folk CRM x Zoho CRM: Which AI CRM is the best?

AI has evolved beyond being just a feature; it now serves as the driving force behind more intelligent pipelines, quicker decisions, and enhanced customer relationships.

With capabilities ranging from predictive insights to automated workflows, CRM platforms are now in competition to determine how effectively they integrate AI into every interaction.

While both folk CRM and Zoho CRM offer intelligent sales assistance, their levels of AI integration, usability, and overall business impact differ significantly. For teams prioritizing simplicity over complexity and cluttered dashboards, folk provides robust AI integration that ensures timely follow-ups and valuable insights from your calls and emails, representing a powerful application of AI within a CRM.

Why AI Integration Matters?

AI revolutionizes CRMs from mere static databases into proactive sales assistants. Rather than waiting for representatives to sift through contacts or compose follow-up messages, AI now automates essential tasks, anticipates outcomes, and enriches data in real time.

• Faster decisions. AI identifies which leads to focus on based on intent signals and deal momentum.
• Smarter outreach. Tools recommend message templates, optimal timing, and can even gauge tone or sentiment.
• Cleaner data. Say goodbye to manual entry; AI automatically fills in missing information and flags duplicates or outdated records.
• Sales forecasting. Predictive models enable teams to identify pipeline risks before they occur.
• B2B data enrichment. AI gathers company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact details to instantly complete lead records.
• AI-powered sequences. Personalized cold emails are automatically generated and scheduled based on deal stage, persona, or interaction history.

When AI is seamlessly woven into a CRM, representatives can dedicate more time to selling rather than administrative tasks. This distinction is what elevates a good CRM to one that genuinely drives revenue!

What is folk CRM?

folk serves as the ideal sales assistant that teams have always wished for. This intuitive, integrated, and proactive CRM simplifies busywork, allowing sales representatives to concentrate on nurturing genuine relationships. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs for lean teams.

Tailored for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk makes AI accessible and manageable.

Extract intel from calls and emails

One of Folk's standout features is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, enabling sales and investment teams to derive critical insights from recorded conversations. By integrating with dialers like Ringover and Aircall or call recording tools such as Grain for Google Meet, users can effortlessly import transcripts into Folk. From there, they can utilize Magic Fields, a built-in AI functionality that allows you to define prompts for extracting specific information from the transcript. For instance, sales teams can automatically gather details like contract value, user count, decision-makers, budget, or next steps—all without the need for manual note-taking. Investment teams can access insights including founder background, fundraising stage, or a startup's objectives. These fields are fully customizable; simply write a prompt, map it to the transcript, and Folk's AI takes care of the rest. The outcome is a structured, searchable CRM enriched with valuable data from your calls, facilitating quicker follow-ups, accurate qualifications, and streamlined reporting.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk's AI Follow-Up feature ensures that no opportunity is overlooked. Natively integrated into the platform, this intelligent assistant examines your email conversations to determine when a follow-up is necessary. For example, if you pose a question in an email and the lead hasn't responded, Folk automatically detects the silence and prompts you to follow up at the right time.

Moreover, this feature also works in reverse—highlighting leads you might have overlooked or conversations that have gone cold. By analyzing past interactions, Folk helps you prioritize the right contacts for re-engagement to advance deals. This contextual follow-up system saves time, minimizes manual tracking, and enhances your likelihood of closing more deals.

AI features in folk CRM summary

• Suggested actions: Receive proactive reminders and AI suggestions based on recent activities or deal stages.
• Extract intel from calls: Use AI to pull next steps, decision-makers, budgets, and essential information.
• AI-generated messages: Save time with context-aware outreach suggestions tailored for each contact.
• Duplicate management: AI identifies duplicates and cleans up messy contact lists to keep your CRM organized.

folk starts at $20 per user per month, offering a 14-day free trial with no credit card required!

What is Zoho CRM?

Zoho’s Zia is an integrated AI assistant that allows you to chat or speak for instant CRM updates—request reports, record edits, or task creations without navigating through menus. Under the hood, Zia provides dynamic deal-win predictions, anomaly detection, and churn forecasting to maintain a healthy pipeline. It enriches records from email signatures, flags competitor mentions in real-time, and recommends workflow automations based on your team's behaviors. With a custom Prediction Builder, you can create tailored AI models for any module—no coding necessary.

Feature comparison of folk CRM and Zoho CRM

AI Follow-ups

Folk’s AI Follow-ups efficiently monitor your inbox and calendar, identifying moments when a lead requires your attention—like when someone mentions, “Let’s chat Tuesday” or “I’ll circle back next week.” You’ll receive a task suggestion along with a draft follow-up message ready in your dashboard. Simply review it, hit send, and rest assured that you’re always ahead in every conversation.

Zia utilizes Workflow Rules to automate your follow-up tasks. Once you establish the triggers (such as deal stage changes or task completions), Zia monitors which follow-up actions yield the best results and can automatically generate tasks or send notifications when it’s time to reconnect. Furthermore, Zia’s “Best Time to Contact” feature analyzes past engagement to recommend the ideal moment for your call or email. For more complex multi-step processes beyond the built-in workflows, you can integrate Zoho Flow or Zapier.

Automated Contact Enrichment

With 1-click Enrichment, your team can automatically fill new contacts with essential company details—such as titles, phone numbers, social profiles, and more—immediately as they enter your CRM. Say goodbye to manual imports and outdated data. If you need additional technographic or firmographic insights, simply integrate with a marketplace partner like Clearbit or InsideView for seamless, real-time data hygiene.

Zoho's native Zia Data Enrichment enhances your leads by adding company size, industry, key contacts, and financials through matching with public records. To access additional firmographics or technographics not provided by Zia, install marketplace extensions like Clearbit or InsideView; once linked, these tools will automatically populate your selected fields in real time. Forget about manual lookups or CSV imports.

Smart Fields

Looking to enhance your personalized outreach? folk seamlessly integrates your CRM data with AI to generate contextual email sequences in mere seconds. Simply specify the persona and objective—whether it’s a “five-step outreach to marketing leads” or a “post-demo recap”—and receive ready-to-launch subject lines, body copy, and send cadences. It’s full-funnel automation without the hassle of copy blocks.

Although Zoho doesn't use the term “Smart Fields,” its Conditional Layouts and Dependent Picklists enable you to display or hide form elements based on existing data. This means known contacts bypass unnecessary questions while new leads only encounter relevant options. Plus, if you require AI-driven property values, Zia can automatically populate any Custom Property through data enrichment, combining rule-based logic with AI-generated insights.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

Looking to scale your personalized outreach? folk seamlessly integrates your CRM data with AI to create contextual email sequences in just seconds. Specify the persona and goal—whether it's “five-step outreach to marketing leads” or a “post-demo recap”—and you'll receive subject lines, body copy, and sending schedules ready for immediate launch. Experience full-funnel automation without the hassle of writer's block.

With Zia for Emails, simply ask Zia to draft or refine your message—be it subject lines, body copy, or even tone adjustments—and watch it produce polished email snippets in no time. You can save these as templates and link them into a sequence using Zoho’s workflow rules. For complete automation, connect Zia-generated templates to Zoho Flow to trigger each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates.

Next Best Action

folk eliminates the uncertainty in your pipeline by presenting the “best next step” derived from CRM data, inbox history, and calendar signals. Whether it involves making a call, sharing a case study, or sending a quick check-in, you'll receive positive, actionable suggestions directly within your workflow—ensuring that every rep feels confident and supported.

Zia’s Next Best Experience widget evaluates deal health, engagement signals, and historical win patterns to propose your most impactful next step—be it a call reminder, sharing a relevant PDF, or sending a personalized follow-up. These tailored suggestions are integrated right into your CRM and can be incorporated into workflows, so reps always know precisely what to do next.

Conclusion

When comparing folk CRM and Zoho CRM, Zoho offers an integrated AI assistant, Zia, for dynamic deal predictions and automated workflows, while folk focuses on simplicity with features like AI-driven follow-ups and insightful call analyses. Both CRMs provide unique advantages, yet folk proves to be a fantastic alternative for teams seeking a user-friendly interface and effective AI integration, enabling them to streamline processes, enhance engagement, and ultimately close more deals.

Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.