Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Contact management is where a CRM either remains effective or devolves into chaos. Streak and Freshsales.
Social selling thrives at the intersection of your CRM and your network. If your tool fails to keep pace with LinkedIn activities, comments, and warm introductions, you risk losing not only visibility but also deals to teams that are more attuned to their relationships.
folk and Clarify both position themselves as modern, relationship-first CRMs. Clarify emphasizes transforming unstructured interactions into organized records, while folk offers teams a flexible workspace suited for social selling, allowing them to track contacts, signals, and their pipeline all in one place.
In this comparison, we'll explore how each CRM facilitates authentic social selling workflows, helping you determine which one aligns best with your team's approach to building and nurturing relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals don't initiate with a cold email or a demo request; they begin with a LinkedIn comment, a repost, a direct message, or a quiet profile visit. If your CRM can't capture these signals and connect them to real people and pipelines, your team will be navigating in the dark while competitors cultivate relationships right before your eyes.
A social selling CRM provides a centralized space to convert these interactions into structured, actionable insights: who engaged, where they originated, what interests them, and how close they are to making a purchase. Rather than viewing LinkedIn as merely “nice-to-have awareness,” it becomes a measurable, repeatable component of your revenue strategy.
With a social selling CRM, your team can:
✔️ Identify buying signals from likes, comments, and profile views, and convert them into follow-ups.
✔️ Track which prospects are familiar with you through content versus outbound efforts, allowing for tailored messaging.
✔️ Map relationships across accounts, champions, and influencers—not just contacts on a list.
✔️ Report on deals influenced by social activity, rather than attributing all credit to last-click channels.
What is Streak?
Streak is a streamlined CRM integrated directly within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. Users can seamlessly manage deals, track progress, and collaborate directly from the familiar Gmail interface without the hassle of switching tabs. Email is at the heart of Streak, enhanced by real-time tracking and pipeline views that overlay on your existing Gmail conversations.
What is Freshsales?
Freshsales is a CRM solution by Freshworks that consolidates contacts, deals, email, telephony, and essential automation into a single platform. Tailored for sales teams, it offers multiple channels without the complexity of full enterprise solutions. Depending on the selected plan, configuration and feature depth can vary, and some setup time may be necessary.
Feature comparison of Streak and Freshsales
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
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 and shared within your team’s workspace, providing you with an up-to-date timeline for each deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.
In contrast, Freshsales lacks built-in enrichment for social profiles, requiring users to manually update contacts or utilize third-party tools like Clearbit or Lusha for enrichment.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
Streak’s email synchronization occurs in real time, seamlessly integrated within Gmail’s infrastructure. The moment you send or receive a message, Streak promptly logs it into the relevant pipeline, ensuring your team always has access to the most current activity without delay. There’s virtually no lag—messages and thread updates appear instantly in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. By connecting directly to Gmail, you enjoy the benefits of Google’s exceptional uptime and reliability.
In contrast, Freshsales lacks features for social listening or engagement tracking, focusing solely on email, SMS, and phone channels.
Social Selling: Which channels?
Streak’s Mail Merge tool is built right into Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in under two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables (like first name, company, and deal data) from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences in the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to improve reply rates. Every message and follow-up is logged seamlessly in your Streak timeline, ensuring you always have visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or how bounces are managed unless you integrate another tool.
Freshsales facilitates multichannel outreach through email, phone, and SMS, but it does not offer native support for social platform interactions or monitoring.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
Streak’s Mail Merge tool integrates seamlessly within Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in under two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables, such as first name, company, and deal data, directly from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to enhance reply rates. Every sent message and follow-up is automatically logged in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, it’s important to note that Streak’s campaign features do not include advanced analytics dashboards; as a result, you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you integrate another tool.
In contrast, Freshsales does not offer in-context messaging or social automation, and all sequences are restricted to internal channels, such as email or calls.
Activity & Engagement Tracking
Streak integrates a small tracking pixel and link tracker directly into Gmail, providing real-time “eye” icons that indicate when an email is opened or a link is clicked within a thread. By hovering over the green eye, you can view timestamps, locations, and detailed click data for each link without leaving your inbox. Since it's built solely on Gmail’s API, setup is minimal, and you receive instant feedback; however, aggregated campaign dashboards and multi-link heat-mapping are not available, as tracking is limited to individual message views.
Freshsales offers activity tracking that encompasses emails, calls, meetings, and SMS, but it does not include social engagement, meaning no social signals are linked to contact records.
folk CRM: The Ultimate CRM for Social Selling!
folk CRM is a cutting-edge CRM designed for social selling, transforming it into a streamlined and repeatable process. It swiftly captures contacts, maintains conversation context, and minimizes manual tasks with enrichment and intelligent fields, ensuring timely follow-ups.
Tailored for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk enables teams to centralize leads from various sources, organize them into custom pipelines, and monitor every interaction in a single location. Automatic contact enrichment fills information gaps, deduplication keeps the database tidy, and shared notes and tags facilitate warm introductions and relationship tracking across the team.
For effective daily social selling, folk promotes consistent execution: segment leads, customize outreach, set reminders, log interactions, and guide opportunities through a pipeline while preserving the personal touch that ultimately closes deals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while Streak excels in email integration and direct Gmail functionality, and Freshsales provides a consolidated platform for multi-channel communication, neither matches the comprehensive capabilities of folk. Folk stands out as the premier choice for teams focused on social selling, offering seamless email integration, automated follow-ups, and a flexible workspace for managing relationships efficiently. With features designed specifically for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk ensures that your social selling strategy is effective and efficient.
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