While Pipedrive offers a streamlined, visual pipeline-first approach with strong mobile capabilities, Nutshell positions itself as a cost-effective, full-featured, and user-friendly alternative with advantages in contact storage and built-in support.
HubSpot is a strong choice for B2B professionals needing depth in marketing automation, while Salesforce caters to those requiring enterprise-level customization, but both come with higher costs and complexity.
When evaluating CRMs, B2B professionals should map their essential workflows, budget for implementation and support, and leverage free trials and demos to test real-world fit, considering factors like UI comfort and data migration ease.
As of October 2024, the Power AI plan has been renamed to Business. Learn more here.
Pipedrive CRM is a popular and well-rounded CRM used by over 100,000 companies in more than 170 countries. Their branding portrays them as a simple, well-rounded choice for businesses of any size and an instrumental tool for making salespeople’s lives easy. It’s undoubtedly a good CRM, but it isn’t a good fit for everyone, and some may need to consider Pipedrive alternatives.
Pipedrive has its challenges and downsides, including a lack of marketing features, difficulty with integrations, and poor customer support. It’s crucial to compare Pipedrive’s features, reviews, and costs with the best Pipedrive alternatives to find the CRM that provides the best value for your team.
Using this comparison guide can help you identify the alternatives and ensure you’re really choosing a CRM that works for you.
Before we dive into the best Pipedrive alternatives, let’s review some essential information about the Pipedrive CRM.
Pipedrive pros
Pipedrive is a popular CRM for a reason. Here are some of the pros of using Pipedrive:
Ease of use:Users and prospective buyers appreciate Pipedrive’s clutter-free user interface. Pipedrive strives to provide a simple and intuitive experience so that its users can focus on selling.
Sales management features: Pipedrive also excels in its pipeline and sales management features. Customers on every plan can see an overview of their leads and communications, and customize their pipelines.
Useful extra features: Under the hood, advanced features like email sync, templated email automation, and one-click calling can propel any sales team toward their goals.
Pipedrive cons
Despite its benefits, Pipedrive also has a few cons. Take a look at some of the disadvantages we see most often with Pipedrive:
Open deals limits: One of the major downsides of Pipedrive’s CRM is the limit on the number of open deals you can have in your pipeline per plan. For example, if you’re on the Essential plan, you can’t have more than 3,000 open deals in your pipeline — or else you have to start paying nearly double for the next highest plan. What this means is that when your business grows and starts working more leads through its pipeline, Pipedrive forces you to pay more.
Lack of comprehensive CRM features: Pipedrive is primarily built for sales teams, leaving marketing and support teams without much value. Furthermore, even the expensive plans often don’t report on what users actually want. Pipedrive’s reporting lacks capabilities like viewing how many touches a prospect got, setting custom date ranges, and reporting on activities across users.
Pipedrive’s price starts at $14 per user per month, which is an attractive number when compared to other CRMs.
But there’s a catch — that entry-level price point lacks many of its marquee features. This “essentials” version leaves much to be desired. You’re left without the ability to sync your email account to Pipedrive, no email or task automation, and no user/admin permissions.
Bumping up to the $39 Advanced plan includes these features, but you still don’t get automatic lead assignment, contacts timelines, the ability to create teams, or multiple dashboards, which are reserved for the $49 Professional plan and above.
Lastly, Pipedrive offers the Power plan and the Enterprise plan, which costs $64 and $99 per user per month respectively, which offer higher limits and phone support.
The 7 best Pipedrive alternatives
If you’re considering Pipedrive, it’s likely that you’ve heard of these alternatives or seen them on software review sites. While the bulk of their features are similar, each has its own unique pros and cons, which, depending on your needs, could make or break your CRM experience.
Check out these seven Pipedrive alternatives:
1. Nutshell
Pricing: $13/user/month (billed annually) for Foundation, $25/user/month for Growth, $42/user/month for Pro, $59/user/month for Business, $79/user/month for Enterprise
Notable features:
Sales automation features like pipeline customization, automated lead assignment and pipeline distribution, and team guidance
Comprehensive filtering and sorting for leads and reporting
Contact management and unlimited CRM contacts and data storage — you’ll never have to upgrade your plan because your business is becoming too successful
Summary:Nutshell is an award-winning CRM platform and the best Pipedrive alternative. It helps B2B sales and marketing teams work together to close more deals. Powerful enough to support any element of your business and simple enough to implement without a paid admin or IT department, Nutshell is favored among small to medium-sized companies who know better than to overpay for software they’ll never use. Furthermore, according to customer reviews, Nutshell’s features often outshine the competitors in terms of both usability and comprehensiveness.
Watch out for: Users indicate that the feel of the mobile application doesn’t match the PC interface with which they are familiar.
PER USER COSTComparisons based on similarly priced packages (Nutshell Pro and Pipedrive Professional)
SALES PROCESS AUTOMATIONAutomatically move your leads through your pipeline based on automated triggers.
SALES REPORTS AND ANALYTICSInstantly view how you’re tracking against quota and previous periods, and segment by product, rep, lead source, and more to identify what’s really driving your sales.
LIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORTAvailable on Monday-Friday from 7:30am to 7:30pm eastern (excluding holidays).
CONTACTS AND COMPANY RECORDSUnlimited contact, company records and data storage.
PIPELINE MANAGEMENT FEATURESFlexibility for teams who have multiple processes or to use for other objectives such as Customer Retention or Customer Success.
$42 per month billed annually,
$49 per month billed monthly
Up to 5 fully customizable pipelines
Included, Unlimited
Online chat
Unlimited
Drag-and-drop board, list view, map view, chart view
$49.90 per month billed annually
Yes
150 reports per user
Online chat
Unlimited
Drag-and-drop board
Compare Nutshell and Pipedrive
To learn more about how Nutshell and Pipedrive stack up, check out our in-depth, head-to-head comparison.
Pricing:$25/user/month (billed annually) for Starter, $100/user/month for Pro Suite, $165/user/month for Enterprise, $330/user/month for Unlimited, $500/user/month for Einstein 1 Sales
Notable features:
Workflow customization tools
Analytics
Marketing leads management
Sales team communication
Summary: Another one of the standout Pipedrive alternatives is Salesforce. Salesforce is a comprehensive and robust software solution platform centered around its lead management and CRM functionality. With Salesforce (and its associated cloud applications), it’s possible to do just about anything: Customer journey-related custom sales workflows, plugin application builders, and integrations with your existing systems, to name a few. Be warned that the basic setup fee starts at around $5,000, but if you want the above-mentioned functionality, your setup will start at $50,000.
Watch out for: Salesforce is significantly more expensive and complex than Pipedrive and the other Pipedrive alternatives on this list. The steep learning curve means it can take a long time before you start getting value from the tool and will likely need to hire outside Salesforce consultants to help you get started.
Pricing: Free tools available, Starter Customer Platform starts at $15/user/month, Professional Customer Platform starts at $1,170/user/month, Additional plans and enhancements available
Notable features:
Website landing page builder
Customer journey-based workflows
Sales and marketing email template builder
Sales and marketing management tools
Summary:HubSpot is a CRM, marketing automation tool, and customer service hub all built into one. With HubSpot, you can create custom web pages, forms, and emails, and tie them together into complicated, automated workflows. HubSpot is a great option for sales and marketing teams who can afford the big spend and don’t have the time or resources to integrate their CRM with other similar features.
Watch out for: Don’t be fooled by the free version—it’s barely more functional than an Excel workbook. If you want to use all of HubSpot’s features, it will cost a small fortune. Furthermore, those who aren’t HTML pros will need HubSpot to design their marketing pages for them.
4. Zoho
Pricing: $14/user/month (billed annually) for Standard, $23/user/month for Professional, $40/user/month for Enterprise, $52/user/month for Ultimate
Notable features:
Integration with other Zoho apps
In-CRM emailing (limited #/user)
Dashboards and reporting
Integrates with Microsoft and Outlook
Workflow management
Summary:Zoho CRM is one application that exists in Zoho’s diverse ecosystem of bite-sized applications, which are typically sold in bundles. The CRM offers basic contact management tools, and automation, like automatically converting website visitors into leads. The reporting in Zoho is also top-notch, allowing users to report across products, locations, accounts, and statuses and providing useful sales forecasting.
Watch out for: Zoho has lots of add-on applications that vary in price, making it difficult to get a quote without going through demos, trials, and hassle. For the complete package, you may need to buy additional applications à la carte.
Looking for an easy-to-use CRM with all the features you need to boost sales?
Pricing: $29/user/month (billed annually) for CRM Plus, $49/user/month for Professional, $99/user/month for Enterprise, Marketing and Service plans also available
Notable features:
Integrates with G Suite, Microsoft, Mailchimp, and more
Custom dashboards
Custom pipeline builder
Opportunity reports
Summary:Insightly is a CRM favored by companies with straightforward sales processes and is fifth on our list of Pipedrive alternatives. Its simple user interface allows for the creation of custom pipelines and provides all the tools and functionality needed to manage them. Insightly offers strong filtering that allows large lists to be sorted into manageable groups.
Pricing: $9/user/month (billed annually) for Starter, $24/user/month for Basic, $59/user/month for Professional, $99/user/month for Business
Notable features:
Google-based CRM
Hangouts-based chatbot
Chrome extension, Gmail inbox, and other G Suite app support
Summary:Copper CRM is an innovative approach to customer relationship management. Describing itself as a “relational CRM” as opposed to a “transactional CRM,” its focus is to exist solely in the G Suite space to facilitate faster and more effective use of the Google app suite. Its Chrome extension comes in handy for scheduling meetings and creating follow-ups over email without going out of the way.
Watch out for: Copper is designed for Google users only, so it won’t play nicely with any of your non-Google software. Copper’s onboarding is expensive and is only included in their most expensive package. Copper’s plans also come with limits on the number of contacts you can have.
7. Spiro.ai
🥉 Honorable mention 🥉
Price: Starts from $1,500 per user annually (contact Spiro for specific, tailored pricing)
Notable features:
Optimized with AI
Very little manual data entry
Scans email correspondence to automate tasks
Summary: Spiro.ai is an AI-based CRM for manufacturers and distributors that uses algorithms to minimize the amount of busywork salespeople have to do, freeing them up to close more deals. For example, when you type someone’s email into Spiro, it finds all of their info on the web (so does Nutshell) and when you send an email with a line like “I’ll call you tomorrow,” the system actually reminds you to call them tomorrow.
Watch out for: Spiro has a tremendous price tag compared to their functionality; a salesperson who quickly creates tasks already won’t benefit much from having Spiro’s AI do it for them. This tool is also made for manufacturers and distributors, so if you don’t sell physical products, it won’t be the best fit.
How to find the best Pipedrive alternative
Shopping for a CRM is tough because you’re essentially choosing which software is going to run your sales operations. There are many hidden factors at play that won’t show up on a typical CRM’s “features” page, like ramp-up time, implementation costs, additional services needed, quality of customer support, and more. So, how can you make you choose the right Pipedrive CRM alternative for your business? Here are a few tips.
1. Consider your business goals and needs
Before you start testing CRMs, determine what you want to accomplish with your CRM and the essential features for achieving these goals. Survey team members across various departments that will use the CRM about the features they plan to use. Having a clear idea of your goals will help you weed out tools that don’t meet your needs.
2. Check for integration capabilities
When your CRM can integrate with your other tools, it becomes that much more useful. When evaluating CRMs, take a look at your existing tech stack and whether each potential new CRM integrates with the tools your company uses.
3. Read reviews
Software review sites are also invaluable because customers will often tell the stories that CRM salespeople can’t. Checking review sites helps you get a variety of perspectives and opinions about each option.
4. Start a free trial
In order to ensure you’re making the right choice, the best approach is to take a free trial and see if the CRM can really support all of your requirements. Test out the features that matter to you and interact with the CRM’s support team to see how responsive and helpful they are.
