Pipedrive vs. monday Sales CRM: Which CRM Is Right for Your Business?

Pipedrive vs. monday Sales CRM Compared

Who Do We Recommend Pipedrive For?

We recommend Pipedrive for businesses seeking an affordable, sales-focused CRM. Its powerful, color-coded visual platform and robust sales tools provide effective lead generation and sales pipeline management. Email functions and add-ons improve your communication with contacts. 

We think most small and midsize businesses will find value in one of Pipedrive’s five cost-effective plans. However, large businesses that are seeking a comprehensive CRM solution might find Pipedrive’s specialized platform lacking.

Pipedrive stands out for the following reasons:

• Pipedrive provides flexibility with affordable plans and add-ons.
• The platform accommodates unlimited contacts and provides robust email tools.
• Pipedrive offers excellent visual sales features and AI-powered assistance.

Pipedrive’s color-coded Kanban card pipeline lets you quickly view deal progress. Source: Pipedrive 

Who Do We Recommend monday Sales CRM For?

monday sales CRM is our top choice for businesses seeking essential CRM features and project management capabilities. monday’s highly customizable platform and extensive automations help businesses with complex sales processes save time as they close deals, manage contacts and oversee projects. 

We think most small businesses will find that monday provides the features they need to work efficiently. However, very small businesses and freelancers that can’t meet the three-seat minimum might be priced out. Additionally, businesses with large budgets and complicated sales processes will find better functionality in the Enterprise plan.

monday excels because of the following features:

• monday Sales CRM is a highly customizable and easy-to-use platform.
• It provides extensive automations for any task, including integration functions.
• Businesses gain access to monday’s work management platform.

monday Sales CRM’s straightforward interface shows deal information at a glance. Source: monday

Pipedrive vs. monday Sales CRM Comparison

Price and Plans

Pipedrive

• Pipedrive offers five affordably priced plans.
• All Pipedrive plans have a 14-day free trial.
• Contacts and pipelines are unlimited in all Pipedrive plans, but automations aren’t standard.

We love that Pipedrive offers flexibility with five affordable plans. There are no seat limits, and you can change plans when needed. We appreciate that you can try any plan for free for 14 days and that paying annually will save you up to 32 percent. 

We were also pleased to see that all plans include Pipedrive’s most compelling features, albeit with usage limits. You get unlimited contacts and customizable sales pipelines standard, but we were disappointed that automations are limited to 30 in the Advanced plan and 180 in the Enterprise plan. 

Still, we appreciate that reasonably priced add-ons are available to enhance your CRM with lead capture, marketing campaigns and project management tools.  

monday Sales CRM

• The plans are low-priced but have a three-seat minimum. 
• The first three plans offer a 14-day free trial.
• Annual payments save you 18 percent, and students or nonprofits can get discounted rates.
• You must contact monday for Enterprise plan pricing or if you have over 40 users.

monday sales CRM offers three very affordably priced plans and an option for custom Enterprise plan pricing. However, its three-seat minimum requirement disappointed us. This pricing model will increase costs for startups and freelancers. Additionally, we’d prefer to see transparent pricing for the Enterprise plan, which includes most of monday’s most compelling features, like lead scoring, advanced CRM analytics, and post-sales management tools.

monday’s Basic plan has essential features for companies that need limited CRM capabilities, including web forms, templates, and unlimited contacts and pipelines. Businesses that need more robust features — including email, automations, productivity and reporting — must pay more. However, we appreciate that all plans get two seats to the free tier of monday’s work management platform.

Winner: Pipedrive

Pipedrive slightly edges out monday in this category. Although monday has lower per-user prices, the three-seat minimum makes things more expensive, especially for very small businesses. We think Pipedrive offers a more robust, better-value solution. Plus, we appreciate its transparent pricing.   

Sales Features

Pipedrive

Pipedrive excels at helping you improve sales with insights throughout the sales cycle. Consider the following notable sales features:

• Visual sales pipelines: Pipedrive’s visual sales pipelines help you monitor deal progress. The Kanban card-style, color-coded visual platform provides a quick and accurate view of the sales pipeline, showing you where deals are and what actions you should take. 
• Deal rotting: We love the deal rotting feature, which triggers visual alerts and automated actions when deals become inactive.  
• AI-powered sales assistant: We appreciate that the AI-powered sales assistant comes with all plans. It studies your data and makes suggestions on actions to take, leads to follow up with, and features you should use. 
• Unlimited customizable pipelines: We like that Pipedrive offers unlimited customizable pipelines with custom fields. 
• Filters: Filters allow you to monitor leads or check employee performance. 
• Visual deal and activity reports: Visual deal and activity reports, which let you immediately see what’s working and what isn’t, come standard in all plans. 
• More sales capabilities: Deeper insights, like sales forecasts and revenue projections, come with premium plans. You can also expand sales capabilities with the Lead Booster add-on.

monday Sales CRM

We found that monday makes it a breeze to set up and customize your entire sales process, thanks to the following features: 

• Intuitive visual interface: monday Sales CRM’s visual interface is simple and easy to use.
• Dashboards and templates: You can start capturing leads and managing the pipeline painlessly with customizable CRM dashboards and templates.
• Deal Stages and Funnel Charts: We like that the Deal Stages widget and Funnel Charts feature let you track deal progress with a quick glance. 
• Leaderboard widget: The Leaderboard widget motivates employees with friendly workplace competition and lets you track individual progress and keep employees on task.

Still, we were disappointed that some essential sales tools, like lead management, aren’t included in monday’s Basic plan and that many advanced features — including lead scoring, forecasting, analytics and post-sales management tools — are restricted to premium plans. 

Winner: Pipedrive

Pipedrive is the clear winner for sales features because the platform was designed to help sales teams thrive. We found its features more robust than monday’s basic offerings, and we were disappointed that many of the features you need to succeed are missing in monday’s lower-tier plans.

Automations

Pipedrive

Pipedrive lets you use templates or build your own automations for tedious tasks so you have more time to close the deal.

• Automatic notifications: You can automatically notify reps when emails are opened or send triggered emails when a deal starts rotting. 
• Easy-to-set-up actions: We like that it’s easy to set up actions, with multiple trigger and event options to choose from. 
• AI-powered automation recommendations: We especially like that the AI-powered assistant tells you which actions you should automate.

However, we were disappointed that automations aren’t included in Pipedrive’s Essential plan and are very limited in other plans.

monday sales CRM

monday shines with the following automation functionalities:

• Templates: You get a ton of templates for trigger-and-action automations, like automatic lead assignment, to help your team work efficiently.
• No-code custom automations: No-code custom automations are easy to create with simple if-then statements.
• Automations with third-party integrations: We especially like that you can set up automations with third-party integrations, like sending a message on Slack when a deal changes status.

However, we were disappointed that automations aren’t available with monday’s Basic plan. Automated actions are otherwise limited, but with up to 250,000 in the Enterprise plan, getting all of the automations you need shouldn’t be a problem. 

Winner: monday Sales CRM

monday is our choice for businesses seeking practical, time-saving automations. monday makes it easy to create automations, and you get thousands more per month than with Pipedrive. While we appreciate Pipedrive’s automation features, we found the limits too restrictive for businesses with complex CRM workflows. 

Email 

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is sales-focused but also includes excellent email communication features, including the following: 

• Essential standard tools: We like that standard email features include unlimited contacts, a leads inbox, automatic call logging and a contacts map that filters by location.
• Advanced tools: Higher tiers include more email features, like two-way email syncing with Google or Outlook, customizable templates, email interaction tracking and scheduling. We love that mass emails can be sent over time to avoid blocking.
• Visual contacts timeline: We found the visual contacts timeline especially useful. You can quickly get up to speed on a customer’s interaction history before reaching out. However, we were disappointed that you need the Professional level or higher for this feature.
• Campaigns add-on: You can further streamline email marketing with the Campaigns add-on.

Pipedrive’s contacts timeline visualizes every customer interaction. Source: Pipedrive

monday Sales CRM

Monday’s Basic plan includes unlimited email contacts, but we were disappointed that the Basic plan doesn’t allow you to visualize contact interaction history. 

Contact management via email through monday’s platform requires higher-tier plans that unlock the following features: 

• Two-way email integration 
• Activity logging
• Customizable email templates
• Mass emails
• Email open tracking
• Automations
• Advanced integrations with the best email marketing software

Winner: Pipedrive

Pipedrive beats monday in the email functionality category; it offers more robust email features across the board, and most come standard. Plus, you can run marketing campaigns within the Pipedrive platform with an add-on, without integrating an external app. 

Project Management

Pipedrive

To access Pipedrive’s project management features, you must purchase the Projects add-on for $8 per user per month. We like that this add-on extends Pipedrive’s easy-to-use Kanban visual interface to planning and managing complex projects. 

You’ll get the following project management features: 

• Project templates that can help you get started quickly
• Tools to track projects in real time
• Custom fields to help with organization 
• Features such as shared files and mentions to boost team collaboration 

monday Sales CRM

monday Sales CRM’s automations provide project management capabilities that rival those in the best project management software. Additionally, all plans have two seats of free access to monday’s work management platform. You can seamlessly plan, organize and track projects from monday’s central platform. We love its features, including the following: 

• Shared docs
• Collaborative whiteboards
• Visual dashboard 
• Updated alerts to help your teams set goals and stay on top of tasks

Businesses that need additional features, like advanced collaboration and reporting tools, can subscribe to one of the paid tiers of monday’s work management platform. 

monday’s work management platform helps your team stay on top of tasks. Source: monday

Winner: monday Sales CRM

While we found that both platforms offer competent project management, we prefer monday because it includes the tools you need to set goals, plan projects and manage tasks for free. We appreciate that you can scale your capabilities with different tiers of its paid work management platform. Pipedrive offers only a single solution.

Ease of Use

Pipedrive

Pipedrive makes capturing leads and winning sales a breeze with the following functionalities:

• Visual interface: Using Pipedrive is painless thanks to the visual interface. It provides information at a glance, and the drag-and-drop function lets you select the correct action efficiently.
• Additional tools: We found the AI-powered assistant and the fully functional mobile app especially useful. Additionally, you can easily access over 480 top CRM integrations.
• Online help resources: Pipedrive offers valuable online resources, like training and video courses, to help with more complex processes. 

monday Sales CRM

monday stands out for its highly customizable platform that makes it easy to manage contacts, organize projects and close deals. These features make the platform easy to use: 

• Customizable templates
• Automations
• Over 200 integrations
• Unlimited boards to organize your work  

Winner: monday Sales CRM

monday beats Pipedrive in usability thanks to its flexible platform, which allows more robust customization, automation and integration capabilities. We appreciate Pipedrive’s foolproof visual platform, but we think monday offers an easier-to-use solution that can be tailored to meet all of your business’s CRM needs.  

Customer Service

Pipedrive

• Live chat: Customer service is available 24/7 to all subscribers via live chat. 
• Online resources: We like that Pipedrive offers extensive online resources — like articles, tutorials, courses, webinars, videos and community forums — to help users solve issues on their own. 

We were disappointed that only premium subscribers can access phone support. We would have liked to see phone support included with all plans. 

monday Sales CRM

• Email and live chat: We like that monday provides standard 24/7 customer support via email and live chat. 
• Callbacks: Anyone can request a callback from one of monday’s helpful reps on weekdays. 
• Dedicated success manager: Enterprise plans include a dedicated customer success manager for personal onboarding, training and support.  
• Online resources: monday stands out for offering excellent online resources, including daily webinars focused on navigating the platform. Anyone can access in-app articles, training courses, videos and a community forum.

Winner: monday Sales CRM

We found that monday offers better customer support. You can get help from a rep in more ways, including over the phone. We especially like that Enterprise users get personalized help and that daily webinars cover almost every aspect of using monday. 

Pipedrive vs. monday Sales CRM Recap

Choose Pipedrive if …

• You want flexibility in choosing the right features and price range.
• You need a visual interface to get information quickly. 
• You’re looking for a sales-focused CRM with AI-powered assistance.

Choose monday Sales CRM if …

• You want a highly customizable platform for sales and project management.
• You need time-saving automations for all of your business tasks.
• You’re looking for a simple and cost-effective CRM platform.