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

Choosing between Streak and Monday CRM ultimately hinges on one key question: which CRM truly minimizes administrative tasks through effective automation?

For teams that value simplicity, folk stands out with its streamlined and powerful automation capabilities, enabling users to automate emails based on their defined conditions and trigger actions via the API.

Why Automation Is Essential for CRM in 2026

Automation has become crucial for modern revenue teams, as sales and marketing departments are expected to manage a growing volume of leads across various channels while navigating increasingly complex buying journeys— all without expanding their teams or compromising on personalization. A CRM that depends on manual data entry, sporadic follow-ups, and outdated spreadsheet-style reporting saps valuable time, energy, and focus from genuine customer interactions.

Here are the main reasons why automation is now indispensable:

• Buyers demand prompt and relevant responses across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and phone calls.
• Pipelines progress swiftly, and any missed follow-up can lead to lost revenue.
• Data volumes are soaring, rendering manual updates 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 how many 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 cultivating relationships and closing deals instead of managing the tool.

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 manage deals, track progress, and collaborate on threads without switching tabs, all within the familiar Gmail interface. At its core, Streak is centered around email, offering real-time tracking and pipeline views seamlessly overlaid on your existing Gmail conversations.

What is Monday CRM?

Monday Sales CRM leverages monday.com’s work management platform, offering teams a visual approach to managing pipelines alongside their projects. The Emails & Activities app seamlessly integrates with Gmail and Outlook, allowing users to send, receive, and log emails directly from their boards, while tracking opens and replies where the action takes place. With templates and automation features, it standardizes follow-ups and keeps lead statuses, tasks, and email histories synchronized.

Feature comparison of Streak and Monday CRM

Integration Capabilities

Streak seamlessly integrates within Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without the need for additional windows or apps. Every email you send or receive is automatically logged into the appropriate pipeline and shared across your team's workspace, ensuring you have an up-to-date timeline on each deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.

Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app allows you to connect up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts for two-way syncing, displaying sent and received emails as items on your boards alongside calls and tasks. Although it lacks native calendar syncing within the CRM, you can create simple automations or use Monday’s Calendar view to visualize your scheduled events.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

Streak’s email sync operates in real time within Gmail’s infrastructure. As soon as you send or receive a message, Streak immediately logs it to the appropriate pipeline, ensuring your team has instant access to the latest activity. With virtually no lag or queuing, message and thread updates are reflected right away in both your inbox and Streak’s interface. By integrating directly with Gmail, you gain the advantage of Google’s exceptional uptime and reliability.

In contrast, Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app syncs your inbox every few minutes by default, regularly polling Gmail and Outlook for new messages to turn into board items. While this introduces a slight delay compared to real-time systems, updates typically appear within two to three minutes. If you require faster updates, you can adjust the polling intervals or implement custom webhooks for sub-minute responsiveness.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly into Gmail, enabling you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in just 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 straight from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within the same thread, and even perform A/B tests on subject lines to enhance reply rates. Each sent message and follow-up is logged automatically in your Streak timeline, keeping you informed about who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign features do not include advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without incorporating an additional tool.

Monday’s Emails & Activities app offers native two-way email sync for both Gmail and Outlook through straightforward integration recipes. New messages and replies are converted into pulses on your boards automatically, allowing you to keep track of your communications alongside your deals. Additionally, calendar items sync seamlessly via Monday’s Calendar Sync feature, where date and timeline columns correspond to Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal, or any external calendar, ensuring that events show up on both your board and calendar within minutes.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

Streak’s Mail Merge tool is integrated directly into Gmail, allowing you to send personalized mass emails to hundreds of recipients in less than 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) from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within 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 that you always have visibility on who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, Streak’s campaign features fall short with their lack of advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you incorporate additional tools.

On the other hand, Monday CRM’s Emails & Activities app connects up to six Gmail or Outlook accounts and includes a Group Emailing feature for sending bulk messages to board items and contact lists. You can automate follow-ups using monday.com automations or integrate with Mailchimp for comprehensive email marketing capabilities. Keep in mind that without Mailchimp or a similar add-on, you won’t have access to native campaign analytics beyond basic send logs available on your boards.

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 specific thread. By hovering over the green eye, you can view timestamps, locations, and click data for each link, all without leaving your inbox. Since it operates solely on Gmail’s API, setup is minimal and feedback is immediate; however, aggregated campaign dashboards and multi-link heat mapping are unavailable beyond individual message views.

Monday’s Emails & Activities app records message opens when you send emails through the board interface, but it doesn’t natively track link clicks. To obtain click-through rates, you need to embed links with UTM parameters and either automate data collection into your board or integrate a marketing tool like Mailchimp.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

Streak operates entirely within Gmail, offering complete CRM capabilities—including pipelines, contact details, and email logging—without you ever having to leave your inbox. The sidebar displays deal stages, custom fields, and shared notes alongside each thread, ensuring you always have context at your fingertips. You can easily drag and drop emails into various pipelines or update statuses in real-time, creating a seamless integration of your inbox and CRM. However, keep in mind that Streak is exclusive to Gmail, so if you switch to Outlook or another email client, you won't enjoy the same in-inbox experience.

On the other hand, monday.com’s Emails & Activities app operates from your boards rather than within your inbox. By connecting Gmail or Outlook, your emails transform into pulses linked to relevant items, allowing you to reply or add notes directly within monday.com. This setup is ideal for visual teams that manage everything on boards, but it doesn’t provide a true in-inbox sidebar—your work takes place in monday.com rather than your mail client.

folk CRM: The Best CRM for Automations

folk CRM is an innovative, AI-driven CRM designed for teams eager to simplify their deal automation processes. It consolidates all relationships—leads, clients, partners, candidates, and investors—into adaptable views that fit any workflow.

folk caters to automation-focused teams. With native email and calendar synchronization, teams can efficiently automate follow-ups and outreach on a large scale. Thanks to the new conditional email automations, you can trigger emails based on real-time data in folk—for instance, automatically sending onboarding or handoff emails when a contact becomes a client or a deal is marked as signed.

Harnessing the power of AI, folk enhances data, creates icebreakers, drafts personalized emails, and recommends the next best actions. Its open API and webhooks integrate effortlessly with tools like Zapier and Make, facilitating advanced workflows across email, WhatsApp, Slack, billing, and internal systems.

With one-click contact capture via the folkX Chrome extension and collaborative pipelines, folk provides teams with a lightweight yet robust CRM to scale automation while maintaining complete control.

Conclusion

In summary, Streak excels with its real-time email integration directly within Gmail, making it a strong choice for teams heavily reliant on email communication. Monday CRM offers a visual, project-based approach that supports multiple email accounts, but its sync delays can hinder responsiveness. folk, however, surpasses both with advanced automation, native email syncing, and AI-driven features that streamline communication and follow-ups. For teams prioritizing seamless email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk is the clear leader in CRM solutions.

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