Zoho vs Pipedrive Compared 2023: Is Zoho or Pipedrive Best?
Time for another heavy-hitting showdown between two CRM and sales process management systems: Zoho vs Pipedrive.
While both of these are smart, simple and lightweight alternatives to bigger business SaaS solutions like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, or even Salesforce or HubSpot, which is the best of the two?
In this article we’ll tackle their features, prices, pros and cons so you can make a final decision once you’re done reading.
What is the difference between Zoho and Pipedrive?
The main difference between Pipedrive and Zoho is that Pipedrive is primarily a sales and email software with some basic CRM tools, while Zoho is a suite of apps, and Zoho CRM is their customer relationship management app that works alongside their many sales, marketing, and support packages.
When reading a Zoho CRM review, you realize there is a reason this is one of the most popular web-based CRM and sales software systems. It gets praise for its design, its intuitive features, and its wide range of functionality, especially when it comes to working alongside other Zoho tools in everything from workflow builders, and project management to BI analytics.
In a similar vein, your typical Pipedrive CRM review also compliments its ease of use and sleek look and feel. The web-based CRM tools are often user-friendly and highly effective, like their email marketing automation segmentation or their workflow builder.
Zoho vs Pipedrive comparison chart
Here’s a basic overview table for Zoho CRM vs Pipedrive:
Comparison | Zoho CRM | Pipedrive CRM | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Pricing | 6 plans, starting at $14 per user per month billed annually | 5 plans, starting at $14.90 per user per month billed annually | |
Free version? | Yes | No | |
Customer support | 3 | 4 | |
Ease of use | 4 | 5 | |
CRM software | 4 | 5 | |
Marketing automation | 5 | 4 | |
Sales features | 4 | 4 | Tie |
Customer support tools | 4 | 2 | |
Templates | 3 | 3 | Tie |
Integrations and API | 3 | 4 | |
Mobile apps | 5 | 3 | |
Overall winner | 35 | 34 |
Zoho vs Pipedrive Pricing
Zoho CRM has 4 standard CRM plans from $14, $23, $40 and $52 per user per month billed annually, as well as 2 bundle plans that include more custom marketing, sales and customer service apps for $28 for 2 users per month billed annually, and $57 per user per month billed annually. Pipedrive has similar pricing, with 5 plans that are $14.90, $27.90, $49.90, $64.90 and $99, all per user for an annually-paid subscription. Pipedrive also offers add-ons at a per company per month billed annual rate.
Winner: Zoho CRM
Pricing is pretty similar between the two platforms, but Zoho’s bundles end up offering more value per dollar than Pipedrive’s add-on options.
Pipedrive vs Zoho Free versions
Pipedrive does not seem to offer a free version of their CRM system. Zoho, on the other hand, does offer a free plan. This is good for 3 users, and it gets you things like sales force automation tools and a basic CRM set of features.
Winner: Zoho CRM
Clear winner here, with Zoho CRM being the only one of the two that has a free basic CRM package.
Zoho vs Pipedrive Customer support
Beginning with Pipedrive, you get 24/7 live chat support on all of their plans. There is an online help center, and their in-app support is available in 22 languages. Advanced paid plans get phone support and an implementation program. Zoho, on the other hand, is mostly about community forums, FAQs, tutorials and tips.
Winner: Pipedrive
Especially at the cheaper end of the plans, you get more customer service options with Pipedrive than with Zoho.
Pipedrive vs Zoho Ease of use
This category is a tight race. It is clear that both Pipedrive and Zoho put a lot of effort into making user-friendly dashboards and interfaces, with intuitive tools and features.
Winner: Pipedrive
After painstakingly comparing both, our team of expert reviewers have just barely decided that Pipedrive will be a tad simpler than Zoho for most people.
Zoho vs Pipedrive features & functionality
In the following part, we will look at some of the standard tools of a CRM system, and compare them between Zoho and Pipedrive.
CRM software
Both Pipedrive and Zoho CRM are great for customer relationship management. Pipedrive has nice email integration, giving you two-way sync email integration to use with your Gmail and Outlook for keeping in touch with contacts. Zoho specializes in sorting contacts and tracking activities.
Winner: Pipedrive
Pipedrive can really go head to head with most CRM systems out there, like HubSpot or Salesforce, although Zoho CRM is not far behind when it comes to CRM solutions for small business.
Marketing automation
Zoho CRM has some decent marketing tools like campaign builders, mass emails, an email opt-out option and email scheduling. You get some similar tools with Pipedrive, like custom fields, but the better marketing automation tools are mostly in the enterprise plan.
Winner: Zoho CRM
For the best CRM, you just get more good basic marketing automation features with Zoho CRM’s main plans as opposed to Pipedrive’s expensive pricing plans.
Sales features
For sales pipeline management tools, Zoho CRM helps salespeople organize leads, deals, and company-wide accounts. There is good sales forecasting too, and sales scoring rules. Pipedrive has custom pipeline management, product catalogs and deal rotting features, to name a few.
Winner: Tie
Sales teams using Zoho will love their sales pipeline management, but otherwise salespeople with Pipedrive are very happy with their lead and deal management.
Customer support tools
For customer support, Pipedrive lets you track communication in many useful ways. However, Zoho CRM has more basic customer service features, like cases, solutions, web-to-case forms and more, though these are for the enterprise pricing plans.
Winner: Zoho CRM
If you are willing to get an enterprise Zoho CRM package, you will have enough decent customer support tools to get by.
Templates
Zoho CRM has many templates as part of its email builder toolkit. It’s easy to use and they are customizable, which makes them valuable for market segmentation. Most templates have social media icons for creating links too. Pipedrive also has an email template library as part of their email builder that also does segmentation.
Winner: Tie
Both have solid email builders, a good variety of nice-looking templates, and useful tools like segmentation.
Integrations and API
Pipedrive has an open API for devs to play around with or to create custom integrations with things like Microsoft Dynamics, but there are many native Pipedrive integrations for apps like ActiveCampaign, Zapier, Google Drive and Google Calendar or even Kanban tools like Trello. Likewise, Zoho integrates with apps like SAP Business One or Oracle’s NetSuite.
Winner: Pipedrive
Pipedrive’s API is more inviting than Zoho’s, and you get an easier integration database to navigate, specifically for things like email integration.
Mobile apps
You can use either of these sales CRM solutions with a mobile app for iOS or Android. An artificial intelligence-based analytics tool on Zoho’s mobile app really streamlines the sales process for salespeople on the go. Though Pipedrive’s mobile app may take less time to master.
Winner: Zoho CRM
While Pipedrive’s mobile app is a bit simpler, once you get the hang of it, Zoho CRM’s mobile app has more functionality.
Which is better, Zoho or Pipedrive? Our takeaways
So this Zoho CRM vs Pipedrive CRM is obviously so close we hate to call either a winner, though for the sake of clarity, Zoho beats Pipedrive by a hair’s breadth. Still, you might want something more specific, like ActiveCampaign for marketing purposes, Salesforce for sales force automation, or HubSpot for inbound marketing.
However, don’t balk at the possibility of limiting your salespeople to just one of either Pipedrive CRM vs Zoho CRM. Both are true contenders for the best customer relationship management software, top sales pipeline management software, and great marketing automation platforms out there.
