Last updated
December 2, 2025
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Breakcold vs Clay

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Breakcold vs. Clay: Overview

Are you in the market for a CRM solution? Breakcold and Clay are two popular platforms that offer distinct features tailored to enhance outreach and streamline sales operations. While both aim to boost sales growth, they address different business needs.

This blog post provides a detailed comparison of their key features, pricing, and benefits, helping you determine which aligns best with your organization's objectives.

For teams of 20-50 people looking for comprehensive CRM and social sales functions, we'll also explore folk as a potential alternative to consider.

👉🏼 Try folk now to compare Breakcold and Clay and centralize contact enrichment and outreach

Main points
  • 🔍 Breakcold is a social-selling CRM with pipeline; Clay focuses on outreach and enrichment.
  • 📈 Pipeline: Breakcold offers a visual board; Clay lacks native pipeline and uses inbound dashboards with extra setup.
  • ✉️ Outreach & AI: Breakcold runs multichannel campaigns; Clay adds email sequences and Claygent research.
  • 💵 Pricing: Breakcold $17.40–$35.40/user/mo (annual); Clay $134–$720/mo+ on credit-based tiers.
  • Consider folk CRM for 20–50 teams—custom pipelines, enrichment, sequences; from $20/user/mo.

What is Breakcold?

Breakcold is a modern sales tool with a strong focus on social selling. It combines traditional CRM features like email campaigns and sales pipeline management with specific capabilities designed to enhance engagement with prospects.

Key features of Breakcold

  • Social media integration: Breakcold integrates seamlessly with platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, enabling users to interact with prospects without switching tabs.
  • Curated feeds: You can create personalized feeds of B2B contacts, helping sales teams stay engaged with leads by following their updates across various channels​.
  • Unified email inbox: Centralizes all email conversations from different domains, streamlining communication with prospects and improving organization.
  • Sales pipeline management: A visual pipeline allows you to manage and track deals through different stages, enhancing the overall sales process.

What is Clay?

Clay is an outreach and lead generation tool designed to help businesses streamline prospecting and customer outreach. It automates data enrichment by gathering information from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn and other social platforms, to build detailed contact profiles. Clay enables users to create targeted lists, personalize outreach efforts, and manage communication workflows, focusing on improving efficiency in lead generation and outreach campaigns.

Key features of Clay

  • Automated data enrichment: Clay pulls data from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn and public databases, to build comprehensive profiles on prospects, reducing the need for manual data entry.
  • Prospecting and list building: Users can create targeted lists of leads by filtering and segmenting prospects based on specific criteria like location, industry, or role.
  • Personalized outreach: Clay enables tailored outreach by allowing users to customize messages and emails based on the enriched profile data of each lead.
  • Email sequencing: Users can set up automated email sequences for follow-ups, ensuring consistent communication without manual scheduling.
  • Template management: The platform offers tools for creating and saving message templates, which helps maintain consistency in outreach efforts.
  • LinkedIn integration: Clay connects with LinkedIn, allowing users to gather data directly from profiles and track LinkedIn interactions as part of their outreach strategy.

Breakcold vs. Clay: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

Breakcold's pipeline management feature provides a visual representation of the sales process, allowing users to track deals through different stages. This helps teams stay organized, monitor the progress of their sales efforts, and identify bottlenecks in the pipeline.
On the other hand, Clay doesn't have a pipeline dashboard per se, but it allows you to connect with your inbound lead form and then creates a dashboard based off this data. This approach can be beneficial for users looking for a more customized view of their sales data, but it may require additional setup and integration efforts compared to Breakcold's out-of-the-box solution. Ultimately, the choice between Breakcold and Clay for sales pipeline management will depend on your preference for visual simplicity or customizable data integration.

Breakcold CRM Pipeline
Breakcold's sales pipeline template library
Clay CRM Pipeline
Clay's inbound leads dashboard

2. Ease of use

Breakcold offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation, making it easy for users to manage their CRM tasks efficiently. Clay is generally easier to use than a traditional CRM when it comes to data enrichment and outreach tasks, as its interface is specifically designed for prospecting, lead generation, and automated outreach. But for users accustomed to CRMs with comprehensive tracking and structured pipelines, Clay may feel limited.

3. Contact enrichment

Breakcold includes a form of contact enrichment through its social media integrations, allowing users to gather additional insights and interact with prospects across platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. Clay's enrichment feature automatically gathers detailed lead information from various sources, creating comprehensive contact profiles that can be integrated with your existing CRM.

4. Outreach

Breakcold's outreach feature allows users to run automated cold outreach campaigns across multiple channels, including email and LinkedIn. This multichannel capability enhances engagement with prospects, and its built-in email tracking helps users monitor the effectiveness of their campaigns. However, some users have noted limitations in sequencing contacts on lower-tier plans.
Clay's outreach feature is designed for efficient prospecting and personalized communication. It allows users to create targeted lists, pull in enriched data from multiple sources, and send automated, customized emails. Users can set up email sequences to ensure consistent follow-ups and track engagement metrics, such as open and response rates, to refine outreach efforts.

5. Automation

Breakcold offers automation features that streamline manual data entry and cold outreach, allowing users to set up automated email sequences and multichannel campaigns. Clay's automation features are geared toward simplifying outreach tasks, allowing users to set up automated workflows for data gathering, personalized email sequencing, and follow-up reminders.

6. Integration

Both Breakcold and Clay offer integrations with popular tools, enhancing their CRM capabilities. Breakcold focuses on social media integrations, while Clay provides seamless integration with various data sources to enrich contact information and streamline workflows.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Breakcold does not appear to have an AI integration. Clay's AI integration is research focused. Through Claygent, you can automate your research and visit domains, find info and report back. You can use this to see whether or not companies are SOC-II compliant, and more.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Breakcold and Clay.

Breakcold prices

Breakcold provides the option of a monthly or annual subscription plan. The following is a high level overview of their annual plan.

  • CRM Essentials: $17.40/seat/month.
  • CRM Pro: $35.40/seat/month.
Breakcold prices and plans

Clay prices

Besides a free plan, Clay has a few premium plans to choose from depending on the features you need, credits, and number of people/company searches you want to make. Below is a high level overview of their annual subscription.

  • Starter: Starting from $134 per month for 24k credits per year.
  • Explorer: Starting from $314 per month, for 120k credits per year.
  • Pro: Starting from $720 per month, for 600k credits per year.
  • Enterprise: Price undisclosed. Custom credits option.
Clay prices and plans

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Breakcold and Clay

Looking for an affordable alternative that perfectly serves growing sales teams of 20-50 people? We recommend folk CRM. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. From social selling capabilities to the ability to support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment and more – it's easy to see why folk CRM has become the preferred choice for medium-sized sales teams requiring comprehensive yet manageable solutions.

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folk's sales pipeline dashboard is highly customizable, allowing you to manage your entire sales cycle and leads in one platform.
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folk can also automate your follow-up messages and outreach, and provide you with a detailed analytics report so you don't have to switch context and do it all from your CRM.
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Key features

  • Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
  • Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
  • Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
  • Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
  • Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk's Google Chrome extension.
  • Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
  • Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
  • Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don't reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

  • Standard: $20 per user, per month.
  • Premium: $40 per user, per month.
  • Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

Breakcold vs. Clay: What's the Verdict?

When it comes to Breakcold and Clay, there's no doubt that both CRMs bring unique strengths to the table. Breakcold excels with its social selling capabilities, while Clay offers robust contact management features. However, for sales teams of 20-50 people seeking a more personalized and flexible CRM solution that combines the best of both worlds, folk CRM emerges as the clear winner. With its ease of use, customization options, competitive pricing, and comprehensive feature set specifically designed for growing sales teams, folk CRM stands out as the optimal tool tailored to meet diverse business needs without overwhelming smaller teams.

👉🏼 Try folk now to manage pipelines and never miss a follow-up across your team

FAQ

Which is better for outreach: Breakcold or Clay?

Breakcold suits multichannel outreach and social selling with a built-in pipeline. Clay excels at prospecting, data enrichment, list building, and email sequences. Choose Breakcold for engagement + pipeline; Clay for research-driven outreach.

Does Clay have a sales pipeline view?

No native visual pipeline. Clay can build dashboards from inbound lead data or integrate with a CRM, but extra setup is required compared with out-of-the-box pipeline tools.

How much do Breakcold and Clay cost?

Breakcold (annual): Essentials $17.40/user/mo, Pro $35.40. Clay (annual): Starter $134/mo, Explorer $314, Pro $720, Enterprise custom. Pricing may vary by usage and billing.

What is a good alternative to Breakcold and Clay for growing teams?

folk CRM offers customizable pipelines, contact enrichment, email sequences, and automation for 20–50 person teams. Plans from $20/user/mo. Try folk with a 14-day free trial.

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