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Nektar and momentum integration
Buyer's Guide

Nektar + Momentum: Complete Salesforce Context for AI

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Nektar + Momentum Integration: Connect Every Customer Interaction to Better Deal Intelligence Buyer’s Guide 9 min October 28, 2026 Momentum helps revenue teams turn customer conversations into structured insights and actions. Nektar complements that capability by ensuring customer interactions across email and calendars are captured, connected to the right Salesforce records, and available as structured CRM data. Together, they help close an important gap in revenue intelligence: the difference between understanding what happened on a call and understanding the full context of the customer relationship. Momentum records conversations and turns them into insights that can support deal reviews and AI-driven workflows. Nektar captures email and calendar activity, matches interactions to the right Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities, and keeps those associations correct as CRM records change. That distinction matters because not every important customer interaction happens on a recorded call. Emails, calendar meetings and the relationships surrounding an opportunity all contribute to understanding where a deal stands. With Nektar feeding connected customer activity into Salesforce, Momentum can draw on a richer CRM context for its AI-powered workflows. Get our latest insights into your inbox Why Integrate Nektar With Momentum? Sales conversations contain valuable signals: customer objections, buying intent, commitments, risks and next steps. Momentum helps teams extract those signals from conversations and turn them into actionable intelligence. But a call is one part of the customer journey. A prospect might raise a concern during a meeting, clarify it over email the following day, introduce another stakeholder in a calendar invitation, and involve an executive in a later conversation. Each interaction adds context to the deal. If that context is scattered across communication channels or associated with incomplete CRM records, revenue teams and AI systems may not have the full picture. This is where Nektar complements Momentum. Nektar captures customer emails and calendar interactions and connects them to the appropriate Salesforce Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities. It helps ensure that customer activity is not just collected, but associated with the CRM records where revenue teams need it. Momentum can then use the customer and deal context available in Salesforce alongside its conversation intelligence. The result is a more connected foundation for deal reviews, buying-group visibility, revenue workflows and AI. How Nektar and Momentum Complement Each Other The two platforms address different parts of the customer-context problem. Capability Nektar Momentum Customer interaction capture Captures email and calendar activity and connects it to Salesforce records. Records customer calls and captures conversational insights. Salesforce context Matches activity to the right Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities and keeps associations current as CRM records change. Uses Salesforce context and conversation insights to support deal intelligence and AI-driven workflows. Email activity Captures email interactions and writes structured activity into Salesforce. Can read email information once it is available in Salesforce. Buying-group context Connects customer interactions to the people and opportunities involved in the buying process. Adds insights from recorded conversations to the broader customer and deal context. AI readiness Provides structured, connected customer activity in Salesforce. Uses conversational insights and Salesforce context to support AI-powered workflows. The distinction: Momentum provides conversation intelligence. Nektar connects the email and calendar activity that helps complete the customer context in Salesforce. Neither needs to replace the other’s role. Together, they help revenue teams connect what customers say on calls with what happens across the rest of the buying journey. The Missing Piece: Email and Calendar Context in Salesforce Salesforce has increasingly emphasized that AI agents need trusted, relevant customer context to act effectively. Its Meet Momentum webinar makes the same point: when customer signals fail to reach Salesforce, agents operate without the full picture. But the solution isn’t simply to capture more conversations. It’s to connect the different interactions that make up a customer relationship. Consider a typical enterprise opportunity: A discovery call reveals the customer’s primary challenge. An email thread clarifies the requirements and brings a new stakeholder into the discussion. A calendar invitation identifies additional participants in an upcoming meeting. A follow-up conversation confirms the next steps and timeline. Momentum can provide insights from recorded conversations. Nektar helps ensure that email and calendar activity is captured and associated with the right Salesforce records, so those interactions contribute to the broader customer context. What Can You Build With Nektar + Momentum? Combining Nektar’s customer activity data with Momentum’s conversation intelligence creates opportunities to improve how revenue teams understand deals and act on customer signals. 1. More complete AI deal reviews Deal reviews are more useful when they account for the full customer relationship, not just the latest recorded conversation. Momentum can surface insights from customer calls, while Nektar brings email and calendar activity into the Salesforce context surrounding the deal. Together, these sources can help teams assess questions such as: What concerns has the customer raised across calls and email? Have agreed next steps been followed up? Which stakeholders are actively participating? Has a new stakeholder entered the buying process? Are there signs of engagement changing between meetings? The result is a richer evidence base for deal inspection. Revenue leaders can assess conversational signals alongside the activity surrounding them, rather than relying on call summaries alone. 2. Better buying-group visibility Enterprise deals rarely depend on one contact. Decision-makers, technical evaluators, champions, procurement teams and executives can all influence the outcome. Momentum can reveal who said what during recorded conversations. Nektar helps connect customer interactions to the relevant Salesforce people and opportunities, making it easier to understand engagement across the buying group. This can help RevOps teams identify: Which stakeholders are participating in conversations and email exchanges Which contacts are actively engaged with an opportunity Where stakeholder engagement is concentrated around a single person Where additional relationships may need to be developed How customer participation changes as an opportunity progresses The value comes from connecting these signals to the actual Salesforce records used for account and opportunity reporting. 3. More useful AI recommendations AI recommendations are only as relevant as the context behind them. An agent that sees a call summary but misses

build vs buy thumbnail
Buyer's Guide

Build vs Buy: How GTM Teams Decide What to Build

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Build vs Buy: What 67 GTM Teams Told Us About Building It Themselves Buyer’s Guide 9 min October 19, 2026 Executive Summary The build vs buy question has changed for go-to-market teams. AI made building cheap, so almost every team can build its own CRM data tooling. We hear it on most of our calls. So we went back to them and reviewed 193 calls across 67 companies where building in-house came up. Most teams build something, and they should. The ones that got value from AI built the intelligence their business is judged on and bought the data layer underneath it. This post covers the five kinds of build we saw, where each one breaks, and five questions to answer before you decide. Why Build vs Buy is on Every GTM Team Agenda A tool that once took a quarter to build can now take an afternoon. Most revenue teams have at least one engineer or RevOps lead who has already proved it. So when a CRM data problem comes up, “We’ll build it” is a reasonable first answer. We noticed a consistent pattern. Teams that got value from AI drew the build or buy line in the same place. They built what makes their business different: ICP definitions, deal strategy, win-loss and churn models, agents, and the checks on AI output. They bought what has to be right every day: capturing every email and meeting, matching each one to the right contact, account and opportunity, and keeping the full history in their own CRM. Kyle Norton, former CRO at Owner.com, puts the same split bluntly: Kyle NortonFormer CRO, Owner.com Buy the systems where uptime, reliability, compliance, and scale matter more than uniqueness. Get our latest insights into your inbox The 5 Kinds of Build and Where Each One Breaks “We’ll build it” covers five different projects. Each starts for a different reason and fails in a different place, so it helps to know which one you are running before you weigh build or buy. Counts are companies in our sample, and some ran more than one. 1. The Stitched Stack (16 companies) Every team buys its own tool, and each tool writes to Salesforce. Sequencing, call recording and the CS platform each get an integration. Nobody approves a data pipeline, but three integrations signed months apart add up to one. It breaks because each tool writes its own version of the same event. One logs a meeting as a task, another logs it as an event, and the records never reconcile. Much of the history also sits in each vendor’s own objects, so it leaves when the contract does. As Abhijeet Vijayvergiya, Nektar’s co-founder and CEO, puts it:  Abhijeet VijayvergiyaCo-founder and CEO, Nektar.ai It’s on rent, it’s not permanent. 2. The Warehouse Cleanup (21 companies) This was the largest group. The thinking is simple: “We have a warehouse and data engineers. We’ll fix it downstream.” These teams usually do have the skills. It breaks because you cannot clean data that was never captured, or match a meeting to a deal after the context is gone. Teams end up parsing, deduping and pushing records back into the CRM. Some of the most expensive people in the company spend their time on cleanup. 3. The In-house AI Team (8 companies) The company has a real AI team, an MCP stack and a warehouse, so buying anything that touches AI looks redundant. It breaks because the AI team is rarely pointed at go-to-market. A GTM leader at a fintech infrastructure company told us their central AI team is “mostly there to make sure [we have] access to the technology and it’s governed.” GTM requests wait in line behind everyone else’s. 4. The “use what we already pay for” Build (10 companies) An executive who already pays for an LLM, a call recorder and a CRM asks why the company should pay again. The champion has no number ready. It breaks because the team spends a few cycles assembling the answer from existing tools. Win-loss analysis is the usual example: transcripts, CRM exports and raw email dropped into an LLM by hand, with a token bill nobody tracks. The gaps show up a quarter later. 5. The build on top (11 companies) Same engineers, same ambition, different line. These teams build the agents, models and dashboards, and buy the capture and matching underneath. Many teams from the first four groups end up here after a quarter or two. What they built on top was specific to each business. A fintech company built a signal that flags when nobody has spoken to a customer’s CFO, its earliest churn warning. A cybersecurity company built a white-space agent that maps which product to sell into which account. A contract software company built a model that tests whether sales engineer involvement in a trial predicts a close. None of these are products anyone sells. Each runs on matched activity data the company owns. Why An Internal Build Looks Free An internal build is paid for by people already on payroll. On a budget sheet it costs nothing, so anything you buy shows up as new spend against a zero. A GTM operations leader at a compliance software company described this exactly. His team had spent several quarters building its own activity reporting “in sweat equity,” with “no dollars tied to it outside of the timing and effort.” His biggest obstacle to buying was explaining new spend against a build that appeared to cost nothing. The build also got harder to leave every month. More reports, dashboards and habits depended on it, so switching meant restating history and re-enabling the field. Meanwhile the build had stopped where the work got hard. Partner activity, close to a third of that company’s revenue, had never been tracked. The Cost Nobody Adds Up In a build vs buy decision, the model is the inexpensive part. The expense is in making customer data trustworthy enough for a model to act

gong vs nektar
Buyer's Guide, Product

Gong vs. Nektar: How They Handle Salesforce Data

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Gong vs. Nektar: How They Handle Salesforce Data Buyer’s Guide, Comparison 18 min September 18, 2026 Sales teams today generate enormous amounts of customer activity across calls, meetings, email, and calendars. The challenge is no longer simply capturing that activity. It is making sure the resulting data is complete, structured, correctly associated, and available in Salesforce for the teams and systems that depend on it. This is where Gong and Nektar approach the problem differently. Gong is primarily a conversation intelligence platform. Its core capabilities center on recording and analyzing calls and meetings, generating summaries and insights, coaching reps, and, with Gong Engage, supporting outbound workflows. Nektar is focused on revenue activity capture and CRM data completeness. It captures customer interactions across email, meetings, and calls and structures that activity in Salesforce as native CRM records. That distinction is important because the two platforms do not necessarily need to compete for the same job. In fact, they can work together. The key question is not simply whether Gong or Nektar can “log activity.” It is which system should own the activity data in Salesforce, and what level of structure and context does the revenue organization need from that data? Gong and Nektar Solve Different Problems The simplest way to understand the difference is to look at where each platform starts. Gong starts with the conversation. It records customer conversations, analyzes them, generates summaries and insights, and connects that information to CRM records. For teams using Gong Engage, it can also support sales engagement and outbound sequencing. Nektar starts with the customer relationship. Its role is to capture customer activity across the team’s inboxes and calendars, structure that information, and make it available as Salesforce-native data. That means Nektar can capture: Emails Meetings Calls Meeting participants Customer contacts Opportunity relationships Opportunity Contact Roles Activity metadata The objective is to create a more complete representation of the customer relationship inside Salesforce without requiring reps to manually log every interaction. A useful way to think about the distinction is: Gong helps revenue teams understand what happened in conversations. Nektar helps ensure the activity surrounding those conversations becomes complete, structured CRM data. That makes Nektar less of a replacement for Gong and more of a revenue telemetry layer underneath the revenue stack. Get our latest insights into your inbox What Happens to Gong Data in Salesforce? Gong’s Salesforce integration connects Salesforce records with Gong’s conversation intelligence platform. Salesforce Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities can provide context for Gong conversations, while Gong can send conversation-related activity and information back into Salesforce. Depending on the Gong products and configuration being used, this can include activities such as calls, meetings, and emails. For example, Gong can help a sales organization understand: What was discussed on a customer call What objections were raised What commitments were made What topics appeared repeatedly across conversations How a deal is progressing Which conversations may require management attention This is valuable conversation intelligence. But there is an important distinction between conversation intelligence and CRM data infrastructure. A conversation can contain useful information without that information automatically becoming a governed Salesforce field, Contact, Opportunity Contact Role, or other structured CRM record. That difference becomes increasingly important as enterprise sales organizations become more complex. The Customer Relationship is Bigger Than the Recorded Conversation Consider a typical enterprise opportunity. A prospect may interact with a sales organization through discovery calls, executive meetings, email threads, calendar invitations, product demonstrations, technical evaluations, security reviews, procurement conversations, follow-up emails or internal and external meetings. There may be 8, 10, or 20 people involved across those interactions. Not all of them will necessarily appear in a recorded Gong conversation. Some may communicate exclusively through email. Others may join a calendar invitation but never speak during the meeting. Some may not exist as Salesforce Contacts yet. And an account may have multiple active opportunities at the same time. This creates a larger CRM question: Who is involved in the customer relationship, what activity has taken place, and how should that activity be represented in Salesforce? Conversation intelligence is one part of the answer. Activity capture and relationship intelligence are another. Gong & Nektar Salesforce Data: 6 Core Differences 1. Conversation Intelligence vs. Revenue Activity Capture Gong’s primary job is conversation intelligence. Its activity data in Salesforce is largely connected to those conversation intelligence and engagement workflows. Nektar’s primary job is broader activity capture. It automatically captures customer interactions across email, meetings, and calls across connected inboxes and calendars, regardless of whether a rep manually logs the activity. It then structures that information and writes it into Salesforce as native CRM records, including tasks, events, contacts and opportunity contact roles (OCR). This distinction matters because Salesforce can be used as more than a place to store a record saying that a meeting happened. It can become the underlying data layer for forecasting, pipeline inspection, account planning, buying-group analysis, reporting or AI applications.  For those use cases, activity needs to be not only captured but structured and associated with the right CRM records. 2. Contact Creation: Capturing a Person vs. Creating a CRM Record One of the biggest differences between conversation intelligence and a CRM data layer appears when a new stakeholder enters the buying process through email. Consider a simple example. A prospect who isn’t yet in Salesforce starts emailing an account executive. That person may eventually become an important member of the buying group. But if the CRM doesn’t know the person exists, subsequent activity can remain disconnected from the opportunity. This is where Gong’s Salesforce email export has an important limitation. According to Gong’s documentation, “Gong exports emails associated with Salesforce leads or contacts from the date you enable export.” Gong also states that it does not export emails retroactively. That creates two important constraints.  The person needs to already exist in Salesforce Gong’s email export is based on emails associated with existing Salesforce Leads or Contacts. In other words, an email conversation with someone who isn’t already

Gong salesforce integration
Buyer's Guide, Salesforce

A Guide to Gong Salesforce Integration

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A Guide to Gong Salesforce Integration Buyer’s Guide, Salesforce 7 min September 17, 2026 Gong’s Salesforce integration connects conversation intelligence with CRM data. The model is straightforward: Salesforce provides Gong with CRM context, Gong analyzes conversations and other captured interactions, and selected Gong data can be exported back into Salesforce. For revenue teams evaluating Gong, however, there is an important distinction between conversation intelligence and CRM data capture. Gong is built to understand conversations. Salesforce remains the system where customer and opportunity records live. The question is therefore not whether Gong captures valuable conversation data. It does. The question is: how much of that context actually becomes Salesforce data? Get our latest insights into your inbox What does Gong capture? Gong captures and analyzes customer conversations across supported channels, including calls and meetings, and can use Salesforce data to provide additional context around those conversations. Once Salesforce is connected, teams can search and analyze conversations based on Salesforce fields such as opportunity stage or amount. Gong can also export conversation data back into Salesforce.  The Salesforce integration therefore works in both directions conceptually: Salesforce → Gong Salesforce provides CRM context that Gong can use for analysis. Gong → Salesforce Selected conversation information can be exported back into Salesforce. That second part is where the data model becomes important. What does Gong write to Salesforce? Gong can export captured conversation information to Salesforce. Their FAQ says “No, Gong doesn’t create contacts in Salesforce, but Gong does import the email of new contacts and log it in Gong.” Teams can also control which Gong calls are exported using filters. So the Salesforce record can include information derived from Gong conversations.  But there is a critical limitation in Gong’s own documentation: Gong doesn’t create contacts in Salesforce. Gong explicitly says that when a new contact is identified, it does not automatically create that contact in Salesforce. Gong can import the new contact’s email into Gong and log it there, but the Salesforce contact does not get created automatically.  That creates a particularly important boundary for teams thinking about CRM completeness. Where Gong Stops The contact limitation matters because the Salesforce activity record and the Salesforce person record are connected. If a person does not already exist in Salesforce, Gong says it will not create that Contact. Its documentation also states that Gong exports emails associated with Salesforce leads or contacts from the date you enable export. A meeting is exported only when at least one external participant matches a Salesforce contact or lead. If no contact, lead, or account is found, the task/event isn’t created. That means the two limitations compound: No Salesforce Contact → no corresponding Salesforce email activity. The conversation can exist in Gong. The person can be identified by Gong. But that does not necessarily mean the person becomes a Salesforce Contact or that the associated activity becomes part of the Salesforce record. This is not a criticism of Gong’s conversation intelligence. It is simply the boundary between Gong’s conversation system and Salesforce’s CRM data model. No Contact means no Opportunity Contact Role In Salesforce, an Opportunity Contact Role connects a person to a specific opportunity and identifies their role in the deal. That relationship is important for reporting on the people involved in an opportunity. If Gong identifies a new person in a conversation but does not create a Salesforce Contact for that person, there is no Salesforce Contact record to associate with the opportunity. As a result, that person cannot have an Opportunity Contact Role created through that Gong-to-Salesforce workflow. The chain looks like this: Person participates in Gong conversation → Gong identifies the person → No Salesforce Contact → No Opportunity Contact Role → Person is missing from opportunity-level buying-group reporting. The conversation can exist in Gong. The person can be known to Gong. But without the corresponding Salesforce Contact and opportunity relationship, that stakeholder does not become part of the structured buying-group data in Salesforce. This is particularly important in complex B2B sales cycles, where the people participating in conversations are not always the same people who were originally entered into Salesforce. Why Opportunity Contact Roles matter A Salesforce Contact by itself tells you that a person exists in the CRM. An Opportunity Contact Role tells you that the person is connected to a specific deal. That distinction matters for buying-group visibility. A CRM may contain several Contacts associated with an Account while still failing to show which of those people are actually involved in a particular opportunity. When a stakeholder participates in a Gong-recorded conversation but does not already exist as a Salesforce Contact, the Gong integration cannot establish that Salesforce relationship through Contact creation. That creates a gap between conversation intelligence and structured opportunity intelligence. What does this mean for Salesforce reporting? Salesforce reporting depends on what exists in Salesforce. If a buyer participates in a Gong-recorded conversation but doesn’t have a Salesforce Contact, that person may not become part of the CRM’s contact-level reporting through Gong. That matters particularly in complex B2B sales cycles where one opportunity can involve many stakeholders. A CRM report may show the opportunity, existing contacts and Gong activities associated with known CRM records. But it can still lack people who participated in conversations but weren’t already represented as Salesforce Contacts. For teams measuring buying-group coverage, that creates a data question: Are we measuring the actual buying group, or only the portion of the buying group that already exists in Salesforce? What does this mean for AI in Salesforce? The same distinction becomes even more important when AI is added. AI systems can only reason over the context available to them. Gong can have rich conversational context about a buyer while Salesforce may not contain a corresponding Contact record for that person. That can create a split between conversational intelligence and CRM intelligence. The conversation exists. The person may be known. But the CRM record may not. For AI operating on top of Salesforce, that can mean an

salesloft salesforce integration
Buyer's Guide, Salesforce

A Guide to Salesloft Salesforce Integration

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A Guide to Salesloft Salesforce Integration Buyer’s Guide, Salesforce 10 min September 17, 2026 Salesloft and Salesforce are designed to work together. Salesloft’s CRM Sync connects sales engagement activity with Salesforce, allowing teams to synchronize records, log activities, map fields, and automate data movement between the two systems. But there is an important distinction between integrating a sales engagement platform with Salesforce and building a complete record of customer activity and relationships inside Salesforce. Salesloft’s documentation focuses primarily on what the integration can synchronize. For revenue teams evaluating Salesforce data quality, the more useful question is what happens at the edges of that integration. What gets captured? What gets written to Salesforce? What object does it become? And what information can still remain outside the CRM? Get our latest insights into your inbox What Does Salesloft Capture? Salesloft captures engagement activity generated through its sales engagement platform, including emails, calls, cadence activity and other seller interactions. Its Salesforce integration is designed to synchronize both CRM records and activity data. Salesloft says its CRM Sync can automatically record calls and emails as activities in Salesforce, while pushing more than 30 activity properties, including call duration, call disposition, sentiment, email activity counts and cadence identifiers. The integration also works with Salesforce Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities. Salesloft describes the connection as bidirectional, allowing records and field updates to move between Salesforce and Salesloft. Administrators can configure field mappings, determine which system has priority for particular fields, and define synchronization rules. Salesloft also provides a sync log showing transferred records, fields, timing, direction and outcomes, allowing administrators to troubleshoot failed syncs and mapping errors. That makes Salesloft more than a simple activity logger. It is designed to keep the sales engagement system and Salesforce synchronized. But synchronization is not the same thing as comprehensive relationship intelligence. What Does Salesloft Write to Salesforce? Salesloft primarily writes two categories of information back into Salesforce. 1. CRM records and field updates Salesloft can synchronize Salesforce Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities. Administrators can configure field mappings and determine the direction and priority of individual fields. Salesloft’s CRM Sync also supports automation rules that can execute actions based on defined criteria. This means Salesforce can remain the source of important CRM information while Salesloft uses that information to drive sales engagement workflows. 2. Sales activities Salesloft can write calls and emails into Salesforce as activities. Those activities can carry additional information such as: Call duration Call disposition Sentiment Email activity counts Cadence identifiers Other activity properties Salesloft has also expanded its activity logging to account for multiple people involved in an email or meeting. Shared Activity Syncing ensures that emails and meetings involving multiple People are accurately recorded in Salesloft and Salesforce, providing a complete view of interactions across your team and contacts. This feature is crucial for maintaining data integrity and gaining accurate insights. That is significant for organizations trying to capture more than one stakeholder in a deal. What about Clari Capture and Salesforce? The Salesforce integration story becomes more interesting following the Clari-Salesloft merger. Clari and Salesloft completed their merger on December 3, 2025. The combined company now operates as Salesloft, with Clari Forecast retaining the Clari name while Clari’s broader revenue intelligence, deal management and conversation intelligence capabilities continue under the Salesloft brand. For existing Clari customers, that creates a practical Salesforce question: What happens to Clari Capture, and how does it fit into the Salesforce activity-capture architecture going forward? The distinction matters because Clari and Salesloft have historically addressed different parts of the revenue workflow. Salesloft’s CRM Sync is designed to move sales engagement activity between Salesloft and Salesforce. Clari’s platform has historically used activity and revenue signals to support forecasting, deal inspection and revenue intelligence. Salesloft’s current platform brings these capabilities together under one company and one broader Predictive Revenue System. For an existing Clari customer, however, the immediate concern is not the corporate structure. It is the data flow into Salesforce. What happens to Clari Capture? The Clari-Salesloft merger raises a very specific Salesforce question for existing Clari customers: What happens to Clari Capture? Clari Capture was Clari’s activity-capture product. It automatically captured customer interactions, synced activity to the CRM, and could create and enrich contacts based on email and calendar activity. Clari’s own documentation describes Capture as a system that captures contacts and activities, enriches them, and synchronizes them back to the CRM. That matters because Capture was not simply a reporting feature. It sat in the data path between customer activity and Salesforce. There is no clear public replacement path yet.Clari and Salesloft now operate as one company under the Salesloft brand. Salesloft says that “the capabilities Clari users rely on today will continue under the Salesloft name” and that Clari Forecast retains the Clari name. It also says that product integration is ongoing and that customers should expect capabilities to deepen over time. The current Salesloft platform and product pages describe the combined Predictive Revenue System, Salesloft CRM Sync, Clari Forecast and other capabilities. Salesloft has also announced that Clari forecasting, deal intelligence, conversation intelligence and Salesloft engagement data are being brought together in the combined platform. There is currently no publicly documented migration path that tells an existing Clari Capture customer to move to a specific replacement product, what happens to their existing Capture configuration, or how historical Capture data and Salesforce workflows should be handled. What Clari Capture used to do matters Clari’s documentation describes Capture as automatically capturing contacts from calendar invites and email threads, enriching those contacts, creating new contacts in the CRM, and attaching newly identified members of the buying team to the appropriate opportunity. Clari’s community documentation also shows that Capture had its own logic for deciding when and how activity was written back to Salesforce. For example, Clari documented that Capture could skip writing an activity when it could not determine an exact account match. So replacing Capture is not simply a matter of changing the name of a product.

A Guide to Groove Salesforce Integration
Buyer's Guide, Salesforce

A Guide to Groove Salesforce Integration

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A Guide to Groove Salesforce Integration Buyer’s Guide, Salesforce 6 min September 17, 2026 Groove is different from many sales engagement platforms in this comparison because its architecture is deeply tied to Salesforce. Groove describes itself as a Salesforce-native sales engagement platform, and its AppExchange listing highlights real-time email and calendar synchronization, automatic activity logging, contact capture and the ability to create Salesforce Leads, Contacts and Accounts.  That makes Groove’s Salesforce integration fundamentally different from a platform that primarily maintains its own database and periodically syncs information into Salesforce. The more useful question is therefore not whether Groove can write data into Salesforce. It can. The question is what that data looks like at scale and where the integration still has boundaries. Get our latest insights into your inbox What does Groove capture? Groove captures sales engagement activity across email, calendar and other engagement workflows. Its Salesforce AppExchange listing describes capabilities including: Email synchronization Calendar synchronization Activity logging Contact capture Call logging Opportunity management Multi-channel campaign automation Groove can also create Salesforce Leads, Contacts and Accounts from the engagement workflow. That last capability is important. Unlike Gong, Groove can create Salesforce Contacts. So contact creation is not the gap to focus on when evaluating Groove. The more relevant questions are around the operational model, support and the depth of information written into Salesforce. What does Groove write to Salesforce? Groove writes engagement data into Salesforce’s native CRM objects. Groove writes key engagement data to contact, lead and task objects.  Groove also supports additional fields that can be surfaced in Salesforce for reporting. These can include information associated with: Flows Templates Step type Step number Response time Email send time Flow completion Flow removal Next-step dates Active Flow counts Groove’s documentation explains that some of these fields need to be created as custom fields in Salesforce before they can be populated. That creates a fairly detailed activity dataset inside Salesforce. Groove can create contacts Groove’s AppExchange listing explicitly says users can create new Leads, Contacts and Accounts from the Groove workflow. Groove can also automatically import new Salesforce Leads and Contacts into Flows. Its current documentation says Groove scans Salesforce for new Leads or Contacts every three hours by default, while Salesforce Flow can be configured for real-time imports when the required setup is in place. So contact creation and synchronization are core parts of the Groove architecture. Where Groove stops The limitation to examine with Groove is therefore not contact creation. It is what happens when an organization moves from capturing activity to managing customer context at enterprise scale. Groove’s data model is strongly optimized around Salesforce records and engagement activities. That makes it useful for organizations that want sales engagement to operate close to the CRM. But the more complex the revenue organization becomes, the more the questions move beyond activity capture: Who are all the people involved in an account? Which relationships exist between those people? Which stakeholders are active across different teams? What happened outside the engagement workflow? How does activity from Sales, CS, Marketing and executives connect? Can that context be used consistently across the opportunity? Those questions require a broader customer-context layer than activity logging alone. Support and Scale are Part of the Evaluation Groove’s own customer reviews provide another dimension that buyers should consider: support. One AppExchange reviewer wrote: “We don’t have a headcount large enough to warrant them giving us support.” That is a customer-reported experience, not a general statement about Groove’s support model, but it is relevant to buyers evaluating how an implementation will be supported as usage expands. At the same time, other Groove customer stories highlight the platform’s Salesforce-native architecture and support for complex Salesforce workflows. So the support question is best treated as a due-diligence issue, not as a blanket product criticism. For enterprise buyers, the relevant questions are: What support tier is included? Who owns Salesforce integration issues? What happens when custom Salesforce configurations change? How are sync failures handled? How quickly are managed-package changes released? What support is available during implementation and migration? What does this mean for Salesforce reporting? Groove can put a substantial amount of engagement information into Salesforce. Salesloft recommends the Groove Insights package for more granular reporting and provides prebuilt dashboards covering flows, calls, meetings booked, opportunities created and bounce codes.  That can make Salesforce a useful reporting environment for Groove-generated engagement. But there is an important technical distinction in Groove’s documentation: Lead and Contact data can be backfilled. Task data cannot. Groove says Lead/Contact fields are updated hourly and can be backfilled, while Task data is populated after the activity takes place and cannot be backfilled. For organizations doing historical CRM cleanup or migration, this difference matters. What does this mean for AI? Groove’s Salesforce-native architecture can put more engagement data directly into the CRM. But AI needs more than engagement volume. It needs relationships and context. A Salesforce record containing: Email → Task → Contact → Account is useful. A connected model containing: Person → Role → Relationship → Buying Group → Activity → Opportunity → Account → Outcome is a different level of context. Groove’s Salesforce integration addresses a significant part of the first problem. The second requires additional data modeling and enrichment beyond activity capture. Groove + Salesforce: The Practical Takeaway Groove has a particularly deep Salesforce integration. It can capture email and calendar activity, log activities into Salesforce, create Leads, Contacts and Accounts, write engagement fields into Salesforce, support custom objects and Salesforce workflows, and provide reporting through Salesforce and Groove Insights Its current documentation and AppExchange listing make that architecture clear.  For buyers, the remaining questions are therefore less about basic CRM synchronization and more about scale, support, historical data, and whether activity capture is enough to provide the customer context required by modern RevOps and AI workflows. Read our other Integration Guides Outreach Salesforce Integration Gong Salesforce Integration Salesloft Salesforce Integration About Nektar Nektar helps revenue teams turn Salesforce into a more complete source of

A Guide to Outreach Salesforce Integration
Buyer's Guide

A Guide to Outreach Salesforce Integration

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A Guide to Outreach Salesforce Integration Buyer’s Guide, Salesforce 11 min Updated: September 15, 2026 For sales and marketing professionals, managing and nurturing leads and prospects is a critical function that can make or break a deal. Salesforce and Outreach, two powerful tools in their own right, have emerged as game-changers in this regard.  Outreach is a unified sales engagement platform that facilitates your sales opportunities and improves productivity. It has a wide range of applications, from intelligent sales automation to buyer sentiment analysis, and it does much more. On the other hand, Salesforce is the number one Customer Relationship Management(CRM) platform that leverages your marketing, sales, IT, and other services. When you connect Outreach to Salesforce, their benefits get multiplied. This integration creates a synergy that supercharges your sales and marketing efforts, allowing you to take a more holistic approach to customer relationship management. In this blog, you will be introduced to Salesforce and Outreach, along with their key features. Following this, you will get to know the purpose behind Salesforce Outreach Integration, their connection requirements, and the steps involved in establishing these connections. Get our latest insights into your inbox What is Salesforce Integration? Salesforce integration refers to connecting Salesforce with other software applications or systems to enable seamless data sharing and communication between them. Integration is essential for businesses because it allows them to streamline their operations, improve efficiency, and provide a unified view of customer data across different departments and systems. Integrating Salesforce with Outreach is a strategic move for many sales and marketing teams seeking to supercharge their outreach efforts. When integrated with Salesforce, Outreach gains access to Salesforce’s rich customer data, enabling sales teams to personalize outreach efforts with up-to-date information. This integration allows for seamless lead and contact synchronization, real-time activity tracking, and automated task creation, significantly improving efficiency in managing sales workflows.  The integration creates and updates records in both systems, though not symmetrically. Prospect and account data flows both ways. Task syncing runs one way, from Outreach into Salesforce, and only for activities marked complete. Depending on their workflow, users can employ Outreach or Salesforce as their primary front-end application. This integration allows users to engage in both inbound and outbound activities, facilitating strategic communication with Leads, Contacts, and Accounts. Moreover, it empowers organizations to maintain a cohesive view of their sales pipeline, ensuring that sales and marketing teams are aligned and can effectively nurture leads and drive conversions. Purpose of Outreach Salesforce Integration By utilizing Outreach, you can monitor your entire sales pipeline, extract more insightful data, and achieve a more comprehensive understanding of revenue attribution across all your activities. Salesforce stands out as a top-tier CRM platform renowned for its exceptional features and capabilities. When you establish a connection between Outreach and Salesforce, the advantages of both platforms are mutually shared, enhancing work quality. The integration of Salesforce and Outreach enables seamless record creation and updates on both platforms. Depending on your workflow preferences post-integration, you can use Outreach or Salesforce as your primary front-end application. This flexibility allows you to significantly improve your Inbound and Outbound strategies through well-planned communication with your Accounts, Contacts, and Leads. Integrating Outreach with Salesforce offers several benefits for sales and marketing teams, including: 1. Streamlined workflow The integration eliminates manual data entry by syncing prospect and customer information between Outreach and Salesforce. This streamlines workflow, reduces data duplication, and saves time for your sales and marketing teams. 2. Consistent prospect records Prospect and account fields stay aligned between the two systems, so a rep working in Outreach sees what a rep working in Salesforce sees. Activity data is a separate question, covered further down. 3. Enhanced lead management Sales teams can efficiently manage leads, contacts, and opportunities within Salesforce and engage with them through Outreach, ensuring that no potential lead falls through the cracks. 4. Personalized outreach Sales reps can personalize outreach efforts using up-to-date information from Salesforce, such as lead status, interactions, and historical data, leading to more effective communication and higher conversion rates. 5. Automated tasks Outreach can automatically create tasks and reminders based on Salesforce data, ensuring that follow-ups and important actions are never missed. 6. Advanced reporting Integrating the two platforms allows for comprehensive reporting and analytics, providing insights into outreach performance, lead conversions, and campaign effectiveness. 7. Sales productivity Reps can work within their preferred platform (Outreach or Salesforce) while benefiting from seamless data exchange, reducing context-switching and increasing productivity. 8. Account-based marketing (ABM) With synchronized data, marketing teams can run more targeted ABM campaigns, aligning their efforts with sales strategies to engage high-value accounts effectively. 9. Sales cadences Outreach offers customizable sales cadences for email sequences, calls, and follow-ups, allowing reps to automate and optimize their outreach strategies within Salesforce. 10. Scalability As your business grows, the integration scales with you, accommodating larger prospect and customer databases and supporting your evolving sales and marketing needs. Integrating Salesforce with Outreach enhances efficiency by automating many manual tasks, such as data entry and lead nurturing. This not only saves valuable time but also reduces the risk of errors. It also provides a 360-degree view of prospect and customer interactions by syncing data between the two platforms, enabling teams to make more informed decisions and deliver personalized outreach. Steps in Outreach Salesforce Integration Now that we have looked at the benefits of Outreach Salesforce integration let’s go through the steps and requirements for the merger: 1. Outreach requirements To establish a connection between Outreach and Salesforce, several prerequisites need to be met: As an Outreach User, you must hold the Admin role within the Outreach Platform to access the plugin settings for establishing connections. To facilitate communication and synchronization with Salesforce, REST API calls are essential. It’s important to note that REST API calls are accessible exclusively in the Enterprise and Unlimited editions, and they are not available in the Professional Edition. Salesforce Essentials Edition does not support REST API access at all, including as a paid add-on,

salesforce email integration
Buyer's Guide, CRM

Salesforce Email Integration & Email Sync: Complete 2026 Guide

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Salesforce Email Integration: Every Way to Sync Email to Salesforce Buyer’s Guide 29 min September 8, 2026 If your sales team lives in Gmail or Outlook while your customer data lives in Salesforce, there is a basic problem: Your customer conversations are happening somewhere your CRM cannot automatically see them. Emails are sent. Replies come in. New stakeholders get added to threads. Opportunities move forward through conversations that may never make it into Salesforce. And when those interactions aren’t captured, Salesforce doesn’t just have less activity data.  This displays an incomplete picture of the customer. That affects sales managers trying to inspect deals, RevOps teams trying to measure engagement, marketers trying to understand account activity, customer success teams trying to understand relationships, and increasingly, AI systems trying to reason over Salesforce data. The good news is that there are several ways to get email into Salesforce in 2026. The bad news is that salesforce email integration can mean very different things depending on the approach you choose. You can: Log emails manually Use Salesforce’s Outlook or Gmail integration Use Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) Use a sales engagement platform Use a dedicated email/activity capture platform Each solves a different problem. Some simply help a rep log an email. Others automatically capture email activity. And the most sophisticated options go further, turning that activity into structured CRM data about contacts, opportunities, buying groups and relationships. This guide explains the differences. Get our latest insights into your inbox What is Salesforce Email Integration? A Salesforce email integration connects your email system (typically Microsoft Outlook or Google Gmail) with Salesforce so that email activity can be associated with CRM records. Depending on the solution, that can mean very different things. A basic integration might let a salesperson: View Salesforce records from Gmail or Outlook Create Salesforce records from their inbox Manually relate an email to an opportunity Log an email to a contact View Salesforce information while composing an email A more advanced email sync solution can automatically capture incoming and outgoing messages and associate them with Salesforce records without requiring the salesperson to manually log anything. Salesforce’s own Outlook and Gmail integrations provide the in-email experience. Einstein Activity Capture adds automatic activity capture and synchronization.  And dedicated activity-capture platforms can go further by turning email and meeting activity into structured revenue intelligence. So before choosing a tool, ask this: Do we want Salesforce to help reps log email, or do we want Salesforce to automatically know what is happening in customer relationships? Those are not the same requirement. 5 Ways to Get Email Into Salesforce Here’s the simplest way to understand the landscape: The right answer depends less on “Can this tool sync email?” and more on “What do we need Salesforce to know about our customer relationships?” Let’s look at each option. 1. Manual Email Logging in Salesforce The simplest Salesforce email integration is no integration at all. A salesperson sends an email from Gmail or Outlook and manually logs it to Salesforce. Salesforce supports manual email logging through its email tools, including the ability to relate emails to Salesforce records. Enhanced Email also allows emails to be stored as EmailMessage records rather than simply appearing as generic tasks.  How it works A typical workflow looks like this: Send email → choose Salesforce record → click Log Email → Salesforce records the activity The rep decides where the email belongs. That might be a contact, lead, account, opportunity, case or another Salesforce record that supports activities. What manual logging does well Manual logging has one major advantage: Control. The rep decides exactly what belongs in Salesforce. It can also be inexpensive because you’re using functionality already available within Salesforce rather than introducing another platform. Manual logging may be enough for organizations that have small sales teams, low email volume, simple sales processes, strong CRM discipline or limited need for historical activity. Where manual email logging breaks The problem is not whether Salesforce can log the email. The problem is whether people will consistently do it. Consider a salesperson handling 80 customer emails a day. If logging each message takes even a few seconds, the process becomes tedious. More importantly, it introduces human judgment into the CRM data: What did the rep remember to log? What did they forget? Which record did they choose? Did they log the reply? Did they add the new stakeholder they were emailing? There are also hard limits to some manual methods. For example, Salesforce’s Email to Salesforce functionality can match up to 50 email addresses and can create up to 50 email activities for a received email; email text and HTML are truncated at 131 KB.  Best use case: Small teams that need occasional email logging and don’t need automatic capture. Verdict: Inexpensive, simple and controllable, but fundamentally dependent on rep behavior. Explore Salesforce Inbox Looking for more than basic email sync? See how Salesforce Inbox brings email, calendar, and Salesforce workflows together for sales reps. 2. Salesforce Outlook and Gmail Integrations The next level is Salesforce’s native integrations with Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. This is where the phrase Salesforce email integration can become confusing. The Outlook/Gmail integration is primarily about bringing Salesforce into the rep’s inbox. Salesforce describes the integration as a way for reps to view, edit and create Salesforce records from their email environment and relate emails and events to Salesforce records.  The Outlook integration is available as a Salesforce add-in through Microsoft AppSource, while the Gmail integration is available through Salesforce’s Chrome-based experience.  What the Outlook/Gmail integration can do   Depending on configuration and licensing, reps can: See Salesforce records while working in email Search Salesforce records Relate emails to Salesforce records Log emails and events Create contacts and leads Create other Salesforce records View Salesforce information alongside emails Use email templates Access productivity functionality Salesforce’s current documentation also confirms that the integrations can log emails and events to records created from custom objects when those objects support activities.  And Salesforce continues

salesforce inbox: The Complete Guide to Features, Pricing, Setup & Limitations
Buyer's Guide

Salesforce Inbox: What It Is, Features, Pricing & Limitations (2026)

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Salesforce Inbox: The Complete Guide to Features, Pricing, Setup & Limitations Buyer’s Guide 27 min September 7, 2026 Sales reps read and reply to emails, schedule meetings, send follow-ups and exchange important deal information in their inbox. Salesforce Inbox is designed to bring Salesforce context and sales productivity tools into that workflow. But there is an important distinction that is often missed in articles about Salesforce Inbox: Salesforce Inbox is not the same thing as Einstein Activity Capture. Inbox is primarily the productivity layer that brings Salesforce records and tools into Outlook, Gmail and Salesforce’s email experience. Einstein Activity Capture (EAC), when enabled, provides the automated background capture of email and calendar activity. Salesforce also supports Inbox without EAC, in which case reps can manually log emails rather than having them automatically captured. That distinction matters because many teams evaluating Salesforce Inbox are actually trying to solve a different problem: How do we make sure every meaningful customer interaction becomes reliable, structured Salesforce data without asking reps to manually log everything? This guide explains what Salesforce Inbox is, what it does, how Salesforce Inbox for Outlook works, what it costs, what has changed through 2026, how it compares with Einstein Activity Capture, and where its limitations become important for growing revenue teams. Get our latest insights into your inbox Salesforce Inbox at a Glance Question Salesforce Inbox What is it? A Salesforce email productivity layer that works with Outlook, Gmail and Salesforce Primary purpose Give reps Salesforce context and productivity tools while they work in email Works with Outlook? Yes Works with Gmail? Yes Email tracking? Yes, with Inbox productivity features Meeting scheduling? Yes Send Later? Yes Automatic email capture? Not by Inbox alone; typically provided through Einstein Activity Capture Manual email logging? Yes Mobile Inbox app? No. Salesforce retired Inbox Mobile on February 1, 2024 Current licensing Included in some Salesforce editions/bundles; extra cost in others Current standalone list price? Salesforce’s current public documentation does not present one universal standalone Inbox price Best suited for Reps who want Salesforce context and email productivity tools inside Outlook/Gmail Biggest misconception Treating Salesforce Inbox and Einstein Activity Capture as the same product Salesforce currently states that Inbox is available in Lightning Experience and is included in Unlimited, Einstein 1 Sales and Agentforce 1 Sales editions, while Professional and Enterprise customers can purchase it at additional cost. An Inbox license unlocks Inbox features in the Outlook integration, Gmail integration and Lightning Experience. What is Salesforce Inbox? Salesforce Inbox is a set of email productivity features that brings Salesforce information and sales tools into the places where reps send and receive email. In practice, that means a salesperson can work in Outlook or Gmail and use a Salesforce side panel to see relevant Salesforce records, relate emails to Salesforce records, insert availability into emails, track email engagement, schedule emails for later and use productivity shortcuts. The product is therefore less about replacing your inbox and more about connecting the inbox to Salesforce. For example, a rep working on an opportunity could: Open an email from a prospect in Outlook. See the relevant Salesforce record in the side panel. Review Salesforce context without opening another browser tab. Insert available meeting times into the email. Track whether the email is opened or links are clicked. Schedule the email to be sent later. Manually relate or log the email to Salesforce. If Einstein Activity Capture is also configured, emails and calendar events can be automatically captured and associated with Salesforce records in the background. The simplest way to think about it is that Salesforce Inbox is productivity inside your inbox. Einstein Activity Capture is automated activity capture behind the scenes. They can work together, but they are not interchangeable. What does Salesforce Inbox do? Salesforce Inbox brings several Salesforce capabilities into Outlook and Gmail. The exact experience depends on your Salesforce edition, license and configuration, but the core Inbox productivity capabilities include: 1. Salesforce records inside Outlook and Gmail The Salesforce panel lets reps see relevant CRM information while working with email. Instead of switching repeatedly between Salesforce and Outlook or Gmail, reps can access Salesforce records from the email experience. Salesforce describes the experience as surfacing relevant Salesforce records alongside email and events and allowing users to relate email messages to Salesforce. This is particularly useful for sales reps who spend most of their day in email. 2. Email tracking Inbox can track email engagement, including when recipients open emails and click links. Salesforce’s documentation specifically notes that when Inbox productivity features are added to the Outlook or Gmail integration, reporting can include recipient opens and link clicks. This gives reps another signal about whether an email has been engaged with. It is important, however, not to confuse email engagement tracking with automatic CRM activity capture. They solve different problems. 3. Insert Availability Salesforce Inbox lets reps insert their availability directly into an email. Rather than exchanging multiple emails to find a suitable meeting time, the rep can send available slots or a scheduling link. Salesforce has continued investing in this experience. In the Winter ’26 release, Salesforce introduced a redesigned meeting-scheduling interface designed to make it simpler for prospects to select a meeting time. 4. Scheduling links Inbox can generate scheduling links that allow recipients to select an available time. This builds on Salesforce’s earlier scheduling capabilities, including the ability to share preferred meeting times and scheduling links. The important benefit is straightforward: The prospect chooses the time instead of starting another scheduling thread. 5. Send Later Salesforce Inbox allows reps to schedule emails for a later time. This can be useful when a rep wants to write an email immediately but send it at a more appropriate time. Salesforce has also expanded Send Later beyond new messages. Salesforce release notes document support for using Send Later when replying to threaded emails, rather than restricting scheduling to new, unthreaded emails. 6. Text shortcuts and email productivity Inbox includes productivity features such as text shortcuts.

salesforce gmail integration
Buyer's Guide, CRM

Salesforce Gmail Integration: The Complete Guide for 2026

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Salesforce Gmail Integration: The Complete Guide for 2026 Buyer’s Guide, CRM 20 min September 1, 2026 Salesforce and Gmail are two of the most important systems in a modern sales stack. But connecting them isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Customer conversations happen in Gmail. Meetings happen in Google Calendar. New stakeholders enter email threads. Follow-ups get sent. Important buying signals appear in conversations. But your revenue team still needs that activity in Salesforce. That is what a Salesforce Gmail integration is designed to solve. In 2026, however, “Salesforce Gmail integration” can mean several different things. Salesforce itself offers Gmail integration, Einstein Activity Capture, Salesforce Inbox, and related synchronization capabilities. Third-party platforms can add another layer of activity capture, automation, matching, and intelligence. So the question is no longer simply: How do I connect Gmail to Salesforce? It’s: How much of the customer activity happening in Gmail do you need Salesforce to understand, and what do you need Salesforce to do with it? This guide explains what the Salesforce Gmail integration does today, how to set it up, where the native option works well, where teams can run into limitations at scale, and when a dedicated Salesforce activity-capture or revenue-data platform makes sense. Get our latest insights into your inbox What is Salesforce Gmail integration? A Salesforce Gmail integration, sometimes referred to as a Salesforce connector for Gmail, connects a user’s Gmail account with Salesforce so they can access Salesforce information from Gmail and associate email activity with Salesforce records. Salesforce’s native Gmail Integration allows users to see, create, and modify Salesforce records from Gmail. With Enhanced Email enabled, users can relate emails to Salesforce records while composing messages and associate emails with contacts, leads, accounts, opportunities, cases, and supported records.  The experience has also evolved. Salesforce made Gmail Integration available inside Sales Cloud Everywhere, bringing the Gmail functionality into its Chrome side panel alongside other Salesforce capabilities.  Separately, Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) can automatically capture email and calendar activity from connected Google accounts and associate that activity with Salesforce records. Since Summer ’25, Salesforce has introduced Sync Email as Salesforce Activity, which allows captured emails to be stored as Salesforce activity data, including Task and EmailMessage records. This makes the email data available to standard Salesforce reports, workflows, triggers, APIs, and other platform capabilities.  So there are really two related layers: Gmail integration: Work with Salesforce from inside Gmail. Activity capture: Automatically bring customer email and calendar activity into Salesforce. For many teams, you will want both. Salesforce Gmail Integration is also part of a broader ecosystem of Chrome extensions built to make Salesforce easier to use from the browser. If you’re evaluating those tools alongside Gmail integration, What can you do with Salesforce Gmail integration? The native integration covers the core workflows most sales teams expect. 1. View Salesforce records from Gmail Sales reps can open an email in Gmail and access relevant Salesforce information without constantly switching between applications. Depending on configuration, they can view and work with Salesforce records associated with the people they’re communicating with. This is particularly useful for basic CRM lookups: Is this person already a contact? Which account are they associated with? Is there an open opportunity? What activity has already been recorded? Do I need to create a Salesforce record? Salesforce describes the Gmail integration as a way for users to see, create, and modify Salesforce records directly from Gmail. 2. Log emails to Salesforce Users can associate emails with relevant Salesforce records from Gmail. Enhanced Email is important here. Salesforce requires Enhanced Email for relating Gmail emails to Salesforce and stores email messages as richer email records rather than treating everything as a simple task.  This gives sales teams a much better record of customer conversations. 3. Automatically capture emails Manual logging is not the only option. With Einstein Activity Capture and Sync Email as Salesforce Activity enabled, Salesforce can automatically sync emails sent and received through connected Google accounts into Salesforce.  That changes the workflow from: Rep sends email → remembers to log it to: Rep sends email → Salesforce captures the activity For organizations trying to improve CRM completeness, this is one of the biggest benefits of connecting Gmail and Salesforce. 4. Sync Google Calendar activity Salesforce can also capture and synchronize calendar activity through Einstein Activity Capture. That gives Salesforce visibility into meetings alongside email activity. Salesforce can match Google Calendar events with relevant Salesforce users, contacts, and leads. It can also sync attendee information, subject to Salesforce’s matching and attendee limits.  5. Create Salesforce records from Gmail The Gmail integration can also reduce the friction involved in creating CRM records. If someone new enters a sales conversation, the rep can create or update the relevant Salesforce record without leaving Gmail. This is important because the best CRM workflow is often the one that requires the fewest context switches. How to set up Salesforce Gmail integration The exact setup depends on whether you’re using the basic Gmail integration, Einstein Activity Capture, Salesforce Inbox, or a combination. For the native Gmail integration, Salesforce’s current setup process starts in Salesforce Setup. Step 1: Enable Enhanced Email Before enabling Gmail Integration, Salesforce recommends verifying that Enhanced Email is enabled. Enhanced Email is required to relate Gmail emails to Salesforce records.  Step 2: Enable Gmail Integration In Salesforce: Setup → Quick Find → Gmail Integration and Sync Enable the setting that allows users to access Salesforce records from Gmail. Salesforce’s current documentation specifically instructs administrators to enable Gmail Integration and Sync and then enable Enhanced Email with Gmail.  Step 3: Configure Einstein Activity Capture If your objective is automatic activity capture rather than simply accessing Salesforce from Gmail, configure Einstein Activity Capture. This is where administrators define how email, events, and other activity should be captured and synchronized. With the newer Sync Email as Salesforce Activity architecture, captured email can become standard Salesforce activity data.  Step 4: Configure users and permissions Users need the appropriate Salesforce permissions and must connect

Salesforce Outlook Plugin
Buyer's Guide, CRM

Salesforce Outlook Plugin: Setup, Features & Alternatives

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Salesforce Outlook Plugin: What It Is, How It Works, Setup, Limitations & Alternatives Buyer’s Guide, CRM 11 min September 1, 2026 If your sales team works in Microsoft Outlook while Salesforce is your CRM, a Salesforce Outlook plugin can bridge the gap between the two. But in 2026, “Salesforce Outlook plugin” can mean several different things. Salesforce has a native Outlook integration, Einstein Activity Capture, and Salesforce Inbox. There are also third-party activity capture and revenue intelligence platforms that extend what the native tools can do. The right choice depends on a simple question: Do you just need Salesforce inside Outlook, or do you need Outlook activity to become reliable, structured Salesforce data? This guide explains what Salesforce Outlook integration looks like today, what the native option does well, where it can become difficult at scale, and when it makes sense to consider alternatives. Get our latest insights into your inbox What is a Salesforce Outlook plugin? The Salesforce Outlook integration is a Microsoft Outlook add-in that brings Salesforce functionality into Outlook. Instead of switching between Outlook and Salesforce, users can work with Salesforce records while reading and sending email. Depending on configuration, users can: View Salesforce information from Outlook Match emails to Salesforce records Log emails and calendar events Create Salesforce records from Outlook Relate emails and events to accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities and other supported records For automatic activity capture, Salesforce also provides Einstein Activity Capture (EAC). EAC can automatically capture email and calendar activity from connected Microsoft accounts and associate it with Salesforce records. So there are really two parts to the modern Salesforce Outlook experience: Outlook Integration = Salesforce functionality inside Outlook Einstein Activity Capture = automatic email and calendar activity capture Salesforce Inbox can add further email productivity capabilities for organizations with the appropriate licensing. Salesforce for Outlook vs. Outlook Integration If you’re reading older articles about Salesforce Outlook integration, you’ll encounter Salesforce for Outlook. That is the legacy product. Salesforce for Outlook is no longer supported, although Salesforce says it will continue functioning until its planned retirement in December 2027. Salesforce recommends migrating to Outlook Integration and Einstein Activity Capture instead. So if you’re implementing Salesforce and Outlook today, don’t build a new deployment around Salesforce for Outlook. The current architecture is the Salesforce Outlook add-in plus the appropriate activity-capture capabilities. What does Salesforce Outlook integration do well? For straightforward Salesforce environments, the native integration is a strong starting point. Salesforce inside Outlook: Reps can access Salesforce records without constantly switching applications. Email and event logging: Users can relate emails and meetings to Salesforce records directly from Outlook. Record creation: A rep can create supported Salesforce records from an email rather than manually opening Salesforce. Automatic activity capture: Einstein Activity Capture can remove the need for reps to manually log every email and calendar event. Native Salesforce architecture: Because the solution comes from Salesforce, it works within the Salesforce ecosystem, permissions model and automation framework. For a team that primarily wants to simply put Salesforce in Outlook and capture their reps’ activity, the native solution may be all they need. The complexity starts when “capture activity” becomes “capture all of our revenue activity accurately.” Where Salesforce Outlook integration gets complicated at scale The native integration works well for simple use cases. Enterprise revenue organizations, however, often have requirements that are considerably more complex. 1. Shared mailboxes Sales teams often work from addresses such as: sales@ support@ partnerships@ renewals@ customersuccess@ These aren’t individual user accounts. Salesforce documents limitations around Outlook shared mailboxes: true Outlook shared mailboxes aren’t supported in Microsoft add-ins, while certain shared-folder configurations with delegated access can be supported. This matters because the email address, Salesforce user, account and ownership of the customer relationship may all be different things. If shared mailboxes are central to your workflow, test this before rolling out the integration. 2. Email aliases Large organizations may have people using multiple addresses: alex@company.com alex@brand.com alex@acquiredcompany.com The challenge isn’t sending the email. It’s recognizing that these addresses may belong to the same person. Alias-based matching can create problems with contact identification and calendar attendees, particularly in complex organizations with multiple domains, subsidiaries or acquisitions. If your business uses aliases heavily, validate how the integration handles them before deployment. 3. Custom Salesforce objects Salesforce’s Outlook Integration can allow users to relate activity to supported custom-object records. But there’s an important distinction between a rep can manually associate this email with a custom record, and a system that can automatically determine which custom record this activity belongs to. The latter is much harder. If your Salesforce architecture revolves around custom objects such as subscriptions, projects, implementations, engagements or partner relationships, you’ll want to understand exactly how automatic activity matching works. Salesforce provides configurable matching logic through its Activities: Match Email to Records Flow, but sophisticated organizations may need additional configuration to make their matching rules work reliably. 4. Multi-attendee meetings A meeting isn’t just a calendar event. It can tell you who is involved in a deal. Consider a meeting with: An economic buyer A champion A technical evaluator Procurement An executive sponsor Your AE and SE Capturing the meeting is useful. Knowing who attended and what role each person plays is considerably more valuable. Salesforce states that Einstein Activity Capture can sync combinations of Salesforce users, contacts and leads for up to 50 attendees per event. But calendar synchronization shouldn’t be confused with buying-group intelligence. Knowing that six people attended a meeting doesn’t automatically tell Salesforce that one is the champion and another is procurement. 5. Historical activity Connecting Outlook today doesn’t necessarily answer the question: “How do we get our historical customer interactions into Salesforce?” This matters for organizations with: Long sales cycles Years of customer relationships Existing open opportunities Acquired companies New CRM implementations Former employees Salesforce provides historical email migration and retention capabilities through its activity-capture architecture, but the available history depends on configuration and migration options. If historical activity matters, evaluate the actual lookback period, migration process

einstein activity capture thumbnail
Buyer's Guide

Einstein Activity Capture: What It Is, How It Works, Limitations & Alternatives

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Einstein Activity Capture: What It Is, How It Works, Limitations & Alternatives Buyer’s Guide 15 min August 27, 2026 If your sales team works in Gmail or Outlook while your revenue teams work in Salesforce, there is an obvious gap: customer activity happens outside the CRM. Emails are sent. Meetings happen. New stakeholders enter conversations. But unless that activity makes its way into Salesforce, your CRM can never provide a complete picture of the customer relationship. That’s the problem Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) is designed to solve. Einstein Activity Capture automatically captures email and calendar activity from connected Microsoft or Google accounts and associates it with relevant Salesforce records. It reduces manual data entry and gives sales teams greater visibility into customer interactions. (Salesforce) Before Summer ’25, captured EAC email data lived outside standard Salesforce records. It wasn’t available to many Salesforce Platform features, couldn’t be exported in the same way as standard records, and was subject to EAC-specific retention limitations. Starting in Summer ’25, Salesforce introduced Sync Email as Salesforce Activity. With it enabled, EAC stores captured email as standard Salesforce ‘Task’ and ‘EmailMessage’ records. The data can be used in standard reports, workflows, triggers, SOQL and APIs. (Salesforce) Salesforce is now migrating older EAC implementations to the new architecture as well, with automatic migration dates rolling out during 2026. (Salesforce). This guide looks at how Einstein Activity Capture works in 2026, what it does today, what it costs, where it stops, and what to do about it. Get our latest insights into your inbox What Is Einstein Activity Capture? Einstein Activity Capture is Salesforce’s activity-capture capability for automatically bringing email and calendar activity into Salesforce. It connects with Microsoft and Google accounts and can capture emails, calendar events, contact activity and meeting activity. Captured emails can now be stored as Salesforce EmailMessage and Task records and associated with relevant users, contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities. Salesforce’s matching logic can also be customized using Flow. (Salesforce) The basic workflow is: Gmail / Microsoft 365 → Einstein Activity Capture → Email + calendar activity → Salesforce records → Reports + automation + APIs + AI For many organizations, that’s exactly what they need. The question is what happens after the activity reaches Salesforce. How to Set Up Einstein Activity Capture Setting up Einstein Activity Capture involves three main steps: connect your email account, configure capture settings, and configure how Salesforce matches activity to CRM records. 1. Check your prerequisites Before you begin, make sure: You’re using Salesforce Lightning Experience with the required EAC license. Your organization uses a supported Microsoft 365/Exchange or Google Workspace environment. Your Salesforce admin has the required permissions. Your Microsoft or Google administrator is available to approve the required OAuth/connection permissions. For Microsoft 365, Salesforce now uses Microsoft Graph for EAC connections. 2. Connect your email and calendar In Salesforce: Setup → Quick Find → Einstein Activity Capture → Settings From here, an admin can configure the EAC connection and capture settings, then assign users to the configuration. Depending on your setup, you can configure: Email and calendar capture Privacy settings Header-only email capture Sync Email as Salesforce Activity The last option is particularly important in current EAC implementations because it stores captured email as standard Salesforce activity records such as EmailMessage and Task. 3. Configure email-to-record matching Salesforce uses the Activities: Match Email to Records Flow to determine which Salesforce records captured emails should be associated with. Find it under: Setup → Flows → Activities: Match Email to Records The default Flow matches email addresses against Users, Contacts, Leads, Accounts and Opportunities. Admins can use Save As to create a customized version if they need different matching logic. 4. Test before rolling it out Send a few test emails and verify that they’re being associated with the right Contact, Lead, Account or Opportunity. This step matters because capturing an email and correctly associating it with the right CRM record are two different things. In short: Connect → Configure capture → Configure matching → Test. That is the setup flow a Salesforce admin actually needs to follow. What Einstein Activity Capture Does Well If you’re evaluating Salesforce activity capture options, EAC is generally a good fit for organizations that want core activity capture up and running quickly, without investing heavily in custom configuration or development. It tends to work best when you’re looking for: 1. It removes manual activity logging Sales reps don’t have to remember to manually log every email or meeting. That’s still EAC’s fundamental value proposition. 2. It is deeply integrated with Salesforce For organizations already running Salesforce, EAC provides a native way to connect email and calendar activity with CRM data. 3. Captured email is now Salesforce data With Sync Email as Salesforce Activity, captured emails can be used by standard Salesforce reports, workflows, triggers and APIs. (Salesforce) 4. Matching can be customized Salesforce provides the Activities: Match Email to Records Flow, which administrators can customize to change how captured emails are associated with CRM records. (Salesforce) 5. Salesforce is continuing to invest in the architecture Salesforce is retiring its older Activity 360 Reporting, Activity Metrics and Activities Dashboard capabilities in favor of standard Salesforce activity data. (Salesforce) So the fair assessment isn’t: “EAC is an old, limited activity-capture tool.” It’s: EAC has become a more capable Salesforce-native activity data layer. Einstein Activity Capture Limitations in 2026 The important question in 2026 isn’t whether EAC can capture activity. It can. The question is whether capturing activity automatically gives revenue teams the intelligence they need. Often, it doesn’t. 1. Email aliases aren’t supported Salesforce’s own documentation states that EAC sends email only from the connected account and that alias addresses aren’t supported. Email aliases also can’t be authenticated as separate connected accounts. (Salesforce) For organizations where reps operate with multiple sending identities, this can create gaps between the way people communicate and the way Salesforce captures that communication. 2. EAC doesn’t automatically create an Opportunity Contact Role (OCR) from every interaction EAC

Buyer's Guide, Product

Nektar.ai v/s Clari v/s Gong v/s Backstory v/s EAC

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Nektar vs. Clari vs. Gong vs. Backstory (People.ai) vs. EAC Product 15 min Updated: July 29, 2026 Automated data capture stopped being a nice-to-have for revenue teams years ago. In 2026, it’s become something closer to infrastructure: the layer that determines whether an AI agent acting on your CRM is working from a complete picture or a partial one. This comparison covers five platforms that all promise some version of automated capture, AI-driven insight, and cleaner CRM data, Nektar, Clari, Gong, Backstory (formerly People.ai), and Salesforce’s own Einstein Activity Capture, and where each one actually delivers versus where the marketing outruns the product. Two of these five have changed meaningfully since this comparison was last written, and getting that history right matters if you’re evaluating them today: People.ai rebranded to Backstory in April 2026, and Clari merged with Salesloft in December 2025. Both are covered accurately below, not under their old, standalone identities. Get our latest insights into your inbox Nektar Nektar was founded in 2020 with a vision to help GTM teams close revenue leaks with a purpose-built AI data foundation that unifies accurate, clean, timely revenue data automatically, at scale. That thesis has sharpened since: Nektar’s current positioning is making Salesforce data trustworthy enough for both reps and AI agents to act on directly, not just clean enough for a human to read. Claim to Fame Nektar’s Data Foundation automatically syncs contacts, emails, and calendar meetings from sales communication into Salesforce, for ongoing activity and historical GTM activity alike, with zero rep effort required.  Time Travel goes further, retroactively correcting historical records as new context arrives, something none of the other four platforms in this comparison do. Daisy AI sits on top, surfacing 39 signals across deal risk, buyer engagement, and rep performance directly on the Salesforce Opportunity tab. It supports every customer-facing team, business development, sales, customer success, and account management, which is why revenue operations leaders specifically choose Nektar for a genuine 360-degree view of the customer, not just a sales-only slice of it. Pros: Captures historical and ongoing contacts and GTM activity to deliver genuinely complete CRM data, not a partial sync Automatically presents the buying committee in every deal by enriching contacts with job titles and buyer roles (influencer, decision maker, economic buyer) Automatically links captured contacts to relevant open opportunities as Opportunity Contact Roles, not just Account-level records Classifies activity by sales or CS process automatically, surfacing exactly how sellers and CSMs are actually spending their time Captures calendar events including recurring events and any updates made to them (participant or schedule changes) Always-on reporting delivered directly to Slack, email, or MS Teams, the power of a dashboard without requiring anyone to open one Time Travel™ continuously maintains CRM data, updating and correcting records as new context arrives rather than leaving them static Works for every customer-facing team, not sales alone, including partnership, channel, and alliance teams Vendor-neutral by design, sits alongside Gong, Clari, or Salesloft rather than replacing them Cons: Best suited for companies with 10+ sellers; smaller teams may not need the full depth of the platform As a more specialized data-foundation layer rather than an all-in-one suite, teams wanting conversation intelligence or forecasting UI natively often pair Nektar with a complementary tool rather than expecting Nektar to do everything Clari (Now Clari + Salesloft) Founded in 2012, Clari built its reputation on AI-driven forecasting and predictive analytics for sales teams. In December 2025, Clari merged with Salesloft, forming a combined revenue-orchestration company under CEO Steve Cox, adding Salesloft’s sales-engagement layer (and Clari’s earlier Groove acquisition) to Clari’s forecasting core. If you’re evaluating “Clari” today, you’re really evaluating this combined platform, not the standalone forecasting tool it used to be. Claim to Fame Clari is still best known and most appreciated for its forecasting capabilities specifically, funnel views, pipeline inspection, and forecast rollups that sales leadership teams lean on heavily. Post-merger, it’s positioning itself as a full revenue-orchestration platform spanning forecasting, engagement, and conversation intelligence in one place, which is a meaningfully bigger promise than the pre-merger product made. Pros: Clean visuals and UI, widely regarded as one of the more polished interfaces in this category Customizable dashboards and a genuinely useful “funnel view” of the pipeline Strong visibility into current and projected pipeline for forecast rollups The Salesloft merger adds sales engagement and cadence automation natively, reducing the need for a separate tool for that function Conversation intelligence (via the earlier Chorus.ai and Wingman lineage) now bundled in, easier to consolidate vendors if you want one platform for forecasting, engagement, and calls Cons: Several contacts still aren’t reliably captured in Salesforce; contact-level completeness has been a longstanding weak point independent of the merger Syncing activity into Salesforce Opportunities isn’t always accurate Salesforce sync issues persist as a recurring theme in user feedback User adoption remains a real risk, and requires ongoing enablement investment to sustain The merger itself introduces real integration risk in the near term; analysts including Forrester have flagged genuine product overlap between the combined pieces that’s still being worked through as of mid-2026, worth a direct conversation with the vendor about current integration maturity before committing Read Detailed Comparison Comparing Nektar & Clari? Gong Founded in 2015, Gong built the conversation-intelligence category, using AI to analyze customer calls and meetings and surface coaching and deal-risk insight from what was actually said. It remains a large, well-resourced, independent company (no merger or rebrand to report here) and has continued investing in AI-native forecasting and coaching since this comparison was last written. Claim to Fame Gong is still best known for helping sales leaders coach reps and ramp new hires faster through conversation intelligence, accuracy and depth of insight from actual call and meeting content remain genuinely best-in-class. What started as a sales-team tool has expanded into real usage among customer success and SDR/BDR teams as well, given its focus on conversation-based engagement broadly. Pros: Ramps new sellers faster and coaches existing reps more specifically, grounded in what

Buyer's Guide, Product

Backstory (formerly People.ai) Alternatives: 10 Options for 2026

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Backstory (formerly People.ai) Alternatives: 10 Options for 2026 Product 11 min Updated: July 20, 2026 People.ai rebranded to Backstory in April 2026, repositioning itself from an activity-capture platform into what it now calls a “Revenue Answers Platform” which is a conversational AI layer that reasons over captured activity data to answer natural-language questions about deal and account health. Same underlying company, same core capture technology, a meaningfully different pitch. That rebrand is also a useful marker for something bigger that’s happened across this entire category since the original version of this list. Every tool built in the last decade for “capture activity, show a dashboard” is now being measured against a different bar: can it feed an AI agent that acts on that data directly, not just a human reading a report. That’s the lens this update applies to all ten entries below. Get our latest insights into your inbox What Is Backstory (formerly People.ai)? Backstory automatically captures sales activity like emails, meetings, and calls, and structures it against CRM records. What’s new since the April 2026 rebrand is a conversational interface layered on top: instead of navigating dashboards, users can ask natural-language questions about deal or account health and get an AI-generated answer reasoning over the captured activity. Worth knowing before you evaluate it: a conversational layer is only as reliable as the data it’s reasoning over. Read detailed feature comparison Comparing Nektar & Backstory (People.ai)? Top Backstory / People.ai Alternatives for 2026 1. Nektar Nektar GTM telemetry platform that automatically captures every customer interaction and delivers clean data to your CRM, data warehouse, and AI applications, with zero manual entry or adoption friction. Unlike tools that lock your data in proprietary interfaces, Nektar acts as revenue signals infrastructure: capturing emails, meetings, calls, and Slack, then piping structured intelligence into Salesforce, Snowflake, Claude, and your entire stack. Data Foundation automatically captures every email, meeting, call, and calendar event and writes it natively into Salesforce, HubSpot, or Dynamics — zero rep effort, live in under two weeks. Time Travel retroactively corrects historical records as new context arrives, closing a gap no point-in-time capture tool (including Backstory) can touch. Daisy AI then surfaces 39 signals across categories like buyer visibility, deal risk, and rep performance directly on the Salesforce Opportunity tab. Key features: Zero-rep-effort capture across email, calendar, meetings, and calls Time Travel retroactive correction: up to 12 months of historical backfill Daisy AI signal library across buyer visibility, deal risk, and forecast-relevant flags Vendor-neutral as it sits alongside your existing sales stack rather than replacing it Best for: Salesforce-first enterprise teams that need CRM data reliable enough for AI agents to act on directly, not just a cleaner dashboard. 2. SetSail (now part of ZoomInfo) SetSail was acquired by ZoomInfo in 2024 and now operates within ZoomInfo’s broader platform rather than as an independent company. It still functions as an AI-powered sales data layer capturing activity across email, calendar, and call transcripts and surfacing the specific rep behaviors that correlate with winning deals, plus incentive mechanics to reinforce them. Key features: automated activity capture across email, calendar, and calls; behavioral pattern analysis tied to deal outcomes; MEDDPICC-style meeting-prep summaries; incentive and gamification layer for reinforcing winning behaviors. Best for: Teams already invested in the ZoomInfo ecosystem wanting behavioral analytics layered on top of activity capture. 3. Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) EAC remains Salesforce’s native tool for syncing email and calendar activity into Salesforce records. It’s a reasonable baseline for teams that want activity visibility without adding a third-party vendor, though it lacks the AI-driven signal layer — deal risk scoring, buyer engagement analysis — that dedicated revenue intelligence tools build on top of similar capture data. Key features: captures email and calendar events from Microsoft or Google accounts, logs activity to the Salesforce timeline, native to Salesforce with no separate vendor relationship required. Best for: Teams wanting basic activity capture natively inside Salesforce without additional AI features or vendor cost. 4. MatchMyEmail MatchMyEmail automates email and calendar logging into Salesforce, working with any email client or host rather than requiring a specific inbox provider. It’s a narrower, lighter-weight tool than most others on this list — no AI signal layer, just reliable, automated capture. Key features: automatic email and calendar capture, permanent storage of historical communication data, compatible with any email client. Best for: Teams wanting straightforward, dependable activity logging without a broader intelligence platform attached. 5. Revenue Grid Revenue Grid combines activity capture with guided-selling and forecasting features — 360-degree pipeline visibility, forecast-to-actual comparison, and revenue signals aimed at improving process consistency across a sales team. Key features: 360-degree pipeline visibility, forecast accuracy tracking, guided-selling signals embedded in Salesforce. Best for: Teams wanting activity capture bundled with broader guided-selling and forecasting tools in one product. 6. Aviso AI Aviso’s forecasting engine is now paired with MIKI, a conversational orchestrator that can query pipeline data and trigger CRM updates directly, alongside a library of 50+ pre-built revenue agents and a no-code studio for building custom agentic workflows. Key features: MIKI conversational AI orchestrator, predictive forecasting, 50+ pre-built revenue agents, no-code agent workflow builder. Best for: Teams wanting AI agents built directly into forecasting and pipeline execution, not just activity capture with a chat interface layered on top. 7. Collective[i] Collective[i] has repositioned itself around what it now calls “applications and agents” for sales forecasting and CRM optimization, explicitly framing its mission around helping organizations “operate with the speed and precision required to compete in an AI-first world.” Underneath the updated positioning, its core capability remains automated activity capture combined with AI-driven forecasting and opportunity scoring. Key features: AI-driven forecasting and opportunity-win probability, automated activity and contact capture into CRM, professional-network intelligence for surfacing warm relationship paths. Best for: Teams wanting forecasting and relationship-network intelligence combined in one platform. 8. LinkPoint360 LinkPoint360 focuses specifically on email integration for Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics — one-click email logging, custom object and field detection, and client-side deployment for teams with stricter data-residency requirements.

Nektar.ai vs People.ai: A Buyer's Guide
Buyer's Guide

Nektar vs Backstory (formerly People.ai): A Buyer’s Guide

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2026 Guide for Enterprise GTM Teams Seeking Backstory (People.ai) Alternatives Buyer’s Guide 11 min Jan 27, 2026 Updated: August 13, 2026 A quick note before you read further: People.ai rebranded to Backstory in April 2026, repositioning as a “Revenue Answers Platform” with a conversational AI layer on top of its existing activity-capture technology. Same underlying company and core capture technology, new name and pitch. This guide refers to it as Backstory throughout, noting the People.ai history where it’s directly relevant (its Gartner recognition, for instance, was announced under the People.ai name). Introduction: Two Different Approaches to the Same Problem Both Backstory and Nektar operate in the revenue data capture category, helping enterprises automatically capture GTM activity and enrich their CRM using AI. However, they solve fundamentally different problems for different buyers. Backstory (formerly People.ai) is an established revenue intelligence platform with strong analytics capabilities, recognition as a Visionary in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Revenue Action Orchestration (awarded under the People.ai name, prior to the April 2026 rebrand), and a mature suite of tools including ClosePlan, account planning, and leadership dashboards, now layered with a conversational query interface as part of its Backstory repositioning. Nektar is an advanced data-first GTM telemetry solution focused on delivering clean, accurate, AI-ready CRM data directly into standard Salesforce objects, designed specifically for enterprises that want to power their existing BI stacks rather than adopt another analytics platform. This guide is intended for GTM leaders, RevOps leaders, Sales Operations teams, and Data teams evaluating both solutions. It draws on direct enterprise evaluation feedback, product analysis, and independent research to help you determine which solution fits your specific needs. Get our latest insights into your inbox Who This Guide Is For This comparison is most relevant if your organization: Already operates a mature BI stack (Databricks, Snowflake, Looker, Tableau) Has dedicated RevOps or SalesOps teams building custom analytics Prioritizes CRM data accuracy over out-of-the-box dashboards Needs granular control over what data syncs to Salesforce Requires specific detail around internal and external participation or meeting attendance intelligence (not just invitee data) If your priority is comprehensive analytics UI, pre-built dashboards, and account planning tools, Backstory may be the stronger fit for your organization. But if you’re looking to solve the data problem at its core without the additional enablement effort of new training, Nektar is a better bet. This guide focuses on scenarios where data infrastructure is the primary buying criterion. The Core Difference: Analytics-First vs Data-First The fundamental difference between these platforms comes down to philosophy, and the April 2026 rebrand sharpened rather than changed this distinction: Backstory is built around the premise that revenue teams need better analytics and insights delivered through their platform, now explicitly reframed around conversational, natural-language answers rather than dashboards alone. Data capture exists to power those answers, scorecards, and AI-driven recommendations. Nektar is built around the premise that enterprises already have analytics tools they trust. What they lack is clean, accurate, complete, unified rep activity data in the CRM to feed those tools. Nektar focuses on being the best possible data layer, not an additional interface to learn. Neither approach is inherently superior; they serve different organizational needs. The question is which approach matches your GTM infrastructure strategy, and whether a conversational interface actually solves your problem or just adds a new way to ask a question the underlying data still can’t fully answer. Considering an Alternative to Backstory? See how Nektar delivers 90%+ attribution accuracy directly into your Salesforce, without the Backstory price tag. Check Side-by-side Feature Comparison Why Enterprises Evaluate Backstory Alternatives Based on conversations with enterprise buyers evaluating both platforms, several consistent themes emerge: Existing Analytics Investment Many large enterprises have already invested significantly in Databricks, Snowflake, Looker, or Tableau. Their internal ops teams build custom dashboards tailored to their specific sales motions. For these organizations, adopting another analytics platform, conversational interface or not, creates redundancy rather than value. They want the underlying data, not another UI. Salesforce Integration Model Backstory (like People.ai before it) uses a managed package approach that creates custom objects in Salesforce. While this provides rich functionality within Backstory’s own ecosystem, some enterprises report challenges including: Additional automation required to map data into standard Salesforce fields Complexity when using captured data in existing workflows or forecasting Duplicate participant records requiring cleanup Nektar writes directly to standard Salesforce objects (Events, Tasks, Contacts), which can simplify integration with existing processes but may offer less specialized functionality. Meeting Attendance Requirements A significant differentiator for some buyers is meeting attendance intelligence. Backstory’s meeting data typically relies on calendar invites and recorded calls via conversation-intelligence platform integrations. Nektar captures both invitees and actual attendees, along with meeting status (completed, cancelled, no-show, under 10 minutes), without requiring recording. For organizations focused on coaching, churn analysis, or executive involvement tracking, this distinction can be decisive, and it isn’t something a conversational query layer on top of the same underlying capture gap actually solves. Data Volume Control Some enterprises express concern about data volume and Salesforce storage costs. Nektar offers granular sync controls that let administrators define which activities to capture, which contacts to create, and what thresholds to apply. Backstory’s capture approach may generate higher data volumes, which can be beneficial for analytics but challenging for storage-conscious organizations. Category Nektar.ai Backstory (formerly People.ai) Salesforce data model Standard objects (Events, Tasks, Contacts) Managed package with custom objects Opportunity Matching AI/ML graph-based, self-learning Rule-based, configurable Meeting Attendance Invitees + actual attendees + meeting status Primarly invitee-based, recorded calls via CI partners Meeting Intelligence Source Direct Zoom/Teams integration (no recording required) CI platform integration (Gong, Zoom IQ, Webex) Engagement Scoring Customizable, writes to Salesforce fields Pre-defined, displayed in analytics UI Multi-user Attribution All internal users + external contacts Primarily organizer-focused Noise Control Granular sync rules and filters Comprehensive capture approach Analytics & Dashboards Minimal (Data-focused) Comprehensive built-in analytics Account Planning Not a primary focus Strong (ClosePlan, org charts) Data Portability Standard objects, no lock-in Managed package migration required Best for Data-first

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