Freshsales

Freshsales Review: AI-Powered CRM With Built-In Phone and Email for Inside Sales Teams

Freshsales is Freshworks' answer to the question of what a CRM built for modern inside sales teams should look like: clean interface, AI-driven insights from day one, built-in phone and email tools, and pricing that scales without enterprise-level sticker shock. Since its 2016 launch (rebranded from Freshsales Suite to Freshsales in 2021), it has become one of the fastest-growing CRM platforms in the mid-market segment.

Built-In Telephony

The built-in phone system is Freshsales' most distinctive feature. Unlike most CRMs that require a third-party integration with Aircall, RingCentral, or Dialpad, Freshsales includes native telephony from the Growth plan. Sales reps can make and receive calls directly within the CRM interface, with automatic call logging to the associated contact record, call recording for coaching and compliance, and call metrics (duration, outcome, talk-to-listen ratio) tracked at the rep and team level.

For inside sales teams whose primary contact mode is phone, this integration eliminates the context-switching that comes with managing a CRM and a separate calling tool simultaneously. Call outcome updates the deal stage. Follow-up tasks are created from the call record. The efficiency gain for high-volume calling teams is material.

Freddy AI

Freshworks' AI layer — Freddy — is integrated throughout Freshsales with several practical applications. Freddy Insights scores each deal based on historical win/loss patterns and current deal attributes, flagging deals that are at risk or stalled. Contact scoring ranks leads by their probability of converting based on engagement signals. Freddy Copilot (on Pro and Enterprise) generates email drafts, call summaries, and deal briefs from CRM data.

For sales managers who need to prioritise their team's attention across a large pipeline, Freddy's risk flagging is the most immediately useful feature — it surfaces the deals most likely to slip without active intervention.

Email Sequences

Freshsales includes email sequences (automated multi-step follow-up cadences) from the Growth plan. A sequence defines a series of emails with configurable delays: Day 1, Day 3, Day 7, Day 14. When a contact is enrolled, emails are sent automatically according to the schedule, with replies or opens triggering exit from the sequence. For sales teams that have been managing follow-up sequences in tools like Outreach or Apollo, the native integration with CRM deal and contact records reduces the data synchronisation friction significantly.

Free Plan

Freshsales' free plan is notable for supporting unlimited users with contact management, deal tracking, a built-in chat widget, and basic reporting. No credit card is required. For startup sales teams evaluating CRM tools before committing, the free tier provides enough functionality to validate the workflow before upgrading.

Weaknesses

Telephony coverage varies by region. While Freshsales supports phone numbers in 90+ countries, features like local number provisioning, inbound routing rules, and voicemail transcription depend on regional infrastructure. Teams with specific country requirements should verify coverage before committing.

Reporting at lower tiers covers standard pipeline metrics but lacks the custom dashboard flexibility and multi-dimensional analysis available in Salesforce or Zoho CRM Enterprise. For revenue operations teams that need complex multi-territory or multi-product reporting, Freshsales' reporting layer requires supplementation with a BI tool.

Verdict

Freshsales is the strongest choice for inside sales teams that prioritise phone-heavy workflows and want a modern, clean CRM interface with AI assistance at a competitive price point. Its built-in telephony creates genuine workflow consolidation that most competitors require third-party integrations to achieve.

Score: 8.1/10 — Best native telephony integration in the CRM category; reporting depth and regional telephony variations are the main limitations.