Close CRM vs Pipeliner CRM

Choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is crucial for any business looking to enhance customer interactions and boost sales. Close CRM and Pipeliner CRM are two popular options, each offering something different. While Close CRM focuses on simplifying sales processes for small businesses, Pipeliner CRM provides a visual and scalable approach suitable for diverse industries. In this blog post, we'll explore their key features, pricing, and benefits, helping you determine which CRM aligns best with your business goals. We'll also introduce folk as a popular alternative.

What is Close CRM?

Close CRM is a sales-focused platform designed to eliminate the complexity of traditional CRMs, offering a streamlined and user-friendly experience tailored for small businesses with ambitious growth goals. Known for its intuitive design, Close provides robust features like automation to reduce manual work, built-in communication tools for faster follow-ups, and powerful integrations to fit seamlessly into any tech stack. Whether you’re managing leads, collaborating with a team, or scaling sales efforts, Close is built to save time and help small businesses succeed.

Key features of Close CRM

• Fast setup: Simple and quick to implement, allowing teams to start using the platform without delay.
• Intuitive interface: Easy-to-navigate dashboard tailored for speed and productivity.
• Built-in communication: Integrated calling, email, and SMS tools for seamless interaction with leads and clients.
• Automation tools: Includes workflows, smart views, and task automation to streamline repetitive tasks.
• Powerful reporting: Customizable sales and activity reporting for actionable insights into team performance and revenue trends.
• Team collaboration: Features like shared inboxes and task assignments to keep teams aligned and efficient.
• Secure and scalable: Designed with robust security and scalability for growing businesses.
• Integrations: Offers over 100 native integrations and Zapier compatibility to sync seamlessly with existing tools.

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.

Close CRM vs. Pipeliner CRM: Feature Comparison

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

1. Sales Pipeline Management

Close CRM's pipeline offers a streamlined, visual approach to managing sales processes, making it easy to track deals from start to finish. The 'Powerful Pipeline View' provides a clear snapshot of all active opportunities, enabling teams to focus on what matters most. With features like drag-and-drop deal management, users can effortlessly update the status of leads.
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

Close CRM is known for its intuitive interface, making it easy for sales teams to navigate and manage tasks efficiently. Pipeliner CRM, while offering a visually appealing interface, may require a steeper learning curve due to its extensive customization options and features.

3. Contact enrichment

Close CRM does not provide its own contact enrichment feature. You can only access this using a third-party application, which might incur an additional cost. Pipeliner CRM offers a contact enrichment feature through its Auto Profiling integration. This feature only adds data if there is a high probability of accuracy and does not overwrite existing fields. It's also just 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

Close CRM's outreach features integrate built-in calling, email, and SMS tools, enabling seamless multi-channel outreach without external apps. Pipeliner CRM includes basic outreach capabilities through its mass email feature, allowing users to send bulk emails and track engagement metrics. However, Pipeliner's tools are limited compared to dedicated platforms.

5. Automation

Close CRM's automation features streamline workflows with custom workflows and Smart Views for lead prioritization. Pipeliner CRM offers automation for sales tasks and integrates with Automation Hub for enhanced functionality, although advanced setups may require third-party tools.

6. Integration

Close CRM offers integrations with various tools to enhance sales workflows and streamline data management. 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

Close CRM does not appear to have an AI integration. Pipeliner CRM integrates AI through Voyager AI Gen, providing data-driven insights for sales decision-making and prioritizing high-impact opportunities.

Price and plans comparison

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

Close CRM prices

Close CRM offers a monthly and annual payment option. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Startup: $49/user/month.
• Professional: $99/user/month.
• Enterprise: $139/user/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 Close CRM 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 be easily adapted to multiple business uses across sales, marketing, recruitment and more. You can use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, and large enterprise. Allowing it to grow with you as your business scales.

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.

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

Both Close CRM and Pipeliner CRM offer robust solutions tailored for different business needs. Close CRM has an intuitive design and focus on small business growth, while Pipeliner CRM provides a visual and scalable approach suitable for diverse industries. 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.