Email continues to be the backbone of modern sales communication, facilitating deal progression, follow-ups, and the deepening of relationships.

As teams increasingly lean on automated outreach, multi-channel engagement, and precise tracking, CRMs are competing more fiercely based on the strength of their native email integrations.

While both Streak and Clarify provide built-in email workflows, their depth, usability, and impact on daily sales operations vary significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity over clutter and seeking fast, reliable email execution, folk offers one of the cleanest and most powerful email integrations in any CRM, simplifying the process of sending, tracking, and automating outreach directly from your workspace.

Why Email Integration Matters?

Effective email integration elevates a CRM from a mere database to a centralized communication hub. Rather than toggling between tabs or using disparate tools, sales representatives can send messages, automate follow-ups, and monitor engagement all from one platform.

• Centralized communication: All emails—both sent and received—sync automatically with the appropriate contact or deal.
• Smarter follow-ups: Automated reminders and sequences enable reps to follow up at optimal times without manual intervention.
• Real-time tracking: Open rates, clicks, and replies are directly integrated into the CRM, guiding subsequent actions.
• Cleaner data: Emails instantly enrich contact profiles with context and conversation history.
• Email templates: Reusable, personalized templates help teams maintain consistency and save time.
• Outreach automation: Easily send bulk emails, sequences, or triggered messages based on deal stages or contact activities.

When a CRM manages email seamlessly, representatives can shift focus from juggling tools to engaging in conversations that drive revenue. This is the key distinction between a good CRM and one that genuinely accelerates sales!

What is Streak?

Streak is a lightweight CRM seamlessly integrated within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. Rather than juggling multiple tabs, users can manage deals, monitor stages, and collaborate on threads directly from the familiar Gmail interface. At its core, email remains central to the product, enhanced with real-time tracking and pipeline views overlaid on existing Gmail conversations.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an AI-native CRM designed for startups and agile sales teams seeking to streamline email, meetings, and deal contexts in one cohesive interface. It integrates with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to automatically sync emails, calendars, and meeting insights, leveraging that data to create timelines and suggest AI-driven follow-ups. Users can compose and send emails directly from Clarify, ensuring engagement is recorded back to contacts and deals, rather than getting lost in individual inboxes.

Feature comparison of Streak and Clarify

Integration Capabilities

Streak seamlessly integrates with Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without the need for additional windows or apps. Every email you send or receive is automatically recorded in the appropriate pipeline, ensuring your team has access to a real-time timeline for each deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.

Clarify connects with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, allowing sales teams to automatically capture Gmail, Outlook, calendar, and meeting activities within the CRM. It also integrates with tools like Zapier, Segment, Posthog, and webhooks to facilitate the transfer of customer and product usage data in and out of the database. A forthcoming integration with Loops aims to send Clarify events to a SaaS-focused email platform, rather than replacing it. Overall, Clarify prioritizes consolidating essential inbox and meeting data into one location, rather than providing an extensive native marketing ecosystem.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Streak’s email synchronization occurs in real time, seamlessly integrated within Gmail’s infrastructure. As soon as you send or receive a message, Streak instantly logs it to the appropriate pipeline, ensuring your team is always updated with the latest activity without delay. There’s virtually no lag—messages and thread updates appear immediately in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. By connecting directly to Gmail, you also benefit from Google’s renowned uptime and reliability.

Clarify focuses on the automatic ingestion of email and calendar data rather than requiring manual logging. Once Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is linked, messages, events, and meeting intelligence synchronize in the background, associating with the correct contacts, companies, and deals. The product highlights features like “auto-capture,” “auto-sync,” and continuous CRM updates but does not provide detailed user-facing sync schedules. As a newer tool, Clarify’s integrations are still evolving and may not be as robust as those of established CRMs, even though its core email and calendar synchronization is marketed as standard functionality.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly within Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in under two minutes—without the need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables (such as first name, company, and deal data) from your pipelines, set up automatic follow-up sequences on the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Every sent message and follow-up is logged seamlessly in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, it's worth noting that Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won't receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you integrate another tool.

Clarify connects with both Gmail and Outlook, enabling inbound and outbound emails to be consolidated into contact and deal timelines, which the AI agent can then utilize for follow-up suggestions. Following the July 2025 update, users will also be able to send emails directly from Clarify, with both the sent messages and replies being recorded in the appropriate records. Additionally, calendar events and meeting summaries from platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams are integrated into the same timelines, providing teams with a straightforward two-way view of conversations and meetings. In practice, this is tailored more towards everyday sales follow-up rather than sophisticated marketing automation.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly within Gmail, enabling you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in less than two minutes—no CSV imports or third-party apps needed. You can easily insert custom variables (like first name, company, and deal data) from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences on the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Each sent message and follow-up is automatically logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you always have visibility into who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, so detailed reporting on unsubscribes or bounce handling requires the addition of another tool.

Clarify allows representatives to send one-to-one follow-up emails directly from the CRM, often drafted with the help of its AI agent based on meeting and email context. However, external reviews and Clarify’s own positioning indicate that the product currently does not support complete multi-channel sequences or traditional mail merge-style bulk campaigns. For nurture streams and onboarding journeys, teams must rely on external tools like Loops or other marketing platforms through integrations. Consequently, Clarify remains focused on sales communication and pipeline maintenance, while more established CRMs take on heavier campaign responsibilities.

Open and Click Tracking

Streak integrates a small tracking pixel and link tracker directly into Gmail, providing you with real-time “eye” icons that indicate when an email is opened or a link is clicked within a thread. Simply hover over the green eye to view timestamps, locations, and detailed click data for each link, all without leaving your inbox. Since it operates solely on Gmail’s API, setup is virtually non-existent, and you receive immediate feedback—however, you won’t find aggregated campaign dashboards or multi-link heat maps beyond individual message insights.

Clarify positions itself around CRM email tracking and highlights tools that monitor opens, clicks, and replies on sales emails in its content. The goal is to capture essential engagement signals from emails sent through connected inboxes or Clarify itself, then display this activity on timelines and in follow-up recommendations. This approach enables sales teams to identify who is engaging and determine the optimal time to reconnect, all while ensuring Clarify doesn’t become an extensive analytics tool. In comparison to dedicated email platforms, reporting on these activities remains relatively straightforward and focused on deal workflows rather than comprehensive marketing analytics.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Streak operates entirely within Gmail, offering comprehensive CRM features—such as pipelines, contact information, and email logging—without requiring you to leave your inbox. The sidebar displays deal stages, custom fields, and shared notes for every thread, ensuring you always have context readily available. You can effortlessly drag and drop emails into various pipelines or update statuses on the go, creating a seamless integration of your inbox and CRM. However, since Streak is exclusive to Gmail, this integrated experience will not be available if you switch to Outlook or another email client.

In contrast, Clarify primarily maintains its functionality within its own web and macOS apps, connecting to both Gmail and Outlook rather than embedding a full CRM sidebar inside the inbox. Users can access timelines, meeting summaries, and AI-generated follow-ups in Clarify, allowing them to send or schedule emails while still utilizing their preferred mail clients. For teams fully immersed in Gmail or Outlook, this approach feels more like a cohesive workspace than a conventional “CRM within the inbox” extension. The future development plans focus on centralizing tasks and AI features within Clarify itself, rather than creating extensive UI add-ons for each email client.

folk CRM: The Best Email CRM

folk empowers teams with a seamless and connected email workflow, enhancing communication, automating follow-ups, and simplifying sequencing—all within a clean and intuitive CRM. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, it is recognized as one of the top-rated lightweight CRMs designed for modern sales and partnerships teams.

Specifically designed for startups, agencies, and scaling sales teams of 20-50, folk streamlines email operations, making them efficient rather than overwhelming.

Extract Intel from Emails

One of folk’s standout features is its ability to centralize communications, turning every email and call into actionable insights through native email synchronization with Gmail and Outlook, coupled with AI-driven analysis. Teams can:

• Quickly recap past conversations with a single click using folk's Recap assistant, which gathers insights from emails and notes to create a summary, providing context in seconds.
• Time follow-ups perfectly as AI scans conversations to alert you when to reach out to a contact and even drafts a response.

Email Sequencing & Automation

folk’s built-in sequencing engine allows you to create automated outreach flows directly within the CRM. You can design multi-step email sequences, personalize messages with CRM fields, and automatically log each interaction. Whether nurturing leads, executing outbound campaigns, or re-engaging dormant deals, folk provides a powerful yet straightforward sequencing workflow that eliminates the need for additional tools.

Set conditions based on CRM variables to trigger automatic emails, such as when a deal closes or when a new lead is acquired.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

With folk’s AI Follow-Up feature, no conversation goes unnoticed. By analyzing your email history, folk notifies you when a contact hasn’t responded, highlights cold conversations, and pinpoints the optimal times to re-engage. It functions like a built-in assistant, keeping your inbox organized and your pipeline active—without any manual tracking.

folk starts at $20 per user per month, offering native email integration and sequences, along with a 14-day free trial—no credit card needed.

Conclusion

In summary, Streak excels in seamless Gmail integration, transforming your inbox into a collaborative CRM, perfect for quick access and real-time tracking. Clarify offers a cohesive workspace with AI-driven insights and calendar syncing, appealing to agile teams that value context. However, for teams that prioritize robust email integration, automation, and streamlined sequencing, folk stands out as the superior choice. Its intuitive interface, combined with powerful email workflows and AI-assisted follow-ups, positions folk as the ideal solution for modern sales teams relying on effective email communication.

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