Streak vs HubSpot: Which CRM is the best for automation?

When deciding between Streak and HubSpot, the key question is: which CRM truly saves time on automation rather than adding more administrative tasks?

For teams that value simplicity, folk offers one of the most streamlined and effective automation solutions in any CRM, enabling users to automate emails based on their defined conditions and execute actions through the API.

Why Automation Is Essential for CRM in 2026

Automation has become the foundation of modern revenue teams. Sales and marketing departments are tasked with managing more leads, channels, and increasingly complex buying journeys without increasing headcount or sacrificing personalization. A CRM that depends on manual data entry, haphazard follow-ups, and outdated spreadsheet-style reporting gradually siphons away time, energy, and focus from genuine customer interactions.

Here are the main reasons why automation is now indispensable:

• Buyers expect prompt, relevant responses across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and phone calls.
• Pipelines move rapidly, and any missed follow-up can lead to lost revenue.
• With the explosion of data volume, manual updates have become both unrealistic and unreliable.
• Leadership requires real-time insights into performance, not end-of-month estimates.

The effectiveness of a CRM is gauged by how much it alleviates the workload for the team, not by the number of fields it can hold. The ideal platform automatically captures activities, maintains clean records in the background, and prompts the appropriate next steps at the right time, allowing representatives to concentrate on nurturing relationships and closing deals instead of managing the tool.

What is Streak?

Streak is a streamlined CRM that integrates seamlessly within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. Users can manage deals, track progress, and collaborate on conversations without the hassle of switching tabs—all from the familiar Gmail interface. At its core, the product emphasizes email, enhanced with real-time tracking and pipeline views layered over your existing Gmail threads.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that integrates marketing, sales, and customer service into a single contact database. Its email integration allows users to connect their personal Gmail and Outlook inboxes, enabling representatives to send individual emails, log responses, and initiate sequences directly from either the CRM or their inbox. Features like open and click tracking, templates, and shared timelines enhance the visibility of email activity across the entire revenue team.

Feature comparison of Streak and HubSpot

Integration Capabilities

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

HubSpot delivers effortless two-way email integration for Gmail, Outlook, and any IMAP-compatible provider, enabling you to send one-to-one emails directly from contact records while automatically logging every reply in your CRM timeline. Its built-in scheduler synchronizes meeting events with Google Calendar or Office 365, complete with automatic guest invites and timeline entries for enhanced visibility.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Streak delivers real-time email synchronization because it operates within Gmail’s infrastructure. The moment you send or receive a message, Streak instantly logs it to the relevant pipeline, ensuring your team has immediate access to the latest activity. There's virtually no lag or queuing—messages and thread updates show up right away in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. With its direct integration into Gmail, you also benefit from Google's exceptional uptime and reliability.

In contrast, HubSpot’s email synchronization works on a near-real-time basis with both Gmail and Outlook, usually updating changes within seconds to a minute. After connecting your account, HubSpot maintains a consistent connection through OAuth, continuously pushing and pulling message data to keep your CRM timeline current. Its reliability is further enhanced by HubSpot’s global cloud infrastructure, which boasts an impressive 99.99% uptime for its core services.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is conveniently integrated 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 (such as first name, company, and deal data) directly from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-ups within the same thread, and even conduct A/B tests on subject lines to enhance reply rates. Every 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 do not include advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won't have access to detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without integrating an additional tool.

HubSpot's CRM, on the other hand, connects via OAuth to Gmail, Outlook, or any IMAP-compatible provider, offering true two-way email synchronization. This allows you to send and receive one-to-one emails directly from contact records, with replies being logged within seconds in the appropriate timeline event. For calendar management, HubSpot's native integrations with Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar provide bi-directional sync: meetings scheduled in your external calendar are reflected in your contact, company, or deal timelines, while events created in HubSpot automatically sync back to your calendar with guest invite notifications.

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 information from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance your reply rates. Every sent message and follow-up is seamlessly logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign capabilities fall short on advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reporting on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you incorporate another tool.

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise offer powerful one-to-one sequences, allowing you to enroll up to 50 contacts at once and send hundreds of personalized emails per user daily. Its drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, manages delays, and detects replies, while the Marketing Hub can scale to thousands of recipients with features like segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most robust campaign features are housed in the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users without this add-on face limitations on total sends and less detailed reporting.

Open and Click Tracking

Streak incorporates 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 specific thread. By hovering over the green eye, you can access timestamps, locations, and detailed per-link click data without leaving your inbox. Since it relies entirely on Gmail’s API, the setup process is virtually nonexistent, and feedback is immediate; however, you won't find aggregated campaign dashboards or multi-link heat mapping beyond individual message views.

HubSpot Sales monitors opens and clicks for every one-to-one email sent from contact records or through the Sales extension, delivering real-time desktop notifications and logging each event on the timeline. Note that click tracking requires a paid Sales Hub seat—free users can only see opens—and you can view total clicks per link directly in the email activity feed. For advanced attribution, such as multi-variant link analysis across campaigns, you'll need the Marketing Hub, as pure Sales Hub users won’t have access to enterprise-level click analytics without the add-on.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Streak operates entirely within Gmail, providing comprehensive CRM features—such as pipelines, contact details, and email logging—without requiring you to leave your inbox. The sidebar displays deal stages, custom fields, and shared notes alongside each conversation, ensuring you always have relevant context at your fingertips. You can easily drag and drop emails into various pipelines or adjust statuses instantly, creating a seamless integration between your inbox and CRM. However, it's important to note that since Streak is limited to Gmail, this integrated experience won't be available if you switch to Outlook or another email client.

With the HubSpot Sales extension, you can view and edit HubSpot records—like contacts, companies, and deals—directly within Gmail or Outlook. You can enroll contacts in sequences and log emails with a single click. A user-friendly CRM sidebar appears next to your inbox, allowing you to create tasks, send template replies, and view recent interactions without needing to switch applications. It even displays lead scores and deal forecasts inline, ensuring that every action you take in your email directly contributes to your pipeline. The only drawback is that if you don't have a paid Sales or Service Hub seat, some of these in-inbox features (such as sequences and call logging) remain inaccessible behind a paywall.

folk CRM: The Best CRM for Automations

folk CRM is a modern, AI-native CRM designed for teams seeking to streamline their deal automation without complications. It consolidates all relationships—leads, clients, partners, candidates, and investors—into adaptable views that fit any workflow.

folk is tailored for teams that prioritize automation. With built-in email and calendar synchronization, teams can efficiently automate follow-ups and outreach on a large scale. The new conditional email automations allow you to trigger emails based on real-time data in folk; for instance, automatically dispatching onboarding or handoff emails when a contact transitions to a client or a deal is marked as signed.

Harnessing the power of AI, folk enriches your data, creates engaging icebreakers, drafts customized emails, and recommends the next best actions. Its open API and webhooks integrate seamlessly with platforms like Zapier and Make, facilitating advanced workflows across email, WhatsApp, Slack, billing, and internal systems.

With one-click contact capture via the folkX Chrome extension and collaborative pipelines, folk provides teams with a lightweight yet robust CRM that empowers them to scale automation while maintaining complete control.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Streak excels with seamless Gmail integration and real-time tracking, and HubSpot offers comprehensive capabilities with robust analytics, folk stands out as the premier choice for teams prioritizing email integration, automation, and sequencing. Its AI-driven features streamline workflows, allowing for effective follow-ups and outreach with ease. For teams looking to harness the full potential of automation without unnecessary complexity, folk is undeniably the best alternative. Explore folk CRM today.

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