Zoho CRM vs Insightly: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with maintaining a seamless workflow where sales and client delivery are tightly interlinked. When critical client information is dispersed across different platforms, such as emails, calendars, and spreadsheets, it often leads to missed follow-ups, broken handoffs, and unpredictable forecasting. A CRM for agencies must facilitate rapid business development while also preserving essential account histories necessary for renewals, upsells, and referrals.

In exploring options like Zoho CRM and Insightly, we see two distinct approaches to solving these challenges. Zoho CRM is a comprehensive tool that emphasizes pipeline management and automation, providing agencies with the necessary flexibility to adapt their processes as they grow. On the other hand, Insightly caters to project-driven environments by linking sales activities with delivery, ensuring that every phase of client engagement is interconnected.

The right choice between these CRM systems hinges on the unique needs of the agency, including process complexity, the level of customization required, and the resources available for ongoing management and optimization.

什么是Zoho CRM？

Zoho CRM is a versatile customer relationship management tool integrated within the expansive Zoho business software ecosystem. It suits agencies looking for pipeline management, activity tracking, automation rules, and reporting, while also offering connectivity to other Zoho applications when necessary. With the ability to create multiple pipelines and layouts, it can accommodate various service lines or sales strategies. Additionally, marketplace extensions and integrations allow users to connect with external tools beyond the Zoho suite, making it a popular choice for agencies seeking extensive functionality and flexibility across sales, operations, and reporting.

什么是Insightly？

Insightly is a CRM that incorporates project-oriented features, linking sales records to both delivery and post-sale activities. This makes it particularly beneficial for agencies where deal management and client delivery must remain interconnected, especially for project-based engagements. Its pipelines effectively track opportunities, while tasks and activity sets help standardize internal processes across various stages. When configured, reporting and dashboards provide visibility into both sales and execution metrics. This CRM is often chosen by agencies seeking a solution that seamlessly bridges sales and delivery workflows.

Zoho CRM与Insightly功能对比

Multi-pipeline and custom stages

Zoho CRM allows for the management of multiple sales pipelines, enabling teams to rename, add, remove, and reorder stages as their processes evolve. These pipelines can be linked to specific layouts, ensuring that various sales motions remain distinct while utilizing the same Deals module. Changes to stages are handled within the pipeline settings, and any removed stages can still be accessed in the stage builder. This feature is ideal for agencies that require unique stage logic tailored to each service line or operational motion.

Insightly's pipeline setup facilitates the creation of pipelines and stage lists that correspond to different sales motions. Agencies can utilize separate pipelines to differentiate their processes for new business, renewals, and partner referrals, while ensuring that stages remain unique to each pipeline. As processes evolve, stages can be adjusted accordingly, ensuring that opportunity tracking accurately reflects the current qualification and delivery handoffs. Insightly enforces pipeline logic at the record level, ensuring that each opportunity adheres to a defined stage flow.

客户与交易活动追踪

Activity tracking in Zoho CRM revolves around tasks, events, and calls, all of which can be accessed through CRM views and record-related lists. The activity views in Zoho CRM categorize items by their creation time, enabling users to open an activity and examine detailed information such as notes, history, attachments, upcoming actions, and email conversations. The Closed Activities list also displays completed tasks, calls, and meetings associated with a record, ensuring a comprehensive log of past actions and future plans.

Insightly's activity tracking focuses on tasks, events, and logged interactions connected to contacts, organizations, and opportunities. With Activity Sets, Insightly allows users to create repeatable sequences of tasks and events based on a template, streamlining follow-ups after discovery calls, proposals, or onboarding processes. Timelines and related lists keep completed actions and next steps visible within the record, facilitating the review of account history and current commitments during internal transitions.

自动化与工作流

Zoho CRM offers standard reports organized by module, along with the flexibility to customize reports tailored to your business needs. You can utilize dashboards and analytics features to monitor your sales pipeline and compare metrics, including the forecasting concepts outlined in Zoho’s analytics resources. For more comprehensive reporting, Zoho Analytics can integrate with Zoho CRM data to generate additional reports and dashboards, complete with options for sharing and scheduling based on your configuration. The visibility of your pipeline is influenced by how deals, stages, and activities are set up.

Insightly's Workflow Automation can trigger actions when specific record criteria are met, such as updating fields, assigning tasks, or creating new tasks. This automation can be integrated with pipeline-driven processes; for instance, you can apply Activity Sets when an opportunity reaches a certain stage in Insightly. The execution of workflows relies on how triggers and actions are established in your account, facilitating routine transitions like advancing a deal to onboarding and generating the corresponding task checklist.

报告与分析

Zoho CRM offers standard reports categorized by module, along with customizable reporting options tailored to your business needs. You can leverage dashboards and analytics to track your pipeline and compare sales metrics, including forecast reporting concepts outlined in Zoho's analytics resources. For more in-depth reporting, Zoho Analytics can integrate with Zoho CRM data to generate additional reports and dashboards, with flexible sharing and scheduling options based on your configuration. The visibility of your pipeline is influenced by how deals, stages, and activities are set up.

Insightly provides reporting capabilities that feature dashboards and custom reports derived from CRM objects such as opportunities, activities, and projects. You can filter these reports by owner, pipeline, stage, and time frame, and save them for regular review. Additionally, Insightly allows for report scheduling, ensuring stakeholders receive timely updates without the need for manual exports. The accuracy of pipeline reporting relies on consistent usage of stages and thorough activity logging by the team.

集成与数据卫生

Zoho CRM offers integrations through the Zoho Marketplace and its integrations layer, showcasing connectors and extensions tailored to specific use cases. It features robust duplication management tools, including duplicate checks, merge functionalities, and an auto-merge de-duplication tool that efficiently identifies and merges exact matches, while allowing for manual conflict resolution when necessary. Additionally, Zia data enrichment enhances records by adding company context fields based on set mappings, depending on enabled features. These tools work together to minimize duplicates and enhance record completeness over time.

Insightly's integration options can be accessed through its integration layer and connected applications, contingent on the chosen plan and setup. Its data hygiene capabilities include duplicate management workflows that assist in identifying and merging duplicate contacts, organizations, or leads, ensuring records remain consolidated. The import process can also affect duplicates based on the matching rules applied during uploads. Maintaining clean records is crucial for improving downstream reporting and minimizing conflicts during automation.

folk：2026年最佳代理机构客户关系管理解决方案！

folk is an AI-powered CRM designed to consolidate contacts, conversations, and deal context without complicating the setup process. It is perfect for agency teams where several members interact with the same account during prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. This system maintains a visible relationship history, ensuring that handoffs do not rely on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline and custom stages tailored to different agency workflows
• Contact and deal timelines that organize interaction history in one location
• 电子邮件和日历同步功能，用于将对话关联至相应的记录
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to standardize next steps
• Contact enrichment to supplement missing company and contact information
• Deduplication tools to merge duplicates and maintain a clean database
• Simple pipeline reporting to track stage health and deal progression
• 集成与自动化连接器，以最大限度减少手动更新

For agencies, the essential 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 across the team. Data hygiene features like enrichment and deduplication help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, keeping pipeline reporting reliable over time.

结论

In conclusion, Zoho CRM excels in pipeline management and automation, making it ideal for agencies with diverse sales strategies. Insightly shines in project-driven environments, seamlessly linking sales with delivery for a holistic client experience. However, for teams that prioritize email integration, automation, and streamlined sequencing, folk stands out as the superior choice. Its AI-powered features consolidate communication, enhance data hygiene, and provide essential visibility across multiple relationships, ensuring your agency remains agile and organized.

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