Comparison · Andsend vs Folk
Andsend vs Folk: Best CRM for Consulting Teams
A flexible CRM for many kinds of teams vs a business development platform built for consulting
Quick Verdict
| Use case | Choose Andsend if… | Choose Folk if… |
|---|---|---|
| Consulting business development | You want a platform built specifically for how consulting firms grow: long-term trust, repeat work and cross-sells across the team. | You want a flexible CRM for a team running shared pipelines, campaigns and customizable workflows. |
| Daily action | You want proactive recommendations based on relationship signals (silence, role changes, milestones), with configurable cadences as the fallback. | You want a CRM that follows up after you've logged the next step, plus structured task workflows. |
| What you act on | You want to act on relationships before they drift, not after they've gone cold. | You want a shared CRM database to search, organize and pipeline. |
| Setup and free plan | You want a free plan, self-serve setup in minutes and a tool that runs alongside an existing CRM. | You want to configure your CRM around custom fields, pipelines and AI workflows. |
Folk is built for many kinds of teams. Andsend is built for one.
A consulting partner opens Folk to look up a contact before next week's meeting. The contact is there. So are notes from two other partners on the same person, in slightly different formats, with three different last-contact dates. The data is all there. What's missing is the answer to the actual question: who has the warmest relationship right now, is it drifting, and whose turn is it to reach out?
It's the shape most consulting firms hit on a flexible CRM. The data gets captured cleanly; the team still works from inboxes anyway, because the CRM doesn't say which silences matter.
Consulting teams often look at Folk because it is clean, modern and easier to use than a traditional CRM. Many consulting firms don't want Salesforce-level complexity; they want something lightweight that helps the team organize relationships. Folk fits that description well. But the question shifts after a point: storing contacts is not the same as acting on relationships, and a consulting team's growth depends on who needs attention now, not what's already in the database.
**Folk is a flexible CRM for relationship-driven teams.** It captures contacts and conversations across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and calendar; provides shared pipelines and Kanban deal tracking; and ships with four AI Assistants for follow-ups, recaps, profile research and workflow automation. Around 4,000 companies use it, most in the 5 to 20 person range. Folk serves sales teams, recruiters, fundraisers, agencies, startups, small businesses and consultants. The product is built to flex across all of them.
**Andsend is a business development platform built for consulting teams.** It connects to LinkedIn, email and calendar, then helps the team understand which relationships are warming, which are drifting, where the warmest paths exist and what message should be sent next. The team gets clarity without configuring objects, pipelines or workflow rules. The system builds itself from existing relationship activity instead of asking every person to manually maintain a CRM record.
**Folk helps you manage relationship data. Andsend helps you act on relationship signals.** For consulting teams, that difference matters because growth rarely comes from a clean CRM record alone. It comes from staying top-of-mind with the people who matter, before the relationship cools.
What Andsend Does Differently
Andsend is built for one purpose: consulting business development. Connect LinkedIn, email and calendar, and Andsend tells you who needs attention today, drafts the message in your voice, and shows warm paths across your whole team.
Built for consulting business development, not just generalist CRM workflows.
Andsend is shaped around one approach: how consulting firms grow. Every product decision (the relationship-state model, the daily action list, the warm-path showing across the team) reflects what consulting actually looks like: long-term trust, repeat work and cross-sells across the firm. Andsend also works for solo consultants, but the value compounds when the whole team is contributing.
Proactive recommendations, more than just reminders.
Folk's Follow-up Assistant triggers when you've logged a next step. Andsend reads signals first (silence that's lasted too long, a role change, a milestone), with configurable cadences as the fallback. The daily action list shows up without you logging anything first, but you can set cadences per contact or per tag if you want them.
Stay top of mind across many relationships at once.
When a client needs help, either you are the person they think of first, or they call a competitor who is. The job is keeping as many relationships warm at the same time as you can, across the partners, BD leads and consultants who make up your firm. Andsend watches which relationships are cooling and tells you who to reach out to before they go quiet.
Feature by Feature Comparison
| Feature | Andsend | Folk |
|---|---|---|
| Primary workflow | Generate projects, engagements, referrals and cross-sells | Track pipelines, run outreach campaigns, manage shared sales database |
| Built for consulting | Yes, exclusively | No, generalist CRM across many verticals |
| Daily priority list | Yes, who to reach out to today | No |
| Proactive recommendations | Signal-triggered by default (silence, role change, milestone); configurable cadence per contact or tag as fallback | Follow-up Assistant runs when you've logged a next step |
| AI-drafted messages in your voice | Yes, grounded in conversation history, in your tone | Follow-up Assistant only, when you've logged a next step |
| Relationship states | Yes: Inner, Active, Drifting and Cold | No (pipeline stages instead) |
| Drift detection (automatic) | Yes | No |
| Warm paths across the team | Yes, automatic | Shared CRM records only |
| Relationship strength scoring | Yes | No |
| Setup time | Minutes | Depends on configuration depth |
| Free plan | Yes, free forever, no credit card | No (14-day trial only) |
| Email sync | Yes, Gmail and Outlook | Yes |
| Calendar sync | Yes | Yes |
| LinkedIn support | Yes (unified threads, native drafts) | Yes (via Chrome extension and sync) |
| Mobile app | Yes | Yes |
| WhatsApp sync | No (on roadmap) | Yes |
| Email campaigns and sequences (one-to-many) | No, one-to-one drafts | Yes, mature outreach tooling |
| Custom data model / objects | No (by design) | Yes (custom fields, pipelines) |
| Integrations breadth | Intentionally narrow (Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, calendar) | 5,000+ via Zapier / Make |
| REST API | No | Yes (Premium plans) |
| Privacy framing | Team sees patterns and gaps, not messages. Private conversations stay private | Standard CRM data model |
Results
Trusted by consulting firms
500+ leaders use Andsend.
“We doubled our interim revenue last year, and a big part of that was becoming systematic about the relationships we already had. I speak with so many HR leaders that without a system, follow-ups slip, and people drift. Andsend gives me the structure to stay top of mind with the right contacts, at the right time, in a way that still feels personal.”
Sofie König
Partner/Owner, Stardust Consulting
“Every quarter we used to map our consultants' LinkedIn networks to see how well we covered key accounts and where we had warm introductions. Today, Andsend does that continuously for us. It's a living overview of our relationships, who's moved, who's new, and where we need to act, so no important connection goes cold.”
Patrik Hallén
Partner, Andersen Consulting
Where Andsend Wins vs Folk
Purpose-built for consulting, not a generalist CRM
Folk is a generalist CRM, shaped to fit sales teams, recruiters, fundraisers, agencies and consultants. Andsend was built for one purpose: consulting business development. Every product decision (the relationship-state model, the daily action list, the warm-path showing across the team) is shaped around how consulting firms actually grow. **The question Folk answers:** "How does our team organize contacts, pipelines and workflows in a flexible CRM?" **The question Andsend answers:** "Which relationships across our firm need attention today, and who on our team has the warmest path to that target client?"
Warm paths shown across the team
Folk gives the team a shared CRM database to search. Andsend actively shows the warmest path from your team to any contact you want to reach, without searching and without configuring workflows. When a firm wants to reach a target account, Andsend identifies which person on the team already has the strongest relationship or most relevant connection, turning cold outreach into warm introductions. For consulting teams, that difference often determines whether an outreach gets a real conversation or gets ignored.
Proactive recommendations, more than just reminders
Folk's Follow-up Assistant runs when you've logged a next step. Andsend has configurable cadences too (per contact or per tag), but they're the fallback. Signals lead: silence that's lasted too long, a role change at a key account, a milestone worth mentioning. The system shows who needs attention now, before any cadence timer or logged task would have flagged it. This matters for consulting teams that often fail at follow-up not because they don't care, but because the signal is buried across LinkedIn, inboxes, calendars and memory.
See which silences matter
Andsend watches which relationships are cooling and tells you who to reach out to before they go quiet. It reads silence (someone you haven't spoken to in months), role changes (a contact who just moved to a new firm), and milestones, then puts them on today's priority list. Folk stores the contact history and reminds you when you've configured a task; Andsend reads the relationship and tells you which silences matter.
AI-drafted messages in your voice
Andsend drafts a message in your voice, grounded in your actual history with that person; you review it and send directly from Andsend, on LinkedIn or email. The reply lands back in the same unified thread. Every interaction becomes context for the next recommendation, so the system gets sharper as you use it. Folk's four AI Assistants (Follow-up, Recap, Research, Workflow) help with CRM-side tasks; Andsend's AI is built around the actual relationship history and the message you'd write yourself if you had the time. **Andsend prepares. You decide.**
Coordination, not surveillance
Andsend's team layer shows patterns and gaps (warm paths, coverage, who has the strongest connection to which target account) without exposing any private conversations. Each person chooses what to share, and messages stay private. The upside is mutual: intros, cross-sells, and coordinated focus on the accounts that matter most. The result is a team that contributes because contributing is worth it, not because anyone is forced to surrender their network.
Where Folk Wins vs Andsend
Built for campaign-driven BD
If your team's business development runs on one-to-many outreach (cold sequences, structured campaigns, send/track infrastructure), Folk is built for that work. Sequences, automated workflows, personalized bulk email and engagement tracking are core CRM capabilities, not add-ons. Andsend's outreach is one-to-one by design: a drafted message in your voice that you review and send. Teams running campaign-driven BD will find Folk's tooling more directly suited.
WhatsApp as a first-class channel
For teams whose client relationships live on WhatsApp (international consulting firms, teams in regions where WhatsApp is the dominant business messaging tool), Folk has built native WhatsApp sync into the CRM. Conversations land in the contact record alongside email and LinkedIn. Andsend doesn't sync WhatsApp today; it's on the roadmap for later this year. If WhatsApp carries your team's primary client conversations, Folk fits.
Custom data model and pipelines
Folk lets you define your own objects, fields and pipeline stages. Andsend is deliberately opinionated; the lightweight structure is the feature, and there's no admin setup because there's nothing to configure. If your firm needs custom data modeling, custom objects or pipeline-shaped workflows, Folk is more accommodating.
Integrations breadth and API access
Folk connects to 5,000+ tools via Zapier and Make and offers REST API access on Premium plans. Andsend connects deeply to Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn and calendar and stops there by design. If your team needs a CRM that plugs into a larger operations stack, Folk has the wider reach.
Pipeline-native deal tracking
Folk's Kanban pipelines are a direct match if your firm runs formal deal stages (lead, qualified, proposal sent, negotiation, won, lost). Andsend is built around relationship health and consulting business development rather than formal deal stages, so it doesn't compete in that workflow. Most consulting teams use Andsend for relationship-led BD and keep a CRM (or invoicing tool) alongside for proposals and deal records.
Andsend vs Folk Pricing
Folk and Andsend are priced for different kinds of work. Folk is a CRM with public per-user pricing; Andsend is a business development platform priced per seat with a free plan. For a 3-person team, Folk Standard runs about $72/month total (~$864/year); Andsend Team at €129/user/month runs about €387/month (~€4,650/year on monthly billing, or ~€3,240/year on annual). The two prices aren't a like-for-like comparison: Andsend's plan includes the team coordination (warm-path showing, proactive recommendations, drift detection, AI-drafted messages in your voice) that Folk's plan doesn't. The right comparison is what each plan actually delivers for a consulting team that needs to coordinate.
| Plan | Andsend | Folk |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes, free forever, no credit card | No (14-day trial only) |
| Public pricing | Yes (Free / Pro / Team) | Yes (Standard / Premium / Custom) |
| Entry paid tier | Andsend Pro: €49/user/month or €34/user/month annually | Folk Standard: $30/user/month or $24/user/month annually |
| Team / higher tier | Andsend Team: €129/user/month or €90/user/month annually | Folk Premium: $60/user/month or $48/user/month annually |
| Billing model | Monthly or annual (annual ~30% off) | Monthly or annual (annual saves 20%) |
Who's it for?
Find the right fit for your team
Who Should Choose Andsend?
- Consulting firms, advisory firms and fractional executives whose growth runs on long-term trust, repeat work and cross-sells across the firm.
- Partners who want relationship intelligence without surrendering their personal network to firm-wide visibility.
- Teams that want daily proactive recommendations based on relationship signals, no logged tasks required.
- Consulting teams that want a free plan, self-serve setup, and a tool that runs alongside an existing CRM.
- Firms looking for a coordination system for the team, not a shared sales database to search.
Who Should Choose Folk?
- Sales teams, agencies and small startups that want a flexible CRM with shared pipelines.
- Teams running one-to-many email campaigns, sequences and outreach automation.
- Buyers who need WhatsApp sync as a core relationship channel.
- Firms that want custom data models, custom objects and broad Zapier/Make integrations.
- Teams comfortable configuring their CRM with deal stages and AI Assistants.
FAQ
Start with the relationships you already have
Folk is a strong modern CRM for teams that want shared pipelines, campaigns and customizable workflows. Andsend is the better fit when consulting growth depends on knowing who to reconnect with, when to reach out, and which warm path to use.
Start with the relationships you already have.
Andsend connects LinkedIn, email and calendar, then shows your team who needs attention today, drafts the message in your voice, and helps you send. Andsend prepares. You decide.
