Insightly vs Pipedrive: Which CRM Is the Best for You?

Insightly is ideal for small and medium businesses seeking an affordable, project management-focused CRM. Its entry-level tier is free but limited to two users and lacks most of Insightly’s key features. Thus, it’s best to opt for any of its three paid tiers, which range in price from $29 to $99 per user, per month. All paid plans have a 14-day free trial and come with contact and project management tools; upgrades include lead routing and advanced workflows.

Pipedrive may not have a free platform, but all of its subscriptions come with a 14-day trial. Plus, Pipedrive’s entry-level Essential plan is a mere $14.90 per user, per month — a rather small fee to pay for custom pipelines, activity tracking, and an AI-based sales assistant. The rest of Pipedrive’s three paid tiers cost the same (or slightly less) than Insightly’s comparable plans and add features like email marketing tools, 24/7 customer support, and workflow automation.

Insightly’s primary focus is project management. It eases the burden of repetitive data entry for busy sales professionals by allowing them to convert won opportunities into projects directly from the pipeline. Similar to Pipedrive, Insightly has kanban-style pipelines that can be updated through a simple drag-and-drop interface. Other key features of Insightly include contact data enrichment via social media profiles, web-to-lead capture, and sales team management.

Pipedrive’s functionality centers around the sales process. All Pipedrive plans come with unlimited contact records and visual pipelines, which will make it easier for businesses to scale without regular paid upgrades. (By comparison, most Insightly plans impose limits on each of those elements.) Other noteworthy features include idle deal notifications plus an AI sales assistant that makes recommendations for future success based on past performances.

Insightly may have broader appeal than Pipedrive since it’s simple enough for beginners but with a layer of complexity that’ll intrigue more experienced CRM users. It’s also quite rigid, which hinders its customizability but also makes it tougher to mess up the system. However, access to customer support is limited without purchasing a separate support plan, which is quite expensive — important to keep in mind should something go awry during CRM implementation.

Pipedrive touts itself as a CRM made for sales professionals, by sales professionals. The result is a clean, intuitive interface that’s easy to learn. A lack of customization and advanced features may be a turn-off for businesses that prioritize those elements in a CRM, but for teams that are generally new to CRM software, Pipedrive will make an excellent starting point. And for businesses that need guidance during setup, Pipedrive offers 24/7 user support with every plan.

Insightly offers a library of nine legacy reports focused on opportunities and contact activities, along with over 40 chart styles to display on the CRM dashboard. For companies that need more specific stats, Insightly includes a custom report builder with all tiers. While generating reports from scratch may be overwhelming at first (relative to Pipedrive), it’ll be worth it for businesses that rely on detailed data to make actionable sales decisions.

Pipedrive comes with a dozen premade report types as standard with every plan. These focus on deal performance, activities, and emails. Custom CRM reporting is available, but only with Pipedrive’s two highest plans. Although it may not be as robust as Insightly when it comes to bespoke reporting, Pipedrive stands out for its visual dashboards, which can display up to 25 reports at a time and are able to be shared with anyone who has access to a link.

All Insightly plans include activity sets, a group of sequences for automating pipeline-related tasks and events. While these activity sets can be tailored to specific triggers, they’re somewhat limited. Upgrading to Insightly’s Professional or Enterprise tiers allows for a wider range of workflows with precise triggers. For even more customized sales automation, developers can use multiple coding languages to create actions with lambda functions via Insightly Enterprise.

Pipedrive may not have the same level of flexibility in creating workflows that Insightly does as there’s no developer option, but it does have a more appealing approach to the process. Pipedrive and Insightly both utilize a visual drag-and-drop interface; however, Pipedrive’s automation builder is cleaner and more organized. Build workflows from scratch, modify any of Pipedrive’s 36 premade automation templates, or add recipes made by other Pipedrive users.

Insightly’s free mobile app features the main CRM’s renowned project management tools while adding several app-exclusive functions. Users can record audio notes up to an hour long and add new contact data via the built-in business card scanner. The Insightly mobile app also has call logging available at no extra cost — a contrast to the $35 per month required to use Insightly Voice, a similar telephony feature on the parent software. However, there’s no way to access offline data.

Pipedrive’s free mobile app takes a page from its CRM counterpart with an organized visual interface. Unlike Insightly, the Pipedrive mobile CRM allows for offline access to contact and sales data – important for field professionals who don’t always have stable Wi-Fi. Other notable features include an overview of daily tasks and meetings (called Focus) along with integration with Google Maps, WhatsApp, and other third-party productivity and messaging apps.

Insightly AppConnect contains over 1,000 CRM integrations, ranging from social media and customer service to operations and project management. Notable native apps include Facebook, Twitter, ADP Workforce Now, and a selection of Google products (Google Vision image recognition, Google Text-to-Speech, and Google Translate, to name a few.) Businesses can use Zapier to link non-native apps; those with Insightly Enterprise can build custom APIs.

The Pipedrive Marketplace currently features over 400 apps across multiple categories, with lead generation, marketing automation, and email marketing among the most prominent. Notable native integrations include Leadfeeder, Jotform, and Ring.io. There are also several integrations built and supported by Pipedrive, such as Dealbot for Slack and Pipedrive for Gmail. Outside of Pipedrive’s native apps, businesses can add integrations via Zapier or develop their own apps.

Every Insightly plan includes access to its knowledge base plus email-based help. For more support channels (phone and community forums), quicker turnaround times, and onboarding assistance, Insightly offers premium support plans starting from $1,500 per year. Although Insightly’s support team has a great reputation, that expense may be too much for smaller companies to bear, especially if they’ll need more hand-holding during CRM implementation.

Meanwhile, Pipedrive offers 24/7 live chat and email support as standard with all of its plans. Phone support is also available but only for Enterprise subscribers. Pipedrive even offers numerous self-service channels such as a vast knowledge base, an active community forum, and Pipedrive Academy, which hosts tutorials and certification programs. Pipedrive support is quite accessible and considered to be very good, but it’s not always the most timely.