Software Alternatives & Startups

Close VS Apify

Compare Close VS Apify and see what are their differences

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Close logo Close

A CRM with built-in calling, SMS, and email

Apify logo Apify

Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.
  • Close Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-15
  • Apify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-30

Apify is a JavaScript & Node.js based data extraction tool for websites that crawls lists of URLs and automates workflows on the web. With Apify you can manage and automatically scale a pool of headless Chrome / Puppeteer instances, maintain queues of URLs to crawl, store crawling results locally or in the cloud, rotate proxies and much more.

Close features and specs

  • Unified Interface
    Close provides a complete customer relationship management solution with a robust set of features including email, calling, and SMS integration, all within one platform, which enhances workflow efficiency.
  • Automation Features
    The platform includes extensive automation capabilities such as automated emails, task reminders, and follow-ups, helping to streamline repetitive tasks and improve productivity.
  • Ease of Use
    Close is known for its user-friendly interface and intuitive design, making it accessible for users of varying technical skill levels.
  • Excellent Support
    Close has a strong reputation for providing excellent customer support, including comprehensive onboarding assistance and a wealth of online resources and documentation.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Close integrates seamlessly with numerous other tools and platforms, including popular options like Slack, Zoom, and Zapier, enhancing its functionality and versatility.

Possible disadvantages of Close

  • Pricing
    The cost of Close can be relatively high compared to other CRM solutions, particularly for small businesses or startups operating on limited budgets.
  • Limited Customization
    Some users may find the customization options within Close to be somewhat limited, which can be a drawback for businesses with highly specific needs.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its overall ease of use, some features can have a steeper learning curve, potentially requiring additional time for new users to become fully proficient.
  • Mobile App Limitations
    The mobile application currently offers fewer functionalities compared to the desktop version, which can be restrictive for users who need to manage workflows on the go.
  • Reporting Features
    While Close offers basic reporting capabilities, some users may find the depth and flexibility of reporting features to be less comprehensive compared to other advanced CRM solutions.

Apify features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Apify provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users of all technical levels to create and manage web scraping tasks.
  • Scalability
    Apify is built to handle tasks of various sizes, from small-scale projects to enterprise-level operations, making it a scalable solution.
  • Integration and API Support
    It offers extensive API support, allowing for seamless integration with other tools and systems to enhance automated workflows.
  • Customizability
    Users can customize their scraping bots (actors) with different settings and scripts to fit specific needs and requirements.
  • Cloud-based
    Being a cloud-based platform, Apify allows users to run their scraping tasks without needing local resources, which is convenient and efficient.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Apify provides thorough documentation and tutorials, which help users get started quickly and solve issues efficiently.
  • Community and Support
    Apify has an active community and solid customer support to assist users with their needs and enhance their overall experience.

Possible disadvantages of Apify

  • Learning Curve
    While the interface is user-friendly, there may still be a learning curve for those new to web scraping and automation.
  • Cost
    Apify can be expensive compared to other web scraping tools, particularly for extensive use cases that require high volumes of data.
  • Dependency on External Factors
    Web scraping often depends on the stability of the target websites. Changes in website structures can break scripts, requiring ongoing maintenance.
  • Performance Limitations
    The performance of cloud-based scraping tasks can be affected by network latency and other external factors beyond user control.
  • Potential Legal Issues
    Web scraping can raise legal concerns, particularly when scraping data from websites that restrict such activities in their terms of service.
  • Resource Intensity
    Complex scraping tasks can be resource-intensive, potentially requiring higher-tier subscriptions and more computing resources, driving up costs.

Analysis of Close

Overall verdict

  • Close is considered a highly effective CRM tool for sales-oriented teams. It offers a range of powerful features that streamline the sales process, though it might be considered expensive for teams not heavily focused on aggressive sales tactics.

Why this product is good

  • Close (close.com) is a customer relationship management (CRM) software designed specifically for sales teams. It is appreciated for its intuitive interface, robust automation features, and efficient communication tools such as email and calling integrations. Users find it especially beneficial for small to medium-sized businesses looking to optimize their sales processes and improve productivity.

Recommended for

    Close is ideal for sales-driven organizations, especially small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that require efficient lead management, streamlined communication, and actionable insights to enhance their sales performance.

Analysis of Apify

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Apify is considered a good choice for web scraping and automation needs due to its comprehensive features, user-friendly interface, and strong community support. It is especially beneficial for those who require efficient, large-scale data extraction and workflow automation.

Why this product is good

  • Apify is an established platform known for its robust web scraping and automation capabilities. It provides a powerful API, pre-built actors for common tasks, and allows you to create custom web scrapers with ease. The platform is scalable, supports a variety of programming languages, and offers features like scheduling, proxies, and data storage solutions. This versatility makes it a valuable tool for businesses and developers needing efficient data retrieval and workflow automation.

Recommended for

  • Developers looking for a versatile web scraping solution.
  • Businesses needing to automate data collection processes.
  • Researchers and analysts requiring extensive data from the web.
  • Marketers seeking competitive analysis through data scraping.
  • Tech enthusiasts interested in exploring web automation tools.

Close videos

Close Netflix Review

More videos:

  • Review - CLOSE (2019) - Netflix Original Movie - One Minute Movie Review
  • Review - Close: Netflix: Ending Explained + Real Life Story Of The Female Bodyguard To The Rich And Famous

Apify videos

Apify product news - 2019/01/30

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Close and Apify)
CRM
100 100%
0% 0
Web Scraping
0 0%
100% 100
Sales
100 100%
0% 0
Data Extraction
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Close and Apify

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Apify Reviews

Top 15 Best TinyTask Alternatives in 2022
This is another tinytask alternative. For you to link various web services and APIs, Apify has provided many web integration options. You can add data processing and customised computation processes in addition to letting the data flow between them. With the data that is freely accessible on the web, you may provide crucial insights, and easy lead creation allows you to...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apify should be more popular than Close. It has been mentiond 48 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Close mentions (8)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2024)
    Close (https://close.com) | Multiple Product & Engineering Roles | REMOTE (US) Close is a bootstrapped, profitable, completely remote, ~90 person team of thoughtful individuals who value autonomy and impact. Since 2013, we’ve been building a CRM for small businesses with a focus on better communication, without the hassle of manual data entry or complex UI. We're looking for experienced people in the following... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2024)
    Close (https://close.com) | Multiple Product & Engineering Roles | REMOTE (US) Close is a bootstrapped, profitable, completely remote, ~90 person team of thoughtful individuals who value autonomy and impact. Since 2013, we’ve been building a CRM for small businesses with a focus on better communication, without the hassle of manual data entry or complex UI. We're looking for experienced people in the following... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Why this simple email template can help with your sign-ups conversion
    This sign-up sales email from Close.io (now close.com) will likely increase your conversion rate. Here's why it works well:. Source: over 3 years ago
  • managing SAAS pipeline
    Do you need something to manage outbound email sequences? close.com or quickmail.io are both pretty cool. Source: about 4 years ago
  • A modern data stack for startups
    On the left, you'll see data sources (only a sample, we have many more than this), tools where we generate and work with data. One of them is Product, the Postgres database that powers incident.io, while Intercom and Close are SaaS we use to run our business. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
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Apify mentions (48)

  • I let an Apify Actor read my docs and write one GitHub issue. It found a 404 without cloning the repo.
    The first network smoke labeled https://apify.com/ inconclusive even though the page was healthy. The response carried a Content Security Policy header larger than aiohttp's default 8 KB field limit. The client failed while parsing headers, before I saw the 200. - Source: dev.to / 7 days ago
  • How to pull every open job from Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters with public APIs (and monitor changes)
    Native @apify scheduling, dataset exports (CSV/JSON), webhooks, and it's callable by AI agents via Apify MCP. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
  • Google's News API has been gone since 2016, and people still search for it
    That runs News Scraper on Apify, which is the same forty lines plus the parts that are Tedious rather than hard: both feeds, the nested publisher element, the date Normalisation, and deduplication. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • WHOIS is gone, RDAP replaced it, and a 404 does not mean what you think
    That runs an Apify Actor I maintain, Domain Scraper, because the Tedious parts are the RDAP bootstrap, the vcard unpacking and the provider Fingerprinting rather than the HTTP call. If you would rather do it yourself, Https://rdap.org/domain/ is the whole API and it needs no key. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How I Turned Canadian Open Government Data Into a Live Licence-Verification Site + API (Build Log, 2026)
    Data collection: Apify actors, one per source, that scrape the open-data endpoints and normalize them. Quebec RBQ ships a daily bulk CSV (inside a 10.8 MB zip, ~924k rows that dedupe to ~54k active licences). Ontario HCRA has no bulk file — it's an internal JSON API behind the public registry. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Close and Apify, you can also consider the following products

Pipedrive - Sales pipeline software that gets you organized. Helps you focus on the right deals, so easy to use that salespeople just love it. Great for small teams.

import.io - Import. io helps its users find the internet data they need, organize and store it, and transform it into a format that provides them with the context they need.

Zoho CRM - Omnichannel CRM for Businesses of all sizes

Octoparse - Octoparse provides easy web scraping for anyone. Our advanced web crawler, allows users to turn web pages into structured spreadsheets within clicks.

HubSpot - Grow Better With HubSpot: Software that's powerful, not overpowering. Seamlessly connect your data, teams, and customers on one CRM platform that grows with your business.

Bright Data - World's largest proxy service with a residential proxy network of 72M IPs worldwide and proxy management interface for zero coding.