Customer relationship management (CRM) has become much easier thanks to top CRM platforms, such as HubSpot and Pipedrive. The hard part for sales and business leaders is figuring out which solution offers the right features at the right price for their exact business needs.
Forbes Advisor took a head-to-head look at HubSpot vs. Pipedrive to show you where each platform shines and where each falls short. We considered price, ease of use, content and lead management tools, team collaboration features and sales forecasting capabilities. This review offers everything you need to make an informed decision when selecting a CRM for your business.
HubSpot vs. Pipedrive: At a Glance
HubSpot is a powerful CRM and so much more. In this review, we take an in-depth look at the HubSpot Sales Hub™, which delivers the sales and marketing tools you need to capture more leads, work them more effectively and land more sales.
Meanwhile, Pipedrive focuses on pure customer relationship management. With Pipedrive, you get an effective contact management platform that helps you manage your contacts and sales pipeline at a price that’s hard to beat.
How HubSpot and Pipedrive Stack Up
HubSpot | Pipedrive | |
---|---|---|
Starting Price | 0 | $14 per user, per month, billed annually |
Free Trial | 14 days | 14 days |
Ease of Use | Easy | Easy |
Contact Management | ✔ | ✔ |
Lead Management | ✔ | ✔ |
Email Marketing | ✔ | ✔ |
Sales Forecasting | ✔ | ✔ |
Built-in Automation | ✔ | ✔ |
Reporting | ✔ | ✔ |
E-commerce Integrations | Integrates with dozens of popular ecommerce apps, including Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, SamCart and BigCommerce | E-commerce integrations through Zapier |
Customer Support | Email, phone, online chat, HubSpot Community, HubSpot Academy and the online knowledge base | Chat, email, online community, online Help Center; phone support for Enterprise plan customers |
Learn More | ||
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Pricing
While HubSpot offers a limited-feature free plan, that’s where the value ends when it comes to HubSpot vs. Pipedrive. Pipedrive’s plans range from just $14.90 to $99 while HubSpot’s Sales Hub™ plans start from $20 to $1,500 per month, making HubSpot considerably more expensive.
Ease of Use
Both HubSpot and Pipedrive have a reputation for being easy to set up and use. Both offer simple, intuitive dashboards that reveal critical sales funnel data.
Since HubSpot offers several more advanced features and customizations, there may be some confusion on how to tap into its full power. To its credit, HubSpot provides a wide variety of support options, including the online HubSpot Academy, where you can get your questions answered.
Contact and Lead Management
Strong contact and lead management are essential features of the best marketing CRMs. Both HubSpot and Pipedrive are strong on both accounts.
HubSpot doesn’t differentiate between leads, contacts, companies and websites―all are considered contacts in the HubSpot platform. With HubSpot, you can track up to 1,000 custom properties per object on all paid plans.
The Professional and Enterprise plans come with automatic lead rotation, standard contact scoring, data quality automation, duplicate management and scheduled workflow triggers. The Enterprise plan also offers predictive lead scoring.
With all Pipedrive plans, you can build an unlimited contacts database. Pipedrive offers lead and deal management, customizable pipelines and 30 to unlimited custom fields, depending on the plan you purchase.
The Pipedrive Contacts Timeline visually represents your communication history with contacts. Pipedrive will also merge duplicate data for you and smart contact data lets you autopopulate insights about contacts and leads from public sources like LinkedIn and the web.
Email Marketing
HubSpot includes several email marketing features, including team email, email scheduling, email tracking and notifications, email reply tracking and email templates. Connect your HubSpot account to top email solutions, such as Office 365 and Gmail.
All Pipedrive plans also integrate seamlessly with top email apps, including Gmail and Outlook. All plans except Essentials come with customizable email templates, merge fields, group emailing, email scheduling and click tracking.
Built-in Automation
HubSpot offers several built-in automations. With HubSpot’s Starter plan, you can set up trigger tasks and email notifications when deals change stages. Higher-tier plans allow 300 to 1,000 fully customizable automated workflows, including quote-based workflows.
The Advanced Pipedrive plan features up to 30 workflow automations, while the Professional allows 60 and Enterprise allows up to 1,000 workflow automations. Pipedrive’s deal rotting tool lets you know automatically if a deal has remained dormant for an excessive length of time. Activity reminder notifications send push notifications regarding important upcoming deadlines or activities automatically.
Reporting
HubSpot’s free plan includes up to three dashboards, each with 10 reports per dashboard. Paid plans offer 10 to 50 dashboards with 10 to 30 reports per dashboard.
HubSpot Professional and Enterprise plans include 100 to 500 custom reports plus 1,000 campaign reports per portal. Marketing asset comparison reporting and behavioral event triggers and reporting are also available.
With Pipedrive, you can build custom deal and activity reports, although the number of reports is limited to between 15 and 150 on the three lower-tier plans. In contrast, the Enterprise plan allows unlimited report generation.
Sales Forecasting
HubSpot’s sales forecasting tools are only available in its Professional and Enterprise plans. The Professional Sales Hub plan includes default and custom forecasting and reporting, while the Enterprise plan provides forecasts across team hierarchies.
Revenue forecast reports are only offered on Pipedrive’s Professional and Enterprise plans.
Bottom Line
There’s no doubt that both Pipedrive and HubSpot are effective CRMs that will help you manage contacts and track leads throughout the sales pipeline. Both CRMs are user-friendly and make monitoring engagement activity and analyzing lead behavior simple.
If you manage a small to medium-sized sales team and are looking for a reasonably priced CRM that delivers the essentials, Pipedrive is likely your best bet.
HubSpot works for all types and sizes of organizations, although the cost of its top-tier plans is often too steep for smaller businesses. The free plan covers the essentials while the paid plans scale with you as your business needs grow. Plus, HubSpot’s extensive all-in-one marketing suite offers functionality that Pipedrive doesn’t deliver.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the difference between Pipedrive and HubSpot?
There are a few critical differences between Pipedrive and HubSpot. Both are user-friendly CRMs for managing contacts and sales pipelines. HubSpot offers one free and multiple paid plans, which can get pricey. Pipedrive doesn’t have a free plan but its paid plans are budget-friendly. HubSpot’s CRM comes with several built-in marketing features while Pipedrive focuses on CRM essentials.
Is Pipedrive easy to use?
Pipedrive is known for its user-friendly interface. The CRM was developed so that users could set up their accounts easily and start benefiting from the CRM from day one.
Is HubSpot hard to learn?
With any CRM, most users have at least a slight learning curve. HubSpot is built to be as straightforward to use as possible. With its intuitive navigation and easy-to-read dashboards, HubSpot is one of the simplest CRMs to learn.
Are HubSpot and Pipedrive open-source CRMs?
Neither HubSpot nor Pipedrive are open-source CRMs. If you’re looking for the best open-source CRMs, check out SuiteCRM, Odoo CRM or OroCRM.
Does CRM require a large IT investment?
No. There is no shortage of cloud CRM solutions that are built with information technology (IT) novices in mind. You don’t have to make a hefty investment in physical IT infrastructure or hire IT staff to manage your CRM. Many CRM solutions are available as an SaaS, so you only pay for what you consume, and you can stop consuming at any time.
How does CRM help marketing goals?
The marketing tools within many CRMs offer the ability to gather data on qualified leads, analyze that data and put that data to use to create personalized campaigns that nurture leads to a purchase. As such, a CRM can help you learn about your target markets, reach marketing goals such as effectively targeting your audience and, in turn, boost engagement metrics and conversion rates.