Every successful business needs a few core software platforms to optimize its operations. When it comes to your sales process and client communication, few platforms are more important than your CRM software.
A quick Google search reveals a seemingly infinite number of sales software options, all claiming to supercharge your sales performance. But sooner or later, you’ll find that a few specific CRM systems stand out. Among those CRM software examples, HubSpot and Pipedrive are the most popular.
But how do you choose between Pipedrive and Hubspot? Should you choose between those two, or might there be a third option that’s even better at helping you manage your sales pipelines?
Pipedrive vs HubSpot: Which CRM Is Best in 2024?
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is Pipedrive?
As its name suggests, Pipedrive is specifically designed for pipeline management. Compare Pipedrive to alternatives like Trello, and you’ll quickly begin to see why that differentiation matters.
Through its professional and enterprise plans, Pipedrive offers advanced contact management specifically designed to streamline your sales processes. Add a good amount of marketing automation that includes both email marketing and workflow automation, and you’ll see why this is one of the most powerful operations tools available for sales teams today.
Don’t think of this CRM suite as a pure contact database. Unlike most alternatives to Pipedrive, this sales hub loves Kanban boards for arranging lead management options. You can approach your pipeline management more visually, using drag-and-drop actions to easily plan your cycle.
Pipedrive features
As you would expect from an advanced lead management tool, Pipedrive offers plenty of features designed to help your sales team. From predictive lead scoring to email marketing features for nurturing leads, this CRM software can become your team’s comprehensive sales hub in every way.
1. CRM and sales pipeline features
A comprehensive CRM suite at its core, Pipedrive offers plenty of features designed to drive, manage, and enhance your sales pipelines. Its screens follow an intuitive and clean layout, embracing deal management with visuals that combine smart contact data and natural next steps.
You can easily add new contacts via short forms, list imports, or integrations with other CRM solutions. Duplicate contact management is automatic, while contact cards notify you of positive and negative data points with easy color coding. Each contact card also includes a visual graph of all touchpoints with that contact, from emails to customer support outreach from your support team.
All of those features come down to a single goal: making it easy for your team to close more deals and optimize the sales pipeline. Rather than a simple CRM, think of Pipeline as a comprehensive sales assistant and deal management tool that can help with every part of the process.
2. Reporting and dashboards
As should be expected with a sales assistant, Pipedrive focuses a significant amount of its features on sales forecasting and other reporting. As a result, it helps managers and sales leaders keep an overview of the entire pipeline and proactively build and adjust their strategies.
The Pipedrive Insights platform is full of these analytics, from snapshots of current sales performance to revenue forecast reports. Every report and dashboard is entirely customizable. Users can even add custom fields and build custom charts for greater insights.
And that’s just the beginning. Pipedrive also integrates sales goals into the process so users can directly compare milestones to current performance in the dashboard. Never lose sight of whether you can hit your sales and revenue goals again.
Finally, Pipedrive has begun to integrate AI capabilities into its reporting tools. The AI-powered sales assistant continually combs sales pipeline data to find recommended subsequent actions, such as following up with leads or qualifying prospects. It’s an intuitive solution to help your sales team focus on the right moves.
3. Customer relationship management templates
Finally, Pipedrive offers a variety of templates depending on the action you’re looking to build. For example, the core suite includes email templates for any lead email and workflow templates to automate typical pipeline activities.
The software also includes templates for its Smart Docs feature, which allows you to build proposals for deals you want to close faster and more effectively. And, of course, you can create and customize your own templates to ensure your emails, automations, and Smart Docs provide what your sales team needs.
Pipedrive pricing
- Essential: $14.90/month per user
- Advanced: $27.90/month per user
- Professional: $49.90/month per user
- Power: $64.90/month per user
- Enterprise: $99/month per user
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat is HubSpot CRM?
HubSpot is more than just a customer relationship management tool. Instead, it’s a comprehensive marketing and sales hub with multiple interlinked software options, including the following:
- HubSpot Marketing Hub, which houses plenty of inbound marketing features and customizable email templates to fuel your marketing campaigns
- HubSpot CMS Hub, a content management system and website builder that can create both individual landing pages and entire online presences
- HubSpot Commerce Hub, a commerce platform for B2B industries that includes e-commerce integrations, monthly billing and invoicing tools, and more
- HubSpot Support Hub, which is designed for enterprises looking to improve their customer support, including both phone support and email support systems
- HubSpot Sales Hub, the CRM piece of the puzzle that we’ll focus on in this comparison guide
In addition to these individual platforms, the company also offers free educational resources in the HubSpot Academy, an online help center for anyone with a HubSpot account. These free training services enable all team members to become more well-versed in not just the software but best practices in sales and marketing.
In addition to professional and enterprise plans, HubSpot offers a free plan for its Sales Hub. The HubSpot Academy also allows anyone to explore the software for free.
HubSpot CRM features
Within its Sales Hub, HubSpot offers straightforward CRM features that compare closely to those of its competitors.
The true differentiator is the wide range of HubSpot integrations, both with the company’s other solutions and external services. For example, the ClickUp integration connects the CRM with powerful project management and team collaboration features for increased productivity.
1. CRM and sales pipeline features
Designed for CRM functionality, the HubSpot Sales Hub shines with a user-friendly interface for your sales team. Even HubSpot’s free plan offers a visual dashboard that lets sales leaders understand where leads and prospects stand in the pipeline. It also provides tools specifically designed to manage those contacts through to a deal.
In addition, HubSpot offers several features specifically designed to save your sales team time. For example, the CRM can notify the assigned sales agent when a prospect visits a specific webpage or opens an email. That enables them to follow up at the right time using live chat, email, or phone from within the software.
Finally, HubSpot Sales Hub is scalable. The free plan has limitations, such as only three dashboards and ten reports. But even then, users can cross into the suite’s marketing and support solutions for a more comprehensive sales and marketing setup. Moving into the higher-tiered professional or enterprise plan is seamless as your business and contact list grow.
2. Reporting and dashboards
HubSpot also offers comprehensive reporting that enables teams and leaders to gain insights into anything from sales forecasting to performance overviews. As with other HubSpot tools, the reporting crosses through every piece of the software infrastructure. For instance, users who use both HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot Sales Hub can easily connect the data from the two into one dashboard.
At its best, that turns HubSpot analytics into a single source of data truth for your entire marketing funnel and sales pipeline.
Better yet, you can easily customize your reports and dashboards to meet your organization’s needs. But it’s important to note that the free plan significantly limits some of that customizability, which only truly comes into play on the higher professional and enterprise plans.
Reporting is another area where the HubSpot Academy shines. You can use it to learn how to build reports and gain knowledge and insights into how you can set up analytics to drive better insights and performance.
3. Customer relationship management templates
Finally, HubSpot offers a range of templates to help your sales team optimize its performance without starting from scratch each time. Some of the most commonly used templates within the larger suite of products include:
- Email marketing templates for sales and lead nurturing
- Website themes and templates for its content management system
- Report and dashboard templates for common sales and marketing metrics and insights
- Business plan and business schedule templates
Not all of these templates, of course, are limited to the HubSpot Sales Hub. Instead, they span the software solutions within the larger suite. For example, email templates can be used within both marketing and sales automation workflows.
HubSpot CRM pricing
- Free Tools: Free
- Starter: $20/month
- CRM Professional: $1,600/month
- CRM Enterprise: $5,000/month
Summarize this article for me pleasePipedrive vs HubSpot: Features Compared
At least when it comes to their CRM functionality, Pipedrive and HubSpot are easy to compare. But it’s also important to note their difference in scope. The first focuses more on pipeline management, while the second is a broader solution that covers the entire marketing and sales process.
Still, it’s time to measure up on the tools’ CRM and sales pipeline features, reporting and dashboards, and CRM templates.
1. CRM and sales pipeline features
Sales teams across industries will appreciate the focused features of Pipedrive and its visual approach to showcasing and managing the pipeline. For sales leaders looking specifically at maximizing the efficiency of their pipeline, it’s a winner in this arena.
HubSpot Sales Hub, on the other hand, wins regarding broader integrations. As a standalone CRM, the Sales Hub is more than adequate.
But if you’re migrating all of your sales and marketing efforts, including content management, onto the software, it becomes significantly more powerful. For that more integrated implementation, HubSpot Sales Hub wins.
2. Reporting and dashboards
Similar to their CRM functionality, HubSpot and Pipedrive bring unique advantages regarding reporting functionality. Pipedrive Insights is great for sales forecasting and advanced analytics, especially given its AI integration.
On the other hand, HubSpot Sales Hub shines through integrations within the larger promotional and sales infrastructure. There is no clear winner because the winner depends entirely on your organizational needs.
But let’s give a special shoutout here to HubSpot, which offers a free plan that includes at least limited reporting. That allows you to jump in and try building reports and dashboards before rolling out anything to the larger team and organization.
3. Customer relationship management templates
Finally, HubSpot wins in the template arena. Because the software is more comprehensive and integrated, its features can span multiple functional areas. Even better, the sheer number of features also outpaces Pipedrive. If you want to avoid starting from scratch in your CRM efforts, consider giving HubSpot your first shot.
Summarize this article for me pleasePipedrive vs HubSpot on Reddit
Where do actual users land when comparing Pipedrive and HubSpot? We took to Reddit to find out. A quick search on HubSpot vs. Pipedrive on Reddit shows most professionals prefer Pipedrive over its competitors when it comes to sales.
“Hubspot makes your life more difficult on [the] sales side (relative to Pipedrive),” wrote one user, “but it does more on the marketing front…. and it’s free.”
Users especially praised the more in-depth relationship-building features of Pipedrive:
“What I liked about Pipedrive was when I was working on a project with a customer I could create the project and link the customer I was working on it with,” said another Reddit commentator. “I could create list views to see which stage each project was at, create updated notations, attach documents like spec sheets and drawings, etc. It was nice to have that kind of clean visibility in one place that was effective to manage from a time perspective.”
Summarize this article for me pleaseMeet ClickUp: The Best Alternative to Pipedrive and HubSpot
Pipedrive and HubSpot may be among the most popular CRM options, but they’re far from the only possibilities. Especially if you’re looking for free tools to drive your contact management with the ability to scale up, you have to give ClickUp a closer look.
Like HubSpot, ClickUp is more than a CRM software. But unlike HubSpot, it’s a project management suite that focuses on everything from client collaboration to knowledge management through its Smart Docs and wiki possibilities.
In other words, ClickUp is a productivity supercharger. And yet, it still competes well on the core features we used to compare its two competitors in this guide:
1. CRM and sales pipeline features
It might be a productivity platform at its core, but don’t underestimate ClickUp’s potential for managing leads. Built into this core is a user-friendly CRM that can help your team intuitively and efficiently grow your customer relationships and close more deals.
ClickUp CRM features include:
- A visual view of the prospect pipeline
- The ability to track and manage individual accounts
- Customizable views, including Lists, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and more
- Email integrations to enable dynamic sales outreach to your prospects and leads
- Customer database functionality to store, manage, and analyze your contacts
- Workflow automations to create more dynamic sales processes
- Direct integrations with CRM tools like HubSpot and Pipedrive to continue leveraging your project management setup
2. Reporting and dashboards
Naturally, ClickUp’s advantages don’t end with basic CRM functionality. In fact, ClickUp Dashboards are among its core features, helping you surface advanced analytics surrounding your sales processes and contact trends.
With ClickUp Dashboards, you can identify and leverage deeper insights with a single glance. Keep a constant eye on sales and sales team performance.
And that’s not the only opportunity to gain advanced insights. On-demand reporting tools offer real-time and scheduled looks into your team’s performance and productivity. That way, you can stay proactive as you manage your performance and forecast future needs.
3. Customer relationship management templates
Finally, ClickUp shines in one of the most beneficial features sales teams need today: templates. It’s home to the ClickUp CRM template and several other CRM templates specifically designed to make onboarding and daily management easier. Whether you’re managing a Service Desk, a team of software developers, or you’re a fitness trainer looking to manage clients, a ClickUp template can give you the head start you need.
Team management could become much easier if you could rapidly construct customized projects and processes that meet your team’s needs while allowing you to remain agile. Add in the ability to leverage other productivity tools like client management templates, and you get a solution designed to make managing your pipeline easy.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSupercharge Your Sales Process With ClickUp
If you’re looking for a sales-focused CRM, HubSpot and Pipedrive are far from your only options. ClickUp offers all the features you need for productivity and managing your prospects in a user-friendly interface.
Even with the free plan, you get all the necessary core tools to help your sales efforts succeed. Once you get used to the more advanced features, you get one of the most powerful and comprehensive sales and productivity platforms on the market.
It’s time to supercharge your sales process. Sign up for your free ClickUp account today to get started.
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