Pipedrive Review and Pricing

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 and deal management. It’s an intuitive, cost-effective and scalable solution that helps sales teams sell more and sales managers run their teams more efficiently.

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 to juggle over 50 deals at various stages simultaneously. It’s no surprise that, without an established and automated follow-up process, some deals can slip through the cracks, damaging both the final sales figures and client relationships. 

Pipedrive understands sales complexities and provides a range of automation and lead-management tools to ease the workload.

We appreciate how well Pipedrive automates processes to move prospects along the sales pipeline faster. Its intelligent reminders, notifications and alerts keep salespeople on task, while its useful AI sales assistant and lead-scoring tools help them focus their efforts on high-value opportunities. Pipedrive is also great for managers, allowing them to get real-time visibility into every deal, generate AI-powered reports and manage dashboards with a simple drag and drop. 

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

When it comes to customer management and marketing, Pipedrive does less than other CRMs, but that’s intentional. The platform concentrates on the needs of its core audience — sales reps, managers and teams — creating a great service that delivers. For all those reasons and more, Pipedrive is our choice for the best CRM for sales automation.

Pipedrive’s email marketing reports provide insights into the best-performing dates and times to consider for your future campaigns. Source: Pipedrive

Ease of use

We were impressed by Pipedrive’s user interface (UI). The design is user-friendly, the navigation is straightforward and the layout is uncluttered. Below 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. We particularly appreciate that it allows users to create “favorite” filters and pin them to the top of the deal view so they can access relevant data with a click. We also like Pipedrive’s straightforward layout, with its left-hand menu giving immediate access to the platform’s core sections, such as leads and team activity. 
• 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. You can also select the question mark icon to go directly to the company’s extensive, clearly written education tools. Alternatively, you can always use the AI chat function to get quick answers about Pipedrive’s functionality. 
• Customization options: Pipedrive shines when it comes to customization. Users can easily change their screen’s appearance and layout to their preferred specifications. Automating workflows and customizing dashboards is also straightforward, and the platform’s built-in Sales Assistant AI tool can help find workflow shortcuts, provide the latest deal updates and suggest the most important follow-up actions. 
• Integrations: An extensive app store includes popular integrations with Trello, DocuSign and Calendly. Pipedrive’s AI can also analyze your latest sales activity and recommend the most suitable apps. The platform’s built-in meeting scheduler can help you connect your preferred communication tools, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. There are also prebuilt webhooks, as well as an application programming interface and development platform on which you can build your own apps and integrations.

Pipedrive’s AI allows you to generate reports with a simple prompt. 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. Businesses get access to 36 prebuilt, customizable automations that are grouped into goal-based categories such as deal management, lead engagement and work optimization. Depending on your plan, you can create anywhere from 30 to 180 custom workflows. 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: 

• 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. 
• Follow-ups: If a deal 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.
• Reminders: If you have a scheduled call or a meeting with a client, you can send them an automated reminder email with key discussion points the day before. Similarly, you can set up a trigger to send an email on a client’s birthday or another important date to foster the relationship. 
• Team notifications: If you’re using Slack as your company communication tool, you can keep up your team’s spirits by notifying them when a deal has been won, so you can recognize individual achievements and celebrate together.

We were particularly impressed by Pipedrive’s Smart Contact data functionality. As long as you have their work email address, Pipedrive will search the internet for the prospect’s information on sites such as LinkedIn and populate their record. That could save valuable time if you regularly receive inquiries from small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) when selling to enterprise-level companies. Integrations with apps such as Apollo.io, as well as Pipedrive’s own Prospector tool, also give users access to a vast database of business contacts, allowing them to expand their prospecting scope and discover leads they haven’t considered previously. 

We also like Pipedrive’s Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) feature — something you’d normally expect only on enterprise-level CRMs such as Salesforce. (Read our review of Salesforce to learn about the powerful tool with enterprise resource planning capabilities.) Pipedrive’s CPQ functionality comes via third-party apps, including GleanQuote, Mobileforce, Extraflow and Qwoty. 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.

Users can set up custom automations and share them with other team members for review. Source: Pipedrive. 

Integrated email platform

We really like Pipedrive’s integrated email client and email marketing platform, Campaigns by Pipedrive, 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 your own designs as templates for later use. You can also use AI to help craft and summarize emails with some simple prompts. As you’d expect, it integrates perfectly with Pipedrive’s customer tracking and data management features and populates CRM contacts with email communication history and behavior, providing sales reps with additional context for their outreach. 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, such as 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. We particularly like that you can automate your email campaigns using a simple visual builder — just like you would with other Pipedrive workflows.

Note that this feature-rich email platform comes with limitations. You will start with only 1,000 email contacts, and you’ll need to pay extra for every subsequent 1,000 contacts. That can become expensive quickly for companies with large email lists. 

You can also use apps to build omnichannel communication into Pipedrive. Connect to SMS messages with apps such as 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. 

You can use Pipedrive AI to generate emails using simple prompts and predefined parameters. Source: Pipedrive

Lead generation

We like that you can use Pipedrive to fill your sales funnel. Below 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. You can populate an outbound list with your customer or prospect database or upload a purchased list. CallHippo’s Pipedrive integration offers similar functionality but with additional AI features such as call scoring and coaching. 
• Chatbot: Pipedrive’s LeadBooster add-on ($39 a month or $32.50 a month if purchased annually) includes an impressive chatbot feature. Go into the platform, create and personalize your bot, and insert the code on 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. You can even set up an automation to alert a sales rep about a new lead so they can follow up right away.
• Web forms: LeadBooster includes customizable website forms that can add or amend prospect records when someone completes them. The form builder also includes spam protection that prevents bot submissions.
• Facebook Messenger integration: Pipedrive allows you to connect and sync your Facebook business inbox, providing an additional platform for lead engagement.
• Prospector lead database: LeadBooster also provides 10 free credits each month to use Prospector, a database with more than 400 million business contacts. You’ll pay for additional usage. It’s more expensive per lead than buying in bulk from one of the best list brokers. The ability to buy leads in volumes as small as one isn’t something most brokers offer, however, so we see it as a positive for sales teams seeking prospects. Users can also benefit from Apollo.io integration, which provides free access to 275 million B2B contacts, further expanding the prospecting pool.

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 and Pulse

Pipedrive’s AI implementation isn’t as advanced as some other CRM platforms we reviewed. Still, the AI-driven 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.

We also like Pipedrive’s AI-powered lead qualification tool, Pulse. It helps you identify the most promising leads based on their behavior and curates the latest lead activity and updates, highlighting items that require your immediate attention. We found the feature particularly helpful for larger businesses handling a higher number of leads and opportunities. (Note that at the time of this review, Pipedrive Pulse was in a limited closed beta). 

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 Insights 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. Depending on your plan, you can have more than one dashboard and even share your dashboard — a feature we rarely 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 such as Teams, Zoom, DocuSign, Google Meet, QuickBooks and more. There are also exceptional apps that help with sales processes. The LeadsBridge app, for example, 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. We also like that Pipedrive’s AI analyzes your work style and established processes and offers a personalized list of recommended integrations that can enhance your CRM experience — something that is particularly helpful for businesses setting things up from scratch. 

Pipedrive analyzes your sales activity and processes and suggests beneficial 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. You can also save the filters you use the most and add them to a separate Favorites tab for easy access. 

We like how you can create custom market segmentation subgroups based on preprogrammed filters. That 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 team management and reporting tools. We were impressed by the features and found them to be among the best we’ve seen in our evaluations. Below are some examples. 

• Set team goals: In addition to setting individual goals, you can set targets for entire teams and keep reps apprised of progress via a dashboard widget. We also like that you can zoom in on the performance of a specific team using filters. That’s particularly helpful for companies with several international divisions where managers need to assess various markets. 
• 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 such as time to respond to leads and emails sent. They can even set up and change automations to move deals faster through deal stages. We like that managers can save valuable time by generating reports using Pipedrive’s AI tools. 
• Forecast sales: We appreciated Pipedrive’s sales forecasting features. 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. The insights are ideal for spotting training opportunities and knowing which reps you can entrust with high-potential deals. We also like how Pipedrive’s deal forecast view allows sales managers to see revenue projections in real time so they can spot which deals (and reps) are lagging behind and take action.
• Centralize documentation: We like how Pipedrive’s Smart Docs feature allows you to sync your data with your company’s cloud storage platforms, such as Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. Having a central database helps sales managers ensure document and template consistency across the teams and accelerate collaboration. 

Pipedrive’s revenue reports are highly customizable and can provide granular insights into a product’s performance. Source: Pipedrive.

Pipedrive pricing plans and subscription costs

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

Pipedrive’s service levels and prices below reflect the 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, deal stagnation alerts, company and user goals, a product catalog, Sales Assistant AI tool, mobile apps, and chatbot support. It allows 3,000 live deals, and you get 30 custom fields per lead, 15 reports per user and one insights dashboard.
• Advanced ($39 per user per month): The Advanced plan includes everything in the Essential plan, plus email open and click tracking, two-way email sync, a meeting scheduler, automations and sequences, smart contact data, web-to-mobile calls, recurring revenue, and live chat support. It allows 10,000 live deals, 100 custom fields per lead, one scheduling link, 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, revenue forecast reports, team goals, dashboard collaboration, Smart Docs add-on with e-signatures and AI-powered opportunity alerts, and email features. It allows 100,000 live deals, 300 custom fields per lead, three teams, unlimited dashboards, unlimited scheduling links and 60 active automations per user. 
• Power ($64 per user per month): The Power level includes everything in the Professional tier, plus a project management add-on and phone support. You get 200,000 live deals, 500 custom fields per lead, 250 reports per user, 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 and a nondeveloper sandbox account. You get unlimited live deals, unlimited custom fields per lead, unlimited dashboards, unlimited teams, unlimited reports and 180 active automations per user.

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

In addition to the LeadBooster add-on, the extras below are also available (annual billing).

• Web Visitors (from $41 per month; company license): The Web Visitors add-on tracks who visits your website by IP address. This technology was quite popular in the 2000s, but its effectiveness today is doubted because IP databases are incomplete. 
• Projects ($6.70 per user per month): The Projects add-on is a project management tool based on Kanban boards.
• Campaigns ($13.33 per month; company license): The Campaigns add-on provides access to Pipedrive’s built-in email marketing platform.
• Smart Docs ($32.50 per month; company license): The Smart Docs add-on is a document-signing service that auto-fills with your Pipedrive data. It allows you to see and get notified when prospects have opened your document. The add-on is free for users on the Professional and Enterprise plans.

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. 

We like that Pipedrive offers a 15-minute video demo the first time you log in to your account. We found it helpful and comprehensive, covering all the key points important for the initial setup. Each view and more complex features also include an in-app video tutorial, ensuring that you can get up and running faster. 

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. The company also offers personalized onboarding support for users spending over $1,000 per month.

You can also engage with a Pipedrive partner to pay for setup and implementation help. Unless you have very specific needs, however, 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. Clients on the Advanced plan and higher can access live chat support. Power and Enterprise users get access to phone support in English and Portuguese. It’s open only from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. GMT, though, 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 also appreciate that you can easily access all the support materials straight from the app’s Quick Help section. 

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. The company also 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 and closing deals — is also its greatest weakness. It has a limited range of functions compared to other CRMs. What it does, it does very well. If you want a more marketing- and customer-service-orientated solution, however, check out our review of Zendesk, which may better suit your needs.

To get the most out of one of Pipedrive’s most useful features — its insights, collaboration and reporting functionality — you must subscribe to the Professional plan or above. That 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 and generate more leads.
• Sales teams seeking to automate repetitive tasks to spend more time pitching to clients and closing deals.
• 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 sales and basic marketing.
• Large businesses with complex CRM needs that require extensive customization features, granular team management or advanced integrations.
• Businesses that want a completely free CRM solution.