A.R.O vs folk
folk is a CRM for a team with a pipeline. A.R.O is for one person's relationships.
folk is a genuinely good lightweight CRM for small teams: shared pipelines, email campaigns, enrichment, a LinkedIn extension, and a per-seat price to match. A.R.O is not trying to be that. It is a personal CRM: your contacts, your cadences, your meetings, one person. If you are a solo founder, consultant or job seeker paying $30 a seat for a deal pipeline you do not run, this is the comparison for you.
Prices and limits checked on folk's own site in October 2026. Check folk for anything that has changed since.
Side by side
| A.R.O | folk | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | One person's network | Teams sharing a pipeline |
| Price | Free for 50 contacts; $4.99 or $14.99 a month | $24-30 per member/month on Standard, more above that |
| Pipelines | Personal kanban boards (job hunt, fundraise, hiring) | Full team pipelines, deals, custom objects |
| Email campaigns | Personalized one-to-one sends from your own account, with merge fields | Email sequences and campaigns |
| Enrichment | None | Contact enrichment and credits |
| Shared workspace | Per-contact sharing only | Full multiplayer workspace, roles, permissions |
| Keep-in-touch cadence | Core feature, per contact, with a who's-going-cold view | Not the focus |
| Meeting prep | Built into the dashboard | Not the focus |
Where folk is the better choice
- If more than one person needs to see the same contacts, folk wins and it is not close. A.R.O shares individual contacts, not a workspace.
- Real deal pipelines, email sequences and enrichment credits, which matter if you are running outbound as a business.
- 5,000+ integrations through their ecosystem.
If one of those is the reason you are looking, go use folk. A tool you actually open beats a cheaper one you abandon.
Where A.R.O is different
- Priced for one person. $4.99 or $14.99 a month against $24-30 per seat.
- Keep-in-touch cadences and a who's-going-cold list, which is the thing a personal network needs and a sales pipeline does not.
- Meeting prep and personal details (kids, partner, interests), the stuff that makes a relationship feel remembered.
- Reminders pushed into Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do or Apple Reminders.
- A free tier that does not expire.
Pricing, plainly
- Free for up to 50 contacts, no card, no clock
- $4.99/month with your own AI key
- $14.99/month with AI included
- 7-day trial on the paid plans
- Standard: $30/member/month, or $24/member/month billed annually
- Premium: $60/member/month, or $48 billed annually
- Enterprise: from $100/member/month
- 2-week trial, no credit card
Questions people actually ask
No. You can share an individual contact with someone, but there is no shared workspace, no roles and no team pipeline. If your team needs one board, folk or a traditional CRM is the right answer.
A.R.O, in most cases. You get cadences, meeting prep and personalized sends for a few dollars a month instead of a per-seat price built for teams. If you run structured outbound campaigns at volume, folk's sequences are stronger.
Yes, by CSV export and import. A.R.O reviews and dedupes every import before applying it.
Try it on 50 people first
Free plan, no card. Connect a Google, Apple or Microsoft account and see who you have been drifting from.