Email is the cornerstone of modern sales communication: it facilitates deal progression, follow-ups, and relationship building.

As teams increasingly depend on automated outreach, multi-channel engagement, and precise tracking, CRMs are competing more than ever based on the quality of their native email integrations.

While Streak and Clarify both provide built-in email workflows, their usability, depth, and effect on daily sales operations can vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity and seeking speedy, dependable email execution, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful email integrations available in any CRM, enabling effortless sending, tracking, and automation of outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Does Email Integration Matter?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a cohesive communication hub. Rather than toggling between tabs or using disjointed tools, sales reps can send messages, automate follow-ups, and track engagement all from a single platform.

• Centralized communication. All emails—both sent and received—sync automatically with the corresponding contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups. Automated reminders and sequences empower reps to follow up at the ideal moment without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking. Metrics like open rates, clicks, and replies are fed directly into the CRM, guiding subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data. Emails enrich contact profiles instantly with relevant context and conversation histories.
• Email templates. Reusable, customized templates help teams maintain consistency while saving valuable time.
• Outreach automation. Send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activities.

When a CRM seamlessly manages email, sales reps can shift their focus from juggling tools to engaging in conversations that drive revenue. This distinction separates a good CRM from one that genuinely accelerates sales!

What is Streak?

Streak is a lightweight CRM integrated directly within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. This eliminates the need to switch tabs, allowing users to manage deals, track progress, and collaborate on threads right from the familiar Gmail interface. Email is central to the product, featuring real-time tracking and pipeline views seamlessly layered onto your existing Gmail conversations.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an AI-native CRM designed for startups and agile sales teams seeking to consolidate email, meetings, and deal context into one streamlined interface. It integrates with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, automatically syncing email, calendars, and meeting intelligence. This data is then utilized to create timelines and generate AI-suggested follow-ups. Users can compose and send emails directly from Clarify, ensuring that engagement is tracked within contacts and deals rather than getting lost in separate inboxes.

Feature comparison of Streak and Clarify

Integration Capabilities

Streak seamlessly integrates within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without the need for additional windows or apps. Every email you send or receive is automatically recorded in the appropriate pipeline and shared across your team's workspace, providing you with a real-time timeline of each deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.

Clarify connects effortlessly with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, enabling sales teams to automatically capture Gmail, Outlook, calendar, and meeting activities within the CRM. It also integrates with tools like Zapier, Segment, Posthog, and webhooks to facilitate the transfer of customer and product usage data in and out of the database. A forthcoming integration with Loops aims to send Clarify events into a SaaS-focused email platform without replacing it. Overall, Clarify prioritizes consolidating essential inbox and meeting data in one location rather than creating an extensive native marketing ecosystem.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Streak’s email synchronization occurs in real time, seamlessly integrated within Gmail's infrastructure. As soon as you send or receive a message, Streak instantly logs it to the relevant pipeline, ensuring your team remains updated on the latest activity without any delays. There's virtually no lag or queuing—both messages and thread updates appear immediately in your inbox and Streak’s interface. By connecting directly to Gmail, you gain the advantage of Google’s exceptional uptime and reliability.

Clarify focuses on the automatic ingestion of email and calendar data, eliminating the need for manual logging. Once you connect Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, messages, events, and meeting insights are synchronized in the background and linked to the appropriate contacts, companies, and deals. The product copy highlights features like “auto-capture,” “auto-sync,” and continuous CRM updates, but it doesn't detail specific user-facing sync schedules. As a newer tool, Clarify's integrations are not as thoroughly tested as those of legacy CRMs, despite presenting core email and calendar synchronization as standard features.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly within Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in under two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables like first names, company details, and deal data from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-ups within the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Each sent message and follow-up is automatically logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, it's worth noting that Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won't have detailed reporting on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you incorporate additional tools.

Clarify connects seamlessly with Gmail and Outlook, allowing both inbound and outbound emails to be integrated into contact and deal timelines for follow-up suggestions from the AI agent. Following the July 2025 update, users will also be able to send emails directly from Clarify, with those messages and their replies automatically recorded in the respective records. Calendar events and meeting summaries from platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams are included in the same timelines, providing teams with a straightforward two-way view of conversations and meetings. In practice, this functionality is designed for everyday sales follow-up rather than intricate marketing automation.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly into Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in under two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables like first names, company details, and deal data from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Each sent message and follow-up is logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, it's worth noting that Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won't receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without incorporating another tool.

Clarify enables representatives to send one-to-one follow-up emails directly from the CRM, often drafted with the aid of its AI agent based on prior meeting and email context. Nevertheless, external reviews and Clarify’s own positioning indicate that the product currently doesn’t support full multi-channel sequences or traditional mail merge-style bulk campaigns. For nurturing streams and onboarding journeys, teams are expected to rely on external tools like Loops or other marketing platforms integrated via connections. Consequently, Clarify concentrates on sales communication and pipeline management, while more established CRMs take on the heavier campaign responsibilities.

Open and Click Tracking

Streak integrates a small tracking pixel and link tracker directly into Gmail, providing real-time “eye” icons that indicate when an email is opened or a link is clicked within a thread. Simply hover over the green eye for timestamps, locations, and detailed per-link click data, all without having to leave your inbox. Since it operates entirely on Gmail’s API, setup is minimal, and you receive immediate feedback; however, aggregated campaign dashboards or multi-link heat-mapping features are not available beyond individual message views.

Clarify positions itself as a CRM email tracking tool, highlighting its capabilities in monitoring opens, clicks, and replies to sales emails. The goal is to capture essential engagement signals from emails sent through connected inboxes or directly from Clarify, displaying that activity on timelines and within follow-up suggestions. This enables sales teams to identify engagement patterns and determine the best times to reconnect, without transforming Clarify into a comprehensive analytics solution. In comparison to specialized email platforms, its reporting features are relatively straightforward and focused on deal workflows rather than extensive marketing analytics.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Streak operates entirely within Gmail, providing complete CRM capabilities—including pipelines, contact details, and email logging—without you ever needing to leave your inbox. The sidebar displays deal stages, custom fields, and shared notes alongside each email thread, ensuring you have context readily available. You can easily drag and drop emails into various pipelines or update statuses on the go, creating a seamless integration between your inbox and CRM. However, as Streak is exclusive to Gmail, you won't enjoy this same in-inbox experience if you choose to switch to Outlook or another email client.

On the other hand, Clarify offers a majority of its features through its own web and macOS applications, connecting with Gmail and Outlook rather than functioning as a full CRM sidebar within the inbox. Users can review timelines, meeting summaries, and AI-generated follow-ups in Clarify, and still send or schedule emails through their preferred mail clients. For teams that operate entirely within Gmail or Outlook, this approach feels more like a unified workspace rather than a conventional 'CRM inside the inbox' extension. The future development is focused on centralizing tasks and AI-driven actions within Clarify itself, rather than creating extensive UI add-ons for every email client.

folk CRM: The Ultimate Email CRM

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

Designed specifically for startups, agencies, and growing sales teams of 20-50 members, folk streamlines email operations without the complexity.

Extract Insights from Emails

One of folk’s standout features is its ability to centralize communication, turning every email and call into actionable insights. With native email synchronization for Gmail and Outlook, along with AI-driven analysis, teams can:

• Quickly recap past conversations with a single click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers information from emails and notes to create a summary, giving you context in seconds.
• Time follow-ups perfectly, as AI scans conversations to alert you when it's the right moment to reach out to a contact and even drafts a response for you.

Email Sequencing & Automation

folk’s integrated sequencing engine simplifies the creation of automated outreach flows within the CRM. You can design multi-step email sequences, personalize communications using CRM fields, and automatically log every interaction. Whether you're nurturing leads, conducting outbound campaigns, or re-engaging inactive deals, folk provides a robust yet straightforward sequencing workflow that doesn’t necessitate additional tools.

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

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk’s AI Follow-Up feature guarantees that no conversation slips through the cracks. By analyzing your email interactions, folk notifies you when a contact hasn’t responded, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the ideal moment to re-engage. It functions like an integrated assistant, keeping your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without any manual tracking.

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

Conclusion

In conclusion, Streak excels in its real-time Gmail integration, providing seamless email management within the inbox. Clarify offers a modern, AI-driven workspace that consolidates essential communication and meeting insights but lacks full automation capabilities. However, for teams that prioritize email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk stands out as the best alternative. Its user-friendly interface, robust sequencing engine, and AI-powered follow-up reminders empower teams to fully leverage email as a dynamic revenue-generating tool, streamlining their sales processes effectively.

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