Pipedrive CRM Review and Plan Costs in 2024

Why We Chose Pipedrive as the Best CRM for Sales Automation

Unlike other customer relationship management (CRM) platforms we reviewed, Pipedrive was designed for sales automation. It’s an intuitive, cost-effective and scalable solution that helps sales teams sell more and sales managers run their teams better.

Sales reps and managers face pressure and a heavy workload. The average sales process — from initial contact to closing a deal — is complex and multifaceted. Reps often have 50 or more deals at various stages simultaneously. Managing it all is challenging, but the stakes are high as poor follow-through can make deals go cold. Pipedrive understands sales complexities. Its platform seems to have been built on the backs of its creators’ past pains and frustrations.

We appreciate how well Pipedrive automates processes to move prospects along the sales pipeline faster. Its intelligent reminders and notifications keep salespeople on task. Pipedrive is also great for managers, giving them real-time visibility into every deal and stage.

Pipedrive’s powerful email marketing platform is another standout feature, on par with many of the best email marketing services. Use plug-ins to turn Pipedrive into a power dialer and a short message service (SMS) broadcaster — tools your marketing team can also use.

Pipedrive does less than other CRMs, but that’s intentional. The platform concentrates on the needs of its core audience, creating a great service that delivers. For all these reasons and more, Pipedrive is our choice for the best CRM for sales automation.

Pipedrive’s dashboards can display recurring revenue growth. Source: Pipedrive

Ease of Use

We were impressed by Pipedrive’s user interface (UI). The design is minimalist, the controls are intuitive and the layout is uncluttered. Pipedrive’s interface is one of the easiest to use of all the CRMs we reviewed. Here are a few of our favorite ease-of-use elements:

• Platform interface: Pipedrive gives users a clear, broad view of the data they deem most important. When you select a feature or report, you’ll see in-depth information presented intelligently and legibly. A permanent menu on the left gives immediate access to the platform’s primary functions. 
• Quick access to information and help: We like the always-present search bar at the top of the screen, which enables quick access to information and help. Select the question mark icon to go directly to the company’s extensive, clearly written education tools.
• Customization options: Pipedrive shines when it comes to customization. Users can change their screen’s appearance and layout to their preferred specifications easily. Automating workflows is also straightforward, and the platform’s built-in Sales Assistant artificial intelligence app can assist with finding workflow shortcuts. 
• Integrations: An extensive app store includes popular integrations with Zoom and Calendly. There are also pre-built webhooks in Pipedrive, as well as an application programming interface and development platform where you can build your own apps and integrations.

Pipedrive allows users up to 25 widgets on their personal dashboards. Source: Pipedrive

Pipedrive Features

Pipedrive is a focused CRM that aims to improve sales team performance. Here are seven standout CRM features in Pipedrive that impressed us.

Managing the Sales Process

We like that reps can create sales workflow automations easily — actions triggered as deals move from one stage to the next. Users get access to 36 prebuilt, customizable automations. Sharing customized workflows is easy, so colleagues can use them in their pipelines. Creating a new automation is straightforward via a form or a drag-and-drop interface. (The process for creating automations is similar to monday CRM’s functionality. Read more in our monday CRM review and monday comparison.)

Automation examples include the following: 

• Welcome campaigns: If someone signs up to receive your email newsletter or engages in a chatbot conversation, you can create an automation to launch a welcome email and follow-up messages. 
• Introduction emails: When a deal appears on the pipeline for the first time, you can create an automation that sends an email introducing a rep as the client’s account manager.
• Follow-ups: If someone has been stuck at the same stage in a pipeline for a specific length of time, you can set an automation to prompt a rep to make a follow-up call.

We were particularly impressed by Pipedrive’s Smart Contact data functionality. With a click, Pipedrive will search the internet for information on a prospect on sites like LinkedIn and populate its record. This could save valuable time if you regularly receive inquiries from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) when selling to enterprise-level companies.

We also like Pipedrive’s Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) feature —something you’d normally expect only on enterprise-level CRMs like Salesforce. (Read our review of Salesforce to learn about this powerful tool with enterprise resource planning capabilities.) Pipedrive’s CPQ functionality comes via third-party apps (specifically Gleanquote and MobileForce). The CPQ works off the back of product catalogs you build in Pipedrive, pulling in all the necessary information to ensure complex quotes are accurate and build in the required profit margin.

Pipedrive’s customizable automations help manage the sale process. Source: Pipedrive

Integrated Email Platform

We really like Pipedrive’s integrated email client and email marketing platform, which incurs a small additional monthly charge. 

The email marketing platform has a drag-and-drop editor and a large template selection. You can save all your own designs as templates for later use. As you’d expect, it integrates perfectly with Pipedrive’s customer tracking and data management features. Send out campaigns from your own domain (or standby domain) for added legitimacy. 

We like how easy it is to use the platform’s email analytics tool. It shows you standard metrics like email open rates and successful lead conversion rates and displays the names of recipients who interact with your emails. Pipedrive remembers the campaigns you send, and you can run historical analyses to check long-term engagement and conversion trends. 

You can also use apps to build omnichannel communication into Pipedrive. Connect to SMS messages with apps like Textedly and WhatsApp (via Twilio) and add voice-over-internet-protocol functionality via providers, such as Aircall, JustCall and Ringover. 

Note that integration levels vary by app. Some may enrich contact records automatically while others don’t. Assess an app’s full functionality before committing.

Pipedrive’s tracked emails feature helps you assess if someone opened or clicked on your email. Source: Pipedrive

Lead Generation

We like that you can use Pipedrive to fill your sales funnel. Here are some impressive lead-generation tools:

• Ring.io power dialer: The Ring.io power dialer plug-in logs and records reps’ calls and notes, helping you organize outbound telemarketing campaigns. Populate an outbound list with your customer or prospect database or upload a purchased list.
• Chatbot: Pipedrive’s LeadBooster add-on ($39 monthly or $32 monthly if purchased annually) includes an impressive chatbot feature. Go into the platform, create your bot and insert the code onto your website. It acts as your first service line when someone visits your website and its interaction quality is excellent. You can set parameters so it knows when to transfer a visitor to a salesperson. It asks for visitors’ names and contact details and moves them to the Pipedrive CRM automatically.
• Web forms: LeadBooster includes website forms that can add or amend prospect records when someone completes them.
• Prospector lead database: LeadBooster also provides 10 free credits monthly to use Prospector, a database with more than 400 million business contacts. You’ll pay for additional usage. Lead per lead, it’s more expensive than buying in bulk from one of the best list brokers. However, the ability to buy leads in volumes as small as one isn’t something most brokers offer, so we see this as a positive for sales teams seeking prospects.

Pipedrive’s LeadBooster add-on provides 10 free monthly credits for Prospector, a database with over 400 million business contacts. Source: Pipedrive

Artificial Intelligence Sales Assistant

We like Pipedrive’s AI-powered Sales Assistant tool. Pipedrive’s AI implementation isn’t as advanced as some other CRM platforms we reviewed. Still, the Sales Assistant gives your reps tips on automating workflows and deal prioritization. 

We appreciate that the more you use the Sales Assistant, the more it learns about your business’s sales cycle, adapting its advice and prompts accordingly.

Dashboard Customization and Integrations

Pipedrive’s flexible CRM software allows for extensive dashboard customization and integrations:

• Dashboard customization: Users can choose up to 25 reports to have live on their dashboard. To add a report, open the reports section and drag the report you want to the dashboard. You can also drag and drop widgets around your dashboard and change any report’s order and size. Managers can use drop-down boxes on their dashboards to change users and times to view specific reports. You can have more than one dashboard and even share your dashboard — a feature we haven’t encountered in the other CRMs we reviewed. 
• Marketplace apps and integrations: We were impressed that Pipedrive’s marketplace boasts over 400 apps — a large number for such a specialist CRM platform. You’ll find major integrations like Teams, Zoom, DocuSign, QuickBooks and more. There are also exceptional apps that help with sales processes. For example, the LeadsBridge app connects your Pipedrive account automatically to paid search and social media platforms. Engage AI keeps an eye on the people you follow on social media and suggests how to reply insightfully to their comments.

Pipedrive’s busy app marketplace has numerous marketing- and sales-centered integrations. Source: Pipedrive

Customer Segmentation Tools

Pipedrive shines when it comes to customer segmentation — a critical tool for sales reps. You can assign individual leads and prospects using multiple filters based on your chosen criteria, such as the products or services prospects inquired about, the deal stage, recent pipeline activity and previous deals. 

We like how you can create custom market segmentation subgroups based on preprogrammed filters. This allows more granularity and supports more precise, intent-based automations. As with the rest of the Pipedrive UI, segmenting is easy, thanks to the platform’s intuitive UI and no-code capabilities.

You can segment contacts on Pipedrive according to multiple characteristics. Source: Pipedrive

Sales Management Tools

Sales managers are responsible for hitting company revenue goals — a stressful task. We love that Pipedrive supports sales managers with high-level management tools. Its sales management features are among the best we’ve seen in our evaluations. Here are some examples: 

• Set team goals: In addition to setting individual goals, you can set team goals and keep reps apprised of progress via a dashboard widget. We like that you can split a team into mini-teams based on specific criteria, such as deal type. 
• Monitor everyone’s activities: Managers can monitor what’s happening and generate reports based on deals closed, deals lost and general rep activity. They can also create reports on individual deal progress, analyzing metrics like time to respond to leads and emails sent. They can even set up and change automations to move deals faster through deal stages.
• Forecast sales: We appreciated Pipedrive’s sales forecasting features. Sales forecasting is a crucial tool to help managers achieve targets and plan ahead. Using historical data and past deal activity, managers receive estimates of which deals will close, insights into weak points in the deal-stage process and analysis of individual rep performance. These insights are ideal for spotting training opportunities and knowing which reps you can entrust with high-potential deals. 

Sales manager dashboards help keep tabs on deals and reps. Source: Pipedrive

Pipedrive Pricing Plans and Subscription Costs

Pipedrive doesn’t offer a free plan. However, you get a free 14-day trial to see if the service is right for your business.

Pipedrive’s service levels and prices are as follows. Prices reflect charges when you’re billed annually. If you prefer to pay monthly, your price will be up to 32 percent higher. 

• Essential: $14 per user, per month: The Essential plan includes lead and deal management, customizable pipelines, data import and export, an email inbox, the Sales Assistant AI tool, deal reports, company and user goals and visual dashboards. It allows 3,000 live deals, and you get 30 custom fields per lead and one insights dashboard.
• Advanced: $29 per user, per month: The Advance plan includes everything in the Essential plan, plus email open and click tracking, a meeting scheduler, automations, smart contact data, web-to-mobile calls and recurring revenue. It allows 10,000 live deals, 100 custom fields per lead, one insights dashboard and 30 active automations per user.
• Professional: $49 per user, per month. The Professional level includes everything in the Advanced tier, plus pipeline-specific deals, deal card customization, a contacts timeline, automated lead assignment and team management. It allows 100,000 live deals, 300 custom fields per lead, unlimited dashboards and 60 active automations per user.
• Power: $64 per user, per month: The Power level includes everything in previous tiers, plus phone support and access to an implementation program. You get 200,000 live deals, 500 custom fields per lead, unlimited dashboards and 90 active automations per user.
• Enterprise: $99 per user, per month: The Enterprise level includes everything in the Power tier, plus security alerts and rules. You get unlimited live deals, unlimited custom fields per lead, unlimited dashboards and 180 active automations per user.

Note that higher tiers don’t necessarily provide more features; however, you get more of each feature. 

In addition to the LeadBooster add-on mentioned earlier, the following extras are also available:

• Web Visitors (from $49 per month; company license): The Web Visitors add-on tracks who visits your website by IP address. In the 2000s, this technology was quite popular. However, its effectiveness today is doubted because IP databases are incomplete. 
• Projects ($29 per user, per month): The Projects add-on is a project management tool based on Kanban boards.
• Campaigns ($16 per month; company license): The Campaigns add-on provides access to Pipedrive’s in-built email marketing platform.
• Smart Docs ($9.90 per user, per month): The Smart Docs add-on is a document signing service that auto-fills with your Pipedrive data. It allows you to see when prospects have opened your document.

Onboarding and Implementation

We appreciate that Pipedrive makes CRM implementation straightforward. Create your account, amend the pipeline stages as necessary and then upload your leads and deals from a spreadsheet or a bridging app. Customize fields for leads, filters, labels and more. After that, you’ll sync your email, calendar and contacts to Pipedrive and connect your other business software. 

The process has been designed to be as user-friendly as possible and shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Power and Enterprise customers can request free help to set up and implement Pipedrive. 

You can also engage with a Pipedrive partner to pay for setup and implementation help. However, unless you have very specific needs, we think businesses won’t have any trouble getting started with Pipedrive.  

Customer Support

Pipedrive’s customer support options are on par with other CRMs we reviewed. All clients can access 24/7 live chat support. Power and Enterprise users get access to phone support; however, it’s only open from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)/Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), so users on the West Coast can only speak to a Pipedrive rep in the morning.

Pipedrive’s knowledge base is one of the best on the market. We like that it has a specific Getting Started section. Once installed, you can access many useful sections on organizing your data, integrating with third-party apps, using lead generation tools and more. 

We like that the help materials are nontechnical and easy to read, often accompanied by videos and screenshots to show a process’s stages. 

We also liked Pipedrive Academy — an online learning portal with courses for all user levels, including admins. Additionally, the company hosts regular webinars to help clients understand more about the platform, its pricing plans and getting the most out of specific features.

Limitations 

Pipedrive’s greatest strength — its hyperfocus on improving the sales process — is also its greatest weakness. It has a limited range of functions compared to other CRMs. What it does, it does very well. However, if you want a more marketing- and customer-service-orientated solution, check out our review of Zendesk, which may better suit your needs.

Additionally, to get the most out of one of Pipedrive’s most useful features — its insights and reporting functionality — you must subscribe to the Professional plan or above. This may make the service hard to afford for SMBs with restricted budgets. Likewise, if you want telephone support and are not on the Power or Enterprise plan, you’re out of luck.

Methodology

When evaluating the best CRM software, we compared over a dozen top platforms’ features and functionality, including contact and deal management, customizability, data analytics and reports. Our in-depth review process included company demos, support and sales team interactions and analysis of instructional and promotional literature. We also considered pricing. When looking for the best CRM for sales automation specifically, we examined sales team optimization, app quality and availability, workflow automations and team collaboration tools. Our goal is to help you find the right CRM for your business.

Bottom Line

We recommend Pipedrive CRM for …

• SMBs with dedicated sales teams that want to streamline their sales process.
• Sales teams seeking to automate repetitive tasks to spend more time pitching to clients.
• Businesses seeking an affordable, user-friendly CRM with a sales-centric approach.

We don’t recommend Pipedrive CRM for …

• Businesses that need a comprehensive CRM solution extending beyond marketing and sales.
• Large businesses with complex CRM needs that need extensive customization and integration.
• Businesses that want a completely free CRM solution.