LinkedIn has evolved beyond a mere networking platform: It’s now the largest B2B sales battlefield.

Choosing the right CRM can determine whether you excel in your pipeline or become lost in the crowd. The debate between Hubspot and Clarify isn't solely about features; it's about which platform offers the smartest advantage for nurturing relationships, tracking engagement, and converting LinkedIn interactions into closed deals.

While Hubspot and Clarify are excellent options, if you seek a CRM designed specifically for LinkedIn workflows, folk CRM often sets a new standard.

Why a CRM for LinkedIn Is Essential in 2025

LinkedIn has transformed into the command center for B2B sales. By 2025, almost every decision-maker you want to connect with will be there, sharing insights, engaging with peers, and making real-time purchasing decisions. If your sales strategy isn't tailored for LinkedIn, you're leaving significant opportunities untapped. A CRM designed for LinkedIn is no longer a luxury; it’s the foundation of effective prospecting, relationship-building, and pipeline expansion.

Its strength lies in creating a multi-touch sales journey. Merely sending one cold email and hoping for the best won't suffice anymore. With the right CRM, you can effortlessly track, manage, and engage prospects across multiple channels:

• Initiate conversations on LinkedIn. Connect, comment, and establish rapport where your buyers already engage.
• Follow up through email or calls. Your CRM maintains the context, ensuring each touchpoint feels personalized.
• Foster relationships over time. By synchronizing LinkedIn activity, you can determine the best moments to engage and close.

In 2025, success belongs to the teams that meet prospects where they are active online. LinkedIn is where business gets done. Without a CRM crafted to maximize its capabilities, every outreach effort risks becoming slower, less focused, and harder to scale.

What is Hubspot?

HubSpot is a premier all-in-one CRM that unifies marketing, sales, and service functionalities into a cohesive platform. With its user-friendly tools, managing contacts, tracking pipelines, and automating outreach becomes seamless. The integrated analytics and smooth integrations empower teams to enhance their performance and scale effortlessly.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an AI-driven CRM designed to accelerate LinkedIn prospecting and networking for sales teams. Its Chrome extension enables you to effortlessly capture and enrich contact information directly from LinkedIn profiles with just one click, automatically adding new prospects to Clarify. The AI analyzes your LinkedIn interactions and recommends the best times to connect for maximum engagement, ensuring your outreach is timely. Additionally, Clarify offers smart follow-up suggestions based on earlier conversations, helping you maintain active discussions without any guesswork.

Feature comparison of Hubspot and Clarify

AI Follow-ups

HubSpot lacks native LinkedIn profile capture functionality. Consequently, you cannot add a contact from LinkedIn to your CRM with a single click, and the HubSpot Chrome extension does not interact with LinkedIn at all. The only solution is to utilize third-party tools like Surfe or Leadjet to transfer LinkedIn profiles into HubSpot. For those engaged in outbound prospecting on LinkedIn, this adds an extra step, hindering efficiency. HubSpot is not designed to facilitate streamlined LinkedIn data collection.

In contrast, LinkedIn Profile Capture in Clarify leverages the Chrome extension, allowing users to create or update people records directly from LinkedIn profiles. While browsing, a sales representative can quickly add a contact to Clarify in just a few clicks, linking them to the appropriate company. Essential profile information is transferred into the CRM automatically rather than requiring manual copying. This approach ensures that LinkedIn sourcing remains connected to structured records, making them easily usable in lists, filters, and pipelines.

Automated Contact Enrichment

HubSpot does not enrich leads using LinkedIn data. Even with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration, you can only view LinkedIn profile information within HubSpot; syncing or enriching contact records is not possible. Any enrichment—such as email, phone number, or job title—must come from other HubSpot sources, like email tracking or connected tools. Therefore, if your primary leads originate from LinkedIn, be prepared to manually update CRM fields or utilize a third-party enrichment layer.

Clarify's LinkedIn Lead Enrichment focuses on transforming captured profiles into usable CRM contacts. When a user saves a LinkedIn profile through the extension, Clarify automatically creates or updates the record with essential identity and company details derived from the profile. This process aims to minimize manual edits on fields like name, role, and employer, providing sales teams with cleaner, LinkedIn-sourced data for their outreach and follow-up activities.

Smart Fields

HubSpot lacks native tracking for LinkedIn activity; thus, if you send an InMail or DM, it won't show up in the contact timeline unless you log it manually. While the Sales Navigator integration provides insights into mutual connections and job changes, it does not track interaction history, which leads teams to operate in silos and makes LinkedIn communications invisible to the CRM—a significant drawback when LinkedIn is integral to your sales process.

Furthermore, LinkedIn Message Templates are not natively managed within Clarify. Typically, teams create and organize their LinkedIn templates in dedicated outbound or social selling tools, with Clarify serving as the central CRM. However, you can leverage the contact and deal data stored in Clarify to personalize messages while drafting them in external tools, allowing Clarify to concentrate on data and pipeline management instead of fully automating LinkedIn messaging.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

HubSpot does not natively track LinkedIn activity; thus, any InMail or DM sent through the platform will not be reflected in the contact timeline unless logged manually. While the Sales Navigator integration provides insights into mutual connections and job changes, it lacks the ability to track interaction history, which can lead to teams operating in silos and leaving LinkedIn communications hidden from the CRM. This is a significant drawback when LinkedIn plays a crucial role in your sales strategy.

In contrast, LinkedIn Engagement Tracking in Clarify relies on integrations and workflows that funnel activity data into the CRM. When LinkedIn messages or events are sent to Clarify, they are displayed alongside emails, meetings, and other touchpoints on the contact timeline. This allows sales representatives to easily review who has been contacted on LinkedIn and when. Clarify ensures this history is well-organized while complementing the specialized tools used for daily LinkedIn messaging.

Next Best Action

The HubSpot Chrome extension is tailored for Gmail and Outlook, not for LinkedIn. As a result, it neither appears nor functions while browsing LinkedIn profiles. You won’t find features for capturing LinkedIn contacts, enriching data, or messaging support within the extension. If you’re aiming for an integrated LinkedIn workflow in your browser, HubSpot unfortunately does not provide that capability, necessitating the use of integrations or third-party tools.

The Chrome Extension for LinkedIn serves as the primary link between Clarify and the LinkedIn interface. It enables users to capture prospects directly from profile pages and seamlessly transfer the data into Clarify in a single step. Contacts created through this method are automatically populated with essential fields, reducing the need for manual data entry. This extension is specifically designed for easy, individual capture of LinkedIn profiles into Clarify, rather than for bulk operations.

folk CRM: The Best CRM Alternative for LinkedIn!

folk is the sales assistant your team has been eagerly anticipating. Designed for simplicity, integration, and proactivity, this CRM handles repetitive tasks, allowing your representatives to concentrate on what truly matters: cultivating genuine relationships on LinkedIn and beyond. With an impressive 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs for lean and ambitious teams.

Tailored specifically for startups, agencies, and sales-focused teams, folk makes AI practical, efficient, and easy to handle. It accelerates the transformation of LinkedIn connections into qualified opportunities while maintaining an effortless workflow.

1. Instant LinkedIn Prospect Capture with the folkX Extension

Prospecting on LinkedIn can be time-consuming, but folk streamlines the process. With the folkX Chrome extension, you can quickly capture leads from LinkedIn or Sales Navigator, adding them directly to your CRM with just one click. Whether saving a single profile or hundreds from a filtered search, all relevant details—including names, job titles, companies, and emails—are seamlessly integrated into your database.

Say goodbye to tedious copy-pasting and juggling multiple spreadsheets. Your complete prospect list is neatly organized in one place, fully synchronized with your workflows, empowering your team to act swiftly and focus on converting connections into opportunities rather than wasting hours on manual data entry!

2. Smart Data Enrichment and Always-Clean Contact Profiles

Engaging decision-makers is only fruitful when armed with complete and accurate data. folk removes the burden of extensive research by automatically enriching your LinkedIn contacts with verified emails, company details, phone numbers, and roles. With a single click, you gain everything needed to personalize your outreach and initiate meaningful conversations.

The platform intelligently deduplicates to maintain a clean and reliable database, even when multiple team members add the same contacts. Instead of spending time managing disorganized spreadsheets or guessing lead ownership, folk ensures your data is structured and current, making every LinkedIn outreach relevant and impactful.

3. Personalized LinkedIn Outreach with AI-Generated Message Templates

folk revolutionizes your prospecting approach on LinkedIn by providing AI-powered message templates directly within the LinkedIn inbox. Upon opening a conversation, you’ll see smart suggestions for connection requests, follow-ups, and outreach messages tailored to your prospect's profile and context.

You can edit, personalize, and send them manually to adhere to LinkedIn's policies. This means no risky automation or tedious copy-pasting between tools—everything is streamlined where the conversation begins, making your outreach quicker, more relevant, and far more natural.

👉 Try folk CRM for free

Summary: folk CRM's LinkedIn Features

• Instantly capture leads with the folkX Chrome extension, importing LinkedIn and Sales Navigator profiles with a single click, while automatically organizing every detail in your CRM.
• Easily enrich contact data by retrieving verified emails, company details, and roles, all while maintaining a clean and accurate database through smart deduplication.
• Send smarter LinkedIn messages using AI-generated templates right within the LinkedIn inbox, enabling you to personalize outreach more efficiently without resorting to risky automation!

Conclusion

When it comes to CRM options for LinkedIn, HubSpot offers an all-in-one solution for marketing and sales integration, while Clarify focuses on AI-driven prospecting and LinkedIn engagement. However, folk CRM stands out as a superior alternative, specifically designed for LinkedIn workflows. It simplifies lead capture with the folkX extension, enriches contact data automatically, and provides AI-generated message templates to enhance outreach efforts. Ultimately, folk CRM empowers teams to maximize their LinkedIn potential with efficiency and personalization.

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