Overview

Pipedrive is a deal-focused customer relationship management solution that also serves as an account management tool, supporting marketing efforts and the entire sales process. Its proactive design automatically tracks and organizes calls and emails while synchronizing schedules across multiple devices, ensuring seamless coordination.

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a sales-centric CRM known for its ease of use, diverse tools, and integrations, making it an appealing choice. However, its 1,000-name email limit and lack of more advanced marketing automation features place it behind some of its competitors.

A particularly appealing feature for small to midsized businesses (SMBs) is Pipedrive’s ability to visualize the entire sales process from start to finish. This capability enhances efficiency and reduces the need for second-guessing within teams, a common reason CRM implementations fail.

User Interface and Set Up

Pipedrive’s intuitive user interface (UI) is easy to learn, saving time and reducing the costs associated with training and onboarding—an advantage over more complex tools. Its simplicity makes it particularly appealing to smaller SMBs and entrepreneurs managing CRM tasks.

Pipedrive CRM’s main purpose is to offer a visual pipeline for managing deals. Upon logging in, you’ll begin with a default sales pipeline, allowing many businesses to start adding deals and ideas right away. If adjustments are needed, you can easily modify the existing pipeline or create a new one in the Settings. With extensive customization options, you can streamline your workflow by moving deals through the pipeline with a simple click and drag.

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Contacts

Pipedrive provides several tools to help businesses manage contacts, teams, and communication effectively. For instance, Contact Timelines allow sales reps to track who to contact next and schedule follow-ups. The Smart Contact Data feature gathers public information on your contacts, giving a complete view of prospects, leads, and customers. Additionally, Pipedrive can detect and merge duplicate contacts, ensuring that multiple sales reps aren’t working on the same lead.

Pipedrive includes advanced user permissions to control what each user can view and modify. Admins can organize their sales department into teams, monitor their performance, and set custom goals for each team.

Once your settings are configured, adding a deal in Pipedrive CRM is straightforward. Just click the Add Deal button at the top of the Deals page, then specify the contact, organization, current pipeline stage, and expected close date. After entering these details, the new deal will appear in your pipeline alongside others. While Pipedrive CRM might not offer as much customization as PipelineDeals, it remains just as user-friendly.

One of Pipedrive CRM’s most useful features is the icon next to each deal in your pipeline. This icon provides a quick overview of any scheduled activities related to the deal, indicates if you’re falling behind schedule, and shows if follow-ups are needed. Additionally, the Activity Scheduler feature helps prevent double bookings by seamlessly adding existing appointments to your calendar.

Mail

The Mail tab in Pipedrive CRM helps you manage important emails when using email forwarding. It offers full email and calendar synchronization with Microsoft Office, Google, and iCloud, eliminating the need to switch between Pipedrive and your inbox. Emails related to a specific deal or contact are visible within Pipedrive contact entries. You can send emails directly from Pipedrive CRM, and they will appear in your email tool. Similarly, any emails sent from Gmail or Outlook will be automatically logged in Pipedrive CRM, linked to the relevant contact or deal.

You can link emails to their associated deals, allowing you to quickly view their monetary value, current pipeline stage, and next scheduled activity. From this view, you can add new activities or access the activities tab to see and filter them by type. You can easily identify overdue and upcoming activities. Pipedrive CRM uses intuitive symbols and colors to make the information on screen easy to understand.

Pipedrive provides a library of email templates and a tool for creating custom ones. Users can incorporate images, links, rich text, and various design elements into their email signatures. The email templates also support automatic population of fields with customer data. For Gold and Platinum users, there’s the added benefit of sending emails to up to 100 recipients simultaneously.

The software includes robust filtering options for creating and exporting fully customizable lists. Its redesigned bulk editing feature allows you to modify multiple fields at once, while individual fields can be edited by clicking the pen icon next to each cell. Additionally, bulk export options like Export to MailChimp are accessible from the top right corner of the dashboard. New filter options include public filters that can be shared with colleagues and private filters for customizing your dashboard view. You can adjust filter views by clicking Edit Filter and selecting Private or Shared under the Visibility setting.

Statistics

The Statistics tab provides access to the live dashboard, where you can view the value of all new deals, identify the employee with the most deals, and review summaries of activities, won, and lost deals. This data can be filtered by pipeline, project, and timeframe. Recent updates to Pipedrive CRM have enhanced its customization capabilities, allowing users to add custom columns for each filter. You can now define a unique set of columns for each deal filter directly from the Edit Filter window.

Customized Chatbot for Lead Generation

New to Pipedrive is Leadbooster, a lead generation tool featuring a customizable chatbot that can be integrated into your website. You can configure preprogrammed questions to capture new leads, which Leadbooster then automatically adds to your pipeline. The software also offers workflow automation to streamline and automate repetitive tasks, saving time and ensuring employees are alerted if any steps in the process are missed.

Pipedrive CRM simplifies lead management with its drag-and-drop feature, allowing you to easily move contacts from one step in the pipeline to another. After interacting with a lead, you can simply drag it to the Contact Made column or any custom column you’ve created. You can also update the lead’s status directly from the deal page using a visual timeline at the top of the page.

While Pipedrive CRM lacks the some advanced data collection features, it still offers effective pipeline and contact information collection through Web Forms, available in the Settings menu. You can embed these forms on your website or include them in a newsletter. The forms can be customized with any text or single- and multiple-option fields you’ve previously created in Pipedrive.

If you want to differentiate between lead management and post-sales support, you can create an additional pipeline using a user-friendly form-based interface. To transfer a deal to this new pipeline, simply drag it into the “Other Pipeline” box at the bottom of the screen. This is also where you can move deals to the Won or Lost sections.

Pipedrive CRM does not distinguish between leads and contacts; when you start a new deal, the associated person is automatically categorized as a contact. This approach works well for smaller companies that view every new lead as a potential customer. If you need to differentiate leads from contacts, you can add a custom field named “Leads” to the contact form. However, smaller businesses that prefer to manage leads separately might find a more specialized tool better suited to their needs.

Reports and Integrations

Pipedrive CRM integrates with a range of popular productivity tools, including Google G Suite, Google Maps, Zapier, and MailChimp. It also connects with Xero for generating and tracking invoices and enhancing financial reporting. Additionally, Pipedrive provides a forwarding address for storing relevant emails and sharing them with your team.

To fully cover all aspects of your business, you may need to utilize several of Pipedrive’s integrations. Given the price per user, more native functionality would be beneficial. However, Pipedrive CRM’s mobile apps for Android and iPhone allow you to manage your deals on the go. These apps are as simple and easy to navigate as the web version. On Android, the software also integrates with Google Assistant for voice commands.

On both mobile platforms, Pipedrive CRM allows you to quickly access your deals, activities, and contacts, with a search function for retrieving essential data. The mobile apps also enhance productivity with features like call tracking, which lets you log calls, take notes, link them to deals, and schedule follow-up activities. Additionally, the apps offer activity push notifications and a new Day View that consolidates your appointments into a mobile-optimized format for better sales productivity.

The Live Dashboard provides an overview of deal status categorized by Newness, Person, Activities, Wins, and Losses. In the Statistics tab, you can access reports that focus on individual users or the entire company. Consistent with the rest of Pipedrive CRM’s interface, these reports are visually appealing and easy to understand.

Pipedrive CRM has significantly enhanced its reporting features over time. It now offers several new views, including charts for Deals Won and Deals Lost, completed activities, and more detailed pipeline conversion analysis. The dashboard provides a clear overview of how many deals were initiated, won, or lost, categorized by product, value, discounts, and top-performing sales team members. You can also access deal-specific views, showing who started each deal, its current pipeline stage, or the status of all deals initiated within a given time frame.

Pricing

Pipedrive CRM offers straightforward pricing with four subscription tiers. You can begin with a 14-day free trial directly from their homepage, without needing to provide billing information unless you decide to continue or test out the LeadBooster chatbot feature. After the trial period, your data will be stored for two months. If you don’t subscribe within that time, your data will be permanently deleted.

Essential

The Essential plan is priced at $14.90 per user per month when billed annually. It includes key CRM features like lead and contact management, along with access to the mobile app, allowing you to use Pipedrive on the go. Additionally, all plans come with a machine learning-powered sales assistant that analyzes your past data and provides recommendations on how to approach upcoming deals.

With the Essential plan, you can create an unlimited number of customizable sales pipelines, but there are limits, including 30 custom fields and 3,000 open deals. You’re also restricted to 15 reports per user. However, not all features fully integrate at this level. For instance, while you can use custom fields to track different data points on deals or contacts, you won’t be able to generate reports that include information from those custom fields.

Advanced

Upgrading to the Advanced plan, priced at $24.90 per user per month when billed annually, increases your limits on open deals, reports, and custom fields. This plan also offers enhanced email functionality for sales teams. You can fully sync your email, allowing you to send and receive messages directly through Pipedrive, making it easier to access contacts and leads. Additional features include email templates, bulk emailing, and scheduling tools to streamline your communication efforts.

Workflow automation becomes available at this level, allowing you to automate tasks like sending welcome emails or timed reminder emails. However, this feature is capped at 30 automated tasks per user, per month.

Professional

Pipedrive’s Professional plan is priced at $49.90 per user per month when billed annually. While some limits remain, they are significantly expanded compared to the Advanced plan. You can manage up to 100,000 open deals, create 1,000 custom fields, and each user can generate up to 150 reports and 60 workflow automations. Additionally, this plan offers web-to-phone calling, allowing you to call contacts directly from Pipedrive and even record calls when necessary.

At the Professional plan level, you’ll benefit from enhanced features designed to streamline sales processes and save time. One notable feature is automatic data enrichment, which automatically fills in missing contact information from public sources when you add a new contact to your CRM. Additionally, this plan supports Google Drive integration, allowing you to seamlessly link and manage documents within Pipedrive.

Enterprise

The highest-tier plan from Pipedrive is the Enterprise plan, priced at $99 per user per month when billed annually. This plan requires a minimum of 10 users. Most limits are removed with this plan, though workflow automations are still capped at 100 per user. The Enterprise plan provides access to all Pipedrive features, including advanced security options such as security alerts and rules, and the ability to enforce two-factor authentication for CRM login.

Enterprise is the only plan that includes phone support. For other plans, support is available 24/7 via email and live chat. Additionally, all plans benefit from assistance with setting up Pipedrive for your business through an onboarding team.

Help and Support

If you need help setting up Pipedrive CRM, there are plenty of support options available. In addition to detailed demo videos, you can browse the knowledge base, call toll-free in the U.S., U.K., or Canada, or review the FAQs. Live chat and email support are accessible 24/7, and the company responds to social media inquiries, typically replying to tweets within 12 hours. While these support options are extensive, the software is so user-friendly that you might not need them. It’s difficult to overstate how easy it is to get started with Pipedrive.

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Bottomline

Pipedrive is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform built specifically with sales teams in mind. True to its name, it emphasizes managing sales pipelines. Designed for small businesses, Pipedrive enhances its solution with advanced features such as chatbot creation for websites and streamlined reporting. However, one of its standout qualities, as seen in earlier versions, is its user-friendly interface.

While Pipedrive doesn’t offer a free plan, it remains affordable and highly customizable, with pricing starting at $14.90 per month. However, it does come with a bit of a learning curve, making it potentially less suitable for every business. To help you decide if it’s the right fit, check out our in-depth, hands-on Pipedrive review.