How much does Pipedrive really cost?

Pipedrive is a relatively inexpensive solution in terms of licenses, costing around €50 per user, which will pay for itself very quickly.

Competing CRM vendors, such as Salesforce and Hubspot, offer solutions at over €90 per user.

In terms of integration, on average, at PulpMeUp we estimate that a Hubspot or Salesforce integration will require up to 2 times more integration time. Note that the functionalities are also richer.

We’ve shown scenarios with up to 20 users, but many of our customers have more than 70 or even 100 users. Pipedrive’s marketing functionalities and automations will be the focus of attention in the coming months.

In this article, I review the various cost items to be anticipated for a Pipedrive integration project, from licensing costs to maintenance costs, via hidden costs, evaluation and scoping, integration, configuration and training.

How much does Pipedrive cost, depending on your company’s profile?

To make things clearer, I’ve summarized the costs in a table with three types of company:

• Company 1: A very small business or B2B agency with comparatively few CRM staff
• Company 2: A start-up / scale-up – typically a SaaS company
• Company 3: An SME with several subsidiaries, or a business unit in a large group

Pipedrive license prices

Pipedrive is one of the most comprehensive CRMs available, especially for your SQL (sales qualified leads) needs, and at very competitive rates.

The principle is to pay for one access per user per month. It is possible to connect up to 3 people to the same user at the same time, but be careful not to play the rapiate, as this is useful for giving access to sales representatives, for example.

I recommend that you give each salesperson access so that everyone can synchronize their emails and diaries, and so that you can monitor activities.

Before talking about license levels, note that Pipedrive is one of the only CRMs that doesn’t limit you in terms of number of contacts! You can import 1M contacts with a single license at €12 per month. Treat yourself!

On the other hand, depending on your subscription level, Pipedrive limits the number of deals, custom fields and reports.

Regarding the choice of license, you can forget about the first Essential level, as you won’t have access to email synchronization.

If your needs are just as limited, I suggest you take a look at Notion’s CRM templates. Airtable offers the same functionality for free for life!

In my opinion, the Advanced level is the best license for getting started with Pipedrive, and it can take you a long, long way.

If I had to give you a schema for determining your licensing needs, it would be related to your number of active users:

• 1 to 5 users: Advanced ideal! Professional if you think you need a lot of reporting
• 5 to 10 users: The ideal professional! You may want to take a look at the Power license, especially if you want to “partition” user views and accesses.
• 10 users: Power ideal (new license launched in 2023), especially if you need to manage teams, advanced reporting, etc.
• Finally, the Enterprise license is especially necessary if you have more than 100 users, and especially if you have intensive API integration with your ERP. In this case, the number of API calls will be the deciding factor.

Add-ons and other hidden costs

The principle of Pipedrive add-ons is to pay per month, whatever your number of users.

Alternatives to Pipedrive add-ons

Pipedrive ‘s marketplace is packed with connected applications, so don’t hesitate to compare Pipedrive’s adds on with the solutions offered on the marketplace. Whenever possible, I’ll point you in the direction of interesting alternatives on the Pipedrive marketplace.

There are 5 official Pipedrive add-ons.

#1 Pipedrive Campaigns



The big news from Pipedrive is the launch at the end of 2022 of Pipedrive Campaign, email marketing with a Pipedrive twist. I refer you to my article on the subject!

From €16 per month for 1,000 eligible contacts in your Pipedrive database. You can increase or decrease your package during the month.

Overall, it’s more expensive than Brevo or Mailjet, but fully integrated with your Pipedrive. No need to manage synchronization with an external tool

Clearly, this is the Add-on to consider very quickly, because it’s a good complement to help your sales teams set up a nurturing tool for your cold or lukewarm leads.

Interesting alternatives are Mailchimp and Brevo.

But beware: the integrations offered on the marketplace are unidirectional, i.e. from Pipedrive to Mailchimp or Brevo. If you want to retrieve information from your emailing software on Pipedrive (which I highly recommend), you’ll need to use Zapier, Make or Outfunnel.

#2 Lead booster

It’s a mixture of several solutions. From chat to web forms to prospectors.

The single rate is €32/month. Except for the prospector, where it is possible to buy additional credits. Pipedrive offers a 15-day trial.

The chat solution or chatbot is an interesting way of centralizing your needs. Very easy to use, it offers various solutions for programming automations. It’s very easy to install via a piece of code to be integrated into any website.

The prospector’s interest, on the other hand, is rather low, especially as the market is full of far more convincing solutions.

The forms solution, to be integrated directly into your site via a code, meets a basic need and can be easily integrated into the CRM system.

To be used for your contact or lead collection forms. The big plus of the solution is its CRM integration, where integrations are either limited or very complex when using other solutions.

In my opinion, Lead Booster is worth considering if you want to concentrate everything in Pipedrive, but fairly quickly I think you’ll need to look for more specific solutions, and Pipedrive’s marketplace is full of innovative solutions.

In any case, for €32 the price is canon for a chat solution, chatbot and integrated forms. You won’t find anything cheaper on the market with this level of integration.

#3 Website visitors

This add-on lets you track who’s visiting your site. Specifically, which company your visitors come from.

Pipedrive is based on the Leadfeeder solution.

Rates start from €49 per month (€0.25 per unique organization identified).

This is particularly interesting if you’re targeting key accounts or customers in North America. I found that interest in targets in Europe was lower.

An interesting alternative is Outfunnel, which doesn’t do quite the same thing, but allows you to track and score your users’ visits to your website.

#4 Smartdoc

This is Pipedrive’s CPQ solution for creating purchase orders, contracts or quotations, automatically completing these documents with data from your Pipedrive CRM and collecting signatures data.

At €32 (12-month commitment, otherwise €39 per month) you get a complete, easy-to-use solution that’s 100% compatible with Google Drive (Doc, Sheet, Slide) and the Microsoft suite (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).

The solution is free of charge for Pro, Power and Enterprise plans.

#5 Project



To put it simply, with Projet you have a mini Trello.

This is the solution I recommend if, after signing a customer, you have a very linear process to follow.

For example, we have a customer who installs green plants in an office, so we can coordinate his suppliers, deliverers and installers via a single interface.

The rate is €6 / project user per month. A classic Pipedrive user can view a project, but cannot act on it.

Project is available to all Power and Enterprise subscribers.

Clearly, this is the solution to consider if you want to maintain project management in your Pipedrive, especially if your sales staff have to carry out customer success missions. The best alternatives to Projet on the marketplace are Trello and Asana.

#6 Messenger



I said 5, but it’s actually 6, because there’s a hidden add-on on Pipedrive.

Messenger by Pipedrive (in beta version) lets you consolidate conversations with your customers from Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp business.

You can also manage replies directly, and the big plus is that you can link the conversation to a contact or a case.

CRM project implementation costs on Pipedrive

For a Pipedrive integration, I’ll try to give you some projections by scenario, assuming that you entrust the whole thing to an external agency.

As a reminder, our “typical” companies are:

• Company 1: A small business or B2B agency with comparatively few CRM staff
• Company 2: A start-up / scale-up – typically a SaaS company
• Company 3: An SME with several subsidiaries, or a business unit in a large group

Company 1: Small business or agency with up to 3 users

• Recommended license: Advanced – €27.90 x 12 months x 3 users = €83.70 per month
• Add on recommended : Pipedrive Campaign for 1000 contacts: €13.33 per month

Framing

This is the first integration of a true CRM. There’s an excel file to import: the customer file with hot prospects.

You need to define the scenarios of the various users within the CRM: who does what and how on a day-to-day basis.

Your requirements are fairly standard for a Pipedrive integrator, and scoping is generally included in the integration service.

Configuration & integration

You need to configure your Pipedrive instance for the 7 basic functions:

• Brochure box
• Business / Opportunity
• Email & calendar synchronization
• Custom field settings for Contacts, Company, Business
• Activity screen configuration
• A monthly management dashboard with a dozen reports
• Setting up Pipedrive Campaigns with a template

Approximately 3 to 4 days’ service required. Budget around €2,500 for a fully operational Pipedrive in line with your usage scenarios.

Training

In principle, training isn’t essential: you’ve taken part in the integration, you’ve benefited from live training and you can easily train your users.

Maintenance / Sales Ops

Ideally, I recommend a one-day service every 3/4 months to review your usage, upgrade your automations, update your dashboards, optimize the deliverability of your newsletters and possibly integrate a third-party tool.

Company 2: Start-up – SaaS

You’re already using a structured CRM, but the data is disparate (duplicates, triplicates, non-homogeneous, etc.), the dashboards don’t enable you to manage your sales activity with sufficient precision, and the integrations need to be finalized both upstream with the prospecting tools and downstream with the ERP or business solution (often developed in-house) and a advanced ticketing solutions such as Crisp or Zendesk.

Already integrated CRM or migration from another solution.

Generally speaking, CRM processes have been built up over time, with each user following his or her own scenarios.

Disparate data (duplicates, triplicates, non-homogeneous, etc.)

Dashboards don’t enable fine-tuned management of sales activity

Integrations to be finalized,

• Recommended license: Professional – €49.90 x 10 users = €499 per month
• Recommended add-ons
  • Pipedrive Campaigns for 5000 contacts: €42 per month
  • Lead booster for chats, chatbots and webforms in particular: 32.50 x 12: €390 per year
  • Smart doc: offered with the professional license
• Recommended integrations:
  • Outfunnel for scoring and synchronizing contacts.
  • Aircall, RingOver or Just call as VOIP solutions
  • A cold email solution like Lemlist or La Growth Machine
• Synchronization with Slack, and a project management tool like Trello or Asana

For this exercise, I counted 10 users:

• A head of sales
• 5 sales
• 2 marketers (Manager + trainee)
• 2 founders

Framing the CRM project

Your needs are fairly standard for a Pipedrive integrator, excluding API integration and/or particularly complex business processes. In general, this will be offered with the integration service.

Configuration & integration

In addition to the basic configuration, you need to add a few more advanced elements

• Creation of products with their own taxonomy
• Activity screen configuration with different routines for SDR and Account Executives
• A monthly management dashboard with a dozen reports
• A weekly management dashboard for the weekly meeting
• A dashboard by user type
• Creating automations
• Integration of sales tunnel(s) with connection to online forms
• Coaching / support for API connection with the business database

Training

For a team of 10 people, you can count on one day for training the super administrator + two days for training all the users.

Training will take the form of real-life case studies.

A word of advice: divide your training into 3 or 4 remote sessions, in small groups of 3/4 people, to enable your users to gradually get into use and maximize adoption.

Maintenance / Sales Ops

Ideally, I’d recommend 2 days a month, or 1/2 day a week, to carry out a Sales Ops mission: i.e. to ensure that the CRM is up to date, that usage is consistent, to optimize dashboards, to deploy new automations, to pilot the sending of a newsletter, to integrate new solutions, etc.

Company 3: SME with subsidiaries or BU of a large group

A CRM is already integrated, with over a million records between contacts, emails, tasks, activities and so on.

Generally speaking, CRM processes have been built up on a piecemeal basis, with each user following his or her own scenarios, and the whole team not adopting them.

Data is disparate (duplicates, triplicates, non-homogeneous, etc.), dashboards do not enable fine-tuned management of sales and marketing activities, and integrations need to be finalized, both upstream with prospecting tools and downstream with ERP or business solutions (often developed in-house) and an advanced ticketing solution such as Crisp or Zendesk.

Team management is opaque in CRM, and practices are not homogeneous. The need for integration with the technical ecosystem is very strong, not only with the business solution, but also with ERP, the Group’s data-lake and the internal reporting tool.

• Recommended license: Power – €64.90 x 10 users = €649 per month
• Recommended add-ons :
  • Pipedrive Campaigns for 10,000 contacts: €90 per month
  • Lead booster for chats, chatbots and webforms in particular: 32.50 x 12: €390 per year
  • Smart doc: offered with the professional license
• Recommended integrations:
  • Outfunnel for scoring and synchronizing contacts.
  • Aircall, RingOver or Just call as VOIP solutions
  • A cold email solution like Lemlist or La Growth Machine
  • Synchronization with Slack and Trello / Asana

  For this exercise, I counted 20 users:

  • A head of sales
  • 4 SDRs
  • 11 sales (AE)
  • A marketing manager
  • 3 marketers

  Framing the CRM project

  A minimum budget of €3,000, i.e. 3 / 4 days for the audit, recommendation and deployment roadmap. This phase is important to properly calibrate the integration mission. The teams are now fully operational, so we need to adapt Pipedrive to the uses already in place and connect the CRM to APIs for a seamless experience.

  Configuration & integration

  In addition to the intermediate configuration, we need to add a few more elements:

  • Configuring user rights and team views
  • Business – on several pipelines
  • Mapping and drafting of all usage scenarios
  • API integration with the entire ecosystem

  A minimum of 20 days’ service is required. Budget around €15,000 for a fully operational Pipedrive in line with your usage scenarios and third-party integrations.

  Training

  For a team of 20 people, you can count on three days for training the sales & marketing super-administrators + seven days for training all 15 users. The training will take the form of real-life case studies.

  A word of advice: divide your training into 3 or 4 remote sessions, with user groups of 2/3 people, to enable your users to gradually get into use and maximize adoption.

  Maintenance / Sales Ops

  Ideally, I’d recommend 10 days a month, or 2.5 days a week, to carry out a Sales Operations mission: ensuring that the CRM is up to date, that usage is homogeneous, that reporting tools are up to date, deploying new automations, managing the sending of newsletters, integrating new solutions, importing new data or challenging API integrations, regularly cleaning / de-duplicating / enriching the database, administering the tools stack, supporting new users, etc.

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