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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.

Mark Fairlie
Written by: Mark Fairlie, Senior AnalystUpdated Feb 05, 2025
Gretchen Grunburg,Senior Editor
Business.com earns commissions from some listed providers. Editorial Guidelines.
Editor's Rating9.5/10
Pipedrive logo
Editor's Rating9.4/10
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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

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

  • Customizable dashboards
  • Object control
  • Step-by-step workflow building
  • Shareable customizations and automations
  • Enhanced data feature
  • Configure, price, quote (CPQ) function

Communications platform

  • Email client
  • Social media connectivity
  • Messaging apps integration
  • Email client
  • Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
  • Interactive voice response (IVR)
  • Social media messaging

Reporting and analytics

  • Live results tracking
  • Customizable template reports
  • Data cleansing
  • 25 template dashboards
  • Sales forecasts
  • Live team monitoring

Artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements

  • Einstein Next Best Action
  • Sales Assistant
  • Company analysis
  • Predictive insights
  • AI for sales teams
  • LinkedIn/AI integration

Apps and integrations

  • Extensive app store
  • Developer support
  • Platform exclusives
  • 500-plus third-party apps (many sales-focused)
  • Partner network
  • API integration

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.

Did You Know?Did you know
Salesforce CRM is part of an extensive business software ecosystem. Check out our Salesforce Service Cloud review (post-sales customer management tool) and Salesforce Marketing Cloud review (marketing platform aimed at larger businesses) to learn about additional solutions.

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)

  • Account, contact, lead, task and opportunity management
  • Einstein Activity Capture
  • Lead assignment and routing
  • Customizable sales processes, dashboards and reports
  • Products and price books
  • Files and case management
  • Email integration

Pro Suite

$100 per user, per month (billed annually)

Everything in Starter Suite, plus:

  • 1 sales console app
  • Sales quoting and forecasting
  • Track quotes and orders
  • Lightning App Builder
  • Access to AppExchange
  • 5 flows per company
  • Access to add-on features like Einstein Email Insights and Flow Orchestration

Enterprise

$165 per user, per month (billed annually)

Everything in Pro Suite, plus:

  • Advanced forecast and pipeline management
  • Opportunity scoring
  • Einstein Conversational Insights
  • Sales teams
  • Contracts, orders and quotes
  • Sales territories
  • Deal insights
  • Approval processes

Unlimited

$330 per user, per month (billed annually)

Everything in Enterprise, plus:

  • Sales engagement and conversation intelligence
  • Einstein Relationship Insights
  • Lead scoring
  • Sales cadences
  • Sales engagement hub
  • One developer sandbox and one full sandbox per organization

Einstein 1 Sales

$500 per user, per month (billed annually)

Everything in Unlimited, plus:

  • Generative AI
  • Unified data
  • Sales planning, programs and collaboration
  • Knowledge base
  • Sales Elevate with Slack

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)

  • 3,000 live deals
  • 30 custom fields per company
  • 15 reports per user
  • Customizable pipelines
  • Leads inbox
  • Deal rotting
  • Data import and export
  • Merge duplicates
  • Products catalog
  • People and organization management
  • Calendar view and activity management
  • Email inbox
  • Sales Assistant
  • API access
  • Webhooks

Advanced

$39 per user, per month (billed annually)

$49 per user per month (billed monthly)

Everything in Essential, plus:

  • 10,000 live deals
  • 100 custom fields per company
  • 30 reports per user
  • Product subscriptions and installments
  • Important fields
  • Two-way email sync
  • Email open and click tracking
  • Group emailing
  • Automations
  • Smart contact data

Professional

$49 per user, per month (billed annually)

$64 per user, per month (billed monthly)

Everything in Advanced, plus:

  • 100,000 live deals
  • 300 custom fields per company
  • 150 reports per user
  • Required fields
  • Formula fields
  • Pipeline-specific fields
  • Deal card customization
  • Contacts timeline
  • Automatic assignment
  • Revenue forecasting
  • Team filters and goals
  • 24/5 live chat support
  • SmartDocs

Power

$64 per user, per month (billed annually)

$79 per user, per month (billed monthly)

Everything in Professional, plus:

  • 200,000 live deals
  • 500 custom fields per company
  • 250 reports per user
  • Up to 15 teams
  • Free Projects and SmartDocs with e-signature add-ons
  • Developer Center access

Enterprise

$99 per user, per month (billed annually)

$129 per user, per month (billed monthly)

Everything in Power, plus:

  • Unlimited live deals
  • Unlimited custom fields per company
  • Unlimited reports per user
  • Unlimited teams
  • Nondeveloper sandbox account
  • Security rules and alerts

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)
Best for Pricing
Pipedrive
Pipedrive stands out in the pricing category due to its competitive, feature-rich plans. Its plans are well-priced — not just in comparison to Salesforce but also to many other CRM options. Salesforce offers much greater and deeper functionality than Pipedrive, but that's why it's more expensive.

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 custom worklows

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.)
Best for Workflows and Automations
Salesforce
Salesforce beats Pipedrive here because it offers far greater automation and customization opportunities. However, Pipedrive's workflow automations are particularly well-suited for companies with sales teams.

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.
Pipedrive email campaigns

The automated email campaigns in Pipedrive are a great way to nurture

Best Communications Platform Features
Salesforce
Salesforce and Pipedrive both excel in one-to-one communication and marketing campaigns across multiple channels. Both rely heavily on third-party integrations, which work very well but may add to your monthly costs. However, Salesforce wins here primarily because of its impressive 5,000-email-per-day allowance.
FYIDid you know
Don't underestimate the potential of winning customers over the phone. According to ​​Cognism's 2024 State of Cold Calling Report, prospects answer the phone on the first attempt 75 percent of the time.

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 reporting

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.
Best for Reporting and Analytics
Salesforce
Pipedrive excels in sales forecasting and rep analysis; it outperforms Salesforce in these areas without requiring any extra plug-ins. However, Salesforce ultimately takes this round because of the depth and breadth of the reporting and analytics tools it offers for both sales and marketing.

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.
Pipedrive AI assistance

AI assistance improves sales task automation in Pipedrive. Source: Pipedrive

Best AI Enhancements
Salesforce
Salesforce's AI integration is much deeper and more developed than Pipedrive's. So, it's the winner in this category. We believe Einstein Next Best Action and Einstein Discovery are potential game-changers for businesses.
TipBottom line
AI can boost successful lead conversions significantly while also improving agent productivity.

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.
Best Integrations and Apps
Salesforce
Pipedrive's app store and API are tailored precisely to its target audience's needs and intended uses. However, Salesforce takes this category in both quality and quantity. The vendor offers thousands of highly rated integrations.

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

Whether Salesforce or Pipedrive is better depends on your CRM needs. Salesforce is ideal for companies that want better results from their sales, marketing and customer service teams. Pipedrive is best suited for companies that rely on salespeople to close complex deals involving multiple decision-makers.
The difference between Pipedrive and Salesforce lies in the two CRMs' features and pricing. In terms of price, Salesforce is much more expensive than Pipedrive because it has a much broader range of high-quality features, customizations and integrations. However, Pipedrive focuses its platform on companies prioritizing their sales teams and is an excellent fit for those businesses.
Yes, to some extent. Both CRMs allow you to run marketing campaigns, communicate with customers one-on-one, analyze performance and save time with workflow automations. Salesforce has many more features, AI capabilities, and integrations, and is ideal for companies that want to improve their sales and marketing. Pipedrive, meanwhile, has fewer features but is less expensive. It's ideal for companies with sales teams focused on closing deals with clients.
Many would describe Salesforce as the best CRM available because of the breadth and depth of its features and extensions. However, the best CRM for any business is the one that helps it improve in the areas where it wishes to boost performance and results.
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Mark Fairlie
Written by: Mark Fairlie, Senior Analyst
Mark Fairlie brings decades of expertise in telecommunications and telemarketing to the forefront as the former business owner of a direct marketing company. Also well-versed in a variety of other B2B topics, such as taxation, investments and cybersecurity, he now advises fellow entrepreneurs on the best business practices. At business.com, Fairlie covers a range of technology solutions, including CRM software, email and text message marketing services, fleet management services, call center software and more. With a background in advertising and sales, Fairlie made his mark as the former co-owner of Meridian Delta, which saw a successful transition of ownership in 2015. Through this journey, Fairlie gained invaluable hands-on experience in everything from founding a business to expanding and selling it. Since then, Fairlie has embarked on new ventures, launching a second marketing company and establishing a thriving sole proprietorship.
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