folk vs Insightly: Which CRM for agencies wins?

In today’s fast-paced agency landscape, the challenge isn’t about finding the right tools; it’s ensuring that pipeline execution remains consistent while delivering exceptional results for clients. As information about prospects gets scattered across emails, calendars, and various platforms, the risks of missed follow-ups, broken handoffs, and unreliable forecasting increase significantly. A CRM for agencies must be adept at accelerating new business initiatives while retaining sufficient account history for seamless renewals, upsells, and referrals.

Folk and Insightly present two distinct approaches to tackling these challenges. Folk, with its AI-driven focus, streamlines contact management and simplifies deal tracking, making it an excellent choice for agencies that require efficiency without the complexity of extensive operational setups. On the other hand, Insightly integrates project management features, enabling agencies to link deals with delivery and post-sale activities, well-suited for those with more intricate workflows.

Finding the right CRM ultimately hinges on the agency's specific process complexity, the level of customization needed, and how much ongoing ownership can be committed to setup and maintenance.

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 folk?

folk is an AI-driven CRM that streamlines the management of contacts, conversations, and deal context with minimal setup. It's particularly beneficial for agencies handling numerous relationships with clients, partners, and prospects, where information is often dispersed across emails, calendars, and messaging platforms. The contact enrichment and deduplication features ensure that records remain accurate and useful, even when sourced from diverse platforms. Additionally, pipelines and tasks enable the organized tracking of new business, renewals, and referrals, making it ideal for agencies seeking a CRM that enhances coordination and follow-up without the complexity of a robust operations stack.

What is Insightly?

Insightly is a versatile CRM that integrates project-oriented features, linking sales records with delivery and post-sale activities. This makes it especially valuable for agencies where deal management and client delivery are interconnected, particularly for project-driven engagements. Pipelines effectively monitor opportunities, while tasks and activity sets help standardize procedures across various stages. When properly configured, reporting and dashboards provide visibility into both sales and execution metrics. Agencies often choose Insightly to enhance their CRM capabilities while ensuring a seamless connection to delivery workflows.

Feature comparison of folk and Insightly

Multi-pipeline and Custom Stages

folk enables agencies to create pipelines tailored to various revenue streams, such as retainers, projects, partnerships, or hiring. Stages can be customized to accurately reflect actual handoffs and qualification criteria, ensuring the pipeline mirrors the true progression of deals. By using separate pipelines, agencies can maintain clear reporting by service line and avoid compromising one process for the sake of another. Lightweight updates allow the CRM to adapt seamlessly as the agency grows.

In Insightly, pipeline configuration allows for the establishment of pipelines and stage lists that cater to different sales strategies. Distinct pipelines can effectively manage agency workflows like new business, renewals, and partner referrals, while ensuring that stages remain unique to each pipeline. Stages can be modified as processes evolve, so opportunity tracking is aligned with the latest qualification and delivery handoffs. Insightly enforces pipeline logic at the record level, ensuring each opportunity adheres to a specific stage flow.

Client and Deal Activity Tracking

folk ensures relationship context stays connected to the appropriate contact and deal by consolidating communication history and activities into a single timeline. Notes, tasks, reminders, and past interactions remain visible where the team collaborates, minimizing those frustrating “where is the context” moments during handoffs. This approach enhances agency workflows, facilitating seamless transitions when multiple team members engage with the same account across sales, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. The objective is to provide quick access to past events, key information, and future actions.

Insightly's activity tracking is built around tasks, events, and logged interactions that link to contacts, organizations, and opportunities. With Activity Sets, Insightly allows the creation of repeatable sequences of tasks and events from templates, helping to standardize follow-ups after discovery calls, proposals, or onboarding processes. Timelines and related lists ensure that completed actions and upcoming next steps remain visible on the record, enabling thorough reviews of account history and current commitments during internal transitions.

Automation and Workflows

Folk offers pipeline visibility to monitor deal progression, stage health, and overall momentum, enabling leaders to identify potential risks early. Agencies can analyze conversion patterns and cycle lengths at a high level, then dig deeper to uncover what's stalled and why. Reporting facilitates discussions on forecasting, capacity planning, and performance by source or service line, prioritizing clarity and decision-making over cluttered dashboards.

Workflow Automation in Insightly executes actions when specific record criteria are met, including field updates, assignments, and task creation. This automation can also be integrated with pipeline-driven processes, such as applying Activity Sets when an opportunity reaches a certain stage in Insightly. The execution of workflows relies on the configuration of triggers and actions within the account, streamlining routine handoffs like transitioning a deal to onboarding and generating the associated task checklist.

Reporting and Analytics

Folk offers pipeline visibility to monitor deal progression, assess stage health, and evaluate overall momentum, enabling leaders to identify risks early. Agencies can analyze conversion patterns and cycle lengths at a high level, then dig deeper to understand what is stalled and why. Reporting facilitates discussions around forecasting, capacity planning, and performance across different sources or service lines, with a strong emphasis on clarity and informed decision-making—avoiding cluttered dashboards.

Insightly's reporting features include customizable dashboards and reports derived from CRM objects such as opportunities, activities, and projects. Users can filter reports by owner, pipeline, stage, and time range, and save them for regular review. Additionally, Insightly allows for automated report scheduling, ensuring stakeholders receive timely updates without the need for manual exports. The accuracy of pipeline reporting relies on consistent stage usage and activity logging throughout the team.

Integrations and Data Hygiene

folk prioritizes maintaining clean records by enabling data enrichment, deduplication, and structured fields that minimize manual entry. Their integrations link popular agency tools, ensuring that contact and activity data remains consistent across all channels. This approach helps combat common CRM issues, such as duplicate entries, outdated information, and missing context, which can compromise reporting accuracy. A well-maintained database enhances the reliability of automation and ensures the pipeline remains scalable.

In Insightly, integration options can be utilized through its integration layer and connected applications, depending on your plan and configuration. Data hygiene features include duplicate management workflows that assist in identifying and merging duplicate contacts, organizations, or leads, thereby consolidating records. Additionally, the import process can affect duplicates based on the matching rules applied during uploads. Maintaining clean records not only improves reporting accuracy but also minimizes conflicts during automation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while both Insightly and folk cater to agencies, they serve different needs. Insightly excels in integrating project management with CRM functionalities, making it suitable for more complex workflows. Conversely, folk offers a streamlined, AI-driven experience that minimizes setup and enhances efficiency, ideal for teams managing multiple relationships. For agencies looking for a robust solution that simplifies processes without the administrative hassle, folk stands out as the best alternative.

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