Sales pipeline software are CRMs offering visual, customizable pipelines that help salespeople manage leads, opportunities, and customer relationships throughout the sales process. The top pipeline software also provide sales forecasting and analytics tools, basic marketing functionality, workflow automation, and more. To help you choose the right one, we’ve developed our list of the best pipeline software available, including an overall winner.
Here are the six best pipeline software for sellers and teams:
- Zoho CRM: Best overall pipeline software for pricing and features (free starting price)
- Freshsales: Best sales pipeline software for AI-powered sales tools (free starting price)
- EngageBay: Best pipeline software for deal and milestone tracking (free starting price)
- monday sales CRM: Best software for visual contact management (14-day free trial)
- Pipedrive: Best sales pipeline software for robust add-ons upgrades (14-day free trial)
- HubSpot CRM: Best free software option with premium upgrades (free starting price)
In our evaluation, we found that the overall best option is Zoho CRM, scoring the highest for core features, customization, and integrations while tying for cost. Check out how each software fared across all six categories below, including their primary use cases, pricing plans, and summary of features. To see how we assessed each option, jump down to our explanation.
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless noted.
Top 5 Sales Pipeline Software Features
The best sales pipeline software offer features such as:
Sales pipelines are visual representations of your sales process stages and where each lead is within them. Pipeline management tools help you track these stages and identify bottlenecks and opportunities to close more deals.
How We Evaluated the Best Sales Pipeline Software
To determine the best CRM software for salespeople needing to track their pipelines, we divided our scoring into six major categories, each of which included several weighted subcriteria. We then assigned scores for each subcriteria, which totaled an overall score out of five, and the sales pipeline software scoring the highest was identified as our winner. Finally, we determined a primary use case for each option that scored highly enough to make it onto our list.
Evaluation Criteria
For our scoring, we put the most emphasis on each option’s cost and core features offered since these tend to be the most important aspects for salespeople when choosing a sales pipeline software. We then reviewed each option’s customization, ease of use, and integrations with third-party apps. We also looked at the level of customer support offered by each CRM to round out our evaluation.
We evaluated free trial periods, subscription plans, billing options, and features offered in a free plan when applicable.
We assessed each sales pipeline software’s core offerings, such as pipeline management, lead management, account management, workflow automation, and sales forecasting.
This covers the different customizations for sales pipelines, deal stages, milestones, reports, and dashboards.
We evaluated any knowledge bases offered and read user reviews covering whether the sales pipeline software is easy to use on sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius.
We assessed the different integrations often used by salespeople including email, calendar, accounting, and social media.
We checked real user reviews on G2 and Capterra and looked at the types of customer support solutions offered, such as live chat, phone, and email.
Bottom Line: Best Sales Pipeline Software
The ability to view your sales pipeline will change the way you do business. A visual sales pipeline tracks sales activities and helps you identify tasks that are most effective in getting a deal to close. Many CRMs include them as part of their suite of CRM features, but our list will help you find the one that will fit your needs. If you’re specifically looking for software to help you analyze sales activities and deal stages, read our review of the best sales tracking software.
