Folk CRM Review: A Solid Pick for Small Teams, But Not Without Limits

Folk CRM has carved out a niche as the "anti-Salesforce" - a lightweight, spreadsheet-like CRM built for people who hate complicated software. After digging through user reviews and testing the platform, here's what you actually need to know before signing up.

The short version: Folk works great if you're a solopreneur, small agency, or team of 2-5 people who've been managing contacts in Notion or Google Sheets. It's not the right choice if you need robust sales automation, detailed reporting, or a proper mobile app.

Folk CRM Pricing: What You'll Actually Pay

Folk offers three pricing tiers, all billed per user per month:

You get a 14-day free trial with Premium features. No credit card required upfront. If you don't upgrade after the trial, your account gets blocked (but data isn't deleted immediately).

The pricing catch: That $20 Standard plan is missing features most people expect from a CRM. No deal management, no dashboards, no email sequences. You'll likely need the $40 Premium plan to actually run a sales process. For a 5-person team, that's $200/month.

For comparison, check out our best CRM software roundup or our guide to free CRM options if budget is tight.

Pricing Breakdown By Feature Access

Understanding what you get at each tier is crucial before committing. The Standard plan includes unlimited contacts, 2,000 emails per member per month, 500 contact enrichments per month, and 2,000 Magic Fields per month. These limits may seem generous, but they fill up quickly if you're doing any meaningful outreach.

The Premium plan doubles most of these limits: 5,000 emails per member monthly, 1,000 enrichments per month, and 5,000 Magic Fields. More importantly, it unlocks email sequences, dashboards, and deal management - features that most competing CRMs include at their entry-level pricing.

The Custom plan removes these caps entirely and includes API access, which is restricted to Enterprise customers only. For teams that need programmatic access to their CRM data or want to build custom integrations, you'll need to budget at least $80 per user monthly - that's $9,600 annually for a 10-person team.

Annual Billing Discounts

Folk offers annual billing with two months free, which brings the effective monthly cost down to roughly $17.50 for Standard and $30 for Premium when billed annually. This represents about a 17% discount, which can add up for larger teams. However, you're still paying more than many competitors charge for similar feature sets.

What Folk Does Well

Dead-Simple Interface

Folk looks and feels like a spreadsheet. If you've used Notion or Airtable, you'll feel right at home. You can edit data inline, bulk update fields, and drag-and-drop contacts between pipeline stages. There's virtually no learning curve - users report diving in without watching tutorials.

The interface uses a familiar rows-and-columns layout that makes it intuitive to navigate. You can create custom views, filter contacts by any field, and organize your workspace exactly how you want. This flexibility means Folk adapts to your workflow rather than forcing you into a rigid structure.

LinkedIn Integration is Excellent

The FolkX Chrome extension lets you grab contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok with one click. Data gets automatically categorized into the right fields. For anyone doing LinkedIn-heavy prospecting, this is a genuine time-saver.

The extension works directly within LinkedIn Sales Navigator, letting you import entire search results or individual profiles. It pulls in names, titles, company information, and LinkedIn URLs automatically. You can also add contacts directly to specific groups or pipelines from the extension, which streamlines your prospecting workflow considerably.

One caveat: LinkedIn actively works to block third-party scraping tools, so the extension can be temperamental. Some users report it stops working periodically, requiring Folk's team to update it. This is an inherent risk with any LinkedIn scraping tool, not unique to Folk.

One-Click Contact Enrichment

Folk connects to Clearbit, Apollo, People Data Labs, Dropcontact, Prospeo, and Datagma for waterfall enrichment. Click a button, and it fills in email addresses, phone numbers, and company data. No switching to external tools.

The waterfall approach means Folk tries multiple data sources sequentially until it finds the information you need. This increases the success rate compared to relying on a single provider. Folk reports enrichment success rates around 50-60%, which is industry-standard for this type of tool.

You're only charged enrichment credits when data is successfully found, which is fair. However, the monthly limits on Standard and Premium plans mean you might hit your cap quickly if you're doing bulk prospecting. There's no option to purchase additional enrichment credits as an add-on - you have to upgrade to a higher tier.

Smart Fields and Magic Fields

Folk offers two types of automated fields that reduce manual data entry. Smart Fields update automatically based on CRM activity - for example, "Last Interaction" updates whenever you email or call a contact.

Magic Fields are AI-powered custom fields where you write a prompt and Folk's AI generates content for all your contacts. You could create a Magic Field that generates personalized icebreakers, summarizes company descriptions, or extracts key information from notes. This is genuinely innovative and saves substantial time on repetitive writing tasks.

The AI uses GPT-4 under the hood and can reference other fields in your CRM as context. For example, you might prompt: "Write a friendly one-sentence icebreaker for [First Name] at [Company] based on [Job Title] and [Notes]. Keep it under 25 words." Folk generates unique openers for every contact in seconds.

Clean Email Campaigns

The built-in mail merge lets you send personalized bulk emails without leaving the platform. You can use dynamic fields (first name, company, role) and save reusable templates. It's not as powerful as dedicated email tools, but it handles basic outreach well.

Email sequences (available on Premium and above) let you create multi-step campaigns with up to 10 emails. You set wait times between steps and configure the sequence to stop automatically if someone replies. Emails send from your connected Gmail or Outlook account, which helps with deliverability.

The sequence builder is straightforward - add steps, write your copy, insert variables, and launch. You can track opens, clicks, and replies directly in Folk. However, the tracking capabilities are more basic than dedicated tools like Lemlist or Instantly.

Smart Duplicate Detection

When importing contacts, Folk identifies potential duplicates and lets you merge them intelligently - choosing which data to keep from each record rather than just smashing everything together.

The smart merge interface shows you both records side-by-side and highlights differences. You can pick which email address, phone number, or custom field value to retain. This prevents data loss that happens with automatic deduplication and keeps your database clean.

Workflow Assistant for Email Automation

Folk recently introduced a Workflow Assistant that adds trigger-based automation for email outreach. You can define conditions like "when a person is created" or "when a field is updated" and automatically send personalized emails.

Workflows support optional filters so actions only run on the right contacts. For example, you could send an email only when a lead's status becomes "Qualified." Each workflow generates a campaign where you can track sent, opened, replied, and bounced emails.

This is a step toward addressing Folk's automation gap, though it's still nowhere near the sophistication of platforms like Close CRM or HubSpot that offer complex multi-branch workflows.

AI Follow-Up Suggestions

Folk's AI assistant analyzes your email and WhatsApp conversations to detect when discussions go inactive with pending next steps. When this happens, you receive a notification with a personalized follow-up suggestion written in your tone of voice and tailored to the conversation history.

You control when conversations are considered inactive, which contacts or groups are included, and where you receive notifications. Suggestions appear in-app, by email, and directly on contact profiles. This helps prevent deals from stalling and ensures timely follow-ups without manual tracking.

Recap Assistant for Relationship Context

The Recap Assistant generates AI-powered summaries of your relationship with any person, company, or deal. It scans recent interactions, emails, meetings, notes, WhatsApp messages, and LinkedIn activity to produce a concise brief answering: who last interacted, what was discussed, and what the next steps are.

You can customize the recap format to match your sales methodology - MEDDIC, BANT, or custom frameworks. This is invaluable for account handoffs, pre-meeting prep, or getting up to speed on deals you haven't touched in weeks.

Where Folk Falls Short

Missing Core Features on the Basic Plan

The Standard plan lacks deal management, dashboards, and email sequences. These aren't nice-to-haves - they're table stakes for a CRM. Competitors like Pipedrive include these from their lowest tier.

The trial period compounds this problem. You test Premium features for 14 days, build processes around them, then face a choice: pay double or lose functionality you've integrated into your workflow. This creates lock-in that feels manipulative compared to competitors who let you trial the plan you'll actually pay for.

No Mobile App (With Caveats)

Folk does not have native mobile apps for iOS or Android. If you need to check your pipeline or log a call from your phone, you're stuck using the mobile browser version, which isn't optimized for touch interfaces.

There appears to be some confusion in the market about this. Some sources claim Folk has mobile apps, but these references are to a different company (a fitness studio app also called "Folk"). The CRM Folk does not currently offer dedicated mobile applications.

Folk does offer a desktop app for Mac and Windows, which provides a faster experience than the web version and supports offline access. But for sales teams that work on the go, the lack of mobile apps is a significant limitation.

Limited Workflow Automation

While Folk recently added basic workflow automation through the Workflow Assistant, it's still extremely limited compared to mature CRMs. You can trigger simple email actions based on field changes, but there's no support for complex multi-step workflows, conditional branching, task assignments, or integrations with external tools.

For teams that need to automate lead routing, create tasks based on deal stages, or trigger actions in other software when CRM events occur, Folk falls short. You'll need to rely on Zapier or Make.com for external automation, which adds complexity and cost.

Email Tracking Gaps

Users report limited visibility into email opens and clicks within sequences. There's also no ability to automate follow-up emails based on engagement - a feature most sales-focused CRMs include.

When you send emails through Folk, they don't automatically show as sent in your Outlook or Gmail sent folder, which can be confusing when checking your email history. The emails do send from your account and appear in your recipients' inboxes correctly, but your local email client doesn't reflect this.

Customer Support is Hit or Miss

Support is email and live chat only. To get a dedicated customer success manager, you need to be on the Premium plan or higher. Some users praise the team's responsiveness; others find it underwhelming.

There's no phone support on any plan, which can be frustrating when you encounter urgent issues. The help center is comprehensive and includes articles, videos, and guides, but it's not always easy to find answers to specific questions.

On the positive side, some users report excellent white-glove treatment during data migrations. Folk's team has helped import data from Notion and other systems, doing the work themselves rather than providing a to-do list. This level of support seems inconsistent and may depend on your plan or team size.

API is Still Early-Stage

Folk released a REST API, but it's fairly basic compared to mature CRMs. The API is restricted to Custom/Enterprise plan customers, which means you're paying $80+ per user monthly for access.

The API is rate-limited to 10 requests per second per access token (600 requests per minute), which supports moderate integration needs but may not suffice for data-intensive operations. The Zapier connector has limitations with certain field types, and some users report that triggers don't work as expected.

For technical teams building custom integrations or trying to sync Folk with data warehouses, the API capabilities feel incomplete. Folk's documentation indicates they're actively developing the API, but it's not production-ready for complex enterprise use cases.

Integration Limitations

Folk offers native integrations with Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Calendly, Slack, DocuSign, Mailchimp, and a handful of other popular tools. For anything else, you're relying on Zapier or Make.com.

The Zapier connector works for basic needs like adding contacts or updating fields, but it lacks trigger functionality and doesn't support all custom field types. This limits what you can automate. You'll need your Folk API key to connect Zapier, and even then, you may find yourself unable to replicate workflows you'd expect to be straightforward.

Folk doesn't integrate natively with popular sales tools like phone systems (VoIP), SMS platforms, or advanced analytics tools. If you need to log calls or text messages in your CRM, you'll need a workaround.

Who Should Use Folk CRM?

Folk is a good fit if you:

Look elsewhere if you:

Ideal Use Cases for Folk CRM

Folk shines in specific scenarios. Partnership managers tracking relationships across multiple organizations find the contact-centric interface perfect. Recruiters managing candidate pipelines appreciate the LinkedIn integration and ability to customize fields for different roles.

Event organizers benefit from Folk's ability to segment contacts by event, track RSVPs, and send targeted follow-ups. Consultants and freelancers who need to nurture a network without complex sales processes find Folk hits the sweet spot of sophistication and simplicity.

Early-stage startups (pre-Series A) often choose Folk because it's less overwhelming than enterprise CRMs while providing professional features that spreadsheets can't match. Teams that collaborate heavily on deals appreciate the shared pipelines and ability to see who's working on what.

Folk vs. Other CRMs

If Folk isn't quite right, consider these alternatives:

Close CRM - Better for teams doing high-volume outbound with calling, SMS, and email built in. Try Close CRM if you need power dialer and proper sales automation. Read our Close CRM review for the full breakdown.

Monday CRM - Similar spreadsheet-like feel but with better automation and mobile apps. Starts at $9/user/month. Check our Monday.com review and pricing breakdown.

HubSpot CRM - Free tier available, but costs escalate quickly. Better for teams that want marketing hub integration. See our CRM for small business guide for more options.

Pipedrive - More traditional sales CRM with visual pipelines, mobile app, and automation. Starts at $12.50/user/month. Solid if you want deal management from day one.

Copper CRM - Ideal if you're using Google Workspace. Native Gmail integration and better API than Folk. Recommended for teams planning to scale beyond 10 people.

Attio - Similar modern interface to Folk with better collaboration features. Worth comparing if you like Folk's philosophy but need more sophistication.

How Folk Stacks Up on Key Features

Compared to traditional CRMs, Folk is missing pipeline automation, predictive analytics, territory management, and advanced reporting. These gaps make it unsuitable for larger sales organizations with complex processes.

However, Folk excels in areas that matter to small teams: speed of implementation, ease of use, and AI-powered personalization. You can be up and running in under an hour, while Salesforce implementations take months.

Folk's pricing lands in the middle of the pack - more expensive than basic CRMs like Zoho or Freshsales, but cheaper than HubSpot or Salesforce. The value proposition depends entirely on how much you'll use the LinkedIn integration and AI features.

Real User Feedback

Folk has over 300 reviews on G2 with generally positive sentiment. Common themes:

What users love:

What users complain about:

Common Complaints from Power Users

Advanced users consistently note that Folk feels incomplete for serious sales operations. The lack of native phone integration, limited reporting capabilities, and basic automation make it feel like a contact manager rather than a full CRM.

Teams that scale beyond 10-15 people often outgrow Folk and migrate to more robust platforms. The lack of territory management, forecast tracking, and team performance dashboards becomes limiting as organizations mature.

Some users also report that the AI features, while impressive, consume credits quickly. A team doing significant prospecting can blow through monthly Magic Field and enrichment limits in a week, forcing an expensive upgrade.

Data Security and Compliance

Folk hosts all data on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the US-East-1 region. They follow industry-standard security practices including encryption at rest and in transit.

Folk is GDPR-compliant and provides a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) for customers who need it. The enrichment feature follows GDPR standards, pulling data only from public sources and verified providers.

For teams handling sensitive customer data or operating in regulated industries, Folk provides basic security but lacks enterprise features like SSO, audit logs, or advanced permission controls on lower-tier plans. The Custom plan includes these features, but you're paying premium prices.

Implementation and Migration

Getting started with Folk is refreshingly simple. Sign up, connect your email account, and start adding contacts. The entire setup takes under 30 minutes for most teams.

Folk provides templates for common use cases (sales pipelines, recruiting, partnerships, fundraising) that give you a starting point. You can import contacts via CSV, sync from Google Contacts, or use the Chrome extension to capture from LinkedIn.

For teams migrating from other CRMs, Folk's support team offers white-glove migration assistance on Premium and Custom plans. They'll handle data exports, field mapping, and import to ensure nothing gets lost. Users report this service is excellent when available.

The learning curve is minimal. If your team has used spreadsheets or Airtable, they'll understand Folk immediately. Training typically requires 15-30 minutes, not days of onboarding.

Long-Term Scalability Concerns

Folk works beautifully for teams of 2-10 people. Beyond that, cracks start to show. The lack of advanced permissions, territory management, and sophisticated reporting become problematic as organizations grow.

Teams with complex sales processes involving multiple stakeholders, approval workflows, or integration with finance systems will find Folk too simple. There's no native quoting or proposal functionality, limited custom object support, and no ability to enforce required fields or validation rules.

Folk positions itself for teams of "20-50 people," but that's optimistic. Most companies at that scale need capabilities Folk doesn't provide: forecasting, pipeline analytics, rep scorecards, and automated lead assignment.

If you're a fast-growing startup, consider whether Folk will still serve you in 12-18 months. Migration to a new CRM is painful, and you may end up switching platforms just as your team is hitting stride.

The Bottom Line

Folk CRM delivers exactly what it promises: a simple, fast CRM for people who hate CRMs. The spreadsheet-like interface and LinkedIn integration genuinely shine for solopreneurs and tiny teams.

But "simple" has trade-offs. You're paying $40/user/month to get features that competitors include at half the price. The lack of workflow automation, mobile app, and proper email tracking makes Folk feel incomplete for any serious sales operation.

The AI features - Magic Fields, follow-up suggestions, and recap assistant - are genuinely innovative and can save substantial time. If these capabilities align with your workflow, Folk delivers unique value. However, monthly limits on these features mean you may hit caps quickly with heavy use.

My recommendation: Try Folk's 14-day trial if you're currently managing contacts in Notion or spreadsheets. It's a meaningful step up. But if you're evaluating proper CRMs and need scalability, Close CRM or Monday CRM will serve you better as you grow.

Folk is perfect for solopreneurs, consultants, and teams of 2-5 who prioritize simplicity and LinkedIn integration over advanced features. It's not ideal for teams planning to scale beyond 10 people, those needing mobile access, or organizations requiring sophisticated automation and reporting.

For more CRM comparisons, check out our CRM software comparison and best CRM tools guides.