Read our in-depth Zoho CRM review to learn if this popular sales and marketing CRM is right for your business.
Sales pipeline software are CRMs offering visual, customizable pipelines that help salespeople manage leads, opportunities, and customer relationships throughout the sales process. The best 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 sales pipeline software for salespeople and their primary use cases:
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Sales pipelines are a core feature of CRMs used to oversee sales processes and manage customer relationships. Because of this, we evaluated the best CRM software using an editorially-independent scoring model that relies on weighted categories to score each option out of five. Also determined were primary use cases for our top-ranked choices. Check out the specific criteria below, then continue reading for a complete breakdown of each option on our list:
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless noted.
Even though certain software options scored the most points in a single category, we found that Zoho CRM performed the best for overall value for those looking for sales pipeline software. See below to learn more about each option’s pricing, features, and scores.
Zoho CRM offers social profile enrichment and social lead generation as well as mass emailing and Google Ads.
Price Range: Free to $52 per user, per month (15- to 30-day free trial)
Zoho CRM is a pipeline software known for its multichannel marketing features that allow businesses to attract and engage with leads through websites, email, social media, and more. This not only includes social profile enrichment, but also social lead generation as well as web-to-lead online forms. Also included are custom pipeline fields, list views, reporting dashboards, AI-powered sales forecasting, and more.
Even though Zoho CRM takes our top spot, it does have some limitations. If you need a more robust free pipeline option, check out HubSpot CRM. If you need a powerful yet affordable and easier to use sales pipeline tool, check out Freshsales.
Freshsales offers powerful AI and other features that help salespeople manage deals through their pipeline.
Price Range: Free to $69 per user, per month (21-day free trial)
Freshsales is well-known, visual sales pipeline software that uses AI to help salespeople nurture leads as well as forecast revenue and more. In addition it its AI-assisted automations and analytics, it provides an intuitive and easy-to-use pipeline offering contact management features like chat and a built in-phone as well as web forms for lead generation. While it doesn't offer a free visual pipeline, its paid tiers are cost-effective and feature-rich, though they may lack some marketing functionality.
If you need a free visual pipeline, check out HubSpot CRM. For a robust pipeline software with more marketing features, check out Zoho CRM.
Pipedrive provides intuitive pipeline views with lead generation, email marketing, and sales add-ons you can choose from.
Price Range: $14.90 to $99 per user, per month (14-day free trial)
Pipedrive is a visual CRM with an easy-to-use pipeline offering core sales features like automated workflows, custom reporting, and more. One of its defining features is the ability to pay for add-on upgrades a la carte rather than needing to upgrade into a new tier when you only need access to select functionality. Some of these add-on features include lead generation, email marketing, website tracking, document management, and more.
Without these add-ons, however, Pipedrive may be lacking some key pipeline features. If you're needing an easy-to-use tool with more robust out-of-the-box pipeline features, check out Freshsales. Additionally, if you're needing a free pipeline tool, check out HubSpot CRM.
HubSpot CRM offers a feature-packed free version of their platform that includes sales pipeline management software.
Price Range: Free to $1,200 per month (Sales Hub)
HubSpot CRM is offers a free sales pipeline software that centralizes contacts and deals. The free plan lets teams add deals to a visual pipeline from contact records and then autopopulates the deals with relevant information, eliminating the need for tedious manual data entry. You can also integrate HubSpot CRM seamlessly with its free Marketing and Service Hubs for added free features. Premium tiers are available, though they're costly for small teams or solo-users.
For those needing more cost-effective yet feature-rich upgrade options, check out Freshsales for their sales pipeline features or Zoho CRM for a mix of marketing and sales features.
The small business Salesforce product that offers advanced reporting and seperate lead vs opportunity pipelines.
Price Range: $25 per user, per month (14-day free trial)
Salesforce Essentials is a robust sales pipeline tool that offers advanced features for pipeline reporting and small team collaboration. Its sales pipeline is split up into two: leads and opportunities, helping you track individual contacts regardless of where they are in your sales process. Use their prebuilt reports or create your own custom reports for a detailed view of your sales pipeline. However, the system can be hard to learn or use.
If you're looking for a robust sales pipeline tool that may be more intuitive to understand and use, check out Freshsales.
Sales Cloud Pricing Upgrades
Insightly offers project management and pipeline management tools so the entire team can access updates and deliver on time.
Price Range: Free to $99 per user, per month
Insightly is a CRM platform that converts opportunities into projects. Its project management features track all metrics, milestones, and activities that move deals forward from prospect to close to on-time delivery. Insightly can also integrate with many popular third-party business applications to automate workflows and keep projects on schedule. It’s great for businesses that complete projects after a sale or that work on ongoing, detailed projects for their clients.
The ability to view your sales pipeline will change the way you do business. It’s an important tool because it allows you to use data to determine how well your sales process is performing. And because a visual pipeline tracks sales activities, you can see what tasks are the 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 and sales practices.
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