Without a doubt, any successful business throughout history is known for its correctly implemented customer relationships. Thankfully, the digital era blessed us with customer relationship management (CRM), the proper use of which can do wonders in maintaining productive and efficient customer relationships.
There is plenty of CRM software on the market nowadays, which may create confusion around the question “What CRM system would be the most suitable for my business?”
Let’s take a look at the well-known and probably most important CRM systems: Pipedrive and Salesforce, making a detailed examination and comparison of the two to understand which one would perform better for your specific business.
Table of Contents
Pipedrive vs. Salesforce: Overview
Pipedrive and Salesforce are probably the most prominent CRM systems. Pipedrive CRM is known for its user-friendliness and affordability when Salesforce is a titan in the CRM market. Here is a small Pipedrive CRM comparison with Salesforce to put a starting point to a detailed description of each of them.
Pipedrive
The main characteristics of Pipedrive CRM include:
- Email tracking and integration
- User-friendly
- Interactive UI design
- More than 20 available integrations
- 24/7 support
- Statistics and reports
- Synchronization with Google Calendar
- Customizable sales stages
When speaking about Pipedrive CRM features, the first thing that is worth mentioning is the simplicity of its design. It instantly transforms the platform into a perfect solution for small or expanding businesses, where trainees or employees will easily get what the system is all about.
Pipedrive is one of the least expensive platforms that may become very handy if your business is on a budget. So is Pipedrive a good CRM? Let’s find out.
Salesforce
The main characteristics of Salesforce include:
- Synchronization with Google Calendar and Outlook
- Predictive analysis and advanced reporting
- Thousands of available integrations through AppExchange
- Forecasting through machine-learning algorithms
- Einstein AI
Being one of the most famous CRM platforms, Salesforce’s design is more complex to the point that it offers sub-applications for the execution of a specific task. However, the system can be customized according to the business’s needs, which makes it a good solution for any kind of business. Such a vast scope of possibilities are, however, supported by fairly expensive fees. Thus, after a closer look at the Salesforce CRM system features, you might decide whether it’s worth a shot.
Pipedrive vs. Salesforce CRM: Features and Pricing
Pipedrive
Design
Source: GetApp
The main idea of Pipedrive’s intuitive design is that it is based on easily customizable pipelines. You can create different pipelines according to your business’ progress, which can be added, removed, or relocated at any time.
The dashboard provides the statistics, which allows you to analyze what will be your next step in the sales process. Additionally, this CRM system lets you schedule meetings, calls, emails, etc., keeping your team informed.
Contacts and communication
Source: GetApp
One of the main functions that a CRM system must perform is the efficient management of contacts. Pipedrive allows one to customize the view of this data according to the details provided, such as emails, closed deals, completed or required activities, etc. As stated above, all of these possibilities can be easily managed according to your needs.
Another important feature that this CRM system offers is Pipedrive mail, which facilitates direct contact with your customers. It creates its own email, which is automatically connected to your customer contacts or deals and offers an easier track of that process. In addition, the system creates templates for the upcoming emails, which proves that the Pipedrive CRM system is a real timesaver.
Integration
Pipedrive CRM offers a vast scope of integration possibilities, which include Slack, Asana, Trello, Google Maps among other Google apps, Mailchimp, and many more. Long story short, the Pipedrive Marketplace shows all the apps that can be integrated, including the most downloaded or top-rated. If your software cannot be integrated with Pipedrive, you can always create additional custom features or use the Pipedrive API.
Pipedrive’s integration with Salesforce
Even though we are comparing Salesforce Essentials vs Pipedrive, those two can work together. Such platforms as Zapier, Automate, Skyvia, Xplenty and others may help you with Pipedrive’s integration with Salesforce and vice versa.
Before the integration, most of those platforms recommend organizing and eliminating the unnecessary data first for better performance. Then, according to a chosen platform, follow the steps indicated for each of them, which may include registering your account on the migration platform, indicating the current and the future CRM, choosing data that you want to migrate, such as custom fields, legacy data, attachments, etc. However, many of such platforms already can include the synchronization of new and updated data, without creating duplicates for the records. If you are dissatisfied with the result, you can always change the mapping fields and re-start, or turn for help to the support teams.
Reporting
Pipedrive’s advanced sales reporting is based on three main types of data:
- Activities effort (data about emails sent and received, added and complete activities)
- Pipeline performance (data about new deals, progress, velocity, and conversion)
- Sales performance (data about won and lost deals)
Source: GetApp
Support
Pipedrive’s support team is available 24/7, seven days per week. If a question arises while using the CRM system, simply click the question mark in the top right corner and an answer will be provided in the form of articles. If you still have doubts, support staff will directly chat with you about your issue. Nevertheless, Pipedrive doesn't offer the possibility of phone calls.
Pricing
Pipedrive CRM pricing offers the following options:
- Essential: $15/month per user
- Advanced: $29/month per user
- Professional: $59/month per user
- Enterprise: $99/month per user
Salesforce
Design
Source: Software Suggest
Salesforce’s CRM system is known for its complexity, as it contains plenty of sample data and information, popping out straight away the moment you log in. As stated in the overview section, Salesforce has different sub-applications that help the user with a wide variety of tasks. These include:
- Sales Console
- Salesforce Chatter
- Relationship manager
- Lead Generator
- Sales Leadership
- Sales Generator
Salesforce also offers tutorials for their new users to speed up the learning process. Trailhead Academy even provides certified courses for those who want to take Salesforce’s usage to the next level.
Contacts and communication
One of the main exceptional differences of Salesforce is that it allows adding much more information about a contact than any other CRM system. They can be imported directly from your phone book, Outlook, or Gmail, and, additionally, Salesforce offers your contact tracking in social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, for more direct and easier interactions.
Communication within Salesforce is supported by the integration of Outlook or Gmail, which allows for tracking the relevant CRM data of every mail, as well as updating the pipelines from your inbox.
Team communication is supported by Chatter, which is an internal CRM “social platform” that helps team members stay updated and connected.
Integration
Despite its own wide-ranging software, Salesforce still supports the integration of the most important marketing and sales systems, such as Mailchimp, G Suite, Quickbooks, etc. Furthermore, Salesforce offers an AppExchange full of different applications made by the community, and it provides opportunities for developing your own apps.
Reporting
The reporting with Salesforce CRM can be as detailed as the actions you are able to do within the actual system. You can report on Customer Support, Accounts, and Contacts, even creating administrative reports without IT intervention.
Source: The Blueprint
Support
In comparison to Pipedrive, Salesforce does offer effective phone support. However, it is also a paid feature, unless there is a “severity one” problem. Salesforce also provides self-help information for solving technical issues.
Pricing
Salesforce CRM pricing offers the following options:
- Essentials: $25/month per user
- Professional: $75/month per user
- Enterprise: $150/month per user
- Unlimited: $300/month per user
Pipedrive vs. Salesforce CRM: User Experience and Reviews
An overall statistical summary of Pipedrive CRM compared to Salesforce user experience and reviews look like the following:
Pipedrive
Source: GetApp
Pipedrive receives 4.6 stars out of 5 from its users. Most of the positive comments highlight the simplicity and user-friendliness of the CRM system, and many emphasized a vast range of possibilities for integration. However, some users showed their dissatisfaction with the lack of some advanced features that become handy when the business grows. Also, the impossible integration of SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics turned out to be an important con for some users. Another minus mentioned was the lack of a desktop application.
Salesforce
Source: GetApp
Salesforce scored 4.4 stars out of 5, which shows that it is also loved by many users. The most positive comments have to do with the possibility of generating helpful reports and that it excels at data tracking. On the other hand, many users are dissatisfied with the complexity of the design, as it required training for onboard employees, and some have expressed that the idea of integration of sub-application is too overwhelming.
Pipedrive vs. Salesforce CRM: Conclusions
Having examined the main characteristics of the two powerful CRMs and taking into account the user experience summary, it is fair to conclude that Salesforce provides a much wider set of features, not only Pipedrive. However, Pipedrive beats it with simplicity and its easy-to-learn design. Salesforce is oriented toward helping your business grow into a full-scale enterprise when Pipedrive provides solutions to manage your sales at a very reasonable price while keeping things simple.
The comparison of the two proves the theory that Salesforce is not the best option for smaller businesses, as the extra features that it provides and the investment altogether may not be necessary. Pipedrive provides just enough for a small business to cover all the needs at a reasonable price. Moreover, instead of spending hours learning the system, employees can start working straight away.
Having said that, we hope that your business got a step closer to its perfect CRM system.
