folk CRM Alternative: Customermates and folk Compared

folk or Customermates: which fits your team

Who folk is a good choice for

folk calls itself "the AI CRM for your entire sales motion". Its strength is the start of a relationship: finding people, saving them and reaching out. If most of your week is prospecting on LinkedIn and sending outreach, folk is built for that and Customermates is not.

• Capture. The folkX Chrome extension saves profiles from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, X, Instagram and Gmail. The mobile app scans business cards and records voice notes.
• Reach out. Standard includes 500 email-finder lookups and 2,000 messages per member a month, templates for LinkedIn and Gmail, and email campaigns with analytics. Sequences come with Premium.
• Sync. Emails and calendar events from Google or Microsoft and WhatsApp 1:1 chats land on each contact's profile in real time.
• Assist. Follow-up and recap assistants are on every plan; the research and workflow assistants run on monthly quotas.
• Connect AI. An MCP server on every plan lets Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor search and update the workspace after an OAuth sign-in.

Why teams look for a folk alternative

Deals and the API sit on Premium. Standard includes pipeline management. The deals object, custom objects, dashboards, workspace roles and the REST API need Premium, at $60 per member a month or $48 billed yearly (€54 or €43).

LinkedIn is captured, not synced. folk's help center says it has no native LinkedIn integration for automatic syncing. To log a LinkedIn conversation, you open the thread and click "Add to folk" in the extension, once per conversation. Email and WhatsApp 1:1 chats do sync on their own.

Standard shows 30 interactions per contact. On Standard you see at most 30 emails, meetings and chats per contact, from up to three years back. Premium shows the full history.

US hosting, according to its help center. folk is run by Folk Inc., a Delaware corporation. Its help center places the infrastructure on AWS in North Virginia (us-east-1), with EU transfers under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; its privacy policy names AWS servers in Ireland. If the region matters for your data processing agreement, ask folk which statement applies. folk reports SOC 2 Type 1; Customermates holds no certification.

Exports leave history behind. folk exports one group at a time as CSV files of contacts and notes, but not interactions, reminders or some field types, and there is no export of the whole workspace.

What five people pay per month

Prices checked on 8 October 2026 from folk's pricing page, using the euro prices listed there. In US dollars, folk Standard costs $30 per member a month or $24 billed yearly, and Premium $60 or $48. Customermates bills monthly, in euros.

The rows do not buy the same things, so read them in pairs:

• folk Standard and Customermates Pro are the closest pair. Each syncs one account per person and includes AI help. folk Standard adds the email finder, campaigns and the extension. Customermates Pro adds deals and the API, and that one account can be LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram or Telegram, answered from the CRM.
• Customermates Starter is the cheapest row, but it has no inbox. It suits a team that wants deals, Mate and the API without synced conversations.
• For several channels per person, compare folk Premium with Customermates Business. Premium syncs 5 accounts per member. Business gives 3 per user and lets you share a whole account with the team. For five people, Business costs more than folk Premium.

Where Customermates fits

Customermates is an open-source, AI-native CRM for small client-facing teams: consultants, agencies, other service businesses and founders. It is built in Germany.

Conversations you can answer. From Pro, the unified inbox brings Gmail, Outlook and IMAP mailboxes, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram into one list, and you reply on the original channel. LinkedIn in Customermates includes Sales Navigator and Recruiter InMail. Link a participant to a contact once, and every conversation with that address or handle shows on the contact's timeline.

Deals and the API on every plan. Your own lists, fields, relationships and calculated fields, table and board layouts, and a stage field with probabilities for a weighted pipeline total. Roles, REST, webhooks and MCP are part of Starter.

AI that does the CRM work. In Customermates Cloud, Mate prepares thread summaries and reply drafts, updates records and builds views, using hosted AI credits: a monthly allowance per active user, listed on the pricing page. Routines run a saved instruction on a schedule or when a record changes. Mate sends a message without asking when you tell it to send, so ask for drafts when you want to review first. Your own Claude or ChatGPT can work through the MCP server instead, with 58 tools on every plan and on self-hosted installs.

Your server, if you want one. The AGPL-3.0 core runs with Docker Compose and PostgreSQL 16, with REST, webhooks and MCP, but without the inbox, Mate or hosted credits. In Customermates Cloud the database is configured in the AWS Frankfurt region, a DPA is available, and the subprocessors, including US providers, are listed on the legal pages.

Where Customermates is the wrong choice

• No browser extension and no enrichment. Contacts come from the inbox, an XLSX import, the API or your AI client, and nothing looks up missing email addresses for you.
• No campaigns, sequences or bulk email. Messages go out one at a time, written by you or drafted by Mate.
• No native mobile app. Customermates runs in the phone's browser.
• No reminders and no task due dates. Add a date field such as "Next contact" and sort a saved view by it. Saved views are personal, so each person keeps their own.
• No free plan. There is a 7-day trial, then a paid plan.

A worked setup: a consultancy moving from folk

A four-person consultancy on folk Standard keeps two groups, "Prospects" and "Clients", runs a pipeline view on a status field and logs LinkedIn chats with folkX. Two partners prospect on LinkedIn; the other two look after clients in Gmail.

A project's value is the sum of its line items, each a service such as a "Strategy workshop" package times quantity, and the stage probability turns it into the weighted total.

Each partner connects one channel, LinkedIn or Gmail. One account each fits Pro, at €116 a month for the team. When someone needs Gmail and WhatsApp side by side, the workspace moves to Business at €276.

Each partner also owns a routine for the Friday follow-up. A routine runs as its owner, so it sees that person's contacts and drafts in their channels. It runs in Customermates Cloud and uses hosted AI credits:

Switching from folk in five steps

1. Export each group from folk

   In each group, open the menu at the top right and choose "Export view as CSV". The export holds the displayed columns, so show every field you want to keep first. You get a contacts file and a notes file; interactions, reminders and some fields, such as contact custom fields, are not included.

2. Save the files as XLSX

   Customermates does not read CSV files, so open each one in a spreadsheet app and save it as an Excel workbook.

3. Prepare the workspace

   Rename Deals to Projects in Configure if that fits, create the "Relationship" and "Next contact" fields, and set the stage probabilities.

4. Import one list at a time

   Import organizations first, then contacts, then projects. Link columns match records by name, so a contact's company column finds the organization you imported before. New contacts need a first and a last name, and email addresses or phone numbers can map to the contact's Contact details field. Copy folk's notes into a notes column before the import, or let your AI client append them over MCP afterwards. Row and size limits are in the records guide.

5. Connect channels and routines

   On Pro or during the trial, connect a mailbox, LinkedIn or WhatsApp under Settings, Channels. Then set up the Friday routine, or connect your own AI client through MCP.

Other folk alternatives worth a look

Customermates publishes this list. Prices and features come from each vendor's pricing page, checked on 8 October 2026.

• Attio suits teams that want a flexible data model. Attio Free covers up to 3 seats and 50,000 records. Plus costs €39 per user a month, or €31 billed yearly, for up to 10 seats; Pro costs €93 or €74 and adds call intelligence and sequences. The number of objects grows by plan, from 3 on Free to 12 on Pro. The Attio comparison goes into detail.
• HubSpot covers a free start for very small teams. Its free tools allow up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts, with no time limit.
• Twenty is an open-source CRM with unlimited custom objects that you can host yourself. Cloud Pro costs $9 per user a month billed yearly, and Organization, at $19, adds single sign-on and row-level permissions. The trial runs 30 days. See the Twenty comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Competitor details checked on 8 October 2026 against folk's pricing page, privacy policy and help-center articles on security and privacy, interaction tracking, LinkedIn interactions, sources and integrations, the folkX extension, data export and MCP, and against the pricing pages of Attio, HubSpot and Twenty.