June is the month as a team we chose to focus on having more time with our families. Having more family time means less time spent on our business. The only way we can safely take a break from business is through automation. Setting our business on autopilot allows us to automate the majority of usual processes. It doesn’t make sense to outsource administrative tasks when there are hundreds of systems and tools available to do it for us. When it comes to managing your business, you want to ensure it’s nurtured the right way, no pun intended. Welcome to the Battle of the CRMs. In this 2-part blog, I’m going to cover three major Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems: PipeDrive, InfusionSoft and HubSpot. I chose these three brands as they are highly-rated among their users, extremely robust and very popular among marketing professionals in general.
If you’ve spent even 5-10 minutes in the world of marketing, you may have heard about SalesForce–one of the industry leaders. In the automotive industry, it still is a leader as it offers exactly what salesmen need. In my experience, SalesForce often comes with a love or hate relationship. There is no in between like there is with ClickFunnels, LeadPages, Zoho, Insightly and many others. However, marketers need more capabilities if they’re serious about marketing their product or service. A lot of CRMs share the same functions, but not all of them offer the same features. Let the battle begin…!
PipeDrive: The Facts
First, I’ll start simple with PipeDrive. Founded in 2010, PipeDrive is available to 15 languages and offers multiple currency exchanges. Their coverage is larger than that of Verizon: over 140 countries around the world. According to their site, they maintain 50,000 global users. Everyone goes straight for the bottom line when shopping for any business tool and so will I. Pricing is very reasonable for this CRM. After a brief undisclosed trail run, their plans start at $10/month. From there, they move up to $63/month (with annual billing and monthly billing options available). If you’re smart and do a little digging like I did, you can grab hold of a unique 21-day promo trial.
PipeDrive: The Differences
PipeDrive is a strong CRM with its pipeline management dashboard. At first glance, it’s quite impressive with so much available customization. Sales reporting and sales forecasting is a big staple on their features list, which is useful no matter who you ask. Full email sync (and integration) brings a new level of utility to your standard email system. Even Gmail can’t touch this integration!
However, it doesn’t include marketing automation like InfusionSoft and HubSpot does. Customizable web forms offered by PipeDrive prove very useful with a simple design. Because they would be sent to your customers and prospects, simple is the right way to go. You don’t want to overload anyone involving your business!
From a bird’s eye view, PipeDrive is a simple, popular CRM. It provides the majority of features an entrepreneur, a solopreneur or newer business owner would need. Depending on how robust your business is or how much it can branch off and grow, PipeDrive may be more than enough. One downside to PipeDrive is they do not offer a payment system. There’s no way to take or send direct payments. If you need more power and payment integration in your new CRM, you may need to upgrade to something with eCommerce.
InfusionSoft: The Facts
According to their website, InfusionSoft has 125,000 global users. When it comes to the competition, InfusionSoft does not have an equal competitor in the traditional sense of the word. ActiveCampaign and Ontraport are close, but without the cigar. ClickFunnels and PipeDrive are also close, but neither platform provides true marketing automation. InfusionSoft stands alone in their own space for the SMBs (small-to-medium-sized businesses).
Stay tuned for my next blog as I wrap up the second half of the CRM battle. Next week, I’ll cover what sets InfusionSoft apart from the others. I’ll conclude with the facts and differences about HubSpot.
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