⚡ Quick Verdict:
- Pricing: Pipedrive starts at $14/user/month. Salesmate starts at $23/user/month.
- Best for: Pipedrive for visual pipeline management and deal management. Salesmate for teams that want calling, SMS and a team inbox in one place.
- Key difference: Pipedrive lists over 400 native integrations and up to 25 custom reports. Salesmate caps dashboards at 10 reports but bundles multi-channel communication.
- Our pick: Pipedrive, rated 4.3 against Salesmate’s 2.5, wins on price, reporting depth and a cleaner learning curve.
The cheaper CRM here is also the higher rated one.
That does not happen often in customer relationship management.
Pipedrive costs $14 per user each month. Salesmate starts at $23.
But price is the smallest gap between these two sales CRM tools.
One is built around a visual sales pipeline. The other bundles calling, SMS and marketing.
Overview
This Pipedrive vs Salesmate comparison covers pricing, core features and ease of use.
We also break down which sales team each tool actually fits.
When you compare Pipedrive with Salesmate, three things separate them.
Our writers spent hands-on time with both platforms.
Those notes appear in the “What Our Team Noticed” sections below.
Everything else comes from published pricing pages, documentation and G2 reviews.
What is Pipedrive?
Pipedrive is a sales CRM built around one visual sales pipeline.
You drag and drop deals from one deal stage to the next.
It is used by hundreds of sales teams worldwide.
Pipedrive focuses on moving deals through the pipeline efficiently.
The user interface is designed to cut distractions and keep reps on sales activities.
Most small businesses pick it for its user-friendly design.
🏆 Winner: Pipedrive
Pipedrive turns your sales process into a board you can actually read. New reps understand it on day one.
Pipedrive Pricing
Pipedrive runs four paid tiers. There is no free plan.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | $14/user/month | Solo reps tracking deal progress |
| Growth | $24/user/month | Small teams adding automation features |
| Premium | $49/user/month | Teams needing custom reports and forecasting |
| Ultimate | $69/user/month | Larger teams wanting extensive customization |
Pricing verified September 2026.
Free trial: 14 days on any plan, no credit card required at signup.
Money-back guarantee: No standard refund window. Cancel before renewal to avoid the next charge.
📌 Note: Several Pipedrive extras are sold separately. Web Visitors, Projects and Campaigns are add-ons, not included in the base price. Budget for them if you need lead generation from web visitors.
⚠️ Pricing conflict flagged: Some sources list Pipedrive’s Essential plan at $14, Advanced at $29, Professional at $49 and Enterprise at $99. Our CSV records the current tiers as Lite, Growth, Premium and Ultimate. We use the CSV figures throughout this article. Third-party sources also list Salesmate’s entry tier at $12; our CSV shows Basic at $23.
Key Benefits of Pipedrive
Here is what makes Pipedrive worth a look:
- Visual pipeline management: Deals sit as cards you move between stages. You can spot idle deals and identify bottlenecks in seconds.
- Low onboarding friction: Pipedrive loads sample data and views during setup. New reps see how the sales process works before importing real records.
- Deeper reporting: Custom dashboards hold up to 25 reports and goals. That is more than double what Salesmate allows.
- 400+ native integrations: The marketplace connects Pipedrive to email, calendars and project management tools without middleware.
- Create multiple pipelines: Run separate pipelines for new business, renewals and partners. Each gets its own stages and custom fields.
- Support and community: Live chat and email support sit alongside webinars, guides and an active user forum.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer signed up for Pipedrive and ran a small deal board for several days. Here is what stood out from that hands-on time:
Pipedrive Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Starts at $14 per user per month, cheaper than Salesmate’s entry tier
- Custom dashboards hold up to 25 reports and goals
- Over 400 native integrations in the marketplace
- Sample data during setup shortens the learning curve
- Live chat and email support with an active user forum
❌ Cons
- No built-in calling or SMS, so you need third-party apps
- Several core features are sold as paid add-ons
- Workflow automation is capable for basic tasks but limited for multi-channel sequences
- G2 rates its customer support 8.3, below Salesmate’s 8.9
What is Salesmate?
Salesmate is a CRM built for growing small and medium sized businesses.
It puts sales and marketing on one platform.
The layout resembles a spreadsheet packed with customer information.
That feels familiar to some people and overwhelming to others.
Salesmate is designed to boost productivity for sales teams that live on the phone.
Voice calls, SMS and a shared team inbox come with the product.
Runner Up: Salesmate
Salesmate bundles calling, SMS and a team inbox into the CRM. Good fit for phone-heavy teams that hate juggling tools.
Salesmate Pricing
Salesmate runs three paid tiers. Advanced automation costs extra.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $23/user/month | Small teams starting with contact management |
| Pro | $39/user/month | Teams needing email campaigns and custom fields |
| Business | $63/user/month | Growing SMEs wanting deeper sales automation |
Pricing verified September 2026.
Free trial: 15 days across all plans, no credit card needed to start.
Money-back guarantee: No published refund policy. Test the trial fully before you commit annually.
📌 Note: Salesmate prices by feature set rather than by seat count alone. Priority support is reserved for custom plan subscribers. The Automation Journeys module is a paid add-on, not a base feature.
⚠️ Warning: Calling and SMS run on credits you buy separately. A phone-heavy sales team can push the real monthly cost well past the sticker price.
Key Benefits of Salesmate
Here is where Salesmate earns its keep:
- Multi-channel communication: Voice calls, SMS and a shared team inbox live inside the CRM. Pipedrive needs third-party apps for the same job.
- Extensive customization: Salesmate supports more flexible custom field types than Pipedrive. Customization options run deeper, and advanced workflow designs are possible without code.
- Automation Journeys: The add-on builds multi-channel marketing sequences. Email campaigns and follow ups run from one visual builder.
- Lead capture built in: Web forms and chatbots generate leads straight into the CRM without extra tools.
- Rated support: G2 scores Salesmate’s customer support at 8.9, ahead of Pipedrive’s 8.3.
- Wide app reach: Salesmate connects to over 700 apps through third-party connectors.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer set up a Salesmate account and worked through the onboarding walkthroughs. Here is what stood out:
Salesmate Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Built-in voice calls, SMS and a shared team inbox
- More flexible custom field types than Pipedrive
- Web forms and chatbots capture leads without add-ons
- G2 support score of 8.9
❌ Cons
- Steeper learning curve than Pipedrive, with more upfront setup
- Dashboards cap at 10 reports
- Advanced automation sits behind a paid add-on
- Smaller user community, and some reviewers report unanswered tickets
Feature Comparison
Both are cloud-based crm systems that automate sales work and track customer interactions. The differences show up once you look past the marketing pages.
The Pipedrive features list leans on pipeline speed. Salesmate leans on communication.
We walk through ten key features below, from contact management to cost.
| Feature | Pipedrive | Salesmate |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $14/user/month | $23/user/month |
| Free Plan | ❌ | ❌ |
| Visual Sales Pipeline | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in Calling & SMS | ❌ | ✅ |
| Reports per Dashboard | Up to 25 | Up to 10 |
| Native Integrations | 400+ | 700+ via third parties |
| Web Forms & Chatbots | Add-on | ✅ |
| Advanced Automation | Included in higher tiers | Paid add-on |
| G2 Support Score | 8.3 | 8.9 |
| Best For | Pipeline-first sales teams | Phone-heavy SMEs |
1. Contact Management
Pipedrive: Contact management is straightforward. Each record shows customer information, linked notes, activities, calls, emails and files in one view. You are never hunting for context before a call.
Salesmate: You get customizable fields and views instead. Contacts can be segmented with different filtering options, and companies are tracked as their own records. The trade-off is more setup before it feels useful.
2. Deal Management and the Visual Sales Pipeline
Pipedrive: This is the core of the product. Drag and drop functionality lets you move deals across stages, and you can create multiple pipelines with custom stages. Rotting indicators flag idle deals so nothing sits untouched, which makes it easy to identify bottlenecks.
Salesmate: You can build multiple pipelines here too, with the same drag-and-drop approach to deal management. Reviewers describe it as less intuitive than Pipedrive’s board. Collaboration on individual deals is stronger, though.
⚠️ Warning: Pipedrive assigns clear deal ownership. Salesmate leans toward shared deals. Pick based on whether your team wants accountability or collaboration.
3. Lead Generation and Web Forms
Pipedrive: Lead generation runs through a separate Leads Inbox plus the Campaigns and Web Visitors add-ons. Web Visitors reveals which companies browsed your site. It works well, but it is a line item on top of your plan.
Salesmate: Web forms ship with the platform. Drop a form on your site and it pushes records into the CRM directly. For teams that generate leads mainly through their website, that is one less bill.
4. Email Marketing and Email Templates
Pipedrive: Email sits inside the sales process. You send and receive from the deal record, and email marketing runs through Campaigns. Tracking and open data feed back into the contact timeline for real customer engagement.
Salesmate: Email templates are a strong point, and the library is easy to organise. Building and sending email campaigns, however, belongs to the Automation Journeys add-on rather than the base plan.
5. Custom Reports and Dashboards
Pipedrive: Custom dashboards hold up to 25 reports and goals. That covers revenue forecasting, activity tracking and conversion rates by deal stage without exporting anything.
Salesmate: Personalised dashboards cap at 10 reports. The charts look sharp and the visual appeal is genuinely better. Neither platform offers unlimited reports, so heavy analysts will still export to a BI tool.
6. Artificial Intelligence and Automation Features
Pipedrive: The AI sales assistant reviews your activity and suggests next steps. Notable AI features include deal-win probability and email drafting. The workflow builder handles follow ups and stage-change triggers well, but sales automation stops short of complex branching.
Salesmate: Chatbots handle first-touch conversations using artificial intelligence, and Automation Journeys supports multi-channel sequences that Pipedrive cannot match. Base-plan workflow automation is thinner than the marketing suggests.
7. Integrations
Pipedrive: Over 400 native integrations sit in the marketplace. Because the connections are first-party, setup usually takes a few clicks and breaks less often.
Salesmate: The headline number is over 700 apps, but most arrive through third-party connectors. It works well with popular email platforms natively. Expect an extra middleware subscription for the long tail.
8. Project Management and Scheduling
Pipedrive: Projects turns a won deal into a delivery board. It is basic project management, not a replacement for a dedicated tool, and it costs extra.
Salesmate: There is no project board. Instead you get a meeting scheduler that hands prospects a booking link tied to your calendar. Different problem, solved well.
9. Documents, Team Inbox and Collaboration
Pipedrive: Documents and templates cover quotes, proposals and e-signatures from inside the deal. Collaboration is lighter, and there is no built-in calling or internal chat.
Salesmate: This is where Salesmate pulls ahead. Internal chat, a shared team inbox and voice calls sit in the same window. Remote sales teams get real value from that.
10. Pricing & Cost
Here are the plans side by side.
| Tier | Pipedrive | Salesmate |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Lite — $14/user/month | Basic — $23/user/month |
| Mid | Growth — $24/user/month | Pro — $39/user/month |
| Upper | Premium — $49/user/month | Business — $63/user/month |
| Top | Ultimate — $69/user/month | ❌ Not offered |
Pipedrive: Every tier undercuts the matching Salesmate plan, and the ladder climbs in smaller steps. The catch is add-ons. Campaigns, Projects and Web Visitors are billed separately, so the sticker price is not the final price.
Salesmate: Pricing is tied to feature sets rather than seat count alone, and base plans include more out of the box. For a five-person team, Basic costs $115 a month against $70 for Pipedrive Lite. Calling credits and Automation Journeys push that further apart.
Different Scenarios
| If You Need… | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest cost per seat | Pipedrive | $9 cheaper at entry tier |
| Calling and SMS in the CRM | Salesmate | No third-party dialler needed |
| Deeper custom reports | Pipedrive | 25 reports versus 10 |
| Multi-channel marketing sequences | Salesmate | Automation Journeys add-on |
| Fastest onboarding | Pipedrive | Sample data and guided setup |
| Native app connections | Pipedrive | 400+ first-party integrations |
💰 Your Budget
Pipedrive is cheaper at every tier, but its add-ons close the gap fast. Price both against the specific features your specific business actually plans to use.
🔌 Your Tech Stack
Already running a dialler, a scheduler and a marketing tool? Pipedrive slots into that stack with native connections. Starting from scratch favours Salesmate’s bundle.
📝 Your Sales Process
If closing deals depends on moving them through clear stages, Pipedrive’s board fits. If it depends on call volume and shared conversations, Salesmate fits.
🎓 Your Experience Level
Salesmate carries a steeper learning curve and expects real onboarding time. Pipedrive’s sample data gets a new rep productive the same afternoon.
🆓 Free Trials and Demos
Neither offers a free plan, so use the trials properly. Import 50 real contacts and run one week of live work before deciding.
🛟 Support Options
Salesmate scores 8.9 on G2 for support against Pipedrive’s 8.3, and reserves priority support for custom plans. Pipedrive counters with a far larger community and forum.
Switching Guide
Already on one of these? Here is what changes.
🔄 Switching from Pipedrive to Salesmate?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- Voice calls and SMS without a third-party dialler
- A shared team inbox and internal chat
- Web forms and chatbots included in the plan
❌ What you’ll lose:
- 15 dashboard report slots, dropping from 25 to 10
- 400+ native integrations and the projects board
- $9 per user per month at the entry tier
📋 How to switch:
- Export contacts, deals and activities from Pipedrive as CSV files
- Start a Salesmate trial and rebuild your pipeline stages first
- Import records, map custom fields, then reconnect your email
🔄 Switching from Salesmate to Pipedrive?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- A cleaner board for tracking deal progress at a glance
- Up to 25 reports per dashboard instead of 10
- Lower per-seat cost and a much larger user community
❌ What you’ll lose:
- In-app calling, SMS and the shared team inbox
- Automation Journeys and its multi-channel sequences
- Free web forms and chatbots, now paid add-ons
📋 How to switch:
- Export contacts, companies and deals from Salesmate
- Open a Pipedrive trial and set up your pipeline stages
- Import the files, then line up a replacement dialler before you cancel
What Our Review Didn’t Cover
This comparison focused on small businesses and mid-sized sales teams. We did not test enterprise deployments, custom API builds or bulk data migrations across thousands of records. Salesmate’s calling quality across international numbers also sits outside what we checked. If you manage 50 or more seats, your priorities will look different from what we covered here.
Final Verdict
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| 💰 Pricing | Pipedrive |
| 🚀 Pipeline Management | Pipedrive |
| 📊 Custom Reports | Pipedrive |
| 📞 Communication Tools | Salesmate |
| 👶 Ease of Use | Pipedrive |
| 🔌 Integrations | Pipedrive |
| 🛟 Support Score | Salesmate |
| 🏆 Overall Winner | Pipedrive |
🏆 WINNER: PIPEDRIVE
Pipedrive wins 5 out of 7 categories.
Best for: visual pipeline management, small businesses, sales teams that want reporting depth without a long setup
These two tools solve different problems. Pipedrive is a sales software built to move deals forward and show you where they stall.
Salesmate is closer to a sales and marketing hub with a phone system attached. That bundle is real value for the right team.
But it costs more per seat, caps your dashboards at 10 reports, and asks for more onboarding time. Our rating reflects that: 4.3 against 2.5.
For most business needs in this bracket, Pipedrive is the safer choice. Pick Salesmate only if built-in calling is non-negotiable.
More of Pipedrive Compared
Here is how Pipedrive holds up against other crm systems people shortlist:
Pipedrive wins on: lower entry cost, a faster path from signup to first deal, less clutter in the daily view
HubSpot wins on: a genuinely usable free tier, deeper content marketing tools, a bigger partner network for agencies
Pipedrive wins on: setup you can finish without a consultant, predictable per-seat pricing, a sales team can adopt it in days
Salesforce wins on: enterprise-scale customisation, territory and forecasting models, an admin talent pool you can actually hire from
Pipedrive wins on: sales-specific defaults out of the box, deal rotting alerts, 400+ native integrations built for revenue teams
Monday CRM wins on: flexible boards that double as project management, cross-department use, stronger visual customisation
Pipedrive wins on: a cleaner pipeline board, more reports per dashboard, a larger third-party app marketplace
Freshsales wins on: a free starting tier, phone and chat included natively, tighter bundling with the wider Freshworks suite
More of Salesmate Compared
Salesmate competes with a different shortlist. Here is how it stacks up:
Salesmate vs Keap
Salesmate wins on: lower entry price, calling and SMS in the same window, a lighter interface for daily pipeline work
Keap wins on: mature e-commerce and invoicing, longer-running campaign templates, stronger done-for-you onboarding
Salesmate wins on: a real deal pipeline rather than a bolt-on, built-in telephony, simpler per-seat billing
ActiveCampaign wins on: far deeper email automation, better deliverability tooling, a wider library of pre-built sequences
Salesmate wins on: chatbots and web forms included, multi-channel journeys, a shared inbox for team handoffs
Capsule wins on: a much cheaper starting tier, a shorter learning curve, less feature weight for very small teams
Frequently Asked Questions
What CRM is better than Pipedrive?
It depends on the gap you are filling. HubSpot beats it on free tools, Salesforce on enterprise scale, and Salesmate on in-app calling. For pipeline work, few beat it.
What is Salesmate used for?
Growing SMEs use it to run sales and marketing on one platform. It handles deals, calls, SMS, web forms and chatbots, plus marketing sequences through a paid add-on.
Why is Salesforce better than Pipedrive?
Only at scale. Salesforce offers deeper customisation, complex forecasting and enterprise governance. Below roughly 50 seats, that power usually costs more in admin time than it returns.
How much does Pipedrive cost a month?
Plans run $14, $24, $49 and $69 per user each month for Lite, Growth, Premium and Ultimate. Campaigns, Projects and Web Visitors cost extra on top.
Is Pipedrive similar to Salesforce?
Both track deals and contacts, but they aim at different buyers. Pipedrive is lean and sales-focused. Salesforce is a configurable platform that usually needs an admin to run properly.
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