Salesforce vs Pipedrive? Is Salesforce really worth it?

Salesforce vs Pipedrive. Which is better? Well, this article is a result of me being annoyed by the same question over and over again. The question is more complicated than you might think. The CRM world is very diverse and often making direct comparisons of products that have different target audiences is not a proper thing. Anyway, I decided to express my opinion on the topic. This is not a one-to-one comparison. There is not many technical data. But there is an opinion. The opinion from someone from the industry.

Disclaimer before you start reading this. I’m affiliated with Salesforce. My company is Salesforce Consultancy Partner. Even though I have expressed my honest opinion, bear in mind that I am a part of the SF community.

Why my opinion on Salesforce vs Pipedrive is worth the attention?

For over a decade I have been working with CRM systems. I started my CRM journey as a business user. In the role of a sales rep. Later I got a position as a Salesforce product owner. And then I became a Salesforce consultant. And in between, I’ve tried tons of different solutions. Including Pipedrive. I’ve been using Pipedrive in the sales department. It was integrated with IP Telephony (phone system), email, and other apps and software. On the other hand, I have managed the sales department in Uber with 50+ employees. So hopefully, I have some insights I could share with you.

Decisions are made during the demo

The problem with the software is you never know the real capabilities of the product before you actually start using it. Usually, the first design flaws appear in the first months of usage. These are minor observations. At first, they don’t seem to be game-changers. As time goes, the product owner notices more and more of these flaws. And sometimes, after years of implementation, operation and customization you end up with an idea that software does not fit you.

But how is the decision of buying the software made? It’s usually made after demo and studying the documentation. In the best case, a vendor’s sales team prepares you with a proof of concept. That’s it. You are actually making a very sensitive decision blindfolded. I really hope after reading this you will have more insights. And a better understanding of the difference between Salesforce vs Pipedrive. And hopefully, you will never compare Salesforce and Pipedrive again.

How data is stored in Salesforce vs Pipedrive?

The very first thing a professional user will notice. This is how data is stored in both systems. Salesforce uses objects and fields. You have the ability to create your own objects and store anything you want with them. If you are wondering what objects are. Let me provide you with an example. A car dealer wants to track the car’s life cycle. Track owner, what services did the car get, and so on. You will create a custom object called Cars (or Vehicles, if you are looking for a clean setup). Inside the Cars object, you will track the car’s make, engine type, transmission, and any other relevant information. Most likely you will relate Cars to customers, so you don’t have to write down contact details you already have but reuse them instead.

Now what Pipedrive is missing – you can’t create a custom object there. Period. You have to use what is provided. What makes things even worse, you have very limited capabilities of customizing data inside Pipedrive. Say you are in the trade business. You want to provide customers with price lists. Bummer. Pipedrive has very limited functionality for price lists. The list could go on, there are plenty of similar examples. But don’t rush with conclusions. Pipedrive was never designed as a highly-customizable system. It was designed to be ready for use in 30 minutes after you register an account.

So the first decision you will have to make. Is it worth it for you to sacrifice custom functionality over a more administrator-friendly interface?

User interface

Now, this is one thing a Pipedrive could get ahead of Salesforce. For a good reason. Pipedrive has a built-in sales process, which is designed for lead and opportunity (they call it deals) management. This is a huge advantage for Pipedrive from a user interface perspective. When a software company has to design a narrowly focused solution it could sacrifice any user-unfriendly interfaces. Such design makes interfaces very narrowly focused, but gives users tones of quick actions. For example, creating a lead in Pipedrive could be done from the kanban view. And edited from there. Technically, in Salesforce, you have quick creation buttons. But trust me, after hundreds of user training sessions, I discovered that record creation in Salesforce is much less intuitive for the inexperienced user.

On the other hand, Salesforce provides you with TONES of customization options. Every role in your company can have its own view of the card. If you want to add an activity timeline as a central element for sales reps. Salesforce can do that with page layouts. Do you want to hide certain areas or functionality from junior-level users? No problem. Roles & Permissions are at your disposal. But don’t expect this to be a walk in the park. Salesforce has a steep learning curve. Most likely you will need a consultant.

Integrations

Don’t be fooled with the integration list available on both Salesforce and Pipedrive websites. Every integration is different and the functionality of each integration should be carefully evaluated. However, Salesforce at this point can beat Pipedrive with a wide margin. First of all, Salesforce is the most popular CRM in the world. Even Facebook and Google ads have native integrations with Salesforce. Something you won’t find with Pipedrive. Integration of mail and calendar is amazing with Salesforce. Especially after the recent update of Einstein Activity Capture. You could produce reporting on activities made by each user. Something you won’t find in Pipedrive.

Things become more interesting when it comes to custom integrations. Say you have an ERP system in the company. Navision from Microsoft or the one from SAP. Most likely, there is critical data you would want to include in CRM. Remember, Pipedrive doesn’t have the ability to add custom objects. This is where custom objects will become game-changer. Forget integrating complicated product catalogs with price rules and custom logic. Don’t even think about order management in Pipedrive. Simply put, Pipedrive was never designed for that.

Scalability of Salesforce vs Pipedrive

I have always wondered what the word “Scalability” means. Every single person I ever spoke to gave me a different definition. For me, scalability is the possibility to add functionality as requirements grow. If a company grows from ten employees to fifty. Requirements change. If a company adds new products to its product line. Sales process changes and requirements evolve. Every time something changes, requirements keep pace. So scalability is similar to being future-proof (but not the same, I’ll talk about it later).

If we compare Salesforce vs Pipedrive, I would say Salesforce is the winner here. But again, do not rush with conclusions. Read till the end. I will explain the important points later. Salesforce, thanks to its architecture, allows you to pivot your process very quickly. If you invest sufficient time in educating yourself, you would be able to set up a very complicated process with zero coding. Recently Salesforce has updated its tool called Flow. Honestly, for me, it is a huge deal breaker. Automation became truly no coding.

Automation in Salesforce vs Pipedrive

Well, automation is an extremely broad concept. For me, automation is when you can

• Reduce time spent on data entry
• Remove manual work and hopefully replace employee
• Do things you would never remember to do. Like renewing contracts etc.

That being said, Salesforce is an indisputable leader here. There is a single tool, in Salesforce, which could be the reason I would never have tried other systems. If this tool was present in Salesforce back in 2009, when I started my career, I might have never considered anything else. This tool is called Flow.

Salesforce Flow is a visual coding tool, which is capable of doing complicated logic. The only flaw it has is technical complexity. You don’t have to know how to code, but you will have to learn the logic of coding. Logical thinking and the ability to translate the business language to algorithms is something not everyone could manage. I can understand that and this is a deal-breaker for me. And might not be for you, if you never faced this kind of task.

For experienced users, like myself, Flow is a tool that removes the necessity for 3 (!!!) employees in our company. In particular:

• We do not bill our customers manually. It’s automated via Flow.
• We do not do our books manually. It’s semi-manual thanks to billing automation.
• We do not produce manual reports for customers. It’s automated.
• We assign all our tasks for support automatically. Nobody is looking after this, apart from Salesforce.
• Around 100 tiny tasks, which are too small to mention, but would require 1 full time employee.

At the moment of this article, we are 10. Now that’s 30% of the company we have automated. It translates to costs. We will be getting back to this in the cost comparison section. When I start thinking about the value of this automation, Salesforce vs Pipedrive is not a choice for me.

Reporting

Pipedrive has simple built-in reporting functionality. It allows building reports. Just like Salesforce does. Pipedrive seems to be very similar in functionality. At first. But there is still one function, where Salesforce is superior. It is reported with relations. For example, you can’t count the number of tasks per account in Pipedrive. Or you can’t filter Accounts without tasks in Pipedrive.

Salesforce reporting is very similar to excel. It allows complicated formula logic in it. It gives the ability to group fields, count rows, and merge data from different objects into one report. If you invest a bit more time and discover Custom Reporting functionality, you’ll learn how much more powerful Salesforce reporting is compared to Pipedrive.

On the other hand, if you are just starting with CRM systems, Pipedrive is super easy to learn the tool. It has a much shorter learning curve and could give you the benefit of a fully functional system from day one. It’ll give you the time to learn as you go. This is something Salesforce can’t offer.

Future proofness

Similar to scalability, future proofness is about compatibility with change. But in a different context. If we take a look back, salesforce was founded in 1999. And there are customers who remain with Salesforce from the date of foundation. I’m not sure for certain if all of the updates from Salesforce were seamless. We saw the transition from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning editions start in 2014 (or so). The transition was not perfect, but Salesforce has put maximum effort to support legacy solutions.

In other words, Pipedrive does not have such a long track record and only time will show how sustainable and future-proof Pipedrive’s technology is. My past experience tells me that companies like Pipedrive experience exponential growth and tend to make mistakes. Unfortunately, these are customers who will have to pay for that.

Salesforce vs Pipedrive community

It’s hard to compare Salesforce vs Pipedrive in terms of community-scale and quality. Salesforce has 1500 consultancy, implementation, ISV, and other partners across the globe. It has a comprehensive certification system, which filters out low-quality specialists. Salesforce has Trailhead online courses. They cover most, if not all, technical and business aspects of salesforce implementation.

In comparison, Pipedrive has its own Academy. It’s similar to Trailhead, but the quality and quantity of materials are much much lower. On the other hand, you will spend much less time navigating and getting essential knowledge to start your CRM journey.

Costs

I don’t want to jump into a one-to-one price comparison. These two CRM’s share only CRM words in common. Pipedrive and Salesforce are like Alien and Predator. They come from different planets. They have different tasks and goals. But anyway. Let me share my opinion on the pricing.

Salesforce starts at 25$ per user per month. Honestly, the 25$ plan, which is called Essentials, is totally useless. You can’t create custom objects (which is the reason I would want Salesforce for). You can’t get an API connection. And there are only have 5 Flows per whole organization. Simply put, in my opinion, It is Salesforce’s effort to enter the SMB market and “attach” customers to Salesforce. You will be forced to upgrade later anyway. The first plan, which is more or less usable is Professional, which comes at 75$ per user per month. I’ve only had one project in my whole career where this plan was a good fit. And the customer upgraded later anyway. So you will have to start looking at Enterprise and above. Which is 150$ per user per month.

This is not the case with Pipedrive. I’ve tried subscribing to an Essential plan with them. It’s usable. You can track customers, just like you would on other plans. You still have the email inbox feature. But you won’t be able to send emails. And you do have an API for the Essential plan in Pipedrive.

Salesforce rate plans:

• Essential – $ 25
• Professional – $ 75
• Enterprise – $ 150
• Ultimate – $ 300

Pipedrive rate plans:

• Essential – 12.50 €
• Advanced – 24.90 €
• Professional – 49.50 €
• Enterprise – 99.00 €

But let me summarise this with one simple question. If you could save on your employees. Remove the amount of administration. Create a full-fledged information system and save money on future upgrades (migration is twice more expensive when you want to switch between products). If you don’t have to worry about your CRM compatibility with your growing business. Is it worth the money? For me personally – I see much more value with Salesforce.

Conclusions

When I started writing this article, I promised myself to be as objective as possible. Not to act like a Salesforce fanboy and try to find reasons one could decide to choose Pipedrive over Salesforce. After reading an article which I produced, it seems the choice is obviously towards Salesforce. But just as I told you in the beginning. Don’t rush with conclusions.

I found one reason, where I would go with Pipedrive. I would call it short-term business value. If I have to start my business and get a tool that is ready overnight. I would go with Pipedrive. I know it’s a trade-off on many things. But in that scenario – Pipedrive is out of competition. It’s simple, intuitive, and requires little to no knowledge to set up.

Salesforce is a complicated system. If you do not buy expertise from the market (consulting services), chances are you will fail your CRM project. Did you know that 80% of CRMs fail? It’s a fact from Gartner. And Salesforce will never tell you this.

Hopefully, this article was useful for you. If you liked it, please share it on your LinkedIn or Facebook to help spread the word. And don’t forget that you can always ask us about Salesforce and get competent advice. I’m not only writing these posts, I’m a full-time Salesforce Consultant.

I wish you to make a choice which is right for you. Have a great day/night, whatever it is now when you are reading this.

Cheers.