Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Looking for a new CRM system? Nutshell and Pipeliner CRM are two platforms designed to help businesses improve sales management and team collaboration. Nutshell focuses on simplicity and ease of use, offering features like email automation and pipeline management ideal for small to mid-sized teams. Pipeliner CRM, in contrast, emphasizes visual sales tracking and detailed analytics, catering to teams that require in-depth insights into their sales pipeline. In this blog post, we’ll compare their features, pricing, and usability to help you decide which fits your needs better. We’ll also explore folk as a potential alternative.
What is Nutshell?
Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM specifically designed to help B2B teams close more deals. It combines contact management, pipeline tracking, and email marketing tools to support every stage of the sales process, from lead generation to deal closure. With features like customizable pipelines, activity tracking, and seamless integration options, Nutshell enables sales teams to stay organized, collaborate, and drive results—all within a user-friendly platform tailored for B2B needs.
Key features of Nutshell
- Contact management: Centralizes customer information and tracks communication history to keep teams organized and informed.
- Pipeline management: Customizable sales pipelines to track leads and deals through every stage of the sales process.
- Email marketing: Built-in email campaign tools that enable targeted outreach and engagement with prospects and customers.
- Activity tracking: Logs all interactions, including calls, emails, and meetings, allowing teams to stay on top of follow-ups and engagement.
- Reporting and analytics: Provides insights into sales performance, forecasting, and team activity, helping to make data-driven decisions.
What is Pipeliner CRM?
Pipeliner is an AI-powered sales CRM 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
- Sales force 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.
Nutshell vs. Pipeliner CRM: Feature Comparison
Let's break down the key features of Nutshell and Pipeliner CRM and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience and more.
1. Sales Pipeline Management
Nutshell’s pipeline management feature provides tools for tracking leads and deals through different stages using various views, including board, list, map, and chart views. The pipeline is customizable, allowing users to organize and prioritize leads according to their workflow needs. Additional features like hot lead identification and customizable lead cards support visibility into deal statuses and priorities. Nutshell's pipeline tools aim to support sales teams in managing and visualizing their sales process without unnecessary complexity.
Pipeliner CRM’s pipeline feature offers a visual interface to track sales opportunities through different stages. The drag-and-drop functionality allows you to move deals across stages, providing an overview of your sales progress. It supports multiple pipelines to accommodate different sales workflows, with integrated tools like automation and reporting to assist with task management and deal prioritization. While the feature is functional and adaptable, its focus is primarily on sales tracking, which may limit its utility for broader project management needs.
2. Ease of use
Nutshell and Pipeliner CRM are both designed with user-friendliness in mind. Nutshell offers a clean, intuitive interface that minimizes the learning curve for new users. Pipeliner CRM also prioritizes ease of use, with a visually-driven design that simplifies data visualization and navigation, making it accessible for teams of all sizes.
3. Contact enrichment
Nutshell’s contact enrichment feature is focused on minimizing manual data entry by allowing users to import contacts, emails, and calendar events from various sources. This capability helps streamline contact management, ensuring that sales teams have up-to-date information without the hassle of manual updates. Pipeliner CRM offers a contact enrichment feature through its Auto Profiling integration, which automatically populates additional data for contacts and accounts. However, this 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
Nutshell’s outreach feature includes built-in email marketing and automation capabilities, allowing users to create and send email campaigns directly within the platform. Pipeliner CRM offers basic outreach capabilities through its mass email feature, supporting bulk email campaigns with customization and tracking, but may require additional tools for advanced campaign management.
5. Automation
Nutshell’s automation features streamline basic sales and marketing tasks, supporting follow-up emails and pipeline management. Pipeliner CRM also includes automation tools for tasks like email follow-ups and deal updates, with integrations available for enhanced functionality, although advanced setups might need additional configurations.
6. Integration
Nutshell offers integrations with major productivity platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack, allowing users to manage emails, calendars, and team communication within their existing tools, enhancing workflow efficiency and collaboration. 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
Nutshell’s AI integration includes timeline summarization to help users quickly review past interactions. Pipeliner CRM's Voyager AI Gen provides data-driven insights, offering sales recommendations and forecasts. While both platforms leverage AI, Pipeliner focuses more on sales insights, whereas Nutshell emphasizes workflow enhancement.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Nutshell and Pipeliner CRM.
Nutshell prices
Nutshell offers several pricing plans designed to accommodate different features and team sizes.
- Foundation: $16 per user, per month.
- Pro: $42 per user, per month.
- Power AI: $52 per user, per month.
- Enterprise: $67 per user, per month.
Pipeliner CRM prices
Pipeliner offers several versions of its CRM, tailored to 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 Nutshell 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 support multiple use cases across the business including sales, marketing, recruitment and more. folk can also scale with you as your business grows, with its ability to support solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams, large enterprises 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.
Nutshell vs. Pipeliner CRM: What's the verdict?
In comparing Nutshell and Pipeliner CRM, it's apparent how both platforms offer robust tools for managing sales processes and customer relationships. Nutshell excels with its all-in-one approach, catering specifically to B2B teams with features like email marketing and pipeline management. On the other hand, Pipeliner stands out with its visual sales management and AI-driven insights, making it ideal for organizations seeking scalability. However, for companies that need 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