Pipedrive Alternatives: 6 Drawbacks of Pipedrive CRM Explained

If you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur, we’re sure that you’ve come across Pipedrive.

With companies across the globe using the software, it’s a well-established name in the CRM space.

Pipedrive is an excellent CRM solution. But, as with any software tool, it doesn’t do the job for everyone.

If you’re considering making the switch, this article will outline a few Pipedrive alternatives that you can consider.

It’s always tricky determining which CRM software is feasible for your company.

Google displays almost 200 million search results when you type “CRM software”. That’s a lot of information, and you don’t even need most of it. 

Shopping around for a CRM can be a bothersome endeavor.

You don’t want to make the move of importing all your data and setting up new workspaces. You may have concerns that the new software will have a steep learning curve. 

Whether it’s a system’s lack of features, a poor user interface, or less than desirable customer support that has you itching to make a change, right now is as good a time as ever to switch your CRM.

Some of the issues above may sound particularly familiar to you if you use Pipedrive as your company’s CRM.

An effective CRM software will answer all the specific questions that your company has. Does this software optimize the sales process? Will it help us close more deals?

If you’re browsing the market to switch from Pipedrive, this guide is the best starting point for you. 

We will outline all the features that Pipedrive doesn’t have and compare it with other CRM software. We will also list out three viable Pipedrive alternatives to help you select the best software for your company.

The Drawbacks of Pipedrive/What Can’t You Do In Pipedrive?

Pipedrive is a sales-based CRM tool with sales pipeline management features like integrations, mobile app use, automation, communications tracking, insights, and deal management. It is truly a sales platform.

This is a point that Pipedrive’s competitors bring up, usually. The software is not a comprehensive CRM, but rather a sales solution.

While they have a large audience base (with more than 90,000 companies as customers according to the Pipedrive website), there are some cracks in what’s an otherwise nice-looking facade.

Let’s explore some of the more glaring issues that come with using Pipedrive.

#1. No Marketing Support

Apart from your sales team, your marketing team also relies on your CRM heavily.

The use of a CRM helps marketing teams track past and current interactions with a lead or customer, qualify leads (and disqualify others), and nurture and engage with your audience.

The features included in the CRM should make the lives and jobs of your marketing team easier, not harder.

Yet you may consistently deal with the latter should you continue using Pipedrive, as their CRM lacks marketing support.

Without this support, your company’s marketing team may not do certain activities as efficiently as they could.

Anything that kneecaps the success of your marketing team is something you’d want to wholeheartedly avoid.

To that end, Pipedrive’s lack of marketing support should be seen as a major issue.

If you switch to a more full-fledged CRM system like that offered by EngageBay, you can rest assured you’ll have all the features you need to augment the work of your marketers so their productivity and efficiency never suffers.

EngageBay’s marketing automation software helps online businesses streamline and automate marketing and sales processes and improve the overall efficiency

#2. No Helpdesk

Here’s a feature that a surprising amount of today’s CRMs don’t have — help desks.

The same is true of Pipedrive CRM, so already, you’re limiting the effectiveness of your marketing team and hindering your company’s customer service capabilities.

Many users have noted that Pipedrive’s customer support is not the best. 

Considering that exemplary customer service should be the backbone of any company worth its salt, going without this feature in a CRM doesn’t make sense.

A helpdesk answers the most common questions your leads and customers have about using your products and services.

The best help desks have self-service features, like customer support tickets. 

You will find a very inclusive helpdesk with EngageBay CRM, so you never have to leave customers fending for themselves when they need help with your products or services.

#3. No Live Chat

Foregoing live chat really limits the ways in which you can communicate with your customers.

Now if they want information or answers, they have to email you and wait upwards of one business day, sometimes several, before they can get a response.

That excludes weekends, which can push the wait even longer.

They can also call you on the phone, where they’re stuck waiting on hold while trying to juggle their own lives and responsibilities.

If they get disconnected or accidentally hung up on, then they have to start all over again, but now in a far worse mood than when they called the first time.

A live chat wastes far less time of your customers.

Whether it’s an evening, an early morning, a weekend, or another time that’s not business hours, the customer can use the chatbot to get the information they need.

#4. No 360-Degree Customer Overview

Pipedrive doesn’t offer a 360-degree customer overview, which is surprising since it’s so critical in visualizing sales and lead volumes.

This full, engaging view lets you see every piece of information and data you have compiled on a particular customer.

For example, in a customer profile, you can review any notes or active tasks related to the customer, their lead score, their points of engagement, their personal interests, any social media profiles, your communication history, and the customer’s contact information.

Enjoy 360-Degree customer view for deeper insights with EngageBay

This data comes from your customer service reps, your marketers, and your sales reps, who all work to create and continually update this profile.

#5. No Enterprise-Level Features

Enterprise-level features are the cream of the crop you’re seeking, but they’re not available in every CRM system.

As you can imagine, Pipedrive is one such CRM that lacks these high-level features. This is a shame, as there are trademarks of enterprise-level features that make them worthwhile for any growing company.

For instance, these features are often beloved for their great performance and their scalability.

You always want your company to continue to expand, so scalable features are ideal, as they ensure you don’t prematurely outgrow your CRM software.

Integrations with apps and services you already use is another trademark of an enterprise-level CRM.

This is quite a handy feature as well since you don’t have to discontinue the use of your favorite services and apps just because you’re migrating your CRM software.

The privacy and security are above all some of the greatest perks of investing in enterprise-level software.

With two-factor authentication, login policies that don’t let just anyone in, strict permissions, user privileges, and data protection, you can feel confident that your CRM software is working hard for your security.

#6. Lacks Powerful Reporting

The last point we want to bring up is one of great importance, well, at least if your company cares about having a record of past successes and failures (that should be every company, by the way).

Yet with a Pipedrive membership, you don’t have the kind of powerful, detailed reporting you need to isolate trends and patterns within your data.

With EngageBay, if you provide the information, the CRM will do the rest, generating automated reports that are beautifully rich.

EngageBay’s automated reports are beautifully rich

From campaigns from one month back to several years, you can cull the information that matters most to you so you can use it as a learning opportunity or a launching pad.

Pipedrive offers custom reporting options only in the Enterprise level plan.

Pipedrive Pricing

Pipedrive’s pricing is divided into 4 plans.

Pipedrive’s Essentials pricing plan starts at $12.50/month per user. It’s a pretty good deal on the surface, but at this price point, there aren’t many core features available to users. 

The Advanced plan starts at $24.90/month per user and offers features such as email and task automation, API access, and smart dashboards. 

The Professional plan starts at $49.90/month per user and offers additional features such as multiple dashboards, forecasting, and custom reporting.

The Enterprise plan, starting at $99.00/month per user is the only one to offer all basic features and unlimited CRM support.

When you take a bird’s eye view, you’re shelling out a lot of money for features that come built-in for other CRM platforms.

3 Perfect Pipedrive Alternatives

By this point, you’re convinced that you need an alternative to Pipedrive. This CRM simply isn’t working for you anymore, so it’s time to upgrade, but to which software?

There are three CRMs that we consider the best Pipedrive alternatives: EngageBay, HubSpot, and Insightly. Let’s introduce these options in more detail now.

1. EngageBay

The first of the three Pipedrive competitors we think is very much worth considering is EngageBay.

This newer company was founded as an option for small and mid-sized business owners on a tight budget that didn’t want to miss on sales and marketing features.

Not only is EngageBay an affordable service as a whole, but their CRM is always free, as we mentioned before.

Through EngageBay, you can get the kind of powerful reporting a company of your caliber needs, and you’ll also enjoy a helpdesk, live chat, marketing support, a 360-degree customer view, a detailed sales dashboard, integrated calling features, email syncing, and automated data logging.

Take a look at the complete EngageBay product demo here:

2. HubSpot

Another free CRM that makes for a solid Pipedrive alternative is HubSpot.

Yes, that’s right, you can use HubSpot without paying a cent, although this only applies to their CRM services.

You get all the power the HubSpot brand promises with a wealth of features, among them a lead timeline that tracks notes, meeting history, email history, a call log, and other interactions you have with a lead from the beginning to the end of your sales pipeline.

You can also use HubSpot’s CRM for automating log sales, syncing with Outlook or Gmail, automated customer interaction tracking, and a dashboard that displays your sales funnel.

This dashboard features performance tracking, quotas, contracts, open deals, closed deals, and a lot more pertinent information for your sales team.

3. Insightly

You may also give Insightly a try, as it has more features than Pipedrive’s CRM.

Their software integrates with your favorite tools and apps, like Evernote, Gmail, MailChimp, Quotient, Proposify, Box, Xero, iCloud, and so many more.

Insightly even has mobile features since customers never stop moving, nor do your marketers or sales team.

Their business intelligence sales dashboard is shareable among fellow teammates, and it also has such features as goal progression, drag-and-drop functionality, sales leaderboards, revenue, projections, wins, leads, contacts, opportunities, open projects, and a calendar.

Insightly’s CRM is not free to use even though they do offer a free trial, and the company mentions offering three different CRM plans for companies at different levels of growth.

Conclusion

Shopping around for a CRM is tricky because it’s all about finding the best fit for your company’s needs.

There are many factors that won’t show up upon initial research.

These include things like additional implementation costs, integrations, and any other services.

Ultimately, Pipedrive is a good choice if you have a small sales team that deals with fewer leads.

If you’re looking for a more comprehensive software that prioritizes customer engagement and support, then you should give EngageBay a try. 

The best way to know if you’re making the right choice is to take the software for a trial run. Unfortunately, Pipedrive doesn’t offer a free plan — though it does have a free trial period. 

EngageBay, on the other hand, offers a free forever plan with no deadline and no credit card commitment. 

With EngageBay, you can generate detailed reports, learn more about your customers, and make engaging with them far simpler than ever before. 

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