Streak vs HubSpot: Which CRM is the best for automation?

Deciding between Streak and HubSpot hinges on a crucial question: which CRM truly saves time on automation rather than adding to administrative tasks?

For teams that value simplicity, folk provides one of the most efficient and robust automation solutions available in any CRM. It enables users to automate emails based on custom-defined conditions and perform actions through the API seamlessly.

Why Automation Is Essential for CRM in 2026

Automation has become the cornerstone of modern revenue teams. Sales and marketing must manage an increasing number of leads, channels, and intricate buying journeys without expanding their teams or compromising on personalization. A CRM that still depends on manual data entry, sporadic follow-ups, and outdated reporting methods wastes valuable time, energy, and focus that could be spent on meaningful customer interactions.

Here are the main reasons why automation is now indispensable:

• Buyers expect prompt and relevant responses across various platforms, including email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and phone calls.
• Sales pipelines move swiftly, and any overlooked follow-up can lead to missed revenue opportunities.
• The volume of data has skyrocketed, making manual updates both impractical and unreliable.
• Leadership requires real-time visibility into performance rather than relying on end-of-month estimates.

The true value of a CRM lies in how much it alleviates the workload for the team, rather than the number of fields it can accommodate. The most effective platform automatically captures activities, maintains clean records in the background, and prompts the appropriate next steps at the right times, allowing representatives to concentrate on nurturing relationships and closing deals instead of managing the tool.

What is Streak?

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Streak is a lightweight CRM seamlessly integrated within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a collaborative pipeline for sales, support, and account management. Users can manage deals, track progress, and collaborate on discussions without the need to switch tabs, all from the familiar Gmail interface. At its core, Streak leverages email, enhancing it with real-time tracking and pipeline views over your existing conversations.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that integrates marketing, sales, and customer service, all centered around a unified contact database. Its email integration allows sales representatives to connect their personal Gmail and Outlook inboxes, enabling them to send individual emails, log responses, and initiate sequences directly from either the CRM or their inbox. Features like open and click tracking, templates, and shared timelines ensure that email interactions are visible across the entire revenue team.

Feature comparison of Streak and HubSpot

Integration Capabilities

Streak fully integrates within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without the need for additional windows or applications. Every email you send or receive is automatically recorded in the appropriate pipeline and shared across your team's workspace, ensuring you have a real-time overview of each deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.

HubSpot provides seamless two-way email integration for Gmail, Outlook, and any IMAP-compatible provider, enabling you to send one-to-one emails directly from contact records while automatically logging every reply in your CRM timeline. Its native scheduler also syncs meeting events with Google Calendar or Office 365, complete with automatic guest invitations and timeline entries for enhanced visibility.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Streak’s email sync operates in real time, seamlessly integrated within Gmail’s infrastructure. As soon as you send or receive a message, Streak instantly logs it to the relevant pipeline, so your team always has access to the latest activity without any delay. With virtually no lag or queuing, messages and thread updates appear immediately in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. This direct connection to Gmail also means you benefit from Google’s top-notch uptime and reliability.

Meanwhile, HubSpot’s email synchronization functions on a near-real-time basis with Gmail and Outlook, typically updating changes within seconds to a minute. Once your account is connected, HubSpot maintains a continuous connection via OAuth, constantly pushing and pulling message data to keep your CRM timeline current. This reliability is enhanced by HubSpot’s global cloud infrastructure, which boasts an impressive 99.99% uptime for its core services.

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—no CSV imports or third-party applications necessary. You can easily insert custom variables like first names, company details, and deal information straight from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences in the same thread, and even conduct A/B tests on 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 lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning detailed reporting on unsubscribes or bounce handling will require an additional tool.

On the other hand, HubSpot’s CRM connects via OAuth to Gmail, Outlook, or any IMAP-compatible provider for genuine two-way email sync, enabling you to send and receive one-to-one emails directly from contact records, with every reply logging seamlessly to the appropriate timeline event. Regarding calendars, HubSpot’s native integrations with Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar facilitate bi-directional sync: meetings created in your external calendar appear on contact, company, or deal timelines, while events scheduled in HubSpot automatically sync back to your calendar with guest invites included.

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 under two minutes—no need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can easily insert custom variables such as first names, company details, and deal data from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences on the same thread, and even conduct A/B tests on subject lines to maximize reply rates. Each sent message and follow-up is logged seamlessly in your Streak timeline, ensuring you maintain visibility over who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign features fall short of advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you integrate another tool.

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise offer robust one-to-one sequences, allowing you to enroll up to 50 contacts at once and send hundreds of personalized emails per user each day. Its intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, manages delays, and detects replies, while the Marketing Hub can scale to thousands of recipients, complete with segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most powerful campaign features reside in the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users without this add-on will encounter limitations on total sends and more basic reporting capabilities.

Open and Click Tracking

Streak integrates a small tracking pixel and link tracker directly into Gmail, allowing you to see real-time “eye” icons each time an email is opened or a link is clicked in a specific thread. By hovering over the green eye, you can view timestamps, locations, and click data for each link without leaving your inbox. Since it operates entirely on Gmail’s API, setup is minimal, and you receive instant feedback; however, aggregated campaign dashboards and multi-link heat mapping beyond individual message views are not available.

HubSpot Sales monitors opens and clicks for every one-to-one email sent from contact records or through the Sales extension, delivering real-time desktop notifications and logging each event on the timeline. Note that click tracking requires a paid Sales Hub seat—free users will only see opens—and you can check total clicks per link directly in the email activity feed. More advanced attribution features, such as multi-variant link analysis across campaigns, are available in Marketing Hub, meaning pure Sales Hub users will miss out on enterprise-level click analytics unless they opt for the add-on.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Streak operates entirely within Gmail, providing comprehensive CRM capabilities—such as pipelines, contact details, and email logging—without you ever needing to leave your inbox. The sidebar showcases deal stages, custom fields, and shared notes alongside every email thread, ensuring you always have contextual information at your fingertips. You can seamlessly drag and drop emails into various pipelines or update statuses on the go, creating a cohesive experience that merges your inbox with your CRM. However, keep in mind that Streak's Gmail-exclusive nature means you won't enjoy this integrated experience if you transition to Outlook or another email client.

By installing the HubSpot Sales extension, you can view and edit HubSpot records—contacts, companies, and deals—right in Gmail or Outlook, enroll contacts in sequences, and log emails with just a click. A user-friendly CRM sidebar appears beside your inbox, allowing you to create tasks, send templated responses, and review recent interactions without needing to switch applications. It even displays lead scores and deal forecasts inline, ensuring that every email action contributes directly to your pipeline. The only downside is that if you lack a paid Sales or Service Hub seat, some in-inbox features (like sequences and call logging) remain inaccessible behind a paywall.

folk CRM: The Ultimate CRM for Automation

folk CRM is a cutting-edge, AI-native CRM designed for teams eager to simplify their deal automation. It consolidates all relationships—leads, clients, partners, candidates, and investors—into adaptable views that align with any workflow.

folk caters to automation-driven teams. With seamless email and calendar synchronization, teams can effortlessly automate follow-ups and outreach on a larger scale. New conditional email automations enable you to trigger messages based on real-time data within folk—such as automatically sending onboarding or handoff emails whenever a contact transitions to a client or a deal is confirmed as signed.

Driven by AI, folk enhances data, generates engaging icebreakers, crafts personalized emails, and recommends optimal next actions. Its open API and webhooks integrate smoothly with platforms like Zapier and Make, facilitating sophisticated workflows across email, WhatsApp, Slack, billing, and internal systems.

With one-click contact capture through the folkX Chrome extension and collaborative pipelines, folk empowers teams with a lightweight yet robust CRM that scales automation while maintaining complete control.

Conclusion

In summary, Streak excels with its seamless Gmail integration, providing a lightweight CRM experience directly within the inbox. HubSpot offers a comprehensive platform with robust two-way email synchronization and advanced campaign management. However, for teams focused on email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk stands out as the premier choice. Its AI-driven features streamline deal automation and enhance outreach across multiple channels, making it the best alternative for teams seeking efficiency and simplicity in their CRM solutions. Try folk CRM for free

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