Salesforce vs Pipeliner CRM

Choosing the right CRM can be a daunting task, especially with options like Salesforce and Pipeliner CRM leading the market. Both platforms offer robust solutions to streamline operations, boost customer engagement, and drive sales growth. So what sets them apart? In this blog post, we'll compare their key features, pricing, and benefits to help you determine which CRM aligns best with your goals. We'll also explore folk which happens to be a popular alternative.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform for large enterprises, offering tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, with extensive scalability.

Key features of Salesforce

• Comprehensive ecosystem: A unified platform offering CRM, marketing automation, customer service, and custom app development, suitable for the varied needs of large enterprises.
• Customization and scalability: Salesforce is highly customizable and scalable, allowing large organizations to tailor the platform to complex workflows and manage significant growth.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) integration: Salesforce Einstein offers AI-driven analytics and automation, providing insights that help large businesses optimize their strategies.
• Extensive integration capabilities: With Salesforce's AppExchange, large companies can integrate the platform with a wide range of third-party applications, ensuring seamless operation across different business systems.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Salesforce provides robust security measures and compliance features, critical for large organizations handling sensitive customer data.
  

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.

Salesforce vs. Pipeliner CRM: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of Salesforce and Pipeliner CRM and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, user experience and more.

1. Sales Pipeline Management

Salesforce's pipeline management feature, known as Pipeline Inspection, provides a comprehensive view of sales opportunities by consolidating key metrics, deal changes, and AI-powered insights into a single interface. This robust tool is designed to enhance decision-making and streamline the sales process by offering predictive analytics and detailed forecasts.
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 business needs.

2. Ease of use

Salesforce offers a robust but complex interface that may require training to master, while Pipeliner CRM focuses on user-friendliness with an intuitive design, making it easier for teams to quickly adapt and utilize its features without extensive onboarding.

3. Contact enrichment

Salesforce's contact enrichment feature leverages tools like the Data Cloud to enhance and update contact records in real time, utilizing verified data sources such as LinkedIn and InsideView for accurate, up-to-date information. Pipeliner CRM offers a contact enrichment feature through its Auto Profiling integration, which automatically populates additional data for contacts and accounts. But note that 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

Salesforce's outreach solution is powered by Einstein AI, offering advanced engagement insights, while Pipeliner CRM provides basic outreach through mass email features, focusing on supporting sales processes rather than comprehensive multi-channel campaigns, potentially requiring third-party tools for expanded capabilities.

5. Automation

Salesforce excels in automation with features like workflow rules, flow builders, and AI automation via Einstein AI, whereas Pipeliner CRM offers workflow automation to streamline tasks like email follow-ups and deal updates, needing add-ons for more advanced setups.

6. Integration

Salesforce integrates with numerous third-party applications via its AppExchange marketplace, supporting tools for marketing, analytics, and more, while Pipeliner CRM's integration capabilities are less emphasized in the provided information.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Salesforce CRM integrates AI through Einstein for predictive analytics and intelligent recommendations, while Pipeliner CRM's Voyager AI Gen provides sales-focused insights, offering recommendations and forecasts to enhance decision-making, though it lacks broader AI functionalities.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Salesforce and Pipeliner CRM.

Salesforce prices

Salesforce pricing is extensive, ranging from $25 to $500 per user/month.

• Starter suite: $25/user/month provides basic CRM features for small businesses
• Pro suite: $100/user/month includes advanced tools for growing businesses
• Enterprise plan: $165/user/month offers extensive customization and automation for large companies
• Unlimited plan: $330/user/month provides comprehensive features for large enterprises
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month provides AI-driven insights and advanced features for large enterprises

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 Salesforce 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 is highly versatile, and can support multipe business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment and more. folk can also support your business as it grows, thanks to its ability to support solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams, and large enterprises.

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.

Salesforce vs. Pipeliner CRM: What's the verdict?

With two popular CRMs to choose from. It's a tough decision. It's apparent that both Salesforce and Pipeliner CRM offer robust solutions tailored to different needs. Salesforce excels in providing a comprehensive, scalable platform ideal for large enterprises, while Pipeliner CRM focuses on simplicity and visualization, catering to small and mid-sized businesses. 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.