Costing just £14 per month, our Pipedrive review ranks it as one of our top CRMs for usability. But how do its pros and cons serve your small business’ needs?
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The CRM market is more competitive than ever, with some big brands offering cutting-edge features at low costs. There are even free CRM software options to choose from.
As the cost of living crisis drags on and customers become more stingy with their wallets, having a CRM system that helps you better manage your customer network and helps you retain clients is key.
Having thoroughly tested Pipedrive, we find it to be a simple, user-friendly CRM that has limited functionality, but will suit new businesses with uncomplicated demands. But is it a good choice for your firm? Our Pipedrive review will help you make a confident decision about whether or not to try this CRM.
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Users
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Features
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BEST PLAN FOR SMEs
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Pipedrive Essential |
Pipedrive Advanced |
Pipedrive Professional |
Pipedrive Power |
Pipedrive Enterprise |
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Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
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- Pipedrive stands out for its user-friendly interface, and integrations with ecommerce and accounting platforms.
- We recommend Pipedrive for new businesses that don’t have technical software knowledge.
- Pipedrive falls short for its lack of social media functionality.
- It does not offer a free plan, but a 14-day free trial instead.
- We found that the best Pipedrive alternative is Freshsales Suite, as it offers similar features for a cheaper price.
All pricing and information were verified as accurate as of 03/07/2025. However, we recommend confirming any pricing with Pipedrive or any other CRM provider before making any purchasing decisions for your business.
This review will cover:
Who do we recommend Pipedrive for?
When conducting research into Pipedrive, our expert team of analysts tested and analysed the platform in the areas most important to small businesses, including price, features and usability.
From this, we determined that Pipedrive is an excellent CRM for small businesses that are newly set up online, such as high street retailers. It works best as a platform that can be set up and operated without requiring technical software knowledge.
While Pipedrive only provides an average level of functionality – particularly when it comes to marketing – it easily outshines rival software for user experience. Our testing found tasks can be completed quickly and easily – even with more sophisticated tools, like chatbots.
Plus, when we tested Pipedrive, we found the platform has excellent integrations with ecommerce and accounting platforms, which makes it a powerful tool for sales and inventory monitoring.
Read More About CRM
This page is part of a larger series on CRM. Read more about the top CRM systems in our full guide:
How much does Pipedrive cost, and what’s included?
Adopting new technologies can often be a big expense for small businesses. But it’s also an important investment for growth. In fact, statistics by Business Dasher reveal that 68% of businesses reported an increase in revenue due to technology transformations.
So, how much do Pipedrive’s plans cost, and crucially, what features and capabilities does each come with? We’ll take a deep dive into each plan below:
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Price per month (billed annually)
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Price per month (billed monthly)
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Users
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Pipedrive Essential |
Pipedrive Advanced |
Pipedrive Professional |
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£24 per user |
£49 per user |
£69 per user |
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Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Unlimited |
Pipedrive Essential
- £14 per user, per month (billed annually)
- £24 per user, per month (billed monthly)
- Unlimited contacts
- 24/7 live chat and online support
- Lots of communication integrations
- Full set of security tools
- Visual sales pipeline
- Calendar view
- Email inbox
- Custom dashboard
- Many marketing tools
- Revenue reports
Pipedrive Essential is the best option for small business users that don’t havea lot of tech experience, who want a powerful CRM plan that’s low maintenance to use.
As evidence, it took our testers just under 14 minutes to import all of our mock customer data into the Pipedrive backend.
The Essential package is largely focused on tracking and organising sales. However, as Pipedrive doesn’t do so well for online brand-building, it’s better for businesses that already have a marketing strategy in place.
When we compared Pipedrive Essential to rival CRM brands, Freshsales Suite has slightly more functionality for £7 less per user, per month.
However, the areas where Pipedrive is lacking can be improved with a simple third-party integration.
Say you’re an online seller who wants to design a branded invoice for your customers using Pipedrive. You could do this easily by downloading accounting software like Quickbooks or Xero.
Business consultancy firm Gray Matters switched to Pipedrive from Google Sheets. A spokesperson there told Startups:
“Being a business that helps others with their sales and business development, it’s really important that we practice what we preach.
“We’ve used pretty much every CRM out there and this is by far the most user-friendly, so when they say it’s built by sales people for sales people, they are not lying.”
Pipedrive Advanced
- £39 per user, per month (billed annually)
- £49 per user, per month (billed monthly)
- Deal and activity reports
- Ability to send emails from CRM
- Lead scoring
- Preset dashboard
- Custom dashboard
- Custom reports
- Revenue forecast tools
- Social media integration
Considering the sizable increase in cost, Pipedrive Advanced doesn’t offer small business users a huge amount over the Essential plan.
Its main specialism is data storage and presentation. In terms of sales records, you can format all customer transactions into deal or activity reports.
Using the ‘Lead Booster’ add-on (for an extra £25 per month), users can access more complex functions. For example, our testers were able to use the booster to build a chatbot in just over one minute – the quickest of all the brands we analysed.
We were surprised by the lack of any social media functionality included in Pipedrive Advanced or the Lead Booster, however.
We think Pipedrive Advanced is best for businesses with larger budgets and multiple departments. Its added reporting capabilities make it a must for firms that need to regularly communicate sales figures to higher-ups.
Pipedrive Professional
- £49 per user, per month (billed annually)
- £69 per user, per month (billed monthly)
- Custom dashboard
- 60 automated workflows
- Custom reports
- Auto responses
- Customer service tools
- Ability to accept payments
- A lot of marketing campaign tools
At £49 per user, Pipedrive Professional will be out of range for most small business budgets.
However, if your organisation is a small team that handles very large online sales volumes – for example, if you’re dropshipping – Pipedrive Professional is worth the expense.
With 60 automated workflows available, you’ll be able to set up ‘triggers’ that automatically perform a task. For example, sending a welcome email to a new customer when they are added to your database.
Plus, impressive security features mean that customer data will be well protected if you’re storing sensitive information, like medical records. That’s why we ranked it in third place for our healthcare marketing CRM, specifically for its confidentiality.
Pipedrive Power and Pipedrive Enterprise
Pipedrive introduced its Power plan in 2023. However, priced at £64 per user, per month, it is not designed for small businesses. Aside from its high price, its features are better suited for larger teams.
For example, it gives businesses the ability to control account permissions. This works better for businesses with a lot of managers, as it’ll allow them to handle which employees get admin access on the platform.
Similarly, Pipedrive Enterprise, which is priced at £99 per user, isn’t designed for small businesses either. You’ll get onboarding assistance and 100 automated workflows, but its feature set just isn’t premium enough to justify the added expense.
Read more: The best CRM systems for retail businesses
Does Pipedrive have a free plan?
If you’re looking for a completely free CRM system, you won’t find it with Pipedrive. The platform does offer 14-day free trials of any of its payment plans, however.
We think the best free CRM solutions are:
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Best for:
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Verdict:
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BEST OVERALL
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Small agencies |
Established businesses with long client lists |
Building email marketing campaigns |
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Freshsales’ feature list is among the most comprehensive in the free tier, covering tools like an AI chatbot, built-in phone, and automated tasks |
Zoho CRM’s free platform has generous reporting tools that beat even some paid tiers |
HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM tool that’s great for marketing and outreach – two areas that are important for business growth |
What are the best Pipedrive alternatives?
As the below chart shows, Pipedrive’s pricing is competitive, but doesn’t quite rival the more wallet-friendly options like Zoho Bigin (£5 per user) and HubSpot Free.
Our researchers found that the best Pipedrive alternative is Freshsales Suite, as its Growth Plan costs just £7 per user, per month (billed annually), compared to £14 for Pipedrive’s cheapest plan.
We also found that Freshsales Suite offers the same sales-specific features, such as contact lifecycle stages, curated reports and product catalogues. Additionally, we found that it had other features that Pipedrive was lacking, including social media campaigns.
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Free trial?
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Score out of 5:
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Features:
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TOP CRM FOR SMEs
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Pipedrive |
monday CRM |
Zendesk |
Salesforce CRM |
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✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
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4.3 |
4.3 |
4.1 |
4.5 |
4.6 |
4.3 |
3.8 |
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Methodology: how did we review Pipedrive?
Our team of independent researchers analysed and tested a selection of CRM software, including the most popular on the market, to find out how well they perform in the areas that are most important to small businesses.
These criteria are:
- Price: the platforms with the lowest price tags and best value for money score the best.
- Features: the platforms offering the best variety of features are given a better placement than those that have a more limited collection of tools.
- Usability: our researchers have a collection of tasks they need to accomplish. The ease and time with which they can accomplish these tasks are tallied up in order to find out how easy the platforms are to use.
- Customer support: we examine how each platform fares when it comes to the customer support options available.
- Customer score: after looking across various review aggregate sites (such as Trustpilot), our researchers compile a general customer score, summarising the overall satisfaction of the public.
After factoring in all this information, alongside the scores they received, we were able to calculate a final overall score for each CRM platform, including Pipedrive.
Final thoughts
Overall, Pipedrive stands out for its user-friendliness, particularly its visual sales pipeline and the ability to complete tasks quickly and easily. We also found that it has a good level of customer support available if you ever get stuck.
Therefore, we highly recommend Pipedrive for new businesses that may not have the technical skills or knowledge to navigate a more complex platform.
That being said, there are some drawbacks to consider, too. Most notably, we found that Pipedrive falls short in social media functionality and the fact that it doesn’t offer a free plan for businesses. However, you can test it out for yourself by signing up for a 14-day free trial.
The results from this review are based on thorough hands-on testing conducted by the Startups team, alongside independent analysis. However, the right CRM solution will depend on your unique business needs, so always remember to keep this in mind before making a final decision.
Try Pipedrive for free
Get started with a 14-day free trial of Pipedrive Essential
Our runner-up top CRM for small businesses
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