Affinity vs Folk: Which CRM is best for your business?

Are you finding yourself torn between Affinity and Folk? Making the right choice between these two CRM solutions can significantly impact your business operations. 

However, it’s important to recognize that they are not the only options available to you. Zixflow, among others, also offers compelling features worth considering. 

In this blog, I have explained these three, Affinity, Flok, and Zixflow to help you choose which CRM best suits your business needs and goals.

Tabular & detailed comparison of Affinity vs. Folk

Before you start looking into the details, it’s important to know what features each platform, Affinity, Folk, and Zixflow, has. To simplify it, I’ve put together a table showing each platform’s main features. This will help you see quickly how they compare to each other.

Now that you have a quick idea, it’s important to dive into the detailed explanations to assess the features of each CRM thoroughly. 

Affinity, Folk, and Zixflow all provide tools for managing your customer relationships. If you prefer a straightforward platform for handling customer interactions, Zixflow could be your go-to option. With this in mind, I’ll be assessing these three CRMs based on the features they offer.

Let’s begin!

User interface

When choosing a CRM platform, a clean UI is crucial for you. It helps you find what you need quickly, reduces mistakes, and makes using the software more enjoyable. As your business grows, a clean UI makes it easier for you to adapt and make changes without confusion.

Affinity

Affinity CRM’s user interface is designed to be easy for you to use and highly accessible. On the left side, you’ll find a collapsible navigation bar that gives you quick access to key features like contact lists, deals, and favorites. This makes it simple for you to find what you need without any confusion.

The search functionality is enhanced, allowing you to find notes and information by keyword quickly. This helps you save time and stay organized.

Folk

In Folk, everything is made easy for you. The interface is simple and clear, so you won’t get confused. You can find what you need quickly because it’s designed to be straightforward. You can personalize its dashboard to show what matters most to you, whether it’s customer details, sales progress, or communication logs. 

It helps you stay organized and work better with your team. Folk makes managing relationships and running your business smooth, without any complicated stuff to figure out.

Zixflow

Zixflow CRM features a user interface designed to be both user-friendly and highly customizable. You can consolidate all your contact details in one place and create custom fields and lists to organize your data just the way you want.

Zixflow provides various data visualization options, such as tables and Kanban boards, allowing you to choose the format that suits you best. The unified interface lets you handle outreach campaigns across email, SMS, and WhatsApp from a single screen.

A unified inbox keeps all your communications organized and easily accessible. Zixflow streamlines the management of your contacts and communications, making it simple and effective.

Contact management

Another feature to consider when evaluating CRM platforms is contact management. It centralizes all your customer information, which helps you understand their needs and offer excellent service.

Affinity

Affinity CRM focuses on automating contact management tasks to free up your time for deal-making. Whenever you interact with someone, it automatically creates contact records for you. 

These profiles are enriched with data points like biographical information, company details, and even your past interactions. This means you don’t have to worry about manual data entry, and your contact information stays up-to-date effortlessly.

Affinity also has “relationship intelligence” features that help you. It surfaces relevant connections within your network, making it easier for you to find the right person for introductions and deals. This way, you can focus more on making deals and less on managing contacts.

Folk

Folk aims to simplify and centralize all your professional contacts. It lets you import information from various sources and social media, ensuring your contact details are always up-to-date. With Folk, you can create tags and groups for easy organization and collaboration with your teammates on shared contact management tasks.

You don’t have to worry about manually entering information because the folkX Chrome extension allows you to add contacts directly from anywhere on the web with a single click. This works on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Gmail threads, saving you tons of time and eliminating repetitive tasks.

Zixflow

Zixflow is all about flexibility and keeping your contact information organized. You can group your contacts using “Collections” based on any criteria you like, such as people, companies, and deals. Need to do some targeted outreach? You can create specific “Lists” for leads, expert lists, customer success, and more for customer-centric sales activities.

Want to add extra details? No problem. Zixflow lets you create custom fields to store any additional information you need. With just one click, you can get a full overview of a contact, including past interactions, notes, tasks, and files.

Zixflow even helps you find and validate email addresses and capture leads with online forms. It’s designed to make your contact management smooth and efficient.

Omni-channel marketing

Selecting a CRM platform that supports multi-channel marketing is essential for maximizing your outreach and engagement with customers. By utilizing multiple channels such as email, social media, and mobile apps, you can connect with your audience where they are most responsive, to enhance your sales engagement.

Affinity

Affinity doesn’t offer built-in multi-channel marketing functionalities itself. However, it excels at integrating with other marketing tools and platforms. This means you can connect your CRM data with your marketing efforts across various channels, like email, social media, SMS, and more.

Affinity focuses on centralizing all your customer communication data, including interactions from these external marketing channels. This gives you a holistic view of your customer journey and helps you make better marketing decisions.

Folk

In Folk, you can communicate primarily using email. It offers built-in tools to create and send emails efficiently, helping you manage your interactions effectively by keeping all communication history centralized and tracking engagements. 

This focus simplifies your email marketing efforts, allowing for personalized outreach and providing insights into customer interactions to enhance your engagement strategies.

Zixflow

If you use Zixflow, you’ll find a powerful marketing platform that is all about making multi-channel communication easy. Suppose managing your email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns all from one place, that’s what Zixflow offers with its centralized dashboard. 

Zixflow enhances your marketing efforts with features like customizable templates, an AI-driven content creation assistant, and advanced audience segmentation tools.

You can automate your campaigns to send personalized messages and nurture leads effortlessly. Whether your audience prefers email, SMS, or WhatsApp, Zixflow lets you engage with them on their terms. It’s designed to boost your engagement and drive more conversions by ensuring your marketing efforts hit the mark across all channels.

API integration

When you’re in the process of selecting a CRM platform for your marketing needs, API integration should be another top priority. It allows seamless connectivity between your CRM and other essential tools such as email marketing platforms, social media management tools, and analytics software.

Affinity

Affinity offers an API that lets you connect it with other apps like Slack, Dropbox, Mailchimp, etc., and automate tasks easily. This API uses web standards for communication, making it simple to read and update data in Affinity, such as contacts, deals, and tasks. 

You can integrate Affinity with your existing tools, like marketing automation or data analysis platforms, with clear instructions provided in their documentation. They also have ready-made connections with services like Zapier and Pipedream, which make setting up automation even easier.

Folk

On the other side, in Folk, you can integrate with other tools and services through platforms like Make and Zapier, despite not having its own public API currently. These platforms act as connectors, allowing you to link Folk with thousands of other apps such as project management tools, email marketing services, and social media platforms. 

This integration capability lets you automate tasks and share data between Folk and your other tools seamlessly. Also, Folk includes built-in connections with popular services like Gmail, Google Contacts, and Calendly, making it easier to synchronize and manage your contacts and workflows across different platforms, to simplify customer interactions to increase sales outcomes

Zixflow

Zixflow stands out not just as a CRM but as a powerful collaboration tool. It seamlessly integrates with your existing tools such as Gmail, and Outlook, and popular project management platforms like Pabbly, Zapier, and Make. 

Beyond basic integrations, Zixflow offers comprehensive API documentation, making it straightforward to connect with almost any software you use. Whether you need to import customer data or automate tasks through Zapier, Zixflow simplifies CRM management.

Plus, Zixflow’s unified API for managing marketing channels is user-friendly, requiring no coding expertise to set up and use effectively.

Workflow automation

No matter how proficient your team may be manually, integrating workflow automation into your CRM platform is crucial. It revolutionizes efficiency, accuracy, and scalability in managing tasks and streamlining your sales processes, ensuring optimal business performance.

Affinity

Affinity provides built-in automation to make tasks easier and give your team more time to focus on deals. It automatically captures data from emails, calendars, and contacts, so you don’t have to enter it manually. You can also set up tasks to happen automatically based on certain actions, like sending follow-up emails when a contact moves to a new stage in the deal process. 

Affinity works with tools like Zapier to offer even more ways to automate tasks effectively. By handling repetitive tasks automatically, Affinity lets investment firms concentrate on building connections and finalizing deals. 

Folk

Folk features built-in workflow automation that simplifies how you manage relationships. You can set up custom workflows with triggers and actions: triggers start the workflow, like adding a new contact, and actions are the tasks that follow, such as sending a welcome email. 

This automation helps you handle repetitive tasks more efficiently, maintain consistent communication, and improve overall outreach efforts. Folk also provides email sequences for nurturing leads and sending personalized follow-ups. By automating these workflows, you'll have more time to concentrate on fostering stronger relationships.

Zixflow

Zixflow offers comprehensive automation features to enhance your CRM experience without any coding knowledge, just define actions and conditions to automate your sales tasks and simplify sales efficiency. 

It includes a Sales Cadence for maintaining customer communication through WhatsApp, email, or SMS. Whether you’re welcoming new subscribers or reminding customers about abandoned carts, you can set up tailored message sequences for each scenario.

Plus, Flows extends automation capabilities by managing tasks and operations effortlessly. You can even create a WhatsApp bot to automate sales workflow! 

Pricing

Lastly, understanding the pricing structure of the CRM platform is crucial for you. It allows you to align your budget with available features and scalability options, ensuring you make informed decisions. 

Affinity

Affinity has different pricing plans to fit your needs. If you have a small team and focus on managing networks and deals, the essential plan costs $2,000 per user per year. For larger teams handling multiple funds, the scale plan costs $2,300 per user per year. 

The Advanced plan, for bigger teams managing many funds, costs $2,700 per user per year. If your organization has multiple teams and funds, you should contact Affinity directly for pricing on the enterprise plan.

Folk

Folk offers three paid plans: a standard plan at $18 per member/ month/ billed annually for small teams, a premium plan at $29 per member/month/ billed annually for larger teams, and a customizable at $80 per member/ month billed/ annually. Contact the Folk’s sales team to get a demo.

Zixflow

As I’ve explained above, Zixflow is a flexible platform, and it similarly offers flexible pricing plans across three categories: Marketing, XCRM, and ONE. 

The Marketing category includes four plans: Free at $0/ month/ billed annually for basic needs, Starter at $39/ month/ billed annually for essential marketing tools, Growth at $74/ month/ billed annually for advanced features, and Enterprise at $159/ month/ billed annually for comprehensive solutions. 

The XCRM category provides three plans: Starter at $59/ month/ billed annually for basic CRM functionalities, Growth at $129/ month/ billed annually for enhanced CRM capabilities, and Enterprise at $249/ month/ billed annually for extensive CRM features. 

Lastly, the ONE category features three plans: Starter at $79/ month/ billed annually, Growth at $139/ month/ billed annually, and Enterprise at $299/ month/ billed annually. 

Pick the CRM that suits your business needs best between Affinity, Folk, & Zixflow

Choosing the right CRM platform can significantly impact the efficiency and success of your business operations, Affinity, Folk, and Zixflow each offering distinct advantages tailored to different business needs. 

If you prioritize a highly customization and AI-powered CRM, Zixflow is worth exploring. It boasts features similar to Affinity and Folk, including automation capabilities, easy to use forms builder, a communication tool for email, SMS, and WhatsApp, an Email Verifier, an AI wizard, a focus on user experience with a sleek interface, and many other features to increase your business’s sales.

So, are you excited to explore Zixflow? Start now with a free account and experience how it simplifies managing your customer relationships!