| Functionality | 8 <p>Close offers most of the functionality that SMB sales team will need. Besides allowing you to manage contacts, leads and your sales pipeline, Close also allows you to create automated sales sequences (email, calls, SMS), and best-in-class call functionality.</p><p>However, it lacks some advanced features such as automated lead scoring, and being able to directly add contacts from LinkedIn.</p> | 9 <p>Freshsales provides all the essential functionality most companies need, covering the majority of use cases.</p><p>The only notable gap we found was in more advanced features, like the ability to create branched automation workflows—something you’d typically see in platforms like Hubspot or Salesforce, which cater to the largest and most sophisticated organizations.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Close is designed for power users, so you need to know what you're doing. Setting up filters to target the right leads can feel overwhelming due to the extensive options, and there are no templates for automation workflows. Once familiar, Close becomes user-friendly with standout features like smart views, which keep targeted lists accessible via one-click. You can easily create workflows, edit deal cards without extra clicks, and get AI summaries of all contact activity, which will all save a lot of time for sales reps.</p> | 4 <p>Freshsales packs a ton of features and customization options, but it comes with a learning curve. For example, there are 12 different “quick” actions just for a single contact. The abundance of settings can make some workflows feel unnecessarily complex. Take email sequences—before you can even start composing, you’ll need to navigate through six different settings, including selecting between outbound, classic, or smart sequence types. This level of detail is fantastic for power users but might frustrate teams that value speed and simplicity.</p> |
| Look and feel | 6 <p>We find Close visually acceptable, though the lack of colour-coding and labelling of icons can make it a bit plain at times. Page loads are acceptable (~2 seconds per page).</p> | 6 <p>Freshsales looks decent, but the experience is let down by slow load times—key pages like the deal pipeline or individual contact profiles take a few seconds to load, and that gets frustrating fast.</p> |
| Customisability | 8 <p>Close offers significant customization for fields, workflows, and pipeline stages. You can create custom data objects to track items beyond people and companies, such as partnerships. It also supports extremely granular custom filters to target contacts and leads. However, Close is squarely a CRM for sales teams, and we don't think you can adapt Close to other use cases.</p> | 7 <p>Freshsales is fairly customizable—you can add custom fields, create custom data objects, and even track customer user events with code.</p><p>That said, the pipeline feature feels narrowly focused on deals management, making it less versatile if you want to use your CRM for things like vendor or partner management, or tracking customer onboarding. It also falls short on more advanced capabilities, like building sophisticated automation workflows or running in-depth analytics, which platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot handle with ease.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 6 <p>Close offers a free trial without need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. However, fully setting up the platform and upskilling your reps can take up to a week, given Close's powerful and rich outbound functionality.</p> | 4 <p>Freshsales offers a free trial without the need to speak to sales. Completing basic setup is simple, taking around 10 minutes to import contacts and set up pipelines. However, due to its extensive feature set and complex settings, fully customizing the platform—including chatbots, automation, and sequences—can take up to several weeks.</p> |
| Customer Support | 7 <p>You can only contact Close's support team via email, however the team is often helpful and replies within 15 minutes. Close also offers a lot of helpful onboarding guidance and high quality self-help resources.</p> | 6 <p>Freshales offer support via in-app live chat. We usually get a response within an hour, but agents often change halfway during the conversation, and aren't always the most knowledgeable.</p> |
| Integratability | 5 <p>Close's library of pre-built integrations lacks a few key integrations. For example, Close has no pre-built integrations with Zendesk and Intercom for Customer Support, or Mailchimp for Email Marketing.</p> | 6 <p>Freshsales comes with a solid lineup of around 385 pre-built integrations and offers an API for custom setups. However, it’s missing some key pre-built integrations with widely-used tools like Zendesk and Intercom, which might be a dealbreaker for some teams.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 8 <p>Close allows users to export key data via self-serve. Export of most other data is also available via API or on request.</p> | 8 <p>Freshsales allows users to export key data data via self-serve. Export of most other data are also available via API or on request.</p> |
