folk CRM Review 2026: Pricing, Credits & Limits

folk pricing and its plan guide list Standard at $24 per member per month billed annually, or $30 monthly; Premium is $48 annually or $60 monthly. Enterprise starts at $80 per member per month with annual billing, with a scoped quote for limits and services. The initial Premium trial lasts fourteen days and does not require a card. Continued access requires an upgrade; it is not an enduring 200-contact free plan.

Five Standard seats therefore cost $1,440 for twelve months on annual billing, versus $150 each month without that commitment. Premium for the same five people is $2,880 annually or $300 each month. These are illustrative subscription calculations excluding taxes, additional workspaces, optional arrangements, and surrounding software. Workspaces bill separately, so one person participating in multiple workspaces should not assume one payment covers every membership. The billing guide describes proration when membership changes.

Choose the usable tier rather than the smallest advertised price. A team needing sequences or API integration needs to evaluate Premium's budget from the beginning. Standard remains relevant when contact-based views and campaigns meet the brief. Compare Pipedrive for a dedicated sales-pipeline alternative and Streak when working directly inside Gmail is central. Use the SaaS spending checklist to keep migration effort and retained subscriptions outside the simplistic per-seat comparison.

Standard includes people, companies, groups, and pipeline management. Premium adds Deals and custom objects, so the common claim that folk cannot represent custom records is outdated. The important distinction is how those records are organized. The custom-object reference describes group-specific object types and fields, with linked contacts belonging to the relevant group. Model a contact attached to several engagements before deciding whether this structure is preferable to a workspace-wide relational system.

The data-model guide also explains why separate groups should not be mistaken for separate databases. Native contact fields can be shared across groups even when the views differ. A private group is therefore not sufficient evidence of complete client isolation. For agencies and recruiters, test which fields, notes, and interactions another member can access rather than inferring security from a hidden board. Access needs belong in the evaluation before importing sensitive commercial relationships.

Check actual constraints behind broad marketing labels. The hard-limit guide lists 500 groups, 100,000 contacts in a group, and 100 custom fields per group. Its member ceiling differs from pricing's unlimited-member wording, and the data-model guide describes unlimited group records and more open-ended custom fields. These sources conflict, so neither a confirmed unlimited allowance nor a settled operational ceiling follows from the public wording alone. Ask for the limits applicable to the intended workspace before a large import.

folk provides real email/calendar connections, not just manual contact entry. The Google connection guide describes initial historical import and specific exclusions, including unread or archived messages and recurring events in the documented path. Standard displays a limited interaction history per contact; Premium expands recorded-history access. Confirm what your connection imports, what it displays, and what remains only in the source mailbox. Sync claims are not meaningful without those three separate questions.

folkX contact capture and LinkedIn interaction logging solve a different job. The documented conversation workflow involves opening a thread and saving it as an interaction; it is not proof that folk silently mirrors every message from an entire LinkedIn inbox. Use capture for authorized relationship records, respect source-platform rules and privacy, and assign someone to verify context rather than trusting an extension label to establish complete history.

For a useful trial, connect a permitted test mailbox containing a recent conversation, an older thread, a calendar event, and a private interaction that colleagues should not see. Check contact matching, duplicate handling, updates from the source, and visibility after sharing changes. The small-business CRM buying guide provides the surrounding adoption criteria. This review proposes the test; it does not claim those cases were measured in a working customer account.

Standard's monthly allowances include 500 enrichment credits and 2,000 AI-field generations shared across the workspace. Premium raises those pools to 1,000 and 5,000 respectively. Message allowances are different: 2,000 per member on Standard and 5,000 per member on Premium. More seats expand the message entitlement but do not multiply the shared enrichment pool. The enrichment documentation says a successful email lookup costs one credit and a phone lookup four; unsuccessful enrichment is refunded.

For example, 100 successful email lookups plus 100 successful phone lookups use 500 credits, exhausting the Standard workspace's published monthly enrichment allocation. That is not a promise of 500 fully enriched contacts. Before a campaign, classify which fields are genuinely necessary and check accuracy and appropriate data use. AI-generated research or fields need human verification before they become assertions in messages. Treat a generated summary as a draft, not proof that a customer has a need or has granted permission to be contacted.

Premium email sequences support up to ten steps and require Custom Sender; credits are reserved for potential sequence sends. The sending-route guide states that Custom Sender uses folk's provider rather than your connected Gmail mailbox. Its message allowance and applicable restrictions still apply, but Google mailbox sending limits are not the quota for this transport. The separate Gmail Sender uses Google, cannot run sequences, and documents 125 daily sends for personal Gmail or 500 for Workspace.

Reply tracking creates a second dependency. Responses arrive in the external inbox associated with the sender address; to make them visible as interactions and support sequence reply handling, connect that same address through the documented email-sync setup. Test a reply, an out-of-office response, a bounce, and an opt-out before automating follow-up. The sender can be configured correctly while reply context is missing from the CRM. Do not interpret that missing context as permission to keep contacting someone who has already responded.

Use an explicit pilot scorecard: which contacts were authorized recipients, which sender transmitted each message, which workspace or member allowance changed, and which event stopped further steps. Inspect unsubscribed and bounced contacts before sending, since the messaging guide warns that they can remain selectable and consume allowance without delivery. Remove ineligible recipients from the campaign rather than treating CRM selection as proof of consent. This operating check separates usable automation from a sequence that merely looks complete in the editor.

Standard's workspace roles do not supply the differentiated roles available on Premium. Synced communication starts private under the connection documentation, with sharing choices for broader context. Granular controls need additional care: current pricing places certain group-level and sensitive-interaction controls on Enterprise, while some help articles describe Premium access. Obtain confirmation for the exact required control and account instead of choosing the interpretation that makes a lower-price plan look complete.

Premium dashboards provide charting and metrics, but a reporting feature is not a guarantee that the underlying relationships and fields answer your management question. Define one pipeline report, one overdue-follow-up view, and one handoff report during evaluation. Trace a few records back to their source rather than accepting an attractive aggregate. For a team already operating across project management tools, specify where a won relationship becomes owned delivery work and which system keeps that handoff current.

There are now native folk mobile apps for iOS and Android; reviews saying there is no mobile app are stale. However, the mobile profile guide excludes Deals. App-store subscriptions also have a documented one-workspace-member limit. A salesperson needing deal updates on the road must test that actual task, and a team must choose an appropriate purchase route. Native availability does not establish complete desktop feature parity.

The ordinary folk export is group-based and produces contact and notes CSV files inside an archive. Visible columns and filters influence the result. Interactions, reminders, and some relationship fields are excluded, so a successful download does not prove that a destination can reconstruct the working CRM. Inventory each dataset, turn off accidental filters, and compare counts against an approved sample before concluding that ownership of the contact list equals complete portability.

Premium API access offers another route for some data. The beta interaction API can return certain email and calendar content subject to permissions, making an absolute claim that no email can ever leave folk too broad. Conversely, beta access is not a guarantee that every interaction, attachment, relationship, and account setting is portable. Verify endpoint availability and authorization, handle personal information carefully, and record what is missing rather than silently dropping it during migration.

Before importing a whole team, export one company with contacts, a custom object if used, a note, a reminder, and a shared conversation. Inspect the files outside folk and map them to the intended replacement. Document integrations and sender configuration separately, then assign an owner for restoring useful access. Compare this against Attio using our folk vs Attio guide: both require dataset-level planning, and a marginally cheaper licence does not compensate for lost relationship context.

The 8.5 editorial assessment reflects folk's documented relationship model, capture and communication connections, and Premium capabilities, balanced against tier gates, pooled usage, permission ambiguity, and incomplete CSV portability. It is not a measured sales-productivity or data-quality score. A small team can shortlist Standard when contact views and campaigns are enough, or Premium when independent records, reporting, sequences, and API access are essential. Finish the permission test before adding sensitive accounts.

Choose another direction if the requirement is a permanent free CRM, heavily regulated isolation that cannot be verified, or a mobile workflow dependent on absent features. Attio, Pipedrive, and Zoho CRM provide different models to investigate, not automatic upgrades in every respect. Keep the subscription decision attached to defined relationship records, realistic credit usage, and a successful export sample. That produces a defensible choice instead of another fashionable system nobody is responsible for maintaining.