Data cleaning for CRM imports
Comparison
Looking for a free Insycle alternative?
Insycle is the closest real competitor to Sift, and the honest answer is that they do different halves of the same job. Insycle connects to your live CRM and cleans the records already living inside it, on a schedule, through its API, priced by how many records you have. Sift cleans the file before it ever enters the CRM, for free, entirely in your browser, with nothing uploaded. If you want ongoing in-CRM hygiene, Insycle is built for that. If you want a clean import without paying a per-record subscription, that is what Sift is for.
Clean your file in Sift, free →
What Insycle does that Sift does not
Credit where it is due: Insycle solves a problem Sift deliberately does not touch. It is genuinely good at the thing it is built for.
- Connects to your live CRM. Insycle links to HubSpot or Salesforce through its API and operates on the data already inside it.
- Cleans records already in the database. It dedupes, standardizes, and merges contacts and companies that are already living in your CRM, not a file on your desk.
- Runs on a schedule. You can set ongoing, recurring hygiene so new mess gets cleaned up automatically over time.
- Bulk operations across the whole database. It acts on large swaths of records at once, org-wide.
- Subscription by record count. Pricing scales with how many records you manage, which is how it can afford to run continuously against your CRM.
Sift has no CRM connection and no API. It never logs into HubSpot or Salesforce, never touches records that already live there, and cannot run anything on a schedule. If that is the job you need done, Insycle is the right tool and this page is not trying to talk you out of it.
What Sift does
Sift works on the other side of the import line: the file, before it becomes CRM records. You drop in a CSV or Excel file and Sift helps you get it clean and import-ready.
- Clean, dedupe, normalize, map, and pre-flight a file before you import it: trim, name-safe casing, email repair, mojibake and date fixes, phone normalization to E.164, country and postcode standardization.
- Fuzzy dedupe with golden-record survivorship, merging near-duplicate rows into one best record instead of deleting them, matching on email, phone, or a name-and-company fingerprint.
- Map to your CRM's import template (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Dynamics 365, Zoho, Mailchimp) and run an import-readiness pre-flight: required fields, types, and allowed values, flagged before you import.
- Free. No tiers, no record limits, no subscription, because Sift never connects to your CRM or counts your records.
- Nothing uploaded. Every change is approved by you with a before-and-after diff, and the whole thing runs on your own device.
The same job in Sift
- Drop the file in. Sift profiles every column in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
- Approve the cleanups with a before/after diff: trim, name-safe casing, email repair, mojibake and date fixes, phone normalization to E.164, countries and postcodes standardized.
- Dedupe fuzzily, matching on email, phone, or a name-and-company fingerprint, and merge duplicates into one golden record with survivorship rules instead of deleting rows.
- Map to your CRM's template (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Dynamics 365, Zoho, Mailchimp) and run the import pre-flight: required fields, types, and allowed values, flagged before you import.
- Export a clean file, an accounts file, a change log, and a hygiene report, then import a list that lands clean the first time.
When Insycle is the better tool
Reach for Insycle, not Sift, when the mess lives inside the CRM rather than in a file:
- You need ongoing, scheduled hygiene on records that already live in HubSpot or Salesforce, not a one-off clean of a file you are about to import.
- You want dedupe and standardization to run continuously as new records arrive, without someone exporting, cleaning, and re-importing each time.
- You need bulk operations across the whole live database, reached through the CRM's API.
The honest split most teams land on: Sift for the clean-dedupe-map-check step right before an import, and a connected tool like Insycle when they need standing hygiene on the records already inside the CRM. Sift is for the file. Insycle is for the database.