Pipedrive Vs. Insightly 2023: What’s Best for Your SMB?

If you need a way to kick your sales process into high gear, Pipedrive has your back. 

The sales-focused CRM offers tools to help you accomplish the following:

• Manage deals from one central location
• Customize deal stages and task lists to match your workflow
• Create visual pipelines that give you a real-time view of your sales cycle (from start to finish)

We tested this feature (over six months) by adding in some affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire. 

Here’s how a “new deal” card looked from our perspective. 

Within each deal, we could add and edit the following information:

• Associated contacts
• Organization
• Title 
• Value
• Pipeline & stage
• Probability
• Expected close date
• Contact information 

Here’s how our pipeline looked with everything put in. 

We were able to switch between different views with just a click, as well as drag and drop our deals to the next stage. 

If you’re serious about scaling your SMB, you’ll need a tool that keeps your projects organized. 

Pipedrive offers this option (for an additional $8/month).

That’s right—you don’t need extra project management tools to efficiently manage projects within your CRM. 

This feature offers the following helpful tools to take charge of your project management:

• Customizable task templates
• Document & file storage
• Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
• Team collaboration tools
• Detailed project and task tracking cards
• Custom project fields

With Pipedrive, we were able to create project templates (so we didn’t have to repeatedly build the same projects over and over again).

Here’s a snapshot of the project template creation process (to give you a better idea). 

This little feature saved us a ton of time to focus on nurturing customer relationships.

During our six months of testing, we created and tracked a ton of projects.

Some of these included:

• Social media campaigns
• Our newsletter rollout
• New website design
• New client onboarding

Here’s an example of a project we created for our newsletter rollout. 

We were able to easily edit the following info: 

• Project template
• Title
• Start & end date
• Board & phase
• Owner
• Associated deals & contacts

Our take: Pipedrive offers fantastic project management tools to keep your team on track while you grow your business to new heights!

Pipedrive takes the painstaking task of managing repetitive tasks off your hands with their custom workflows. 

This feature lets you create a sequence of automated actions based on specific triggers. 

Here’s what we loved:

• Custom workflows: You can set up a sequence of tasks triggered by a specific action. For instance, when a deal is marked as won, you can have a task automatically scheduled to send a follow-up email. 
• Notifications: Never miss a beat with Pipedrive’s notification system. Whether it’s a deal that needs your attention or a task coming due, these alerts keep you and your team on track.
• Automated follow-ups: One of our favorite features has to be the automated follow-ups. With this, you can say goodbye to forgetting to send that important email or missing a crucial call.

In a nutshell, Pipedrive’s workflow automation is a game-changer. 

It not only ensures nothing slips through the cracks but also boosts your team’s productivity by taking care of the monotonous tasks. 

Talk about a win-win!

Pipedrive provides the ability to create powerful email campaigns (for an additional $16/month). 

Here’s what we loved about Pipedrive’s Campaigns feature:

• Personalized emails: You can customize your emails to a tee, ensuring each one speaks directly to your customer. It’s a fantastic way to build rapport and keep your subscribers engaged.
• Targeted campaigns: You can segment your audience into different groups and send targeted emails to each. This feature allows you to tailor your messages to the unique needs and interests of each segment.
• Detailed analytics: With this feature, you can track the performance of your email campaigns in real time. Gain insights into open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to understand what’s working and what’s not.
• Automated follow-ups: Set up automated follow-up emails to keep your brand on top of your customers’ minds. This feature ensures you never miss an opportunity to engage with your customers.

We created a ton of campaigns throughout our six months of testing.

We really liked the helpful email templates provided by Pipedrive (shown below).

These are perfect for beginners looking to create powerful email campaigns (without the learning curve). 

Once we selected a template, we could customize (just about) every facet of each email with a drag-and-drop interface. 

Here’s how it looked (for context). 

We could easily add the following elements to each email: 

• Text
• Images
• Video
• Buttons
• Social links 
• Custom code

From there, we could schedule and send emails to clients (all from within the CRM tool). 

The nitty gritty: Pipedrive delivers powerful campaign creation for SMBs looking to ramp up their marketing efforts. 

If you’re looking to take your marketing to the next level, this feature is certainly worth checking out!

Great customer relationship management is essentially impossible without a way to effectively manage your customer data.

Luckily, Pipedrive provides a fantastic solution that allows you to effortlessly maintain and nurture customer relationships. 

Pipedrive offers a range of awesome features for managing your contacts:

• Comprehensive contact information: With Pipedrive, you can store all the important details about your clients, like their contact info, deals, notes, and activity history.
• Easy navigation: The contact data is organized in a way that’s super easy to navigate. You’ll have no trouble getting a quick understanding of each client’s current status and history.
• Segmentation: You can easily categorize your contacts, which helps you personalize your approach to each client.
• Interaction tracking: Keep track of every interaction with your clients. No detail will be missed, and you can seize every opportunity.
• Integration: Pipedrive seamlessly integrates with various communication platforms, giving you a streamlined, all-in-one contact management experience.

Here’s a sneak peek of how it looked when we added a new contact with Pipedrive. 

With just a few clicks, we could input all important details, ensuring we had a comprehensive view of each client. 

This feature has been a game-changer in effectively maintaining and nurturing our customer relationships!

Keeping track of your day-to-day tasks is critical in running a successful business. It’s about staying organized and ensuring no task falls through the cracks. 

That’s where Pipedrive comes in. 

Its activity tracker is a fantastic tool that simplifies task management (making it easy to stay on top of your calendar). 

It’s not just about listing your tasks—it’s about managing your business operations effectively. 

Here’s a look at what Pipedrive brings to the table:

• Meetings: Never miss an important meeting again. With Pipedrive, you can schedule and manage all your meetings in one place, sending reminders to all participants and keeping everyone in the loop.
• Calls: Pipedrive allows for seamless call scheduling and monitoring. It logs calls, keeps track of call durations, and even allows for call recording, ensuring no critical information is lost.
• Tasks: The platform allows you to create, assign, and manage tasks efficiently. It keeps you informed about task progress, ensuring nothing gets overlooked.
• Events: Organizing and managing events is a breeze with Pipedrive. It allows you to schedule events, send invites, and track attendance, all from a single interface.

Check out an activity card we created (during our six months of testing) for a meeting with a client.

Within each card, we had a ton of information at our fingertips, including:

• Time & date
• Location
• Guests
• Integrations
• Description
• Owner
• Associated deals
• Calendar view (to avoid double booking)

The nuts and bolts: Pipedrive’s Activity Tracker is a one-stop solution for managing your daily tasks, making it a valuable tool for any SMB.

For an extra $39/month, Pipedrive provides a powerful tool to help you identify and engage with potential leads. 

When you upgrade to LeadBooster, you immediately gain access to the following:

• Prospector: This feature allows you to find new leads by crawling many online sources (including social media profiles and company websites).
• Chatbot: Automate your lead qualification process with the help of an intelligent chatbot that can gather information and route leads to the right team member.
• Live chat: Interact with potential leads in real-time, providing them with immediate assistance (and converting their contact information into leads within your CRM).
• Web forms: Create and embed customizable forms on your website to capture leads and gather information about them.

We tested this feature (over six months) and were impressed with the lead management capabilities provided by Pipedrive.

We saw a significant increase in our leads and conversions (thanks to the efficient lead generation tools).

The breakdown: Pipedrive offers some of the best lead management features on the market, making it an excellent choice for SMBs looking to boost their sales growth!