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Contact management is the crucial point where a CRM either remains effective or devolves into chaos. Streak and HubSpot exemplify this challenge.
Social selling thrives at the intersection of your CRM and your network. If your tool fails to track LinkedIn activities, comments, and warm introductions, you not only lose visibility but also risk losing deals to teams that maintain closer connections with their relationships.
folk and Clarify both position themselves as modern, relationship-centric CRMs. Clarify excels at transforming unstructured interactions into organized records, while folk offers teams a flexible workspace tailored for social selling, allowing them to monitor contacts, signals, and pipeline in one convenient location.
In this comparison, we will explore how each CRM facilitates effective social selling workflows, helping you determine which one best aligns with your team's approach to building and nurturing relationships.
Why is a social selling CRM essential in 2026?
Most B2B deals do not initiate with a cold email or a demo request; they often begin with a LinkedIn comment, a repost, a direct message, or a quiet profile visit. If your CRM cannot capture these signals and connect them to real people and pipelines, your team is operating in the dark while competitors cultivate relationships right in front of them.
A social selling CRM provides a centralized platform 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. Instead of viewing LinkedIn as a mere “nice-to-have” awareness tool, it evolves into a measurable, repeatable process within your revenue engine.
With a social selling CRM, your team can:
✔️ Identify buying signals from likes, comments, and profile views and convert them into follow-up opportunities
✔️ Distinguish which prospects know you through content versus outbound efforts and tailor your messaging accordingly
✔️ Map relationships across accounts, champions, and influencers, rather than just maintaining a list of contacts
✔️ Report on deals influenced by social activity instead of attributing all credit to last-click channels
What is Streak?
Streak is a user-friendly 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 email threads without the hassle of switching tabs, all while enjoying the familiar Gmail interface. At its core, Streak revolves around email, enhanced by real-time tracking and pipeline views that overlay your existing conversations.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM and marketing platform that integrates contact management, email, automation, and content tools into one cohesive suite. It’s particularly favored by growing companies seeking a tight alignment between sales and marketing. However, as you add more contacts, users, and advanced functionalities, costs and complexity may rise.
Feature comparison of Streak and HubSpot
Profile Enrichment & Lead Insights
Streak integrates seamlessly with Gmail, transforming your inbox into a comprehensive CRM without the need for additional windows or apps. Each email you send or receive is automatically logged into the appropriate pipeline and shared within your team’s workspace, ensuring you have an up-to-date timeline on every deal without the hassle of manual bcc’ing.
HubSpot’s Intelligence features gather enrichment data from connected sources, including company details, job titles, industry information, and social media links, enabling reps to approach leads with complete context.
Social Listening & Real-Time Alerts
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 into the relevant pipeline, ensuring your team always has access to the latest activity without any 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 exceptional uptime and reliability.
HubSpot’s Social tool offers real-time monitoring for mentions, likes, shares, and comments across LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter). You can set up alerts for specific keywords or brand mentions, allowing you to respond swiftly.
Social Selling: Which channels?
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 need for CSV imports or third-party applications. You can effortlessly insert custom variables (like first names, company names, and deal data) from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences within the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to maximize reply rates. Every sent message and follow-up is logged seamlessly in your Streak timeline, so you’ll always know who has opened, clicked, or replied. However, keep in mind that Streak’s campaign features lack advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling unless you incorporate an additional tool.
HubSpot offers native publishing and engagement features for LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter), enabling you to respond, post, and analyze performance all within the same platform.
In‑Context Messaging with Templates & Sequences
Streak’s Mail Merge tool, integrated directly within Gmail, allows 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 effortlessly insert custom variables (like first name, company, and deal data) straight from your pipelines, schedule automatic follow-up sequences in the same thread, and even A/B test subject lines to boost reply rates. Each 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 worth noting that Streak’s campaign features fall short in providing advanced analytics dashboards, meaning you won’t receive detailed reports on unsubscribes or bounce handling without integrating another tool.
In contrast, HubSpot does not offer social messaging sequences directly within the browser; instead, email sequences and templates are managed through the Sales Hub and not from the LinkedIn interface.
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 click data for each link without leaving your inbox. Since it's entirely based on Gmail's API, setup is minimal, and feedback is instant; however, aggregated campaign dashboards or multi-link heat mapping features are not available beyond individual message views.
On the other hand, HubSpot tracks a comprehensive array of activities, including emails, calls, meetings, and social interactions, linking engagement metrics from social media posts to contacts whenever possible.
folk CRM: The Ultimate CRM for Social Selling!
folk CRM is an innovative social selling CRM that transforms social selling into a streamlined, repeatable workflow. It quickly captures contacts, maintains conversation context, and minimizes manual tasks through enrichment and intelligent fields, ensuring timely follow-ups.
Designed for LinkedIn-driven outreach, folk allows teams to consolidate leads from various sources, organize them in custom pipelines, and monitor every touchpoint in a single location. Automatic contact enrichment fills in gaps, deduplication keeps the database tidy, and shared notes and tags facilitate warm introductions and easy access to relationship histories across the team.
For effective daily social selling, folk ensures consistent execution: segment leads, personalize outreach, set reminders, log interactions, and progress opportunities through the pipeline—all while preserving the human context essential for closing deals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while Streak offers seamless Gmail integration for efficient email management, and HubSpot provides a comprehensive suite for aligning sales and marketing, both can fall short in social selling workflows. folk stands out as the best alternative by delivering advanced email integration, streamlined automation, and customizable sequencing tailored for social selling success. With folk, teams can maintain context, enhance relationship management, and execute daily outreach with ease, making it the optimal choice for modern sales strategies.
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