Close vs Clarify: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t just need tools; they require systems that ensure pipeline efficiency and maintain the integrity of client relationships. The challenge arises when crucial prospect information becomes scattered across various platforms—emails, calendars, and spreadsheets. This fragmentation leads to missed follow-ups, broken handoffs, and unpredictable forecasting. A reliable CRM for agencies must not only facilitate rapid business development but also retain critical account history to support renewals, upsells, and referrals.

Close and Clarify present two distinct approaches to solving these challenges. Close is tailored for high-volume outbound sales, integrating communication and task management in a way that empowers teams to drive consistency in prospect outreach. In contrast, Clarify leverages AI to automate data updates, minimizing manual entry and ensuring that the pipeline stays current with real-time insights.

Your choice between these CRMs will depend on your agency's specific needs, the complexity of your processes, and the level of automation you desire to enhance your client interactions and sales strategies.

Why Agencies Need a CRM in 2026?

Agencies don’t lose revenue because of a lack of demand. Revenue leaks when lead context gets scattered across inboxes, calendars, Slack threads, and spreadsheets, and when follow-ups depend on memory instead of a system. A CRM creates a single source of truth for prospects, clients, partners, and renewals, so next steps stay visible and ownership is clear.

✔️ Pipeline visibility and forecasting without spreadsheets

✔️ Centralized prospect and client context across email, calls, and meetings

✔️ Standardized follow-ups, handoffs, and next steps across the team

✔️ Clear ownership on every lead, deal, and account to avoid drops

✔️ Performance tracking by source, service line, and stage conversion

In 2026, agencies run more channels, shorter decision cycles, and more stakeholders per deal, with clients expecting faster response times and tighter coordination. Without a CRM, proposals stall, warm leads go cold, renewals happen late, and referrals are handled inconsistently because the team can’t see the full history and the current plan in one place.

What is Close?

Close is a sales CRM tailored for outbound execution, seamlessly integrating calling, emailing, SMS, and task management into daily workflows. It suits agencies focused on high-volume prospecting, appointment setting, or sales development as key services. With pipelines and opportunity statuses to monitor progress, communication history remains accessible within each lead record. Sequences and automations facilitate consistent outreach and follow-up routines, ideal for agencies where success hinges on reliable outbound activity and rapid iteration.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is a modern CRM, leveraging AI to keep records up-to-date through ongoing communication and meetings. It appeals to agencies looking to minimize manual data entry while ensuring a functional pipeline, contact history, and clear next steps. The product emphasizes capturing the context of meetings, follow-ups, and deal updates in real-time. With integrations and automation, updates can flow into a broader system based on configurations. This makes it an excellent fit for teams exploring contemporary CRM workflows centered around conversational context and automated maintenance.

Feature comparison of Close and Clarify

Multi-pipeline and custom stages

In Close, you can create multiple pipelines, allowing different teams or processes to have their own tailored pipeline configurations. Each pipeline can be uniquely named and feature its own set of opportunity statuses that define the stage structure. This enables you to segregate activities such as new business, renewals, or service delivery tracking into distinct pipelines, preventing the overlap of statuses across various processes. You can easily modify the pipeline structure by adjusting the opportunity statuses for the relevant pipeline.

In Clarify, deal tracking revolves around Deals, with the product designed to identify opportunities and ensure that deal stages remain current as activities unfold. Clarify emphasizes maintaining a straightforward pipeline that aligns stages with genuine progress, incorporating probability thinking for accurate forecasting. Additionally, pipeline hygiene is integral to how Clarify ensures records are usable without the need for constant manual updates.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

With Close, calls, emails, SMS, and tasks are seamlessly integrated into the CRM, allowing them to be linked to the appropriate lead and opportunity context. Communication is centralized within the platform, and teams can access activity history on records to review interactions and determine next steps. This functionality enables effective tracking of sales efforts by logging outreach and follow-ups alongside lead and deal records. Depending on configuration, meetings and other touchpoints can also be managed within the same workspace.

The record experience in Clarify consolidates emails, meetings, notes, and record details in one location, providing visibility into activity context alongside contacts and deals. Additionally, product materials highlight the meeting capture feature, which includes recording and summaries linked back to records. Changelog notes regarding record pages and Deals updates reflect ongoing enhancements in displaying activities and deal context together.

Automation and Workflows

With Close, sales reporting features dashboards and reports that emphasize pipeline health, activity tracking, lead conversion, and sales performance. You can filter reports by date ranges and other criteria, while dashboards can be customized to visualize key metrics. This reporting leverages CRM data as its foundation, meaning that activity and pipeline insights rely on what is logged and how opportunities are structured. Additionally, forecasting and pipeline monitoring are facilitated through the reporting layer outlined in Close’s documentation.

In Clarify, follow-ups and updates are automated tasks performed by an agent, which include drafting follow-ups, capturing tasks, and updating records based on call or email interactions. Clarify frames its writing as a component of workflow automation in modern CRM operations, with dedicated posts detailing automatic meeting notes and follow-up reminders integrated into CRM workflows. Ultimately, this approach minimizes manual data entry and routine administrative tasks related to “next steps,” depending on the enabled workflows.

Reporting and Analytics

Close offers comprehensive sales reporting that features dashboards and reports focused on pipeline health, activity tracking, lead conversion, and sales performance. You can filter reports by date ranges and other criteria, while dashboards can be tailored to visualize your chosen metrics. This reporting system relies on CRM data, making the accuracy of activity and pipeline reporting contingent upon logged information and the structure of opportunities. Additionally, forecasting and pipeline monitoring are facilitated through the reporting tools outlined in Close’s materials.

In Clarify, pipeline visibility is characterized by the tracking of deals, with updates clearly reflected in real-time. External reviews highlight how dashboards and forecasts dynamically adjust as records change. Clarify also provides insightful content on CRM analytics dashboards and reporting concepts, emphasizing the importance of using CRM data to assess pipeline health and track trends over time. The specific reports available will vary based on the reporting layer and configuration detailed in product updates and documentation.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

In Close, you can implement integrations through the API and event-based webhooks. The help documentation also guides connecting external apps using tools like Zapier or Make with OAuth or API keys. Key data hygiene features include duplicate detection when creating new leads, options to prevent duplicates during imports, and the ability to merge leads when duplicates are found. Import workflows incorporate duplicate checks against both the uploaded file and existing leads, while merge actions help consolidate records into a destination lead. All these controls are thoroughly documented in Close's help resources and product update notes.

The integrations catalog for Clarify categorizes various integrations, with dedicated pages detailing Slack notifications for pipeline updates and a Zapier connector for extensive automation. Zapier's listing highlights Clarify's compatibility with thousands of apps for efficient workflow triggers and data movement. Additionally, Clarify's product messaging underscores the importance of pipeline hygiene and record maintenance to ensure the system remains updated with new activities.

folk: The Best CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM designed to streamline the management of contacts, conversations, and deal contexts without turning the setup into a daunting task. It is tailored for agency teams where multiple members engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. This system ensures that the history of relationships remains visible, preventing handoffs from relying on memory or disorganized notes.

• Multi-pipeline and customizable stages for various agency operations
• Contact and deal timelines that consolidate interaction histories
• 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 complete missing company and individual 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 benefit lies in achieving operational clarity across multiple relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams, such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders maintain consistency in follow-ups across the team. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication eliminate duplicate records and fill missing fields, ensuring that pipeline reporting remains effective over time.

Conclusion

In summary, Close excels in high-volume outbound sales with integrated communication and robust task management, making it ideal for agencies focused on consistent prospect outreach. Clarify leverages AI for real-time updates and automated workflows, minimizing manual entry. However, for teams prioritizing email integration, automation, and seamless sequencing, folk stands out as the premier choice. Its user-friendly interface, multi-pipeline capabilities, and focus on relationship clarity empower agencies to maintain organized, efficient operations and ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks.

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