folk alternatives
folk is built for relationship-led selling and priced per member. Six alternatives compared on the quotas, the missing free tier and what happens when outbound volume arrives.
Switch if your sending has outgrown 2,000 messages per member a month, or if you need a permanent free tier rather than a two-week trial. Stay if your selling is genuinely relationship-led and the pipeline is short.
The short answer
- folk Standard is $24 per member per month billed annually with no seat cap, which is cheaper than Attio and more flexible than Monday's three-seat minimum. Per-member pricing still compounds with headcount.
- The constraint is quotas, not records. 500 enrichment credits a month and 2,000 messages per member per month price folk for relationships rather than campaigns. Measure your real send volume before comparing anything else.
- There is no permanent free tier, only a two-week trial with no card required. If free-forever matters, that alone narrows the field to a different set of tools.
How we compared these
All figures come from each vendor's own pricing page, checked in September 2026. Nothing is taken from a review site or a comparison directory. Two entries could not be priced from their own sites at all: Pipedrive returns a 403 to automated requests, and Zoho's page serves rupees rather than dollars. Their rows say so rather than borrowing a number.
Evaluated from folk's own documentation and pricing, September 2026. We have not run it in production. The prices, quotas and MCP details below are checkable on folk's site; there is no first-hand usage account here because we do not have one.
The table is built around quotas and seat shape rather than feature lists, because that is what actually differs. A relationship CRM and an outbound platform can look similar on a feature grid and behave completely differently once a real month of sending goes through them.
folk and its alternatives, compared
| folk | Attio | HubSpot | Close | Copper | Streak | SalesCrew | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry paid price | Standard $24 per member/mo annual, $30 monthly | Plus $35 per seat/mo annual, $44 monthly | $20 per seat/mo annual, $7 monthly | Solo $9 per user/mo annual, $19 monthly | Basic $23 per seat/mo annual, $29 monthly | Pro $49 per user/mo monthly | $299/mo flat, unlimited seats |
| Seat model | Per member, no cap stated | Per seat, Plus caps at 10 | Per seat | Per user | Per seat | Per user | Unlimited seats on every tier |
| The binding limit | 2,000 messages per member/mo, 500 enrichment credits/mo | Records: 250,000 on Plus | Contacts on the free tier; tier gates above | 10,000 leads on Solo | 2,500 contacts and 25 companies on Basic | None stated on records; email tools on free | AI allowance around 5,000 model calls/mo. Manual paths never stop |
| Free tier | No. 2-week trial, no card | Yes, 3 seats, 50,000 records | Yes, 2 users, 1,000 contacts | No. 14-day trial, no card | No. Trial with no card | Yes, email tools only | No. 14-day trial, card required |
| Outbound at volume | No. Per-member message quota | No | Sequences, not on purchased lists | Yes, with calling | No | Mail merge 50/day on free | Yes, on your own mailbox pool with per-domain caps |
| Official MCP server | Yes, hosted with OAuth | Yes, hosted with OAuth | Yes, read and write | Yes, three permission scopes | No. A read-only ChatGPT app only | Yes, free on all tiers | Yes. Every UI action has an MCP twin |
| Lives in your inbox | Syncs one account per member | No | No | No | Gmail-centred | Yes, inside Gmail | No. Multi-mailbox inbox inside the CRM |
Figures checked on vendor pricing pages, September 2026.
The field, ranked for a team leaving folk
1. Attio
The obvious step up if folk felt too light: 250,000 records on Plus, a real free tier with 50,000, and a flexible data model. Best for: teams outgrowing a contact list. Not for: teams heading past ten people on Plus, which caps there, or anyone who needed outbound.
Read more2. HubSpot
Cheaper per seat at $20 annually, with a permanent free tier for two users and an integration catalogue nothing here matches. Best for: teams who want marketing and sales in one place. Not for: cold outbound, which its acceptable-use policy restricts.
Read more3. SalesCrew
The answer when the message quota is what broke: unlimited seats at one flat price, cadences on your own mailbox pool with per-account and per-domain daily caps, suppression enforced at freeze and at send, all in a Postgres project you own. Best for: teams whose relationship CRM has started doing campaign work. Not for: anyone who chose folk for its lightness, since this is a heavier product, or who needs a mobile app. New product, no third-party reviews, voice on the roadmap. Disclosure: SalesCrew is our product.
Read more4. Close
$9 a user annually and built around actually contacting people, with calling included and a well-scoped MCP server. Best for: small teams whose selling is calls and email. Not for: large lists, since Solo caps at 10,000 leads.
Read more5. Streak
If what you wanted was your CRM inside Gmail, Streak is the more committed version of that idea, and it gives its MCP server away free on all tiers. Best for: people who live in their inbox. Not for: teams who need a system that exists outside one mail client.
Read more6. Copper
Google Workspace-centred at $23 a seat annually. Note the ceiling: Basic caps at 2,500 contacts and 25 companies, and Copper ships no MCP server, only a read-only ChatGPT app on its upper tiers. Best for: Google-native teams with small lists. Not for: anyone planning on AI operation.
Read moreWhen to stay on folk
Stay if your selling is genuinely relationship-led. folk is designed around people you already know or were introduced to, and the whole product reflects that: contact-first views, light structure, no pressure to model a pipeline you do not have. Tools built for campaigns make that motion worse, not better, because they push you toward volume you were never going to send.
Stay if per-member pricing with no seat cap suits you. At $24 annually with no ceiling, folk avoids the trap Attio's ten-seat Plus plan sets and Monday's three-seat minimum sets from the other direction. For a growing team in the five to fifteen range, that shape is quietly one of the better deals in this comparison.
Stay if 2,000 messages a month per person is more than you send. That quota only looks restrictive next to outbound tools, and most relationship-led teams never approach it. If you are nowhere near the limit, switching to a heavier product to escape a constraint you do not hit is paying for a problem you do not have.
Questions
- What are folk's quotas and do they matter?
- Standard is listed at $24 per member per month billed annually, with 500 enrichment credits a month, 2,000 messages per member per month and one account sync per member, as of September 2026. Those numbers are fine for relationship-led selling and low for outbound. Check your monthly send volume against 2,000 before anything else.
- Does folk have a free tier?
- No. It offers a two-week trial that does not require a card, which is a fair way to test it. If a permanent free tier is what you need, Attio, HubSpot and Zoho all publish one and they are the more relevant comparison.
- Is folk a good CRM for cold outbound?
- Not at volume. Its message quota is per member per month, which prices sending as a per-person activity rather than a campaign one, and cold outbound needs mailbox pooling, warmup and suppression handling that a relationship CRM does not provide. Teams doing both usually pair folk with a dedicated sending tool.
- Does folk work with AI assistants?
- Yes. folk publishes a hosted MCP server with OAuth, so a client like Claude or ChatGPT can read and act on the CRM. This is now common across the category rather than rare, so the useful question is scope: what the server permits and whether every tier gets it.