ClickUp vs Clay

Stuck between choosing a CRM or project management tool? ClickUp and Clay stand out with their distinct features on outreach and project management. Both platforms aim to streamline processes, boost customer interactions, and drive sales, yet they address different organizational needs. In this blog post, we'll provide an in-depth comparison of their features, pricing, and advantages, assisting you in determining the ideal CRM for your business. We'll also introduce folk – a popular user-friendly alternative.

What is ClickUp?

ClickUp is a project management and productivity platform designed to help teams and individuals organize tasks, track progress, and collaborate in one workspace. Although it is primarily a project management tool, ClickUp includes some CRM elements.

Key features of ClickUp

• Task management: ClickUp allows users to create, assign, and track tasks with custom statuses, providing flexibility in managing work processes across different projects.
• Custom views: The platform offers multiple views like lists, boards, calendars, and Gantt charts, enabling users to visualize tasks and workflows in a format that suits their preferences.
• Goal tracking: Users can set, track, and manage goals within ClickUp, aligning tasks and projects with broader objectives.
• Time tracking: ClickUp includes a built-in time tracking feature to log time spent on tasks, allowing users to monitor productivity or billable hours.
• Workflow automation: Automation in ClickUp enables users to reduce manual tasks by setting up rules that trigger actions, such as status updates or notifications, based on predefined conditions.
• Custom fields: The platform allows users to add custom fields to tasks, enabling them to track specific data points or categorize tasks according to their needs.
  

What is Clay?

Clay is an outreach and lead generation tool designed to help businesses streamline prospecting and customer outreach. It automates data enrichment by gathering information from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn and other social platforms, to build detailed contact profiles. Clay enables users to create targeted lists, personalize outreach efforts, and manage communication workflows, focusing on improving efficiency in lead generation and outreach campaigns.

Key features of Clay

• Automated data enrichment: Clay pulls data from multiple sources, such as LinkedIn and public databases, to build comprehensive profiles on prospects, reducing the need for manual data entry.
• Prospecting and list building: Users can create targeted lists of leads by filtering and segmenting prospects based on specific criteria like location, industry, or role.
• Personalized outreach: Clay enables tailored outreach by allowing users to customize messages and emails based on the enriched profile data of each lead.
• Email sequencing: Users can set up automated email sequences for follow-ups, ensuring consistent communication without manual scheduling.
• Template management: The platform offers tools for creating and saving message templates, which helps maintain consistency in outreach efforts.
• LinkedIn integration: Clay connects with LinkedIn, allowing users to gather data directly from profiles and track LinkedIn interactions as part of their outreach strategy.

ClickUp vs. Clay: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

ClickUp does not have a dedicated pipeline management feature designed specifically for sales or CRM purposes, but users can create customizable pipelines using task lists, boards, and custom statuses. This flexibility allows teams to adapt ClickUp to their specific sales workflow, although it may require more manual setup and management.
Clay also doesn't have a pipeline dashboard per se, but it allows you to connect with your inbound lead form and then creates a dashboard based on this data. This feature can streamline the process of tracking leads and managing sales opportunities, offering a more automated approach compared to ClickUp.
While ClickUp offers a more customizable solution, Clay's integration with inbound lead forms provides a straightforward and efficient way to visualize and manage your sales pipeline. Ultimately, the choice between these two platforms will depend on your team's specific needs and whether you prioritize customization or automation in your sales process.

2. Ease of use

ClickUp is designed with a user-friendly interface, offering customizable dashboards and task management features that cater to diverse workflows. However, its extensive features may require a learning curve. Clay's outreach tool also requires a learning curve thanks to its multi-functional features.

3. Contact enrichment

ClickUp does not offer a contact enrichment feature as part of its core functionality. Users can manually store and organize contact information using custom fields, but the platform lacks automatic data enrichment from external sources. Clay’s enrichment feature automatically gathers detailed lead information from various sources, creating comprehensive contact profiles that can be integrated with your existing CRM.

4. Outreach

ClickUp lacks a dedicated outreach feature for external communication, requiring manual setup for outreach tasks. In contrast, Clay excels in outreach with features for efficient prospecting, enriched data integration, and automated, personalized email sequences, enhancing targeted communication and engagement tracking.

5. Automation

ClickUp's automation is general-purpose, not specifically tailored for CRM needs, requiring customization for advanced tasks. Clay automates outreach with workflows for data gathering, email sequencing, and follow-ups, focusing on email communication but lacking multichannel engagement options.

6. Integration

ClickUp provides integrations with tools like Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, and Dropbox, enhancing workflow efficiency and collaboration within the platform. Clay offeres integrations with vairous CRMs, email marketing platforms and data sources, allowing users to sync enriched contact profiles and streamline outreach workflows across tools.

7. Artificial intelligence

ClickUp's AI integration, 'Chat', connects tasks and knowledge to aid task management. Clay's AI, Claygent, automates research, providing insights like SOC-II compliance, focusing on information gathering and reporting.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both ClickUp and Clay.

ClickUp prices

ClickUp offers a free forever plan for personal use. Premium options are available as either a monthly and annual subscription plan. The following is a high level overview of the annual subscription plans available.

• Unlimited: $7/user/month.
• Business: $12/user/month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

Clay prices

Besides a free plan, Clay has a few premium plans to choose from depending on the features you need, credits, and number of people/company searches you want to make. Below is a high level overview of their annual subscription.

• Starter: Starting from $134 per month for 24k credits per year.
• Explorer: Starting from $314 per month, for 120k credits per year.
• Pro: Starting from $720 per month, for 600k credits per year.
• Enterprise: Price undisclosed. Custom credits option.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to ClickUp and Clay

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, fundraising and more.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

ClickUp vs. Clay: What's the verdict?

When it comes to choosing between ClickUp and Clay, the decision largely depends on your specific needs. ClickUp offers robust task management features, making it ideal for teams focused on productivity and project management. Clay, on the other hand, excels in providing a more personalized CRM experience, suitable for businesses seeking deeper customer relationship insights. However, for companies that need a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free.