Pipedrive CRM Review 2025

If you’re looking for a small business CRM, you’ve probably heard about Pipedrive many times.

There are a few good reasons for this. First of all, it’s one of the most well-known sales CRMs in the world. Besides, it is relatively affordable, has a large marketplace, and a modern interface.

However, Pipedrive is not the only small business CRM on the market. So, you may wonder if this is the right choice for you.

We thoroughly tested Pipedrive to see how it works for small businesses.

Overview of Pipedrive CRM for Small Business

Pipedrive CRM was designed to help salespersons in small and medium-sized businesses do what they do best, better—sell. In pursuit of this goal, this CRM offers a host of useful functionalities.

First, it allows you to visualize your sales pipeline in a Kanban board and move opportunities forward using drag-and-drop functionality. Pipedrive lets you organize follow-ups in one place, so you can stay on top of every sales opportunity.

There’s also a dashboard that gives you a visual overview of your sales cycles in real time. And let’s not forget the marketplace where you can integrate with 500+ other business apps.

However, this small business software is not a budget-friendly CRM. On the lowest plan, functionalities like two-way email sync, phone support, and a host of others are not available. You’ll need to subscribe to higher plans or pay for additional add-ons.

Moreover, Pipedrive is a deal-focused CRM. This means that it might not be a perfect fit for small businesses in consulting or professional services industries that rely more on contact management rather than deal management.

That’s the summary of Pipedrive CRM, but it might not be enough for you to decide whether this software is right for you. That’s why below, we included more details on what it’s like to use Pipedrive CRM for small businesses.

Pipedrive Pros and Cons

As one of the most comprehensive CRM solutions on the market, Pipedrive has a few pros and cons.

Key CRM Features of Pipedrive

Pipedrive has a wide range of tools, but the question is—does it have the ones you actually need?

To help you answer that question, we’ve put together a table overview that you can quickly glance through to spot the CRM features you need.

Whether you:

• Only need the very core features
• Require niche integrations
• Do multi-channel outreach
• Need simple automation
• Are looking for a budget-friendly CRM

…this breakdown will help you see exactly what Pipedrive offers for $14 a month.

• Core Features

  • Mobile app
    ✅ Android and iOS
  • Contact management
    ✅
  • Follow-up tracking

    

    As a small business looking to close more sales, you need to stay on top each opportunity, so you don’t lose them. Follow-up tracking is what makes that happen.
    ✅
  • Pipelines
    ✅ Unlimited
  • Duplicate management
    ✅

• Centralization Tools

  • Centralized workspace

    

    A centralized workspace is an essential small business CRM feature that lets you manage your whole business on just one page.
    ⚠️ Limited
  • Dashboard
    ✅
  • Number of integrations
    500+

• Communication Tools

  • Two-way email sync
    ⚠️ Higher plans only
  • Click-to-call options
    ✅
  • Multi-channel inbox

    

    To make communications faster and easier, a multi-channel inbox stores messages you receive from various channels in one place.
    ⚠️ Legacy users only
  • Meeting scheduling
    ⚠️ Higher plans only

• Simple Automation

  • CRM workflows
    ⚠️ Higher plans only
  • Sales email sequences
    ⚠️ Higher plans only
  • Free web forms
    ❌ Paid add-on
  • Browser extension for auto lead capture
    ❌

• Customer Support

  • Email support
    ✅
  • Live chat
    ⚠️ Higher plans only
  • Phone support
    ⚠️ Higher plans only

• Pricing

  • Starting price
    $14 per seat/month
  • Free trial
    ✅ 14 days
  • Free plan
    ❌
  • Next paid plan
    ⚠️ Expensive ($39 per seat/month)

Below, let’s dive deeper into the key features.

Contact Management

If you’re used to sales CRMs, Pipedrive’s interface is quite intuitive, especially when it comes to managing contacts.

In a few clicks, you can add new ‘persons’ to your database and organize them on your list of ‘people’. Click on a person to see and handle all their information and connected deals.

You can also attach tasks to them, make calls, leave notes, share documents, create deals, record all activities, and keep an email history—all on one page.

But that’s not all. On the main contact page:

• You can import new contacts with ease
• Exporting contacts to another CRM is simple
• You can also take care of duplicate records

Keep in mind: Pipedrive also has a module for managing leads. Yes, this CRM differentiates between contacts and leads, and equates leads to deals. This can be confusing to small businesses that haven’t used sales CRMs before or whose processes don’t require this distinction.

Follow-up Tracking

The follow-up tracking module sits in the Feed subtab under the Pulse tab. The Feed organizes all follow-up activities — tasks linked to deals — in one place, sorted by the exact date and time they’re due.

Each follow-up appears as a card showing the task, the associated contact’s details (and organization, if applicable), including the deal’s name, stage, and value.

Once you mark a follow-up activity as done, Pipedrive asks if you’d like to set up the next one right away — though you can always skip it if you want.

Pipedrive’s Feed is only somewhat similar to the Action Stream.

Aspect	Action Stream	Pulse
Structure	Centers around contacts	Centers around deals
Aim	Works as a follow-up list	Works as a to-do list
Interface	Uses color codes for quicker prioritization	No color codes

In the Action Stream, all sales actions are attached to a contact (or lead). In Pipedrive’s Pulse, however, if you forget to add tasks to deals, those deals won’t appear on your follow-up list, and you can easily lose the opportunity.

On the bright side, though, the Feed does help you pinpoint deals that have no activity linked to them.

Pipeline Management

Pipedrive is a pipeline-centric CRM. That’s why the first thing you’ll see when you open the software is your pipeline.

It’s also why you can create an unlimited number of sales pipelines, add hundreds of thousands of deals, and visualize them in a list or a Kanban board. The Kanban board displays the basic details of each deal, indicates their next follow-up activity (if any), and arranges them according to their sales stages.

However, Pipedrive CRM’s pipeline functionality does have limits. For one, you can only create up to 2,500 deals per purchased user seat (the limits are higher on the upper plans). Likewise, you can only have a total of 300,000 active deals and leads in your organization (i.e., the whole CRM account).

That said, these limits won’t be a problem if your business works only on a handful of deals per year.

Deal Management

As a CRM that focuses more on deals than on contacts, Pipedrive lets you manage quite a lot of things for each deal.

You can edit a deal’s basic details, see associated follow-ups, add new tasks, schedule calls, leave notes for team members (‘@’), attach files, create invoices, keep a history of everything, and update the deal’s stage.

You can even keep a log of emails related to that deal.

Besides, in Pipedrive, you can convert leads to deals (and vice versa). While this setup might not be ideal for all small businesses, if you have deal-focused processes, you might appreciate this functionality.

Email Sync

Pipedrive CRM doesn’t offer full email sync on the lowest plan, but it does have a smart BCC functionality.

Pipedrive gives you an email address (usually ending with @pipedrivemail.com). You can then BCC or forward messages from your external email provider to that Pipedrive email address. These messages will appear in your email history on the CRM.

It’s a manual process, so it can get annoying and repetitive. It may also be prone to error. You’re better off with real two-way email sync, but that’s only available on higher plans that cost more than 2x the Lite plan (as of August 2025).

Moreover, it syncs all emails, not just those related to contacts in your CRM. That means personal emails will appear, as well, leaving your inbox cluttered and disorganized.

Collaboration

You can add team members to Pipedrive CRM and collaborate seamlessly. Put them in charge of specific contacts or deals, assign tasks to them, and leave them notes with the “@” function.

You can share access to reports and dashboards, so everyone’s on the same page about the team’s goals and progress. Pipedrive also lets you set up permissions for each user.

Duplicate Management

There’s a feature for finding and merging duplicate records on Pipedrive. Just head to the ‘Merge Duplicates’ page to detect and merge duplicate entries.

Besides just fixing the duplicate problem, Pipedrive actively prevents it. If you try to add a contact with the same name as someone already in your database, Pipedrive flags it immediately and points you to the existing record.

Centralized Workspace

Pipedrive CRM provides a partially centralized workspace where salespeople can carry on their work without having to switch between multiple pages.

Here’s how it works…

Locate the centralized workspace in the Pulse→Feed→Follow-ups tab. The Feed presents all follow-up activities as cards and organizes them by order of urgency. That’s where your work starts.

Clicking a card opens up a side panel where you can view and manage:

• The deal associated with the follow-up.
• The contact(s) or organization(s) connected to the follow-up.
• That follow-up activity, in and of itself.

When you complete one follow-up activity and mark it as done, Pipedrive automatically prompts you to create a new one (though you can refuse to).

In short, Pipedrive’s central workspace lets you access all the data and context you need to move sales opportunities forward—all from one place.

Dashboard and Reporting

Pipedrive offers valuable reporting features. On the Insights tab, you’ll find a dashboard that uses visual aids to give you an overview of your follow-up activities, deals, pipeline health, and revenue.

This is a default dashboard, though. You can’t create a custom dashboard unless you’re on the Premium or Ultimate plans.

However, even on the Lite plan, you can build various kinds of reports, set sales goals, and use the built-in AI assistant to generate all sorts of reports.

Automations

You can set up actions that take place based on certain conditions. These conditions can be either specific events (like a deal added to the pipeline) or time-based triggers (like after a certain amount of time has passed or when it’s a particular date).

To find the automations module, click on the ellipses (3 dots) on the main navigation menu and select “Automations”. There, you can build workflows — from scratch or templates — to automatically carry out CRM actions, add activities and deals, send emails, run campaigns, and send Slack messages.

You can also create sequences for each deal (maximum of 100 deals per sequence), auto-assign deals to team members, and write sales emails with AI. And if you want to capture prospects automatically, you can use web forms and the Chatbot in the LeadBooster tab.

Integrations

Pipedrive natively integrates with your Google, Outlook, and Office 365 accounts to sync your calendar and contacts. There’s also a Chrome extension that lets you use Pipedrive from inside your Gmail.

But that’s as far as the native integrations go. For more, you’ll have to check out Pipedrive’s Marketplace. There, you’ll find 500+ business apps you can integrate with in one click.

Mobile App

Pipedrive has a mobile app available for iOS and Android devices. Even without an internet connection, the app lets you manage contacts, deals, and activities on the go.

When you have an incoming call from someone in your database, the app shows you the caller ID and automatically logs the call.

The Pipedrive app also features a map view for locating nearby contacts and or deals. However, it has no native route planning feature to help you with sales trips. What’s more, you can’t scan business cards on the iOS variant of the app.

Ease of Use

Pipedrive has a clean design, the color scheme doesn’t cause any distractions, and the on-screen texts are bold and visible.

This CRM software also comes with drag-and-drop functionality and one-click navigation that speeds things up a bit.

However, it houses a lot of tabs and subtabs, each with even more sections within them. Having to work with this many layers can be overwhelming, especially for small businesses new to CRM software.

Another problem is that some vital features are buried under a maze of tabs, which makes them harder to find and access. For example, your follow-up section is inside the Feed subtab, located under the larger “Pulse” tab.

The names of these tabs can be confusing for a CRM newbie who’s trying to figure things out. The best small business CRMs just use very simple names for their menus, so everyone can navigate around without taking a course.

Nevertheless, Pipedrive offers a free, personalized onboarding service on all plans to help you get started. On G2, many users say that it has a bit of a learning curve, but it gets easier afterward.

Customer Support

The level of customer support you get with Pipedrive depends on how much you can pay.

That’s why, on the lowest plan, you only have the online help center, Chatbot, and email support to rely on. If you want live chat and phone support, you’ll need to opt for the upper plans.

This tiered support approach might not work well for a lot of small businesses that are very new to CRMs and need more guidance and attention, regardless of how much they’re willing to shell out for a subscription.

Pipedrive Pricing Structure

To choose the right small business CRM, you also need to understand its pricing structure.

Pipedrive offers both monthly and annual billing options. If you pay annually, you typically get a discount compared to paying month-to-month.

Pipedrive’s pricing is usually calculated per user per month. This means if you have 3 people who need access to the CRM and the plan costs $14 per user per month, you’ll pay $42 per month total (or less if you choose annual billing). As your team grows, your costs will increase proportionally.

When reviewing a CRM tool’s pricing, it’s also important to pay attention to any add-ons or extra fees (for example, tax charges). Pipedrive has paid add-ons for lead management, projects, documents, and email marketing.

How Much Does Pipedrive Cost?

The lowest plan (Lite) is around $14 per user/month, which is within the average range on the market.

This plan has the core basics of a small CRM, except for email sync. It also lacks several other handy features, such as workflow automations, email sequences, live chat, and phone support.

As such, if you need more functionality, you’ll have to upgrade to the next plan (Growth), which costs more than 2x the lowest plan, and is still limited:

• Only 5,000 deals per seat
• No 24/7 live chat
• No phone support
• No more than 50 automations
• No auto deal assignment.

With multiple add-ons and higher-tier plans, Pipedrive CRM can become expensive quickly, potentially pushing costs well beyond the $10-20 per user/month range that’s ideal for many small businesses.

Is Pipedrive CRM Pricing Affordable for Small Businesses?

Pipedrive’s pricing falls within the acceptable range for small businesses at the entry level, but it can become expensive if your business model is not heavily focused on sales.

The Lite plan at $14 per user/month seems reasonable, but it’s missing critical features like full email sync that most small businesses need. This forces you to upgrade to a higher plan.

What’s more, some features are bundled together in add-ons. For example, if you want to use web forms, you have to subscribe to the LeadBooster add-on, which costs around $32.5 per month and includes other features besides Web Forms. As such, you end up paying more for features you don’t need rather than getting essential ones in every pricing plan.

For small businesses on tight budgets, small sales teams, or low-margin products, this pricing structure can quickly become expensive.

If you’re not looking to burn a hole through your wallet, you might need to start considering some of the most affordable CRMs for small businesses.

Final Verdict: Is Pipedrive the Best CRM for Small Businesses?

Pipedrive CRM excels at deal management and pipeline visualization, making it a solid choice for sales-focused small and medium-sized businesses that prioritize deal tracking over lead nurturing.

The drag-and-drop Kanban interface and comprehensive deal management capabilities are genuinely helpful for businesses that close deals through structured sales processes.

However, Pipedrive falls short on several key criteria for small business CRMs. The complex navigation structure with multiple tabs and subtabs creates unnecessary friction, especially for beginners.

More importantly, the pricing structure forces you to pay more than double for essential features like email sync, and the tiered support system discriminates against users on lower plans.

Pipedrive CRM is adequate for small businesses with dedicated sales teams that need robust deal pipeline management and don’t mind a steeper learning curve.

However, if you’re looking for a simple CRM with affordable email sync or want equal customer support regardless of your budget, Pipedrive might not be the right fit for you.

According to our criteria (Value, Impact, and Speed), Pipedrive’s fit for small businesses is Low.

Best Alternative for Pipedrive CRM

If you’re not sure that Pipedrive is the right CRM for your small business, you can check out OnePageCRM.

Value: High
Impact: High
Speed: High
Pricing starts from: $9.95

Contrary to Pipedrive, OnePageCRM is a contact-centric CRM, which offers a wide range of features not only for sales but also for relationship building and follow-up tracking.

It has a much simpler interface and lower prices, which make it a top choice for small businesses in over 80 countries around the world.