Zoho or Pipedrive: Which CRM Platform is the Best for Your Business?

Irrespective of whether you are running a small, medium or large-scale business, managing customer relationships is paramount. Therefore, choosing the right CRM platforms is quite essential for your business growth. But, the biggest dilemma is to pick the ideal CRM platform for the purpose.

In the crowd of several options, Zoho and Pipedrive hold good reputations as top CRM platforms in the market. They both have powerful features and capabilities, which makes it even more confusing for entrepreneurs to hire either a Pipedrive or Zoho CRM developer.

If you are one of such business owners who is seeking clarity for choosing between Pipedrive or Zoho development services for your CRM, this article will help you with a detailed comparison between the two.

So, read along till the end to get an insight into the efficacies of both Pipedrive and Zoho CRM platforms, and finally, decide on one!

What’s the General Overview of Zoho CRM and Pipedrive?

Before getting along with the differences between Zoho CRM and Pipedrive CRM, you must have a general understanding of both of these platforms.

Zoho CRM

Seeking Zoho development services for your CRM needs will provide you with impeccable features across all areas of running a business, such as sales, customer support, marketing and team management. This tool will also provide you with good help in designing the business processes. 

Pipedrive CRM

Pipedrive is also a popular CRM solution that is built by dedicated salespeople to tackle major sales challenges with utmost efficiency. Your sales team will be empowered with outstanding features for managing your sales pipelines at all stages.

How Does Zoho and Pipedrive CRM Compare to One Another?

One of the evident differences between Zoho CRM and Pipedrive CRM is with respect to the availability of tools. Pipedrive is accountable as a simple sales & email tool with some standard CRM tools. On the other hand, Zoho is a humongous suite of apps with CRM as one of them, which works well with diverse support, marketing or sales packages.

But this isn’t probably enough to help you decide on whether to hire a Pipedrive or Zoho CRM developer. Therefore, here are some of the ways in which Zoho CRM compares to Pipedrive CRM based on different factors:

1. Pricing

If you are a small business owner, pricing is quite important for you to consider while choosing between these two CRM platforms. For you to know, Zoho comes with 4 plans for its CRM tool, which ranges from $14 to $52 per month.

Not just that, but there are a couple of bundle plans as well, which offer more custom marketing, customer support and sales apps for just $28 per month for two users.

On the other hand, Pipedrive also has nearly the same pricing, ranging from $14.90 to $99, for 5 different plans. Even though the pricing is nearly the same, the features offered by Zoho CRM are more than what Pipedrive has to offer.

2. Free Versions

Pipedrive doesn’t have any free version with its CRM tool for your business. It means you will have to directly make the purchase of your desired plan to avail the services of the tool.

On the other hand, by seeking Zoho CRM development, you will be able to attain a free plan and use the platform features before you decide to buy it.

The free plan is available for three users to try at once, and you get to use the automation tools and other such basic features. This way, Zoho CRM offers you a better convenience for testing, analyzing and then deciding on the purchase.

3. Customer Support

Pipedrive lets you avail of its 24/7 customer support services through live chat, which is made available with all of its plans. Not only that, but they also have an online ‘Help’ center and in-app support features available in different languages.

The high-end paid plans also include phone support services as well! On the other hand, upon seeking Zoho development, you will be able to access support only from the in-app tutorial, tips and FAQs.

Following that, Zoho also has a big community with diverse forum platforms and an explainable AI assistant named Zia, for you to get adequate and responsive support on demand.

4. Usability

Both Zoho as well as Pipedrive are strong in terms of their platform user-friendliness. They both have amazing dashboards with all the information under one roof.

The navigation and overall interface are quite easy to use, as they are crafted with intuitive features or tools. But, as Zoho is a big and reputed platform, loaded with a lot of features, it might be a bit difficult for the complete rookies to be able to use it instantly.

In this aspect of comparison, Pipedrive comes with limited features, which might feel less complex for new business owners to use.

5. Marketing Automation Capability

If you hire Zoho developer to integrate the platform’s CRM tool, your team will be provided with mass emails, campaign builders, email scheduling and other such features.

You will be able to acquire some similar tools with the Pipedrive as well. But, as far as marketing automation is concerned, Zoho CRM is the clear winner!

It is because Zoho CRM offers its marketing automation capabilities with its mainstream plans, whereas Pipedrive offers the same for just its expensive or enterprise-level plans.

6. Sales Proficiency

In terms of sales proficiency, it is quite difficult to specify one tool as better than the other. It is because Pipedrive is made specifically to empower the sales workflow, whereas Zoho CRM has dedicated features for organizing leads, company accounts and deals.

Zoho CRM supports your team members in forecasting the sales rate and specifying the scoring rules for it. On the other hand, Pipedrive offers you features for custom pipeline management.

In short, both Zoho and Pipedrive are proficient in terms of offering sales management proficiency. Therefore, you can choose either of them as far as your sales tracking is concerned.

7. Integrations

Pipedrive comes with an open API for the developers to create and integrate custom integrations with the CRM system. But, the platform also supports native integrations such as with Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc.

Zoho CRM, on the other hand, is also proficient in terms of integrating with third-party business solutions. For instance, you can seek Zoho CRM Quickbooks integration, Google Sheet integration, Microsoft 365 Integration, etc.

Not just that, but Zoho has also launched its Creator platform for low-code app development. It means you can now develop customer apps and integrate them into your CRM system.

Thus, both Zoho as well as Pipedrive are proficient with respect to supporting integrations.

8. Email Templates

You can hire a Zoho developer to help you explore the best CRM templates of the platform, which are available as part of the email-building kit. These templates are quite easy for you to use and customize, which supports market segmentation.

Most of the templates also come with social media icons for embedding links to the email content pieces. Pipedrive on the other hand, also has a library of email templates, which assists you with customer segmentation.

Both of these CRM platforms have the best email builders with outstanding templates to count on. Therefore, you can opt for either of them, depending on the template library that interests you.

9. Mobile Application

Upon integrating Zoho CRM, you are free to access its features and functionalities through its mobile application, which you can use on both Android and iOS devices.

You can also avail the help of Zia, who is Zoho’s explainable AI assistant, right from the mobile app. This way, staying ahead with the sales insight will be easier for your team.

Pipedrive also has a mobile application, but the control features in it are limited, which makes Zoho the winner in this comparison factor. You just need to spend a little time learning how to use the Zoho CRM mobile app, and you can then master the use of it, irrespective of the location or time.

Final Verdict

Now that you have the comparison factors elaborated in brief, you might have already made a decision on whether to go with Zoho or Pipedrive as your CRM platform. Both platforms are equally productive for you to use as your CRM system. But, if you compare it with tight parameters, Zoho proves itself to be an absolute winner.

If you are in search of high-end functionality, with not much consideration about user experience, you must hire a Zoho CRM developer for the purpose. It’s because you get generative AI and explainable AI features with the platform for you to use, even with beginner plans.

Moreover, if you want to acquire all the features at a nominal price, Zoho CRM is still a better option than Pipedrive. But, if you are in search of a polished interface to streamline the day-to-day sales, Pipedrive might be a better consideration.

Pipedrive does offer sophisticated CRM features, but it can’t match the potential of Zoho or its AI proficiencies.