Discover folk - 사람 중심 비즈니스의 CRM
When it comes to choosing between Freshsales and Attio, the key question is: which CRM truly saves time through automation rather than creating additional admin tasks?
For teams that prioritize simplicity, folk offers one of the most streamlined and powerful automation solutions in the CRM landscape, enabling users to automate emails based on their defined conditions and execute actions via the API.
Why Automation Is Essential for CRM in 2026
In today's landscape, automation has become the cornerstone of modern revenue teams. Sales and marketing departments are expected to manage an increasing number of leads, channels, and complex buying journeys without expanding headcount or compromising personalization. A CRM that relies on manual data entry, sporadic follow-ups, and spreadsheet-style reporting can silently deplete time, energy, and focus away from meaningful customer interactions.
Here are the primary reasons why automation is now indispensable:
- Buyers anticipate quick, relevant responses across various platforms, including email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and phone calls.
- Pipelines progress rapidly, and any missed follow-up can lead to lost revenue.
- The sheer volume of data has skyrocketed, making manual updates not only unrealistic but also unreliable.
- Leadership requires real-time performance visibility instead of relying on end-of-month estimates.
The true value of a CRM lies in how much work it alleviates for the team, not in the number of fields it can save. The ideal platform automatically captures activities, maintains clean records in the background, and prompts the right actions at the right moments, allowing sales representatives to focus on nurturing relationships and closing deals rather than managing the tool.
What is Freshsales?
Freshsales is a sales CRM by Freshworks tailored for small to mid-sized teams seeking an intuitive interface combined with robust automation features. Users can seamlessly integrate Gmail or Microsoft 365, opting for either one-way or two-way sync to ensure alignment between their mailboxes and the CRM. This functionality, along with templates, bulk emailing, and activity timelines, positions email as a crucial element in how representatives manage their leads and opportunities.
What is Attio?
Attio is a contemporary, customizable CRM designed as a collaborative workspace where teams can centralize contacts, companies, and deals within a single, live database. It effortlessly connects to Gmail and Microsoft 365, automatically syncing emails and calendar events to ensure every thread is visible on the corresponding contact or opportunity timeline. Users can send emails directly from their linked inboxes within Attio, utilize templates, and monitor engagement—all without leaving the CRM.
Feature comparison of Freshsales and Attio
Integration Capabilities
Freshsales provides native plugins for Gmail and Outlook that display email threads, scheduling tools, and relevant contact details directly within your inbox. Once connected, Freshsales automatically scans incoming emails for recognized contact addresses and logs conversations, allowing you to minimize clutter by selecting which folders to sync.
In contrast, Attio does not include a built-in inbox or calendar integration; instead, it utilizes Zapier’s Email by Zapier or Pipedream to capture both inbound and outbound emails, reflecting them in Attio’s contact timelines. You can easily configure triggers like “New Email Received” or “Send Email” and map fields such as subject, body, and attachments to Attio properties.
Sync Frequency and Reliability
Freshsales integrates seamlessly through native plugins, creating a constant connection to your Gmail or Outlook account and syncing email and calendar events in real time. Incoming messages from recognized leads appear within seconds, while outgoing emails logged in the CRM are instantly reflected in your email thread. Calendar events also sync immediately, ensuring that meetings scheduled in Freshsales appear on your personal calendar without delay.
In contrast, Attio depends on Zapier or Pipedream to capture email and calendar events, meaning the sync frequency is contingent upon the plan of your chosen automation platform.
Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync
Freshsales offers a comprehensive Marketing Campaigns module—simply navigate to Campaigns > Email to create email blasts or automated Journeys based on user behaviors. With features like drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and analytics dashboards, you can track delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Additionally, built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability. However, keep in mind that advanced features such as heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.
In contrast, Attio sets itself apart by seamlessly integrating your email and calendar data right from the start: by connecting your Google or Microsoft account, Attio instantly imports email events and calendar appointments as CRM activities in real time.
Mail Merge and Campaigns
Freshsales offers a comprehensive Marketing Campaigns module—simply navigate to Campaigns > Email to create blasts or automated Journeys based on user behavior. With easy-to-use drag-and-drop templates, dynamic segments, and insightful analytics dashboards, you can track delivery rates, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. Additionally, built-in retry logic and ISP throttling enhance deliverability. However, be aware that more advanced features, such as heat-map click analysis and AI-driven send-time optimization, require an upgrade to Freshmarketer.
On the other hand, Attio lacks a native mail-merge or campaign module. To utilize these features, you will need to subscribe to an automation tool like Zapier.
Open and Click Tracking
Freshsales allows you to enable “Track opens and clicks” under Settings > Email Settings, ensuring that every email sent through the native plugin logs open events and link clicks in the contact timeline. Delivery, open, and click metrics are displayed in both the Deal dashboard and the Campaigns module. However, keep in mind that open rates depend on image-based pixels, so if a recipient blocks images or views links in preview panes, you may encounter underreported statistics.
On the other hand, Attio lacks built-in open or click tracking. Instead, email events are captured through Zapier or Pipedream triggers, meaning you’ll need to set up your own pixel-and-webhook workflows to track opens and clicks and link them back to contacts. While this offers maximum flexibility, it also eliminates a straightforward analytics dashboard; you'll have to create custom reports using your automation platform or BI tool.
In-Inbox CRM Experience
Freshsales’ native plugins for Gmail and Outlook seamlessly integrate your CRM sidebar within your inbox, displaying lead profiles, deal values, and previous email threads while you compose or read messages. You can easily log emails, schedule meetings, and initiate sequences with a simple one-click sync back to Freshsales. Additionally, because the plugin incorporates calendar events into the same view, you enjoy a cohesive experience that blends messages and appointments. However, if you prefer using a different mail client, you’ll need to rely on IMAP sync instead of accessing the full plugin features.
Conversely, Attio doesn’t directly embed into your inbox. Instead, it relies on tools like Zapier or Pipedream to log emails and events back to Attio’s timeline. While this provides a clear, contact-centric view within Attio, it lacks the sidebar functionality in Gmail or Outlook needed for quick record editing. This approach offers flexibility but does not provide the same seamless in-inbox experience.
folk CRM: The Best CRM for Automations
folk CRM is an innovative, AI-driven CRM designed for teams eager to simplify their deal automation. It centralizes all relationship types—leads, clients, partners, candidates, and investors—into adaptable views that fit any workflow.
folk caters to automation-focused teams. With built-in email and calendar synchronization, teams can efficiently automate outreach and follow-ups on a large scale. The new conditional email automations allow you to send emails triggered by real-time data within folk—for instance, automatically dispatching onboarding or handoff emails when a contact transitions to a client or when a deal is marked as signed.
Enhanced by AI, folk enriches your data, creates icebreakers, drafts personalized emails, and recommends next steps. Its open API and webhooks integrate effortlessly with tools like Zapier and Make, allowing for sophisticated workflows across email, WhatsApp, Slack, billing, and internal systems.
With one-click contact capture via the folkX Chrome extension and collaborative pipelines, folk equips teams with a lightweight yet robust CRM to scale automation while maintaining complete control.
결론
In summary, Freshsales excels with its intuitive interface and robust automation features, making it suitable for small to mid-sized teams focused on email integration. Attio stands out for its collaborative workspace, enabling seamless email and calendar syncing, but lacks built-in campaign capabilities. However, for teams that prioritize email integration, automation, and sequencing, folk emerges as the superior choice. Its AI-driven features, flexible pipelines, and extensive automation options equip teams with the tools needed to streamline outreach and enhance productivity.
포크 CRM을 만나보세요
팀에 없었던 영업 보조처럼
