Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
When it comes to customer relationship management (CRM) software, Freshsales and Pipeliner CRM stand out with their distinct user experience and capabilities. Both platforms aim to optimize business operations, boost customer engagement, and accelerate sales growth. However, they cater to varying business requirements and objectives. This article provides a detailed comparison of Freshsales and Pipeliner CRM, evaluating their key features, pricing, and advantages to guide you in selecting the most suitable CRM for your organization. Additionally, we will explore folk as an alternative option.
What is Freshsales?
Freshsales is a CRM platform by Freshworks designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes with AI-powered tools and automation. It provides features like lead scoring, deal tracking, email and call management, and workflow automation to enhance efficiency and drive conversions.
Key features of Freshsales
- AI-powered insights: Freshsales leverages AI to provide recommendations, predict deal outcomes, and offer actionable insights to improve sales strategies.
- Lead scoring: Automatically prioritizes leads based on their engagement and likelihood to convert, helping sales teams focus on high-value opportunities.
- Deal tracking: Provides a visual sales pipeline to track deals through various stages and monitor progress in real time.
- Email and call management: Integrates email and phone communication, allowing users to manage interactions directly from the platform.
- Workflow automation: Automates repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails or updating deal statuses, reducing manual work and improving efficiency.
What is Pipeliner CRM?
Pipeliner is an AI-powered sales CRMNAME designed for small, mid-sized, and enterprise organizations, focusing on simplicity and scalability. It offers a visual approach to sales management, allowing teams to track pipelines, forecast outcomes, and automate workflows.
Key features of Pipeliner CRM
- Salesforce automation: Automates routine sales tasks, helping teams focus on selling while ensuring consistency across workflows.
- Key account management: Provides tools to manage and track relationships with high-value clients, ensuring personalized attention and strategy.
- Communications and activities tracking: Logs and organizes all interactions, calls, and emails, providing a centralized view of customer communication.
- Reporting engine: Offers customizable reports and dashboards to deliver insights into sales performance and team productivity.
- Process and workflow automation: Automates repetitive workflows, such as task assignments and approvals, to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.
Freshsales vs. Pipeliner CRM: Feature Comparison
Let's break down the key features of these two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.
1. Sales Pipeline Management
Freshsales offers a visual sales pipeline that allows you to track deals through various stages in real time. Its drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to move deals between stages, providing a clear overview of your progress. Integrated tools like lead scoring and AI insights enhance deal management by identifying priorities and predicting outcomes. However, the focus on sales workflows may limit flexibility for broader project tracking.
Pipeliner CRM also provides a visual interface to track sales opportunities across stages. With similar drag-and-drop functionality, it supports multiple pipelines to accommodate different workflows. Integrated tools like automation and reporting assist with task management and deal prioritization. While functional and adaptable, its primary focus remains on sales tracking, which might not fully serve broader project management needs.
2. Ease of use
Freshsales is known for its intuitive interface, making it easy for users to navigate and manage customer relationships. Pipeliner CRM, while also user-friendly, offers a more visual approach with its graphical representation of sales processes, which may appeal to users who prefer a more visual workflow.
3. Contact enrichment
Freshsales offers a contact enrichment feature that automatically gathers additional information about leads and customers from public sources and integrated tools. This feature populates profiles with details such as job titles, social media profiles, and company information, reducing manual data entry and providing a more complete view of each contact. Pipeliner CRM offers a contact enrichment feature through its Auto Profiling integration, which automatically populates additional data for contacts and accounts. This feature only adds data if there is a high probability of accuracy and does not overwrite existing fields. However, the Auto Profiling integration is an add-on and must be activated through the Pipeliner Automation Hub, making it a more selective and optional tool for contact enrichment.
4. Outreach
Freshsales includes outreach tools for managing communication via email, phone, and chat, offering personalized campaigns and engagement tracking. Pipeliner CRM provides basic outreach capabilities through mass email features, focusing on supporting existing sales processes. Freshsales offers a more centralized and comprehensive approach to outreach compared to Pipeliner CRM.
5. Automation
Freshsales automates tasks like lead assignment and follow-up emails, enhancing workflow efficiency. Pipeliner CRM also streamlines tasks through workflow automation and integrates with the Automation Hub. Both platforms aim to reduce manual effort, though Freshsales may offer more built-in automation capabilities.
6. Integration
Freshsales integrates with tools like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Mailchimp, as well as Freshworks products such as Freshdesk and Freshchat, to streamline workflows. These integrations support email, calendar, marketing, and customer support, enhancing the platform’s functionality. Pipeliner CRM integrates with over 50 popular applications, including Google Suite, Microsoft Suite, and various marketing, email, and data synchronization tools, to streamline workflows and enhance productivity.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Freshsales includes Freddy AI for predictive analytics, lead scoring, and actionable insights, enhancing decision-making and sales outcomes. Pipeliner CRM's Voyager AI Gen offers data-driven insights and recommendations, focusing on sales decision-making. Both aim to improve efficiency, with Freshsales providing broader AI capabilities.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Freshsales and Pipeliner CRM.
Freshsales prices
Through Freshworks, you can get access to Freshsales Suite, or Freshsales on its own.
- Growth: Starts from $9/user/month.
- Pro: Starts from $39/user/month.
- Enterprise: Starts from $49/user/month.
Pipeliner CRM prices
There are a few versions of Pipeliner's CRM you can choose from, alongside different price points.
- Starter: Starts from $65/seat/month.
- Business: Starts from $85/seat/month.
- Enterprise: Starts from $115/seat/month.
- Unlimited: Starts from $150/seat/month.
Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Freshsales and Pipeliner CRM
Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can grow with you as your business scales, supporting solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams and large enterprises. folk can also support multiple use cases including sales, marketing, recruitment and more.
Key features
- Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
- Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
- Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
- Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
- Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
- Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
- Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
- Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.
Price and plans
folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.
- Standard: $20 per user, per month.
- Premium: $40 per user, per month.
- Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.
Freshsales vs. Pipeliner CRM: What's the verdict?
It's clear that both Freshsales and Pipeliner CRM offer robust solutions tailored to different business needs. Freshsales excels in AI-powered insights and streamlined sales processes, while Pipeliner CRM stands out with its visual sales management and customization options. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free.
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses