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Salesforce vs. Pipedrive Comparison
Salesforce and Pipedrive are leading customer relationship management platforms for small businesses. Here's how they compare.
Table of Contents
There are dozens of powerful, customizable and user-friendly customer relationship management (CRM) platforms on the market. To find CRM success for your business, you must consider your company’s needs. Also, you should find a platform with the features and functionality to help you get the results you want.
Salesforce and Pipedrive are two leading CRM systems targeting different types of businesses. Below, we evaluate their costs, features and integrations to help you decide which platform is the best fit for your organization.
Salesforce vs. Pipedrive Highlights
Salesforce and Pipedrive are among the best CRM software solutions on the market, but they differ significantly. Here’s an at-a-glance comparison.
Criteria | Salesforce | Pipedrive |
|---|---|---|
Starting prices | $25 per user, per month | $14 per user, per month |
Free trial for paid plans | Yes (30 days) | Yes (14 days) |
Workflows and automations |
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Communications platform |
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Reporting and analytics |
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Artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements |
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Apps and integrations |
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Who Is Salesforce For?
Salesforce CRM is ideal for companies that want to achieve better results from their sales and marketing activities. The system comes equipped with a highly capable and fully customizable multiplatform marketing suite and a sophisticated multichannel communications platform. It has superb workflow automation control to improve efficiency. It also boasts excellent reporting and analytics capabilities that shine a light on what’s working well and what isn’t in your business. In addition, this solution’s companion apps and 7,000-plus plug-ins make Salesforce an adaptable, intelligent and flexible CRM. It can help deliver a significant revenue boost to your business.
Our full review of Salesforce CRM details the platform’s ease of use and customer service options.
Who Is Pipedrive For?
Pipedrive CRM is specifically designed for companies that use sales representatives or deal desks to close complex, customizable deals that often involve multiple decision-makers. Sales can be a challenging, frustrating and time-consuming process. However, we were impressed that Pipedrive can serve as the excellent personal organizer many salespeople need to perform optimally. It’s always there keeping an eye on deals in a rep’s sales funnel and reminding them when to contact decision-makers — and why. The system also boasts a smart and easy-to-use integrated multichannel marketing suite to generate more leads to fill your sales pipeline.
Read our full review of Pipedrive CRM for details on implementation, usability and more.
Salesforce vs. Pipedrive Comparison
Salesforce provides an all-purpose CRM for sales, marketing and customer service. Pipedrive’s offering, on the other hand, was built to serve businesses focused on their dedicated sales teams. Here’s an overview of their pricing and essential CRM features.
Pricing
Salesforce Pricing
Salesforce’s Starter Suite is available on a month-to-month basis. All other plans require an annual contract. Note that Salesforce has a vast array of offerings. For simplicity, the pricing below is for the Salesforce Sales Cloud solution.
Plan | Price | Features |
|---|---|---|
Starter Suite | $25 per user, per month (billed monthly or annually) |
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Pro Suite | $100 per user, per month (billed annually) | Everything in Starter Suite, plus:
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Enterprise | $165 per user, per month (billed annually) | Everything in Pro Suite, plus:
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Unlimited | $330 per user, per month (billed annually) | Everything in Enterprise, plus:
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Einstein 1 Sales | $500 per user, per month (billed annually) | Everything in Unlimited, plus:
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Salesforce subscription costs rise quickly. However, the more expensive the plans become, the fewer extra features they have over the previous level — especially between the Unlimited and Einstein 1 Sales tiers. That said, the range of features at every subscription tier should cover most businesses’ needs.
Note that enhanced customer support options — including 24/7 assistance, a dedicated account manager and an expert coach — add up to 30 percent to your monthly subscription costs.
Pipedrive Pricing
Plan | Price | Features |
|---|---|---|
Essential | $14 per user, per month (billed annually) $24 per user, per month (billed monthly) |
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Advanced | $39 per user, per month (billed annually) $49 per user per month (billed monthly) | Everything in Essential, plus:
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Professional | $49 per user, per month (billed annually) $64 per user, per month (billed monthly) | Everything in Advanced, plus:
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Power | $64 per user, per month (billed annually) $79 per user, per month (billed monthly) | Everything in Professional, plus:
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Enterprise | $99 per user, per month (billed annually) $129 per user, per month (billed monthly) | Everything in Power, plus:
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Pipedrive is more affordable than Salesforce, and we like how the platform includes valuable features at lower subscription levels. However, beyond the Professional tier, you pay higher fees primarily to increase the number of open deals and custom fields you can access.
Note that you’ll incur additional costs for premium apps and features, including:
- Web Visitors (website visitor tracking tool)
- Projects (Kanban-chart-based project management tool)
- Campaigns (email marketing campaigns platform)
- SmartDocs (document management tool)
Workflows and Automations
Salesforce
- Customizable dashboard layouts: Managers can keep salespeople focused by adding widgets to their dashboards. These tools can show key performance indicators (KPIs) like call time, number of calls and conversion rate. You can highlight your most important metrics by choosing a light or dark theme and picking from a range of preset color palettes. This feature can help draw attention to what really matters.
- Control over processes: We like how the Flow Builder process allows you to add buttons to screens and forms that require a specific rep or agent action before a deal can move to the next stage. You can check who moved a deal along the funnel for greater transparency.
- Automated tasks: We were impressed with the easy-to-use interface in Salesforce’s Automation Studio for workflow automations. For example, you can identify and merge duplicate records, apply routing logic so a lead goes to a particular rep, and map out steps in the customer journey automatically.
Salesforce makes it easy to build custom workflow automations. Source: Salesforce
Pipedrive
- Out-of-the-box automations: Pipedrive has dozens of customizable and shareable automations. There are four types of prebuilt automations: deal-focused, lead engagement, work optimization and connection to external apps.
- Data enhancement: We were impressed by Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data feature. It scours the internet for information on companies, decision-makers and then populates the relevant contact record.
- CPQ: Pipedrive’s marketplace is home to four powerful CPQ plug-ins, which update sales reps’ live quotes based on real-time information like supplier and shipping prices. This saves them from having to gather the details manually. (A similar feature is also offered as a plug-in for Salesforce CRM.)
Communications Platform Features
Salesforce
- Connect via email: Send and receive individual emails with Salesforce CRM’s built-in email client and send email blasts via its bulk emailing platform. You can send up to 5,000 bulk emails a day and create professional, responsive emails from a range of customizable templates.
- Connect on social media: Salesforce discontinued its proprietary Social Studio in 2024. It now directs users to third-party integrations like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Khoros to engage audiences on social media. Although they may cost extra, these integrations allow you to manage, plan and create social media posts, as well as engage in private app messaging. You can also monitor which posts get the best client engagement on these partner apps.
- Connect on multiple channels: We like how all email and social media interactions are added to the system’s client histories — whether you’re having a conversation with the customer or they’re responding to an ad campaign. This includes interactions on WhatsApp, SMS and MMS, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, the telephone, and more.
Pipedrive
- Email connectivity: Pipedrive’s email client and marketing suite are easy to use and intuitive. That’s very important because, in this digital age, email is sometimes the best way to generate cold leads and keep deals alive.
- Phone connectivity: Pipedrive has an excellent selection of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) plug-ins. This feature allows you to make and receive calls from the Pipedrive dashboard. Auto-dialer integrations like Ring.io are also available if you want to run an outbound telemarketing campaign through the CRM.
- Multichannel connectivity: We like how Pipedrive’s CRM allows you to communicate with clients directly via SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, social media messaging, web chat and more.
The automated email campaigns in Pipedrive are a great way to nurture
Reporting and Analytics
Salesforce
- Track results accurately: We were impressed by how Salesforce CRM tracks, analyzes, and reports on the customer journey and marketing campaign outcomes. If you sell online, you’ll find the revenue and purchase funnel reports particularly useful.
- Ready-made and customizable reports: Salesforce offers an impressive array of prebuilt reports that users can modify. You can also customize the analytics dashboard to display the information you want, such as revenue trends and levels of customer engagement.
- Trustworthy data: We like how Salesforce’s Duplicate Management tool cleans up your database. We also like how data enrichment tools like PipeLaunch use LinkedIn and other helpful online data to help you build each prospect. Another app, LASER Credit Access, even adds business credit scores to your records.
Salesforce CRM supports dynamic report creation. Source: Salesforce
Pipedrive
- Customizable dashboards: Each dashboard can hold up to 25 reports, which you can resize, rearrange and filter by time or user. We appreciate the ability to create multiple dashboards and share them with others inside or outside your organization.
- Sales forecasting: We were impressed by Pipedrive’s sales forecasting feature. It uses past data to predict which deals will close, when and for how much. This feature also gives you greater insight into when funnel dropouts happen.
- Live rep and deal monitoring: See in real time the deals your sales reps are working on. Such info includes their current status and past leads, won and lost. You can also see how long it takes a salesperson to move deals through the stages of your sales process.
AI Enhancements
Salesforce
- Sales teams: Salesforce’s AI tool, Einstein AI, helps sales agents get better results. We particularly like the Einstein Next Best Action feature. It can, among other things, advise reps on live opportunities to upsell and cross-sell during a call or email conversation.
- Decision-makers: Einstein is also excellent for the C-suite, especially through its Einstein Discovery tool. This tool provides real-time analysis of company performance to help guide decision-making. Einstein Discovery also listens for and reports on social media conversations about your brand and products.
- Everyone: We were impressed by the depth of Salesforce’s AI capabilities. The platform can help salespeople create excellent product presentations. It can also free up customer service teams with website chatbots, enhance performance with workflow suggestions and more.
Pipedrive
- Sales teams: Using real-time performance metrics, Pipedrive’s AI-powered Sales Assistant suggests ways managers can improve team and sales rep outcomes. We liked the Kara AI app integration ($30 per month). It helps teams better manage their sales pipelines by focusing on the most promising leads based on deal size, client profile, likelihood of closing and rep conversion rates.
- LinkedIn: The Engage AI plug-in ($30 per month) also stands out thanks to its ability to engage in quality conversations and interactions with leads on LinkedIn. It even creates custom comments for what it determines to be high-priority posts from your leads.
- Customer engagement: We really like how Pipedrive has configured the platform’s AI. It helps teams nurture relationships by analyzing customer behavior and recommending the best times to follow up or make initial contact. This functionality is backed up by tools like lead prioritization and automated email suggestions.
AI assistance improves sales task automation in Pipedrive. Source: Pipedrive
Integrations and Apps
Salesforce
- Huge variety of plug-ins: We like how easy Salesforce makes it to find the right app among its over 7,000 integrations. You can use the search box or industry drop-down to locate your desired integration.
- Developer support: Salesforce CRM is coder-friendly, with an excellent API interface and extensive support documentation. We were also impressed by the more than 300 Lightning Web Components for developers. These are prebuilt programming blocks that programmers can drop into projects to save time.
- Salesforce-only add-ons: In addition to apps and Lightning Web Components, you can make use of Flow Solutions (a drag-and-drop automation tool). Also available are Lightning Bolt templates (task-specific solutions for software product delivery, recruitment management and more).
Pipedrive
- Wide app selection: Pipedrive’s CRM has more than 500 integrations, many designed specifically to help sales teams close more deals. These include standard apps like Microsoft Teams, Calendly and Zoom, as well as many others.
- Partners: Choose an official Pipedrive partner to customize the integration to your exact requirements. In Pipedrive’s app market, search by rating, language or location.
- API integration: Pipedrive’s API platform and documentation are superb. For even greater flexibility, your developer can use either GraphQL or a RESTful API.
Salesforce vs. Pipedrive Summary
Salesforce and Pipedrive have different target audiences. So, we recommend these platforms for companies with the following specific needs:
Salesforce is best for businesses that want better results from their sales and marketing teams.
Salesforce is the market leader in the CRM sector because the vendor and its system are highly effective at what they do. Smaller companies may need to stretch their budget to have access to the platform’s valuable reporting and analytics tools, unified marketing hub, automations, and communications platform. But, it’s a worthwhile investment. This solution is part of the vendor’s broader business software ecosystem that supports many companies in running their entire organization. It’s the most feature-packed and detailed CRM available. For any business focused on improving performance in sales, marketing and customer service, it’s easy to recommend Salesforce.
Pipedrive is best for companies with sales reps who close deals.
Pipedrive knows the businesses it serves well and has built an excellent CRM system around their needs. Sales reps will find this platform invaluable for closing sales, including complex, multistage, customized deals involving multiple decision-makers. The marketing suite is intuitive and, when used correctly, will generate a healthy flow of leads into your business. While Salesforce has more apps and better AI integration, Pipedrive’s progress in both areas is ongoing and impressive. If you have sales targets to hit and a limited budget, Pipedrive is the CRM most likely to help you achieve your goals at a price you can afford.
FAQs
