Pipedrive x Freshsworks: Which AI CRM is the best?

AI has evolved beyond a mere feature; it now serves as the driving force behind smarter pipelines, quicker decisions, and more robust customer relationships.

With a focus on predictive insights and automated workflows, CRM platforms are now distinguishing themselves by how thoroughly they incorporate AI into every interaction.

While both Pipedrive and Freshworks offer intelligent sales assistance, their depth of AI integration, user-friendliness, and overall business impact differ greatly. For teams that prefer simplicity over complexity and wish to avoid cluttered dashboards, folk provides seamless AI integration that enables timely follow-ups and insightful analysis of calls and emails—representing the most effective application of AI within a CRM.

Why AI Integration Matters?

AI revolutionizes CRMs, transforming them from static databases into proactive sales assistants. Rather than waiting for representatives to sift through contacts or draft follow-up messages, AI now automates essential actions, forecasts outcomes, and enriches data in real-time.

• Faster decisions. AI identifies which leads to prioritize based on intent signals or deal velocity.
• Smarter outreach. Tools offer suggestions for message templates, optimal timing, and even analyze tone or sentiment.
• Cleaner data. Eliminate manual entry; AI auto-fills missing information and flags duplicates or outdated records.
• Sales forecasting. Predictive models enable teams to identify pipeline risks before they emerge.
• B2B data enrichment. AI quickly gathers company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact information to complete lead records effortlessly.
• AI-powered sequences. Personalized cold emails are automatically generated and scheduled based on deal stage, persona, or interaction history.

By deeply embedding AI into a CRM, representatives can spend less time on administrative tasks and focus more on actual selling, which is what truly sets apart a good CRM from one that drives significant revenue!

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant is integrated into your pipeline feed, delivering win-probability scores and next-best-action prompts, allowing sales reps to concentrate on the most promising deals. It crafts personalized outreach emails, condenses lengthy email threads into concise briefs, and alerts you when deals stagnate. You can interact with the Assistant through chat or voice for context-aware insights about your performance, and it even recommends useful integrations and features to enhance your toolkit. All insights and reminders are seamlessly organized into a unified feed—eliminating guesswork and promoting guided selling.

What is Freshworks?

Freshworks’ Freddy AI encompasses both sales and support, functioning as a copilot, agent, and analyst. In Freshsales, Freddy evaluates leads, categorizes deals as “Likely to Close” or “At Risk,” and provides a Kanban-style pipeline overview along with automated email sequences. Meanwhile, in Freshdesk, Freddy Copilot offers reply suggestions, translates, and summarizes tickets in real time, and drives chatbots for self-service. Freddy Insights proactively alerts you to issues, conducts root cause analyses, and identifies trends, empowering you to address service challenges before they escalate.

Feature comparison of Pipedrive and Freshsworks

AI Follow-ups

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant keeps an eye on your deal activity and recommends optimal times for follow-ups. After each call or email, it can generate a follow-up task with a suggested date and even offer the opening lines for your email based on previous conversations. You have the flexibility to modify the content or timing before the task enters your pipeline. For those who require multi-step branching, Pipedrive’s Workflow Automation can automatically manage different paths—sending one template if the prospect replies and another if they don’t.

Freshworks' Freddy actively monitors your inbox for meeting requests or date mentions, instantly popping up a task or calendar event suggestion as soon as it detects them. When a prospect mentions, “Let’s chat Tuesday” or “I’ll get back to you next week,” Freddy swiftly analyzes the text, identifies the appropriate date and time zone, and prompts you to schedule the follow-up—eliminating the need for manual copy-pasting. You can effortlessly adjust the reminder or meeting invite, ensuring you never miss a crucial follow-up after an important email.

Automated Contact Enrichment

Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data automatically fills in essential fields by scanning email signatures and public web records. As soon as you add a new contact, their company name, website, location, and social profiles appear within seconds—eliminating the need for manual research. For more detailed firmographic or technographic insights, such as tech stack or funding information, integrate a Marketplace enrichment app like Clearbit or FullContact to enhance your records in real time.

Freshsales’ built-in auto profile enrichment utilizes public records and social profiles to enrich every new lead instantly. Freddy AI automatically adds names, titles, company data, phone numbers, and even social links to your contact records as soon as they arrive, ensuring your CRM remains organized without the hassle of extra imports. For comprehensive firmographic or technographic intelligence, including tech stacks or funding rounds, simply integrate marketplace enrichers like Clearbit or InsideView for seamless, real-time data enhancement.

Smart Fields

With Pipedrive's AI Sales Assistant, you can effortlessly request a tailored outreach email sequence, complete with subject lines, body copy, and send intervals suited to your deal stage. In just minutes, you’ll receive ready-to-use email templates that can be saved in Pipedrive or integrated into Smart Email BCC for automated delivery. Need follow-up triggers? Simply incorporate those steps into your Workflow Automation, allowing the system to manage everything seamlessly.

While Freshsales may not explicitly use the term “Smart Fields,” it offers you comprehensive control over custom fields, with Freddy ensuring they remain up to date. Create any custom property you require, and Freddy will automatically populate those fields by analyzing incoming emails, public data, and your CRM history. The outcome? Dynamic forms and records enriched with AI-generated values, ready for segmentation, scoring, or personalized outreach.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

With Pipedrive's AI Sales Assistant, you can effortlessly request outreach drafts, and it will generate a complete, on-brand email sequence for you, including subject lines, body content, and sending intervals tailored specifically to your deal stage. Within minutes, you'll have ready-to-use email templates that you can either save in Pipedrive or integrate into Smart Email BCC for automated delivery. Looking for follow-up triggers? Simply incorporate those steps into your Workflow Automation, and let the system take care of everything.

Activate Freddy’s Email Generator and the “Generate Sales Emails” feature to create subject lines, email content, and follow-up sequences with just a few easy prompts. Specify the persona and objective—such as “5-step outreach to ISVs” or “post-demo recap email”—and within seconds, you'll receive polished, on-brand templates. You can save these as templates or integrate them into Freshsales’ workflow automation, allowing you to trigger each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates, ensuring seamless full-funnel outreach without the hassle of copywriting.

Next Best Action

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant evaluates your pipeline health, historical win patterns, and engagement signals to identify the most impactful next step—be it a call, a tailored email, or sharing a proposal. These recommendations are conveniently displayed in your deal view or as Task suggestions. You can also sync them with your calendar or integrate with Zapier, ensuring that your reps always know precisely what to do next and when.

Freddy’s Deal Insights and AI View analyze your pipeline data—including deal size, stage, past win rates, and recent activity—to categorize every opportunity as “Likely to Close,” “Trending,” or “At Risk.” These insights fuel Next Best Action recommendations directly in your deal board or as task suggestions, such as call reminders, content sharing, or personalized nudges aimed at driving progress. Incorporate them into your workflow rules, so reps always know the exact next step, eliminating uncertainty and enhancing win rates.

folk CRM: The Best AI CRM

folk acts as the ideal sales assistant that teams wish they always had. This user-friendly, integrated, and proactive CRM handles the busy work, allowing sales reps to concentrate on cultivating genuine relationships. With an impressive 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs for lean teams.

Tailored for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk simplifies AI, making it accessible rather than overwhelming.

Extract Insights from Calls and Emails

One of folk's standout features is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, which enables sales and investment teams to extract valuable insights from recorded conversations. By integrating with dialers like Ringover, Aircall, or call recording tools like Grain for Google Meet, users can automatically import transcripts into folk. From there, they can utilize Magic Fields, a built-in AI feature that allows for the definition of prompts to extract specific details from the transcript. For instance, sales teams can seamlessly pull information such as contract value, user count, decision-makers, budget, or next steps—eliminating the need for manual note-taking. Meanwhile, investment teams can gather insights like founder background, fundraising stage, or what a startup is seeking. These fields are fully customizable; simply write a prompt, map it to the transcript, and let folk's AI handle the rest. This results in a structured, searchable CRM enriched with high-value data from your calls—streamlining follow-ups, qualification, and reporting for greater accuracy and speed.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk's AI Follow-Up feature is crafted to ensure that no opportunity is overlooked. Natively integrated into the platform, this intelligent assistant analyzes your email conversations to determine when a follow-up is warranted. For example, if you've posed a question in an email and the lead hasn't responded, folk identifies this lack of reply and prompts you to follow up precisely when needed.

Moreover, the feature operates in reverse as well—highlighting leads you may have forgotten or conversations that have grown stale. By reviewing past interactions, folk assists you in prioritizing the right contacts to re-engage, ultimately propelling deals forward. This smart, context-driven follow-up system saves time, minimizes manual tracking, and enhances your chances of closing more deals.

Summary of AI Features in folk CRM

• Suggested actions: Receive proactive reminders and AI suggestions based on recent activities or deal stages.
• Extract insights from calls: Utilize AI to gather next steps, decision-makers, leads' budgets, and essential information.
• AI-generated messages: Save time with context-aware outreach suggestions tailored to each contact.
• Duplicate management: AI identifies duplicates and tidies up messy contact lists to keep your CRM organized.

folk starts at just $20 per user per month, offering a 14-day free trial with no credit card required!

Conclusion

Both Pipedrive and Freshworks bring valuable AI capabilities to the table, enhancing sales processes and customer interactions. Pipedrive excels with its AI Sales Assistant, focusing on lead prioritization and personalized outreach. Freshworks' Freddy AI, on the other hand, supports both sales and customer service, offering real-time insights and proactive alerts. Yet, for teams seeking simplicity and effective AI integration, folk stands out as an excellent alternative. It streamlines follow-ups, provides actionable insights from calls and emails, and keeps your CRM organized—all while remaining user-friendly and accessible.

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