Pipedrive is a full-service sales platform that helps around 100,000 businesses grow their revenue with precision. Visualize your sales process in this software to manage leads, automate sales, and create email campaigns from one platform. Pipedrive can improve sales processes in just about any industry. Let’s look closely at more of Pipedrive’s unique abilities, and some downsides as well.
Comparing Pipedrive to the Best CRM Software
Pipedrive is perfect for your business if you want an all-in-one tool to handle several parts of your sales process. Use it to boost your efforts all along the line, from initial lead gathering and nurturing to guiding those leads all the way to purchase and beyond. Its visual pipeline management helps your team leave no stone unturned when catering to potential or existing customers.
That Pipedrive is more than just a CRM is why it didn’t make our list of the top CRM software options. Its CRM features work well in conjunction with the other aspects of the software, but there are many platforms that are better standalone CRMs. If you’re looking just to plug the CRM gap in your tech stack, our top list is a perfect place to start—it was researched like no other CRM review on the internet and can help you choose the best software for your business by the time you finish it.
Pipedrive: The Good and The Bad
Pipedrive is excellent for agencies or marketing and sales teams that want to level up their service to leads, clients, and customers. Keep reading to learn more about what we love (and don’t) about this CRM and pipeline management tool.
The Good
Smart In-Platform Tips: The Pipedrive sales assistant delivers performance tips, recommended features and app integrations based on how your team uses the software.
This feature highlights tweaks you can make to become more efficient or effective.
It also notifies you and your team whenever a change has been made to your account settings so that everyone is always on the same page.
The sales assistant only appears in the most relevant situations, too, so it’s not intrusive. It will show up at the right time and in the right context, then disappear when it is no longer needed.
Workflow Automation: Pipedrive has impeccable automation tools.
You can create automated workflows for just about anything, including emailing leads, adding them to a pipeline, or creating tasks. For instance, send personalized emails whenever a deal is created or reaches a certain stage.
You don’t need any coding knowledge to get started. Pipedrive’s simple drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create powerful automations.
Just imagine, now your sales team can focus on the tasks that matter most and close more deals. Plus, workflow automations help remove human error from derailing any efforts.
Keep your leads and prospects warm while having time to focus on other high-priority sales activities.
End-to-end Campaign Management: Generating and managing leads with Pipedrive is a walk in the park, supported by several key features.
With their Leads Inbox, you can declutter all the information you’re getting at the outset of a campaign, filtering leads and communications to just what you need in the moment.
Pipedrive will even help you deploy web forms, live chat widgets, and chatbots on your site for better lead capturing. Plus, dip into the web visitor data the software captures to learn more about how to capitalize on your site traffic.
Thanks to these tools and others, your team will increase the number of deals in your pipeline and the average value of closed deals.
Smart Contact Data: Customer relationship management is all about knowing as much about your leads as possible. But with your busy day, do you have the time to do a deep dive into each one?
Luckily for you, Pipedrive’s smart contact data uses your contacts’ email addresses to collect information they share online. So, with just one click, you can import valuable information from the web without having to coax it out of leads themselves.
You’ll more quickly have a clear picture of your potential customers, their context, and their needs, letting you tailor your sales pitches accordingly.
Serious Reporting Features: Deal tracking, leads reporting, and revenue forecasting are just a few of the reports you will need as you manage your campaigns and customers.
Sometimes using template reporting is not going to cut it. That’s why Pipedrive’s reports are fully customizable. Use them to track the metrics we mentioned above and create a special report for the average age of deals. Or get really into the nitty-gritty and track metrics hyperspecific to your business.
You can filter through and group your data-rich results, so you can get a clear picture of your overall sales performance.
Now, all you have to do is take those patterns you’ve found and run with them. Or you might find problems in your sales funnel and exterminate them immediately. Either way, it’s a win for you.
Sales Dashboards: If you want to bring your sales data to life, using Pipedrive dashboards is a glimpse of the future. No more static charting and spreadsheet formulas here.
You can filter, customize, and discover your data in new ways that you never thought possible.
Not to mention, you can share these live dashboards with anyone you want, whether they use Pipedrive or not.
Winning strategies will pop off the screen as your eyes flow from left to right, spotting bottlenecks and performance gaps in real time.
So, if you’re looking for a way to keep everyone on the same page (literally), then using these sales dashboards is a key factor to your success.
The Bad
Sluggish & Difficult UI: When dealing with information about your sales and data, you want it now. Waiting for pages to load can make you want to poke your eyes out.
Many complain about the speed of Pipedrive. This can be a problem for you if you have a large customer base with tons of details that you want to bring over. Now, keep in mind, external factors like the quality of an internet connection or the speed of cloud storage servers can make this better or worse.
It could just as much be a result of a cluttered interface. Though over the years the user experience has been improved, it still leaves a lot to be desired for current users.
That also leads to a steeper learning curve for getting the hang of Pipedrive. It lacks the intuitive feel other providers deliver. Yes, it’s all about the information being available to you when you need it, but having to sift through tons of small icons and buttons to find what you’re looking for can also make you search for an easier option.
This is something more than a couple of users of Pipedrive have complained about, and it’s something you should consider when you try your 14-day free trial.
No Social Network Integrations: Social media can be a big part of building a customer base. Some sales journeys start with a nibble on your offer on social media—having a way to take that lead information directly from the social platform into your Pipedrive account would be ideal.
At the time of this post this feature is not yet available. If added, we feel Pipedrive would add to its already robust feature set. But it’s certainly not a dealbreaker if your company doesn’t lean on social media channels for lead generation.
Lack of Phone Support: When you need to troubleshoot issues or figure out how to accomplish something in the software, Pipedrive’s knowledge base is thorough. And, they have live chat support for when you need a rep’s assistance.
But the lack of phone support can be a serious pain point for some businesses. When things just aren’t working and you need to speak with someone, getting a knowledgeable representative on the phone should be straightforward. But, you won’t have that option with Pipedrive.
Also, if you have a persistent problem, live chat can make it hard to streamline second or third interactions with support reps. You’ll likely get connected to a different one each time. This may be a rare situation, but it’s something we noticed in our extensive research on Pipedrive.
Pipedrive Pricing and Options
Pricing is always at the forefront of a business looking to maximize performance while not burning a hole through its pocket.
Pipedrive offers four pricing options to take advantage of:
- Essential: $12.50 per user/month (annual) or $15 per user/month (month-to month)
- Advanced: $24.90 per user/month (annual) or $29 per user/month (month-to month)
- Professional: $49.90 per user/month (annual) or $59.90 per user/month (month-to month)
- Enterprise: $99 per user/month (annual) or $119 per user/month (month-to month)
With the Essential plan you get lead, deal, calendar and pipeline management, over 275 integrations, simple data importing, custom dashboards, and basic reporting.
Higher-level plans build off of that feature set. Advance, for example, comes with everything in the Essential plan and adds the following features, among others:
- Full email sync with templates and scheduling
- Group emailing with open and click tracking
- Workflow builder with triggered automations
The Professional plan unlocks every feature in Pipedrive, while Enterprise is for removing any per user or company limits on adding custom deals, running reports, or creating custom CRM fields.
Pipedrive is very affordable for what you get and compares quite favorably in price to many options on our list of the top CRMs.
Pipedrive Sales Software
From the start, it’s all about pipelines and deals with CRM software. The sales features that Pipedrive provides let you visualize your sales process and improve your workflow based on what you see.
It’s not just seeing a page full of numbers, names, and data. You can design your CRM and pipeline management how you want with custom fields and the ability to drag and drop things where you want them to be.
Pipedrive also includes a powerful automation builder, deep reporting that delivers deep insights, and even an in-platform assistant to help you maximize the software.
Plus, you’ll get tons of tools to help your email-based efforts. Schedule emails, send them en masse, track recipients’ actions, and manage everything from one inbox. Pipedrive has this built right inside the software, so you’ll see everything as it happens.
Pipedrive Email Campaigns (coming soon)
Pipedrive will soon soup up their email campaign capabilities with their Campaigns by Pipedrive offering. It’s not available yet, but it’s coming soon and you can join the waitlist today.
This will help you create more engaging marketing emails that build trust with your leads and customers. It will also provide more helpful email templates and better campaign reporting. You’ll get a powerhouse email marketing solution that has the same attention to detail as Pipedrive’s main offering.
How Pipedrive Ranks
As we said earlier, Pipedrive is a solid offering in the world of sales software. It simply didn’t make our list of the top CRMs because there are better standalone solutions more laser-focused on customer relationship management.
- Nextiva – Best for most
- Monday.com – Best for project management with CRM capability
- HubSpot – Best CRM software for most
- Zoho CRM – Best CRM for deeper visibility
- Freshsales Suite – Best automations for marketing and sales
- Salesflare – Best CRM for strictly focusing on sales
- EngageBay – Best all-in-one CRM suite for small business
- Streak – Best CRM for working 100% from within Gmail
Pipedrive was built by sales people, for sales teams. So, the focus on getting new leads into your funnel is higher in Pipedrive than other CRMs. CRM features are included, of course, but they’re not the bread-and-butter of the software.
Summary
To drive this all the way home, we highly recommend Pipedrive. If you’re looking for a comprehensive sales tool that can help you manage your goals and keep you on track, Pipedrive is an excellent choice.
The software has all the features you need to make sure your sales process stays organized. Plus, with so many integrations available, it’s easy to connect Pipedrive with the other tools you’re using in your business.
Ready to try it out? Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Pipedrive today and see how great it feels to have everything you need right at your fingertips.
