Smartlead Vs. Folderly Vs. Close.io: The Best Tool for Lead Engagement

11
Min
Created On:
May 3, 2024
Updated On:
May 3, 2024
Smartlead Vs. Folderly Vs. Close.io Tool Comparison

In the lead engagement and sales, choosing the right tool can significantly impact your business's success. Smartlead, Folderly, and Close.io are three prominent platforms, each offering unique features and capabilities. 

Are you struggling to decide between Smartlead, Folderly, and Close.io for your lead generation and sales engagement needs? 

Let's dive in and find the perfect tool for your business.

Smartlead: Optimizing Email Deliverability and Lead Generation

Smartlead stands out for its exceptional email deliverability, lead generation capabilities, and cold email automation. 

With unique IP servers and unlimited warmups, Smartlead ensures your emails land in the primary inbox. It enhances sender reputation through natural AI conversations and protects against spam. Smartlead's cold emailing API infrastructure enables automated campaign creation and management. 

It offers unique features and capabilities that set it apart in the realm of lead engagement and sales. With Smartlead, businesses can optimize their email marketing efforts, enhance sender reputation, and drive better results.

Key Features of Smartlead:

Exceptional Email Deliverability

Smartlead ensures high deliverability with unique IP servers and unlimited warmups, ensuring emails land in the primary inbox and enhancing sender reputation.

Custom-Conditional Email Triggers

Smartlead allows for personalized engagement with custom-conditional email triggers and sub-sequences based on lead behavior.

Cold Emailing API Infrastructure

The platform offers a cold emailing API infrastructure for seamless integration into existing workflows, enabling automated campaign creation and management.

Master Inbox and Email Tracking

Smartlead provides a centralized master inbox, email tracking, and mailbox rotation features that streamline sales engagement and improve efficiency.

Smartlead Master Inbox

AI Warmups

Smartlead helps build and defend mailbox sending reputation with AI warmups, leveraging diverse mailboxes across various providers and improving delivery reputation with natural content and humanized sending patterns.

High-Delivery IPs

Smartlead's IP rotating infrastructure ensures unique and exclusive IP allocation for every campaign, improving deliverability and campaign performance.

ESP Matching

Smartlead's dynamic ESP matching algorithm improves deliverability by automatically matching the lead's mailbox provider with yours, eliminating the need for manual MX record matching.

AI Learning

Smartlead's AI learning capabilities auto-adjust warm-up reply rates and patterns to improve deliverability, ensuring effective campaigns.

GPT-4 Update

Smartlead now offers the latest GPT-4 update, bringing enhancements like Master Inbox Reply, Mail Sequence Compose AI, and Campaign Settings GPT-4 Categorization, as well as Pick Templates, a feature that fosters community sharing and innovation.

Smartlead offers exclusive feature enhancements for cold email campaigns, including User Level Webhook, Client Level Webhook, Campaign Level Webhook, and Untracked Replies Webhook for Clients, providing more control and flexibility in tracking and managing campaigns.

Smartlead Agency-Grade VIEWS: Efficient Lead Management

Managing leads effectively is crucial for any business, especially for agencies handling multiple clients and campaigns. Smartlead offers a powerful feature called Agency-Grade VIEWS, designed to streamline lead management and enhance collaboration. Here's how it works:

Personalized Views

With Smartlead, you can create personalized views based on clients, teams, or campaign tags. This eliminates the need to sift through numerous emails and allows you to focus on what matters most. Whether you're organizing leads by client, campaign, or team, Smartlead's VIEWS feature lets you customize your workspace for maximum efficiency.

Predefined Filters

Setting up filters for unassigned leads, client campaigns, or specific categories is quick and easy with Smartlead. With just one click, you can configure predefined filters that match your workflow, saving you valuable time and ensuring you stay focused on key priorities. Whether you're assigning leads to team members or sorting campaigns by status, Smartlead's filters help you manage your workload with ease.

Enhanced Collaboration

Sharing VIEWS with clients enhances collaboration and ensures everyone is on the same page. By granting clients access to specific views, you can keep them informed about campaign progress, lead status, and more. This transparency fosters trust and allows for smoother communication between you and your clients.


Folderly: Elevating Email Deliverability and Integrations

Folderly is a comprehensive email deliverability tool designed to ensure your emails reach the inbox every time. With a focus on improving open and reply rates, Folderly integrates seamlessly with popular CRMs, ESPs, and automation tools, making it a versatile solution for businesses of all sizes. 

Folderly Homepage

Here's a closer look at what Folderly has to offer:

100% Email Deliverability

Folderly uses advanced algorithms to enhance your sender score, ensuring your emails are delivered successfully. By maintaining positive interactions with your emails and offering a comprehensive spam trigger checker, Folderly helps you avoid the spam folder and reach your audience effectively.

Automated Warm-up Maintenance

Folderly's automated warm-up maintenance feature helps you maintain high email deliverability at all times. By gradually increasing your email sending volume, Folderly ensures your emails are received positively by mailbox providers, improving your open and reply rates.

Integration with CRMs and ESPs

Folderly integrates with all major CRMs, ESPs, and marketing & sales automation tools, including Microsoft Office 365, SendGrid, Google Workspace, Gmail, Outlook, and Amazon AWS. This allows you to seamlessly incorporate Folderly into your existing workflows, enhancing your email deliverability without disrupting your current processes.

User-Friendly Setup

Connecting your mailbox with Folderly is quick and easy, requiring just one click. The user interface is easy-to-navigate, and Folderly offers a customer success manager to assist you with setup and implementation, ensuring a smooth transition to using the tool.

Data Safety Compliance

Folderly offers GDPR and CCPA-enabled solutions for data protection, ensuring your data is safe and compliant with regulations. This gives you peace of mind knowing that your emails and customer data are secure.

Spam Checking and SPF Generation

Folderly can check for spam-trigger words in your email templates, reducing the risk of your emails being flagged as spam by ESPs. Additionally, Folderly performs SPF (Sender Privacy Framework) checks and can generate SPF records for your domain, further improving your email deliverability.

Close.io: Streamline Sales Engagement with CRM Integration

Close.io is a highly-rated CRM platform that integrates calling, emailing, and lead management, offering a centralized solution for sales teams.

With a 4.6/5 rating on G2.com, Close.io is praised for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, making it a valuable tool for managing customer relationships and driving sales.

Close.io Homepage

Here's an overview of what Close.io has to offer:

All-in-One Platform

Close.io provides a range of features to help sales professionals manage leads, make calls, send emails, and track activities, all from a single platform. This streamlines sales processes and boosts productivity by eliminating the need for multiple tools.

Integrated Calling

Close.io offers a built-in calling feature that allows sales teams to make and receive calls directly within the platform. This eliminates the need for external phone systems or additional tools, providing a seamless communication experience for both sales professionals and prospects. The call recording and logging options ensure important details are captured for future reference and analysis.

Sales Engagement CRM

Close.io is known for its seamless integration of calling, emailing, and lead management, making it a powerful CRM for sales teams. The platform's user-friendly interface and comprehensive features help sales professionals organize and prioritize leads, communicate with prospects effectively, and close deals efficiently.

Reporting and Analytics

Close.io offers detailed reporting and analytics features that provide insights into key metrics such as call activities, email engagement, and pipeline progress. The real-time dashboards enable sales teams to track sales performance and make data-driven decisions, helping them identify areas for improvement and optimize sales strategies.

As a whole, Close.io is a valuable tool for sales teams looking to streamline their processes, increase productivity, and close deals more efficiently. Its integration of calling, emailing, and lead management makes it a comprehensive solution for managing customer relationships and driving sales.

Why Smartlead is the Best Choice Lead Engagement Compared to Colderly Vs. Close.io?

Here's why Smartlead is the superior choice:

  1. Email Deliverability: Smartlead ensures exceptional email deliverability with unique IP servers, unlimited warmups, and natural AI conversations that enhance sender reputation and protect against spam. This ensures that your emails land in the primary inbox, maximizing their visibility and effectiveness.
  2. Advanced Features: Smartlead offers a range of advanced features such as custom-conditional email triggers, sub-sequences based on lead behavior, and a master inbox for streamlined sales engagement. These features provide personalized engagement and enhance the effectiveness of your outreach efforts.
  3. Integration and Ease of Use: Smartlead integrates seamlessly with various CRMs, ESPs, and marketing tools, offering a user-friendly setup and GDPR/CCPA-compliant data protection. The platform's spam trigger checking and SPF generation features further optimize email deliverability.
  4. AI Learning and Optimization: Smartlead's AI learning capabilities auto-adjust warm-up reply rates and patterns to improve deliverability. The platform intelligently adjusts sending patterns to emulate healthy email behavior, ensuring that your campaigns remain effective.
  5. Community and Innovation: Smartlead fosters a community of sharing and innovation among its users, offering features like Pick Templates that allow access to community-generated templates based on ChatGPT prompts. This encourages users to share their own templates, enhancing email marketing strategies.
In comparison, Folderly focuses primarily on email deliverability and integrations, while Close.io is more focused on CRM integration and sales processes. However, neither Folderly nor Close.io offers the same level of advanced features, AI learning, and community-driven innovation as Smartlead. Overall, Smartlead emerges as the best choice for lead engagement, offering a comprehensive platform with advanced features that maximize email deliverability and sales effectiveness.

Which Tool You Should Choose?

Here's a comparison of the pricing and customer reviews for Smartlead, Folderly, and Close.io:

Smartlead Pricing

  • Essentials: $34/monthsome text
    • 2,000 active leads
    • 6,000 emails per month
  • Pro: $66/monthsome text
    • 10,000 active leads
    • 40,000 emails per month
  • Business: $79/monthsome text
    • Increased limits on leads and emails
    • Custom CRM integration
  • Custom: Contact Smartlead for detailssome text
    • Supports up to 2 million leads
    • All plans come with a 14-day free trial

Folderly Pricing

  • Individual: $96 per mailbox per month
  • Team (10-24 mailboxes): $72 per mailbox per month
  • Team (25-99 mailboxes): $56 per mailbox per month
  • Enterprise (100+ mailboxes): Contact Folderly for a custom quote

Close.io Pricing

  • Startup: $49 per user per month
  • Professional: $99 per user per month
  • Enterprise: $139 per user per month

Customer Reviews: Smartlead

Smartlead g2 review
Smartlead g2 review

Customer Reviews: Folderly

Folderly G2 review
Folderly G2 review

Customer Reviews: Close.io

Close.io pricing page
Close.io pricing page

The Final Analysis

In this analysis, Smartlead emerges as a comprehensive solution for lead engagement, offering a range of powerful features. It provides unlimited sender accounts and warmups, unique IP servers, A/B testing, custom CRM integration, and API access. Its omnichannel outreach spans email and LinkedIn, with an end-to-end whitelabel experience. 

Auto-rotating email accounts maximize outreach, while auto-categorization of lead intent and subsequences personalize engagement. Smartlead's master inbox, campaign performance tracking, and responsive support further enhance its appeal. 

However, Smartlead lacks mobile functionality and native integrations, though a HubSpot integration is in the works. Despite these limitations, Smartlead's robust feature set and customer-centric approach make it a compelling choice for businesses seeking to boost their email outreach efforts.

The Bottomline

In this blog we compared Folderly, Close.io, and Smartlead based on their features, use cases, pricing, and customer feedback. 

Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, but Smartlead stands out for its comprehensive set of features designed to enhance lead engagement.

If you're aiming to scale your business and significantly improve your outreach efforts, Smartlead is worth considering. 

With a 14-day free trial available, you can explore its capabilities without commitment and tailor your plan to suit your needs.If you have more queries or features request join our Slack community consisting 4000+ cold email marketers. 

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

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Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Author’s Details

Rajashree

Rajashree specializes in strategizing and planning B2B SaaS product marketing content. As a writer turned researcher, she has a deep-rooted affinity for writing data-driven content. With over 8 years of experience in the industry, Rajashree has documented her insights in a series of blogs covering genres such as SEO, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, and Email Marketing.

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Frequently asked questions

General Questions

What is Smartlead's cold email outreach software?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Smartlead's cold email outreach tool helps businesses scale their outreach efforts seamlessly. With unlimited mailboxes, fully automated email warmup functionality, a multi-channel infrastructure, and a user-friendly unibox, it empowers users to manage their entire revenue cycle in one place. Whether you're looking to streamline cold email campaigns with automated email warmups, personalization fields, automated mailbox rotation, easy integrations, and spintax, improve productivity, or enhance scalability with subsequences based on lead’s intentions, automated replies, and full white-label experience, our cold email tool implifies it in a single solution.

How does the "unlimited mailboxes" feature benefit me?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Our "unlimited mailboxes" feature allows you to expand your email communications without restrictions imposed by a mailbox limit. This means you won't be constrained by artificial caps on the number of mailboxes you can connect and use. This feature makes Smartlead the best cold email software and empowers you to reach a wider audience, engage with more potential customers, and manage diverse email campaigns effectively.

What do you mean by "unibox to handle your entire revenue cycle"?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

The "unibox" is one of the unique features of Smartlead cold email outreach tool, and it's a game-changer when it comes to managing your revenue cycle. The master inbox or the unibox consolidates all your outreach channels, responses, sales follow-ups, and conversions into one centralized, user-friendly mailbox.

With the "unibox," you gain the ability to:
1. Focus on closing deals: You can now say goodbye to the hassle of logging into multiple mailboxes to search for replies. The "unibox" streamlines your sales communication, allowing you to focus on what matters most—closing deals.

2. Centralized lead management: All your leads are managed from one central location, simplifying lead tracking and response management. This ensures you take advantage of every opportunity and efficiently engage with your prospects.

3. Maintain context: The "unibox" provides a 360-degree view of all your customer messages, allowing you to maintain context and deliver more personalized and effective responses.

How does Smartlead ensure my emails don't land in the spam folder?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Smartlead, the best cold email marketing tool, ensures your emails reach the intended recipients' primary inbox rather than the spam folder. 

Here's how it works:
1. Our "unlimited warmups" feature is designed to build and maintain a healthy sending reputation for your cold email outreach. Instead of sending a large volume of emails all at once, which can trigger spam filters, we gradually ramp up your sending volume. This gradual approach, combined with positive email interactions, helps boost your email deliverability rates.

2. We deploy high-deliverability IP servers specific to each campaign. 

3. The ‘Warmup’ feature replicates humanized email sending patterns, spintax, and smart replies.
 
4. By establishing a positive sender reputation and gradually increasing the number of sent emails, Smartlead minimizes the risk of your emails being flagged as spam. This way, you can be confident that your messages will consistently land in the primary inbox, increasing the likelihood of engagement and successful communication with your recipients.

Can I integrate Smartlead with other tools I'm using?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Certainly, Smartlead is designed for seamless integration with a wide range of tools and platforms. Smartlead offers integration with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Clay, Listkit, and more. You can leverage webhooks and APIs to integrate the tools you use. Try Now!

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

What type of businesses sees the most success with Smartlead?

No, there are no limitations on the number of channels you can utilize with Smartlead. Our multi-channel infrastructure is designed to be limitless, allowing you to reach potential customers through multiple avenues without constraints.

This flexibility empowers you to diversify your cold email outreach efforts, connect with your audience through various communication channels, and increase your chances of conversion. Whether email, social media, SMS, or other communication methods, Smartlead's multi-channel capabilities ensure you can choose the channels that best align with your outreach strategy and business goals. This way, you can engage with your prospects effectively and maximize the impact of your email outreach.

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Do you provide me with lead sources?

Smartlead distinguishes itself from other cold email outreach software by focusing on limitless scalability and seamless integration. While many similar tools restrict your outreach capabilities, Smartlead offers a different approach.

Here's what makes us uniquely the best cold email software:

1. Unlimited Mailboxes: In contrast to platforms that limit mailbox usage, Smartlead provides unlimited mailboxes. This means you can expand your outreach without any arbitrary constraints.

2. Unique IP Servers: Smartlead offers unique IP servers for every campaign it sends out. 

3. Sender Reputation Protection: Smartlead protects your sender reputation by auto-moving emails from spam folders to the primary inbox. This tool uses unique identifiers to cloak all warmup emails from being recognized by automation parsers. 

4. Automated Warmup: Smartlead’s warmup functionality enhances your sender reputation and improves email deliverability by maintaining humanized email sending patterns and ramping up the sending volume. 

5. Multi-Channel Emphasis: Smartlead places a strong emphasis on multi-channel outreach. You can reach your prospects where they are with the LinkedIn outreach feature.   With Smartlead’s cold email automation software, you're always one step ahead in your outreach efforts, enjoying the freedom to scale your initiatives and seamlessly integrate with other tools—all while maintaining a focus on maximizing the impact of your outreach.

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

How secure is my data with Smartlead?

Ensuring the security of your data is Smartlead's utmost priority. We implement robust encryption methods and stringent security measures to guarantee the continuous protection of your information. Your data's safety is paramount to us, and we are always dedicated to upholding the highest standards of security.

How can I get started with Smartlead?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

Getting started with Smartlead is straightforward! Just head over to our sign-up page and follow our easy step-by-step guide. If you ever have any questions or need assistance, our round-the-clock support team is ready to help, standing by to provide you with any assistance you may require. Sign Up Now!

How can I reach the Smartlead team?

Email automation FAQs- Smartlead

We're here to assist you! You can easily get in touch with our dedicated support team on chat. We strive to provide a response within 24 hours to address any inquiries or concerns you may have.

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