허브스팟 vs 클라리파이: 자동화에 가장 적합한 CRM은 무엇인가?

When deciding between HubSpot and Clarify, the crucial question is: which CRM truly saves time on automation rather than creating additional admin tasks?

For teams that prioritize simplicity, folk provides one of the most efficient and powerful automation features available in any CRM, enabling users to automate emails based on their defined conditions and execute actions via the API.

Why Automation Is Essential for CRM in 2026

Automation has become the cornerstone of modern revenue teams. Sales and marketing professionals are expected to manage more leads, navigate multiple channels, and tackle increasingly complex buying journeys without increasing headcount or compromising on personalization. A CRM that still depends on manual data entry, sporadic follow-ups, and outdated reporting methods saps valuable time, energy, and focus away from genuine customer interactions.

Here are the key reasons automation is now indispensable:

• Buyers demand quick, relevant responses across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and phone calls.
• Pipelines are fast-paced; any neglected follow-up can result in lost revenue.
• The sheer volume of data has surged, making manual updates impractical and unreliable.
• Leadership requires real-time performance visibility rather than relying on monthly estimates.

The true value of a CRM lies in how much work it alleviates for the team, not in the number of fields it accommodates. The ideal platform is one that automatically captures activities, maintains tidy records in the background, and prompts the appropriate next steps at the right moments, allowing representatives to concentrate on building relationships and closing deals instead of managing the tool.

HubSpot이란 무엇인가요?

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that integrates marketing, sales, and customer service into a single contact database. With its email integration, users can connect their personal Gmail and Outlook accounts, allowing sales representatives to send personalized emails, log replies, and initiate sequences directly from the CRM or their inbox. Features like open and click tracking, templates, and shared timelines enhance visibility of email interactions across the entire revenue team.

What is Clarify?

Clarify is an AI-driven CRM designed for startups and small sales teams seeking a streamlined interface for managing emails, meetings, and deal context. It integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, automatically syncing email, calendar, and meeting information, which then fuels timelines and AI-generated follow-up suggestions. Users can compose and send emails directly within Clarify, ensuring that engagement is recorded back to contacts and deals rather than getting lost in separate inboxes.

Feature comparison of HubSpot and Clarify

Integration Capabilities

HubSpot provides seamless two-way email integration for Gmail, Outlook, and any IMAP-compatible provider, enabling you to send one-to-one emails directly from contact records while automatically logging every reply in your CRM timeline. Its native scheduler also syncs meeting events with Google Calendar or Office 365, including automatic guest invites and timeline entries for comprehensive visibility.

Clarify connects seamlessly with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, allowing sales teams to automatically capture Gmail, Outlook, calendar, and meeting activities within the CRM. Additionally, it integrates with tools like Zapier, Segment, Posthog, and webhooks to facilitate the transfer of customer and product usage data in and out of the database. A forthcoming integration with Loops will enable the transmission of Clarify events to a SaaS-focused email platform without replacing it. Overall, Clarify prioritizes consolidating core inbox and meeting data rather than providing an extensive native marketing ecosystem.

Sync Frequency and Reliability

HubSpot's email synchronization operates in nearly real-time with Gmail and Outlook, usually reflecting changes within seconds to a minute. Once your account is connected, HubSpot maintains a constant connection through OAuth, continuously pushing and pulling message data to ensure your CRM timeline is always current. This reliability is enhanced by HubSpot's robust global cloud infrastructure, which offers an impressive 99.99% uptime for its core services.

Clarify focuses on the automatic ingestion of email and calendar data, eliminating the need for manual logging. After connecting Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, messages, events, and meeting insights are synced in the background and linked to the appropriate contacts, companies, and deals. While the product highlights features like 'auto-capture' and 'auto-sync' to keep the CRM updated, it doesn't provide detailed, user-facing sync schedules. As a newer tool, Clarify's integrations may not have undergone the same rigorous testing as those of legacy CRMs, even though its core email and calendar syncing is presented as standard functionality.

Two-Way Email and Calendar Sync

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise offer powerful one-to-one sequences, allowing you to enroll up to 50 contacts simultaneously and send hundreds of personalized emails per user each day. Its intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder streamlines template creation, manages delays, and detects replies. Meanwhile, Marketing Hub can scale to thousands of recipients with features like segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most advanced campaign functionalities are found in Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users without this add-on experience limitations on total sends and more basic reporting.

Clarify seamlessly connects to Gmail and Outlook, enabling both inbound and outbound emails to be integrated into contact and deal timelines, which the AI agent can then utilize for follow-up suggestions. Following the July 2025 update, users will have the ability to send emails directly from Clarify, with all sent emails and replies automatically logged to the relevant records. Additionally, calendar events and meeting summaries from platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams are incorporated into the same timelines, providing teams with a comprehensive two-way view of conversations and meetings. In practice, this functionality supports everyday sales follow-ups rather than advanced marketing automation.

Mail Merge and Campaigns

HubSpot’s Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise provide powerful one-to-one sequences, allowing you to enroll up to 50 contacts at once and send hundreds of personalized emails daily per user. The intuitive drag-and-drop sequence builder simplifies template creation, sets delays, and detects replies, while the Marketing Hub can scale to thousands of recipients with features like segmentation, A/B testing, and comprehensive analytics on opens, clicks, and bounces. However, since the most advanced campaign capabilities reside within the Marketing Hub, Sales Hub users lacking this add-on encounter limitations on total sends and more basic reporting functionalities.

Clarify enables representatives to send personalized follow-up emails directly from the CRM, often generated from context gleaned during meetings and emails by its AI agent. Nonetheless, external reviews and Clarify’s positioning reveal that the platform does not yet support fully integrated multi-channel sequences or traditional mail merge-style bulk campaigns. For nurture streams and onboarding journeys, teams must turn to external tools like Loops or other marketing platforms through integrations. Consequently, Clarify remains focused on enhancing sales communication and maintaining pipeline hygiene, while more established CRMs manage extensive campaign tasks.

Open and Click Tracking

HubSpot Sales monitors opens and clicks on each one-to-one email sent from contact records or through the Sales extension, providing real-time desktop notifications and logging every event on the timeline. Note that click tracking requires a paid Sales Hub seat—free users can only see open rates. However, you can view total clicks per link directly in the email activity feed. Advanced attribution features, such as multi-variant link analysis across campaigns, are available in Marketing Hub, meaning that pure Sales Hub users won't have access to enterprise-level click analytics without the add-on.

Clarify positions itself around CRM email tracking and features content focused on tools that track opens, clicks, and replies for sales emails. The goal is to capture fundamental engagement signals from emails sent via connected inboxes or through Clarify, displaying this activity on timelines and in follow-up suggestions. This enables sales teams to identify who is engaging and determine the optimal time to follow up, all without turning Clarify into a comprehensive analytics tool. Compared to dedicated email platforms, the reporting on these events is relatively straightforward and designed around deal workflows rather than extensive marketing reports.

In-Inbox CRM Experience

With the HubSpot Sales extension, you can effortlessly view and edit HubSpot records—such as contacts, companies, and deals—right within Gmail or Outlook. Enroll contacts in sequences and log emails with just one click. A user-friendly CRM sidebar appears next to your inbox, allowing you to create tasks, send template replies, and view recent interactions without needing to switch between apps. It also displays lead scores and deal forecasts inline, ensuring that every email action you take directly contributes to your pipeline. However, be aware that if you lack a paid Sales or Service Hub seat, some in-inbox tools (like sequences and call logging) will remain inaccessible due to a paywall.

In contrast, Clarify maintains most of its functionality within its web and macOS apps, connecting to Gmail and Outlook instead of providing a complete CRM sidebar within the inbox. Users can check timelines, review meeting summaries, and explore AI-suggested follow-ups in Clarify, then send or schedule emails while still using their preferred mail clients. For teams fully immersed in Gmail or Outlook, this approach creates a more integrated workspace rather than a typical 'CRM inside the inbox' extension. The development roadmap focuses on centralizing work and AI functionalities within Clarify itself, rather than adding complex UI elements to every email client.

folk CRM: The Ultimate CRM for Automation

folk CRM is a cutting-edge, AI-native solution designed for teams aiming to streamline their deal automation without complications. It consolidates all relationships—leads, clients, partners, candidates, and investors—into adaptable views that fit any workflow.

folk caters specifically to automation-focused teams. With seamless email and calendar synchronization, teams can effortlessly scale their follow-ups and outreach. The introduction of conditional email automations allows you to send emails triggered by real-time data in folk; for instance, onboarding or handoff emails can be automatically dispatched when a contact transitions into a client or a deal is finalized.

Empowered by AI, folk enhances data, creates engaging icebreakers, composes personalized emails, and recommends optimal next steps. Its open API and webhooks facilitate seamless integration 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 offers teams a lightweight yet robust CRM to effectively scale automation while maintaining complete control.

결론

In summary, HubSpot excels with its comprehensive marketing automation and advanced email tracking, making it ideal for teams seeking extensive campaign features. Clarify provides a streamlined interface with essential email and calendar integration, perfect for startups that prioritize simplicity. However, folk stands out as the best alternative for teams focused on email integration, automation, and sequencing. Its AI-driven features, flexible pipelines, and multi-channel outreach capabilities empower teams to scale their automation effortlessly, ensuring productivity without complexity. Try folk CRM for free

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