Quick comparison: Clay CRM vs. HighLevel

Choosing the right CRM is crucial for any business aiming to enhance customer relationships and boost sales.

Clay CRM and HighLevel are two prominent platforms, each offering unique features tailored to different business needs. In this comparison, we'll examine their key features, usability, and pricing to help you decide which platform aligns better with your goals. We'll also explore folk, which is a popular alternative.

What is Clay CRM?

Clay CRM is a customer relationship management tool designed to help users organize and manage contact information and interactions, with a focus on automation and contact enrichment.

Key features of Clay CRM

• Contact management: The platform allows users to organize and manage contacts by consolidating information in one place. Users can add custom fields, notes, and tags to categorize and track interactions with each contact, making it easier to manage customer relationships.
• Automation: Clay CRM includes automation tools that handle repetitive tasks like contact updates and reminders, helping users streamline their communication and workflow processes.
• Search and filtering: The platform provides advanced search and filtering functionality, allowing users to segment their contact database based on various criteria such as engagement history, tags, or custom fields.
• Real-time updates: The platform provides real-time updates for contact records and tasks, ensuring that users have the latest information on their contacts and projects at all times.
  

What is HighLevel?

HighLevel is a comprehensive platform designed to streamline digital marketing efforts for agencies and businesses. It offers features such as lead capture, automated booking, customer nurturing, and membership site creation. The platform provides tools to help agencies build their digital marketing engine, automate workflows, and drive business growth. It also includes a white-label option for agencies.

Key features of HighLevel

• Lead capture tools: HighLevel provides customizable forms, surveys, and landing pages to help businesses effectively capture and manage leads.
• Automated workflows: Automate tasks like follow-ups, appointment scheduling, and reminders, saving time and ensuring consistent communication.
• Customer nurturing tools: Engage with leads through email campaigns, text messages, and automated drip sequences to convert them into loyal customers.
• Membership site creation: Build and manage membership sites directly within the platform, offering valuable resources or courses to clients.
• White-label platform: Agencies can fully brand HighLevel as their own, delivering a seamless experience to their clients.

Clay CRM vs. HighLevel: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of Clay CRM and HighLevel and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience and more. For marketing agencies with 20-50 team members looking for an optimal solution, this comparison will help identify which platform offers the best value and functionality for your agency's specific needs.

1. Sales Pipeline Management

As a platform that is reminiscent of a super advanced address book, Clay CRM does not offer a dedicated pipeline management feature as part of its core functionality. While users can organize contacts and tasks, the platform lacks specific tools for tracking deals or leads through stages in a sales pipeline.
HighLevel CRM's sales pipeline management feature enables businesses to create pipelines tailored to their sales processes. It provides tools to track leads, monitor deal progress, and view opportunities through a dashboard.

👉🏼 Try folk now to manage a customizable sales pipeline and never miss a follow-up

2. Ease of use

Clay CRM offers a straightforward interface that's easy to navigate, making it accessible for users without extensive technical knowledge. HighLevel, while feature-rich, may present a steeper learning curve due to its comprehensive suite of tools, requiring users to invest time in learning and optimizing its functionalities.

3. Contact enrichment

Clay CRM's contact enrichment feature automatically gathers additional data from sources like social media and public databases to build more comprehensive contact profiles, providing users with a richer understanding of their contacts without manual data entry. HighLevel does not highlight a specific contact enrichment feature as part of its offerings.

4. Outreach

Clay CRM does not have a dedicated outreach feature specifically designed for managing customer communication, such as email marketing or mass outreach. However, users can track interactions with contacts and set up tasks or reminders for individual follow-ups. In contrast, HighLevel CRM includes outreach tools such as email campaigns, text messaging, and automated sequences, facilitating communication with leads and customers directly within the platform.

5. Automation

Clay CRM includes automation features that streamline repetitive tasks like updating contact information and managing workflow tasks. HighLevel CRM offers robust automation tools for lead follow-ups, appointment scheduling, and campaigns, though setting up complex workflows may require additional configuration effort.

6. Integration

Clay CRM supports integrations with various third-party tools, allowing users to connect external applications for enhanced functionality. HighLevel also offers integrations, but specific details on supported applications may vary.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Clay CRM does not currently offer dedicated AI integration. Similarly, HighLevel CRM does not prominently advertise AI integration as a core feature, focusing more on manual configuration and automation rather than leveraging AI for decision-making or optimization.

Price and plans comparison

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

Clay CRM prices

Clay has a free plan for personal use, for up to 1,000 contacts. After that premium plans are as follows on an annual subscription.

• Pro: $10 per user, per month.
• Team: $40 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

HighLevel prices

High Levels has two price tiers for you to choose from.

• Starter: $97/seat/month.
• Unlimited: $297/seat/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Clay CRM and HighLevel

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment and more. Making it one of the most versatile systems on the market. For marketing agencies with 20-50 team members, folk CRM offers the perfect balance of powerful features and affordable pricing, scaling seamlessly as your agency grows without the complexity of larger enterprise solutions.

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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.

👉🏼 Try folk now to start a 14-day free trial and compare pipelines, outreach, and automation in one place

Clay CRM vs. HighLevel: What's the verdict?

Both Clay CRM and HighLevel offer robust solutions for managing customer relationships with unique features tailored to different business needs. Clay CRM excels with its automation and contact enrichment capabilities, while HighLevel stands out for its comprehensive marketing tools. However, for marketing agencies with teams of 20-50 people that need a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk CRM provides the most flexible and cost-effective alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with powerful customization capabilities that scale perfectly with mid-size agency operations.

FAQ

Does Clay CRM have a sales pipeline?

No. Clay CRM organizes contacts, notes, tags, and simple automation but lacks stage-based deal tracking or a visual pipeline. HighLevel includes pipelines with stages and dashboards.

How do Clay CRM and HighLevel pricing compare?

Clay: free to 1,000 contacts; Pro $10/user/mo; Team $40; Enterprise undisclosed. HighLevel: Starter $97/seat/mo; Unlimited $297/seat/mo. Pricing may vary by billing term.

Is Clay AI safe to use?

Clay CRM does not list dedicated AI features. For any AI or enrichment used, review security and privacy policies, enable 2FA, avoid sensitive data, and secure data-processing agreements if required.

What is a good alternative to Clay CRM and HighLevel?

folk CRM offers customizable pipelines, enrichment, email sequences, and automation. Annual plans start at $20/user/mo with a 14-day trial. Learn more at folk.