of activity types, including custom options, to align with a team’s workflow. Timelines can also be filtered to emphasize specific activity categories when reviewing an account.

Automation and Workflows

Salesforce offers robust reporting through customizable reports and dashboards built on standard objects such as opportunities and activities. Reporting filters utilize opportunity stage concepts for effective stage-type reporting, while activity reports provide summaries of both open and completed activities. Dashboards allow for the integration of multiple report charts, enhancing pipeline monitoring and sales management, with access governed by organizational permissions and sharing settings. The extent of reporting coverage hinges on the enabled objects and the configuration of fields and stages.

With Freshsales, you can establish workflow automation through triggers and actions that update records, create tasks, notify users, or assign ownership based on changes in fields or deal events. Additionally, sales sequences facilitate the automation of outreach and follow-up steps, contingent on the specific module and plan in use. The behavior of automation is influenced by the configuration of workflows within admin settings, allowing for the standardization of repetitive tasks associated with pipeline progression and internal handoffs.

Reporting and Analytics

Salesforce offers robust reporting through customizable reports and dashboards built on standard objects such as opportunities and activities. Reporting filters utilize opportunity stage concepts, while activity reports effectively summarize both open and completed tasks. Dashboards can integrate multiple report charts, allowing for comprehensive pipeline monitoring and sales management, with access managed by organizational permissions and sharing settings. The breadth of reporting features is contingent upon the objects enabled and the configuration of fields and stages.

In Freshsales, reports and dashboards can be created using CRM data, including deals, activities, and stage transitions, to effectively monitor pipeline status and performance. The analytics capabilities facilitate tracking progress through stages and examining conversion trends over time based on recorded data. Additionally, users can schedule reports for email delivery, depending on the analytics setup. The available metrics are influenced by the configuration of pipelines, stages, and properties.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

Salesforce integrations are typically added through AppExchange, the platform's marketplace for apps and solutions that enhance its capabilities. For maintaining data hygiene, Salesforce employs matching rules to identify potential duplicates and duplicate rules to determine the actions taken when duplicates are found during record creation or while viewing records. The Salesforce documentation also outlines how duplicate sets and reports highlight duplicates identified by these rules and jobs. These settings can be configured in Setup and are applied to each object based on the administrator's preferences.

In Freshsales, integrations can be added via the Freshworks Marketplace, allowing for seamless connections between external tools and CRM records or workflows. The duplicate management features aid in identifying and merging duplicate leads or contacts, ensuring that reporting and automation function on consolidated records. Additionally, import settings can minimize duplicate creation by matching new data against existing records, while enrichment capabilities may be accessible depending on the edition and configuration in use.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM designed to centralize contacts, conversations, and deal context without making setup a daunting task. It caters to agency teams where multiple individuals engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. This system maintains a visible relationship history, ensuring that handoffs rely on documented information rather than memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and custom stages tailored for diverse agency processes
• Contact and deal timelines that consolidate interaction history in one location
• Email and calendar synchronization to link conversations with the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to ensure standardized next steps
• Contact enrichment to supplement any 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 advantage lies in achieving operational clarity across simultaneous relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure consistent follow-ups throughout the team. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, making pipeline reporting reliable over time.

Conclusion

In summary, while Salesforce excels in customization and scalability for complex business processes, Freshsales offers an efficient and straightforward approach to lead management with solid automation features. However, for agencies that require seamless email integration, robust automation, and effective sequencing, folk stands out as the optimal choice. Its AI-driven platform centralizes communication and maintains relationship histories, ensuring teams can manage multiple pipelines effortlessly while prioritizing operational clarity and data integrity.

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