Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
Pipedrive and Nutshell are two CRM solutions tailored for small to mid-sized businesses, each bringing a unique focus to customer relationship management. Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM that emphasizes deal tracking and pipeline visibility, making it ideal for teams looking to streamline their sales process. Nutshell, on the other hand, combines CRM with built-in email marketing and sales automation, providing an integrated approach to managing both customer relationships and outreach. In this blog post, we’ll compare their key features to help you decide which CRM suits your business needs. Or, if folk might just offer a more flexible alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.
What is Pipedrive?
Pipedrive is a web-based CRM for small businesses, offering lead management, automation, email integration, and customizable pipelines to optimize sales.
Key features of Pipedrive
- Lead and deal management: Centralized tools to manage customer data, interactions, and sales pipelines, helping teams act quickly on opportunities.
- Sales automation: Workflow automation to handle repetitive tasks, such as lead routing, follow-ups, and email sequences, allowing sales teams to focus on closing deals.
- Email integration: Full email sync, templates, and tracking features, enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
- Advanced reporting and analytics: Real-time data analytics and custom reporting tools to track sales performance, forecast revenue, and gain actionable insights.
- Customization and security: Options to customize pipelines, fields, and user permissions, with robust security measures to protect data.
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 also 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.
Pipedrive vs. Nutshell: Feature Comparison
Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.
1. Sales pipeline management
Pipedrive offers a user-friendly Kanban-board interface that aligns closely with traditional sales pipeline management processes. Its visual approach allows sales teams to easily track deals through customizable stages, providing clarity and efficiency in managing sales activities. On the other hand, Nutshell’s pipeline management feature provides a variety of views including board, list, map, and chart views, offering flexibility in how users track leads and deals. The pipeline is highly customizable, enabling users to organize and prioritize leads according to their workflow needs. Nutshell also includes features like hot lead identification and customizable lead cards, which enhance visibility into deal statuses and priorities. These tools aim to support sales teams in managing and visualizing their sales processes without unnecessary complexity. Both platforms offer robust pipeline management capabilities, but the choice between them may depend on whether a team prefers Pipedrive’s straightforward Kanban style or Nutshell’s versatile viewing options.
2. Ease of use
Pipedrive offers an intuitive interface with a visual sales pipeline, making it easy for users to manage deals and track progress. Nutshell, provides a straightforward and user-friendly dashboard with basic sales features that simplifies navigation and ensures quick access to essential features.
3. Contact enrichment
Pipedrive's contact enrichment feature integrates with tools, automatically pulling additional information from external sources to populate fields with data such as job titles, company information, and social media profiles. 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.
4. Outreach
Pipedrive's email builder is designed for responsive campaigns like newsletters. In contrast, Nutshell’s outreach feature includes built-in email marketing and automation, allowing users to create and send campaigns directly, with basic tracking and engagement metrics.
5. Automation
Pipedrive's automation streamlines sales by automating tasks like data entry and follow-ups. Nutshell focuses on basic sales and marketing automation, supporting follow-up emails, task reminders, and email marketing automation for drip campaigns and customer engagement.
6. Integration
Pipedrive offers over 300 integrations, enabling users to connect with various third-party tools across different categories, including marketing automation and email platforms. Nutshell offers integrations with a range of popular tools to enhance its functionality and streamline workflows. It connects with major productivity platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack, allowing users to manage emails, calendars, and team communication within their existing tools.
7. Artificial Intelligence
Pipedrive integrates AI through its Sales Assistant, offering actionable insights and recommendations. Nutshell’s AI tools enhance productivity with features like timeline summarization, summarizing past interactions and activities for quick reference.
Price and plans comparison
Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Pipedrive and Nutshell.
Pipedrive prices
Pipedrive offers two types of plans, both for their CRM product. It comes as either a monthly or an annual subscription basis. Their annual subscription plan is as follows.
- Essential plan: Starts from $24 per user, per month.
- Advanced plan: Starts from $44 per user, per month.
- Power plan: Starts from $79 per user, per month.
- Enterprise plan: Starts from $129 per user, per month.
Nutshell prices
Nutshell offers several feature-rich plans tailored to different goals 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.
Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Pipedrive and Nutshell
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 business functions, and different team sizes. From solopreneurs to growing teams, folk can scale with you. And support your sales, marketing, recruitment and investor relations.
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.
Pipedrive vs. Nutshell: What's the verdict?
By comparing Pipedrive and Nutshell, it's apparent both CRMs offer robust features tailored for small to medium-sized businesses, with Pipedrive excelling in sales automation and Nutshell providing comprehensive B2B solutions. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk presents a flexible alternative, combining ease of use with customization. With features like social media integration and contact sync, folk stands out as a versatile option. Try folk today, free and experience a CRM that adapts to your business needs.
Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses