Pipedrive vs. Salesforce: Which CRM is best for your sales team?

Both Pipedrive and Salesforce are a good fit for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). In this guide, we analyze each CRM tool’s costs, features, capabilities, and user experience to help teams make the best choice for their company’s needs.

Pipedrive vs. Salesforce Starter Suite: Plans and pricing

While both Pipedrive and Salesforce offer advanced plans for larger, enterprise-sized companies with complex needs, this guide focuses on their respective range of pricing plans made for small to medium-sized sales organizations. While neither CRM provider offers a free-forever plan, both Pipedrive and Salesforce have entry-level pricing options with excellent features for a growing sales team at competitive price points. 

Pipedrive offers five pricing plans, but the two highest-cost tiers are more suitable for larger organizations with custom needs. On all paid plans, this provider offers a considerable discount of up to 42% for an annual commitment. While Salesforce also has advanced plans for enterprise-level organizations, its Starter Suite and Pro Suite plans are affordable options for many sales teams. It’s important to note that all plans listed below are offered with monthly or annual billing, with the exception of Salesforce’s Pro Suite, which is only available with an annual commitment.

Pipedrive vs. Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite: Sales pipeline functionality

Both Pipedrive and Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite plans offer robust contact management features that make it easy for users to track sales leads across the buying journey and engage them efficiently. However, companies seeking lead scoring tools should choose Pipedrive if they have the budget to add the LeadBooster add-on. Both Pipedrive’s Advanced plan and Salesforce Pro Suite include sales automation features, although Pipedrive’s plan is offered at a significantly lower cost. 

Teams looking for sales forecasting tools should choose Salesforce’s Starter Suite as this feature is only offered on Pipedrive’s Professional plan designed for larger teams. While it’s not exhaustive and more features may be available, the table below showcases each CRM’s most popular pipeline functionality features.

Pipedrive vs. Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite: Marketing features

Pipedrive and Salesforce both offer excellent marketing features with competitive pricing options. Teams that use email templates regularly and want email analytics should choose Salesforce Starter or Pro plans. While Pipedrive’s Advanced plan offers email scheduling on the Advanced plan, Salesforce includes send time optimization to increase open rates. 

Companies that prioritize mass emailing have two options—Pipedrive’s Advanced plan or purchasing Salesforce’s Marketing Email Send Bundle for an additional cost of $10 per $1,000 emails monthly. The table below outlines valuable marketing features offered by both providers. However, it focuses on their most widely used capabilities and may not cover all available capabilities.

Pipedrive vs. Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite: Dashboard customization

Pipedrive and Salesforce’s Suite plans offer comparable dashboard customization options. Both providers support customizable analytics and offer custom dashboards. However, teams that want to share their dashboards easily with third parties such as stakeholders should opt for Pipedrive. On the other hand, companies that find a forecasting mobile app to access real-time sales forecasts remotely should choose Salesforce Pro Suite. The below comparison highlights each provider’s most popular dashboard customization features and may not cover all available options.

Pipedrive vs. Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite: Ease of use

While Salesforce is known for being an advanced CRM solution, the Starter and Pro Suites are made with novice CRM users in mind. However, most of the automation tools are confined to the higher-cost plans designed for larger, enterprise-size teams and are not included in this guide. 

That being said, Pipedrive shines in the ease of use category for including artificial intelligence (AI) smart app recommendations on all plans, a web browser extension, and a meeting scheduler on the Advanced plan. Teams looking for those tools as well as CRM migration features should choose Pipedrive over Salesforce. While not exhaustive, the table below outlines the essential features of both providers user-friendliness and ease of use.

Pipedrive at a glance

Pipedrive

Base price:	Starting at $24.00 per user, per month*
Free trial length:	14 days
Free plan available:	No

More features from Pipedrive

While this guide highlights Pipedrive’s top features in each category, the CRM system also provides a wide range of additional helpful tools and add-ons, including:

• Deal rotting notifications: Users are alerted when a prospect has been inactive in the CRM for a set period.
• Application programming interface(API) access: The REST API feature enables developers to create custom functionalities at no extra cost.
• Contact mapping: This feature provides a geographical visualization of contact locations, allowing users to filter views by state, region, or country.
• Multilanguage support: Pipedrive’s platform is available in 22 different languages.
• Projects add-on: Teams can integrate Kanban-style boards for project planning and task management with the Power plan or higher. Teams on other plans can access this feature for an additional fee, starting at $6.70 per organization, billed annually.
• Smart Doc add-on: Professional tier users and above can create sales documents and manage client e-signatures. Essential and Advanced plan users can add this functionality for $32.50 per month per organization, billed annually.

Salesforce Starter Suite at a glance

Salesforce Starter Suite

Base price:	Starting at $25.00 per user, per month*
Free trial length:	30 days
Free plan available:	No

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Account, contact, lead, and opportunity management
• Lead assignment and routing
• Web-to-lead capture
• Customizable email templates

Cons

• Lacks AI tools
• No advanced reporting or forecasting features
• Lacks sales territory features
• No built-in quote or contract tools
• Limited collaboration features

Who is Salesforce Starter Suite good for?

Salesforce Starter Suite is an ideal CRM solution for sales teams that need basic CRM features, such as account, lead, and contact management. Businesses that want mass emailing features, email templates, and robust report tools find it’s a good option. It’s also great for companies that want to put some CRM functions, such as lead assignment and routing on autopilot with simple automation rules.

Who shouldn’t use Salesforce Starter Suite?

Companies looking for robust built-in artificial intelligence (AI) features, such as email insights and lead and opportunity scoring should choose another CRM provider as the Starter Suite doesn’t offer them. Teams that need comprehensive sales forecasting features would need to upgrade to Salesforce’s higher-cost plans as the only forecasting features the Starter Suite offers are customizable reports and dashboards.

Furthermore, companies that want advanced team collaboration tools should consider another CRM provider. While Salesforce Starter Suite offers file sharing, users must upgrade to another tier to access collaboration tools, such as Slack integration.

More features from Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite:

While this guide focuses on the most common CRM features and capabilities of Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite, this provider offers other valuable features, such as:

• Lead assignment and routing: Users can route specific leads to certain representatives to maximize the chances of closing each deal.
• Web-to-lead capture: Teams can generate leads and import them to the CRM based on website visitors. 
• Price quotes: Users can create pricing quotes within the CRM and send them to prospects with the Pro Suite plan. 
• Case management: Team members can route inquiries to the right sales rep to answer questions efficiently.

So, should you choose Pipedrive or Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite?

Pipedrive and Salesforce Starter and Pro Suite offer powerful CRM plans to streamline the sales process, collaborate with team members, close sales opportunities, and foster customer retention.

• Choose Pipedrive if: Your team needs incredibly user-friendly CRM software with robust sales automation features and a visual sales pipeline. 
• Choose Salesforce Starter Suite if: Your business wants a simple CRM platform with excellent customer support, pipeline customization options, and comprehensive email analytics. 
• Go with an alternative if: You need a free-forever plan for a limited number of users, such as the basic plans Freshsales and HubSpot offer. If your team needs more advanced features than the Starter and Pro Suite plans include, consider popular Salesforce alternatives. If your company needs features Pipedrive doesn’t offer, check out our guide to the best Pipedrive alternatives. 

Frequently asked questions