folk vs Attio (2026): Pricing, Credits & CRM Fit

Choose between folk and Attio by the relationships and decisions the CRM must support, not by the promise of a modern interface. A consultant following warm opportunities, an agency linking several engagements to a client, and a startup modeling accounts, subscriptions, and product usage have different needs. Both tools can organize relationships, but their object models, permissions, and commercial limits matter when the workspace becomes operational. The individual folk review and Attio review provide product context; this page focuses on choosing between them.

This is official-documentation research checked October 6, 2026, not hands-on testing. Prices are USD with billing cycles stated; examples are calculated subscription costs before taxes and extras. No new speed, sales-conversion, AI-accuracy, or inbox-placement score is assigned. Search research identified free-plan, pricing, mobile, and comparison questions, but autocomplete is not volume or difficulty data. The CRM category remains the better starting point if the requirement is a broader sales/marketing suite rather than either of these data models.

folk's plan guide documents a fourteen-day Premium trial, followed by paid access. Attio's current plans include a permanent Free workspace with three seats and 50,000 records, alongside a separate Pro trial. For a three-person founding team, Attio Free can remove the base CRM subscription bill if its governance and feature limits fit. Do not describe that as Attio being completely free: the data model, sends, reports, and access needs can trigger a paid tier.

Using folk pricing, five Standard seats are $24 times five times twelve, or $1,440 annually; five Premium seats are $2,880. On month-to-month billing, the same teams cost $150 and $300 per month. Attio pricing gives five Plus seats at $2,100 annually or $220 monthly, and five Pro seats at $4,740 annually or $495 monthly. Quote the same billing cycle and number of people before comparing, and keep optional credits, other workspaces, integration subscriptions, and implementation separate.

The most useful paid comparison is often Premium versus Pro, not Standard versus Plus. Custom objects and sequences are relevant requirements on those higher tiers. folk Premium's five-seat annual bill is $1,860 lower than Attio Pro's in this example, but that is not proof of equivalent capabilities or a lower complete operating cost. If Attio's model replaces custom integration work, or folk's group structure creates additional reconciliation, the labour difference can outweigh the subscription difference. Use the SaaS evaluation framework to document the actual requirement.

folk Premium has custom objects and Deals. Its developer model scopes object types and custom fields to a group, and linked contacts must belong to that group. Attio custom objects require Pro or Enterprise; Pro supports twelve total objects including People and Companies. Free's three and Plus's five allowances refer to standard objects, not a licence to create an arbitrary custom schema on the entry tier.

Use an example that exposes the difference: one company employs two contacts, buys two services, and renews each service on a different date. Ask whether each engagement should have its own owner, value, history, and reporting fields. Then model a partnership involving the same person in another context. Compare how the same record is linked, how edits propagate, and how reports join the required information. A contact pipeline is enough for some teams; a complex relationship model needs more than a status field on a person.

Do not mistake flexible fields for a well-defined database. Duplicate company records, inconsistent identifiers, and unclear ownership can undermine either tool. Map the source of truth for billing and delivery as well as sales: the complete SaaS stack guide covers those boundaries. If the organization actually needs a conventional activity-driven selling process, compare Pipedrive before investing in custom objects merely because a CRM permits them.

folk documents Google email/calendar import, with historical and source-type restrictions. Attio documents Gmail and Microsoft 365 synchronization, while excluding on-premises Exchange and Microsoft shared mailboxes. Check the precise mailbox type before testing an integration, especially for a shared sales address. A connection button does not establish that every old message, event, or contact source will be available to every teammate.

For LinkedIn, folkX can capture a contact, and the documented conversation workflow saves an opened thread as an interaction. Do not describe that as a continuously mirrored entire inbox. Attio has its own Chrome extension and optional third-party integrations; a third-party app's capabilities, cost, and data handling should not be attributed to the base CRM without qualification. Test capture only for relationships you are authorized to manage, and preserve the distinction between a captured profile and verified customer information.

Evaluate matching and history with the same sample in each service: a person with two email addresses, a company with a renamed domain, a recurring event, an older thread, and an interaction that must remain private. Check both source import and what another user can see after sharing. If staying directly inside Gmail is the decisive requirement, Streak represents a different product model worth evaluating. Neither folk nor Attio should win a broad inbox comparison based on an extension screenshot alone.

folk separates message quotas per member from shared workspace enrichment and AI-field pools. Standard includes 500 enrichment credits and 2,000 AI-field generations monthly; Premium includes 1,000 and 5,000. Its enrichment guide prices successful email enrichment at one credit and phone enrichment at four. For a five-seat Standard workspace, 100 successful email and 100 successful phone lookups consume all 500 credits. Multiplying the pool by five would create a budget that the plan does not promise.

Attio's credit guide distinguishes non-transferable Ask Attio seat credits from shared workspace credits. Free includes 100 personal credits per seat and 250 shared; Plus 500 personal and 1,500 shared; Pro 1,000 personal and 10,000 shared. Seat credits cannot simply be transferred into a common automation budget. Ask Attio uses personal credit first and may draw on shared credits unless controlled; AI and workflow operations have their own charging rules.

Do not call every Attio enrichment event an AI-credit charge. Its native enriched-data documentation describes automatic enrichment requiring an existing person email or company domain, distinct from AI research and third-party lookup services. For either CRM, write a sample monthly workload: human questions, research, record writes, enrichments, and sequence enrollment. Then apply the correct rates and scope. Credit totals are not comparable until you identify what consumes each credit; a larger number on a pricing page is not necessarily more usable work.

folk Premium sequences support up to ten steps and require Custom Sender configuration. Its Gmail Sender is a separate path with different restrictions and cannot run those sequences. Attio sequences are Pro/Enterprise and positioned for warm relationships rather than indiscriminate high-volume prospecting. Establish authentication, intended recipients, opt-out handling, and ownership before comparing how quickly either editor builds a sequence.

Attio's Pro monthly sending description does not remove the outbox limits: twelve emails per hour and 200 per day per mailbox still apply. folk uses two distinct transports: Gmail Sender sends through Google with its own daily caps, while sequences require Custom Sender through folk's provider. Do not apply Gmail quotas to the Custom Sender transport, or infer that Custom Sender is unlimited. Model the applicable message allowance and sender restrictions, then verify replies and stop conditions with authorized sample accounts.

API access provides another meaningful entry-tier distinction: folk requires Premium, while Attio documents API/apps and workflows across plans. A small integration-first founding team may therefore prefer Attio even before custom objects matter. If n8n or Make connects the CRM to another system, price and test that connector as a separate dependency. Confirm duplicate prevention, retry behavior, and whether an update should propagate in one direction or both rather than counting integration-directory logos.

The communication defaults are not identical. folk's synced interactions start private with sharing options; Attio documents private email bodies but shared subjects/metadata by default. Metadata can still contain sensitive commercial context. Have an ordinary member inspect what is visible after another member connects a mailbox, then repeat with a private relationship. Neither vendor's general privacy statement substitutes for checking the specific record, list, note, and communication permissions the team needs.

folk Standard treats members as admins, with differentiated workspace roles introduced on Premium. Pricing and help disagree about the tier for some granular group/security controls, so obtain explicit confirmation. Attio Free broadly shares editable workspace data; Plus and Pro introduce progressively more controls, while SAML SSO/SCIM require Enterprise. For agency work, test client isolation directly. A private folk group is not an independent database, and a private Attio list is not necessarily the complete boundary for the underlying records.

Both now have native mobile apps, but folk mobile excludes Deals in current documentation, whereas Attio mobile documents records, lists, notes, and tasks. Test your required action instead of treating mobile availability as parity. Reporting needs a similar check: folk dashboards are Premium; Attio's official Plus report allowance conflicts between fifteen and twenty in different sources. A reporting-dependent buyer should verify the actual tier rather than selecting the more generous published figure.

folk's standard export works group by group, with visible columns and filters affecting contact and note CSVs. It excludes interactions, reminders, and some relationship fields; a separate permission-aware beta interaction API addresses part of that gap. Attio's workspace backup includes records, notes, tasks, and other CSV data, but emails cannot be exported and native enriched values have documented export exclusions. Neither download should be described as a complete restorable clone.

Build an exit checklist by data type, not by whether Export exists. Include native and custom fields, repeated opportunities, relationships, notes, tasks, emails, events, attachments, and integration settings. Compare how dates and owners map in the destination, and preserve relevant consent and suppression context. A missing email archive can matter more than a lower annual licence cost for a business whose sales history lives in conversations. Use source mailboxes and authorized alternate exports where appropriate, without assuming that one API retrieves every historical artifact.

Before committing, move a small representative sample and ask the eventual operator to complete one follow-up in the destination. Keep source access until required history and files are independently retrievable. The CRM buyer's guide provides a wider implementation checklist, but the acceptance evidence must come from this data and these tiers. This is a proposed migration test, not a claim that Softora performed a lossless move between two customer workspaces.

For up to three founders with standard relationships and acceptable shared-data permissions, Attio Free is the strongest zero-subscription starting point in this pair. For a five-person agency needing separate engagements, sequences, and dashboards, compare folk Premium with Attio Pro using the $2,880-versus-$4,740 annual base example, then test object scope, permissions, and credit use. For a governance-heavy organization, obtain Enterprise quotes and written control definitions rather than extrapolating entry-tier prices or relying on ambiguous help-page wording.

A useful trial concludes with an owner, a usable data model, a repeatable next-action view, an acceptable sending process, and an exit sample. If the team mostly needs conventional sales activities and forecasts, Pipedrive or Zoho CRM may belong on the shortlist; if marketing and service need one broader platform, inspect HubSpot CRM. The conditional winner is the tool whose documented plan and demonstrated workflow fit, not the one with the most fashionable AI label.