Copper vs Insightly: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t face challenges in discovering tools; rather, their struggle lies in maintaining consistent pipeline execution while ensuring project delivery remains on schedule. When critical prospect information is scattered across emails, calendars, and spreadsheets, essential follow-ups can be missed, handoffs may falter, and accurate forecasting can turn into mere speculation. A CRM for agencies must facilitate swift progress in new business while also retaining enough historical data to support renewals, upsells, and referrals.

Copper and Insightly tackle this issue from distinct perspectives. Copper is tailored for teams that thrive within the Google Workspace ecosystem, offering seamless integration to streamline CRM tasks directly from familiar tools like Gmail and Google Calendar. Insightly, on the other hand, is designed with a project-oriented focus, connecting sales processes with client delivery and ensuring that every stage of engagement is interlinked.

The optimal choice hinges on the agency's workflow complexity, integration needs, and how much effort they can dedicate to customizing and managing their CRM environment.

What is Copper?

Copper is a CRM that seamlessly integrates with Google Workspace, enabling users to manage their CRM tasks directly from Gmail and Google Calendar. This platform is ideal for agencies that primarily handle client communications and scheduling within Google tools and seek structured CRM functionality without drastically altering their daily routines. It features pipelines for tracking opportunities and maintains contact and account records to provide relationship context. Workflow automation and integrations can help minimize repetitive administrative tasks based on individual setups, making it a perfect fit for teams that prefer a Google-centric approach to CRM organization.

What is Insightly?

Insightly is a CRM that provides project-oriented features, effectively connecting sales records with delivery and post-sale activities. It is particularly beneficial for agencies where deal management and client fulfillment need to remain intertwined, especially in project-based engagements. The platform uses pipelines to track opportunities, while tasks and activity sets standardize internal processes across various stages. Additionally, reporting and dashboards can be configured to enhance visibility into sales and execution metrics. This makes Insightly a popular choice for agencies seeking a CRM with a strong connection to delivery workflows.

Feature comparison of Copper and Insightly

Multi-pipeline and Custom Stages

Copper allows the creation of multiple pipelines tailored to different processes, ensuring that each can have its unique stage flows. You can easily edit pipeline stages so that the opportunity board aligns with how an agency qualifies, scopes, and closes work for each scenario. Utilizing separate pipelines helps maintain clarity between renewals, retainers, and project-based sales while still leveraging the same CRM data model. Any changes made are managed within pipeline settings and specifically apply to the chosen pipeline.

Insightly's pipeline setup enables the definition of pipelines and stage lists that correspond to various sales motions. By using separate pipelines, agencies can effectively manage flows for new business, renewals, and partner referrals, while keeping stages distinct for each pipeline. Stages can be modified as processes evolve, ensuring that opportunity tracking accurately reflects the current qualifications and delivery handoffs. Insightly enforces pipeline logic at the record level, ensuring that each opportunity adheres to a single, defined stage flow.

Bijhouden van klant- en dealactiviteiten

Copper enhances deal context by linking essential Google Workspace surfaces, providing a comprehensive view of related communications and activities surrounding contacts and opportunities. With calendar syncing, events can be created and synchronized between Copper and Google Calendar, allowing changes to be reflected across both platforms based on the sync feature utilized. Users can conveniently review activity and relationship histories on records, facilitating smooth handoffs and informed next steps for accounts and opportunities.

Insightly's activity tracking hinges on tasks, events, and logged interactions connected to contacts, organizations, and opportunities. Through Activity Sets, Insightly allows the creation of repeatable task and event sequences from templates, standardizing follow-ups after discovery calls, proposals, or onboarding processes. Timelines and related lists keep completed actions and upcoming next steps visible, enabling users to easily assess account history and current commitments during internal transitions.

Automatisering en workflows

Copper's reporting features are centered around customizable dashboards, metrics, and insights that can be easily shared or exported, including options for emailing or exporting dashboards as part of your reporting workflows. The reporting setup includes dashboard templates, filters, and editing controls, allowing you to tailor KPIs and views to the specific pipeline and activity data being monitored. Additionally, scheduled delivery and alert notifications enhance the reporting capabilities.

In Insightly, Workflow Automation can initiate actions when specific record criteria are met, such as updating fields, assigning tasks, or creating new tasks. This automation can also integrate with pipeline-driven processes, such as implementing Activity Sets when an opportunity reaches a designated stage in Insightly. The execution of workflows relies on the configuration of triggers and actions within your account, facilitating seamless handoffs, such as transitioning a deal to onboarding and generating the corresponding task checklist.

Rapportage en analyse

Copper's reporting is centered on dashboards, metrics, and customizable insights that can be easily shared or exported, with options for emailing or including dashboards in reporting workflows. The setup for reporting features dashboard templates, filters, and editing controls that allow users to tailor KPIs and views according to the tracked pipeline and activity data. Additionally, scheduled delivery and alert notifications are integral parts of the reporting functionalities.

Insightly's reporting consists of dashboards and custom reports generated from CRM objects such as opportunities, activities, and projects. Users can filter reports by owner, pipeline, stage, and time range, and there is the option to save these filters for regular reviews. Insightly also facilitates report scheduling, ensuring stakeholders receive updates without the need for manual exports. The accuracy of pipeline reporting relies on consistent use of stages and thorough activity logging by the team.

Integraties en gegevenshygiëne

Copper provides integrations with popular tools, including a Zapier connection that links Copper to a vast array of external applications for seamless automation and data transfer. To ensure data hygiene, Copper features a duplicate management workflow, enabling teams to select and merge duplicate People, Companies, or Leads, thereby consolidating records. This process helps maintain contact history and account context associated with a single record, even when duplicates arise from imports or manual entries.

Insightly offers integration options through its integration layer and connected apps, with availability depending on the chosen plan and configuration. Its data hygiene capabilities include flows that identify and merge duplicate contacts, organizations, or leads, ensuring records remain consolidated. Additionally, the import behavior can affect duplicates based on the matching rules applied during uploads. Maintaining clean records enhances downstream reporting and minimizes conflicts during automation.

folk: The Ultimate CRM for Agencies in 2026!

folk is an AI-driven CRM crafted to centralize contacts, conversations, and deal context without transforming setup into a lengthy project. It seamlessly accommodates agency teams where multiple individuals engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. The records maintain visibility of relationship history, ensuring that handoffs do not rely on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and customizable stages tailored to various agency operations
• Comprehensive contact and deal timelines that consolidate interaction history
• Email and calendar synchronization to link conversations to the appropriate records
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking that standardize next steps
• Contact enrichment to supplement missing company and contact information
• Deduplication tools to merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• User-friendly pipeline reporting to assess stage health and deal progression
• Integrations and automation connectors to minimize manual updates

For agencies, the primary benefit lies in operational clarity across multiple relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure consistent follow-ups among the team. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication mitigate duplicate records and missing fields, maintaining the usability of pipeline reporting over time.

Conclusie

In conclusion, while Copper excels in integrating seamlessly with Google Workspace for Google-centric teams, and Insightly offers robust project-oriented features connecting sales with delivery, folk emerges as the best CRM alternative for agencies valuing email integration, automation, and sequencing. With its user-friendly design, comprehensive contact timelines, and powerful deduplication tools, folk ensures operational clarity and swift follow-ups, making it the ideal choice for agencies navigating multiple relationships and seeking to enhance their pipeline efficiency.

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