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Pipedrive vs. Insightly is a match worth having ringside seats for. 

If you pick the wrong CRM, you could lose hard-earned cash with your misplaced bet. 

I’m AJ, here to offer my two cents. I’ve spent the last decade building my business (to a successful multiple seven-figure exit). 

In that time, I used just about every CRM software on the market. Now, I aim to help you get to where I am (in a fraction of the time it took me). 

Now, let’s get to the main event—Pipedrive vs. Insightly! Stick around to see if you guessed the winner. 

Spoiler alert: this was a close one!

Bonfire Rating: 4.7/5

Pipedrive: Some of the best pipeline management in the game.

Bonfire Rating: 4.6/5

Insightly is all about scaling your business practices without breaking the bank!

How Did We Evaluate Insightly and Pipedrive?

My team and I compared both customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to see which came out on top.

Here’s what we tested: 

Pricing & Free VersionTop FeaturesCustomer ServiceIntegrationsEase of UseBest Mobile AppKnowledge and Learning CenterLimitationsWhich One We Think is Best for Small Businesses

How We Objectively Test Each Platform:

Expert Review

Features

Pricing

Customer Service

Integrations

Ease of Use

Mobile

AJ’s got a knack for kick-starting businesses, putting them on autopilot, and setting them up for acquisition. Over the past decade, he’s been right in the thick of things with hundreds of small businesses, helping them with just about everything under the business sun. If you need advice on software suites and choices? AJ’s your guy.

We roll up our sleeves and dive into the top CRM features we think are pretty crucial for small businesses. Stuff like reports and analytics, options to customize your pipelines, and the ability to link up with other apps and services. We know what makes small businesses tick, so we know what features they need to get the job done.

Money matters, folks! When it comes to picking a CRM system, price is usually the deal-breaker. We give a big thumbs up if a provider charges $30 or less per user each month for their starter plan. Extra brownie points for throwing in a freebie plan or trial, options to scale up or down as needed, and the freedom to pay monthly or yearly. We’re looking for flexability for small businesses. 

We all know support is mega important when you’re choosing a CRM platform. This is especially true for those smaller businesses or sales teams who can’t afford to have tech wizards on their payroll. We put our detective hats on to see if these companies offer round-the-clock support, and we looked at the different ways you can get help. We’re talking live chat (like, real-time convo), email tickets, a good old-fashioned phone call, and self-service tools (for the DIY-ers out there).

When you’re in the business of picking a CRM, integrations are like the secret sauce that takes your burger from ‘meh’ to ‘mind-blowing’. Imagine, all your favorite apps and tools, working together in perfect harmony, making your workflow smoother than a fresh tub of Nutella. When we review a CRM, we look at the integrations most SMB owners are looking for.

When you’re reviewing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, it’s essential to pay close attention to its ease of use. After all, a CRM is as beneficial as its usability. A simple, intuitive interface saves you and your team a great deal of time and headache. When we’re reviewing each CRM, this is a crucial aspect that we look for.

The importance of Mobile CRM cannot be overstated in today’s digital age. It’s essential for fostering strong customer relationships and managing business activities. Mobile access to CRM makes it possible for sales teams to update and access customer information in real time, improving efficiency and ensuring up-to-date data. Mobile CRM can have a massive impact on SMBs, so thoroughly testing it is essential for each one of our reviews.


Pipedrive Vs. Insightly Comparison Chart

Here’s an overview of how each platform performed. 

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly: Pricing

It’s essential to stay within your budget when choosing a CRM. 

So let’s see how these two do regarding cost. 

Pipedrive Pricing​

Pipedrive offers a free plan in addition to three paid plans:

Essential: $21.90/MonthAdvanced: $37.90/MonthProfessional: $59.90/MonthPower: $74.90/MonthEnterprise: $119.00/Month

Check out our complete Pipedrive pricing guide.

Insightly Pricing

Insightly offers three pricing plans, with a free plan available for up to 2 users.

The plans are as follows:

Free Forever – Up to 2 usersPlus – $29/MonthProfessional – $49/MonthEnterprise – $99/Month

Insightly Vs. Pipedrive Pricing Winner: Insightly

AJ’s Take: Insightly takes this round by an incredibly small margin because of its free plan. This essentially removes the barrier to entry for trying the platform. 

Insightly Vs. Pipedrive: Top Features

When it comes to choosing a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, it’s crucial to consider the features offered by each platform. 

Let’s break down our favorite features of both platforms.

Pipedrive Top Features

Pipedrive offers a ton of features to help your SMB scale. Let’s get into it. 

If you need a way to kick your sales process into high gear, Pipedrive has your back. 

The sales-focused CRM offers tools to help you accomplish the following:

Manage deals from one central locationCustomize deal stages and task lists to match your workflowCreate visual pipelines that give you a real-time view of your sales cycle (from start to finish)

We tested this feature (over six months) by adding in some affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire. 

Here’s how a “new deal” card looked from our perspective. 

Within each deal, we could add and edit the following information:

Associated contactsOrganizationTitle ValuePipeline & stageProbabilityExpected close dateContact information 

Here’s how our pipeline looked with everything put in. 

We were able to switch between different views with just a click, as well as drag and drop our deals to the next stage. 

If you’re serious about scaling your SMB, you’ll need a tool that keeps your projects organized. 

Pipedrive offers this option (for an additional $8/month).

That’s right—you don’t need extra project management tools to efficiently manage projects within your CRM. 

This feature offers the following helpful tools to take charge of your project management:

Customizable task templatesDocument & file storageIntuitive drag-and-drop interfaceTeam collaboration toolsDetailed project and task tracking cardsCustom project fields

With Pipedrive, we were able to create project templates (so we didn’t have to repeatedly build the same projects over and over again).

Here’s a snapshot of the project template creation process (to give you a better idea). 

This little feature saved us a ton of time to focus on nurturing customer relationships.

During our six months of testing, we created and tracked a ton of projects.

Some of these included:

Social media campaignsOur newsletter rolloutNew website designNew client onboarding

Here’s an example of a project we created for our newsletter rollout. 

We were able to easily edit the following info: 

Project templateTitleStart & end dateBoard & phaseOwnerAssociated deals & contacts

Our take: Pipedrive offers fantastic project management tools to keep your team on track while you grow your business to new heights!

Pipedrive takes the painstaking task of managing repetitive tasks off your hands with their custom workflows. 

This feature lets you create a sequence of automated actions based on specific triggers. 

Here’s what we loved:

Custom workflows: You can set up a sequence of tasks triggered by a specific action. For instance, when a deal is marked as won, you can have a task automatically scheduled to send a follow-up email. Notifications: Never miss a beat with Pipedrive’s notification system. Whether it’s a deal that needs your attention or a task coming due, these alerts keep you and your team on track.Automated follow-ups: One of our favorite features has to be the automated follow-ups. With this, you can say goodbye to forgetting to send that important email or missing a crucial call.

In a nutshell, Pipedrive’s workflow automation is a game-changer. 

It not only ensures nothing slips through the cracks but also boosts your team’s productivity by taking care of the monotonous tasks. 

Talk about a win-win!

Pipedrive provides the ability to create powerful email campaigns (for an additional $16/month). 

Here’s what we loved about Pipedrive’s Campaigns feature:

Personalized emails: You can customize your emails to a tee, ensuring each one speaks directly to your customer. It’s a fantastic way to build rapport and keep your subscribers engaged.Targeted campaigns: You can segment your audience into different groups and send targeted emails to each. This feature allows you to tailor your messages to the unique needs and interests of each segment.Detailed analytics: With this feature, you can track the performance of your email campaigns in real time. Gain insights into open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to understand what’s working and what’s not.Automated follow-ups: Set up automated follow-up emails to keep your brand on top of your customers’ minds. This feature ensures you never miss an opportunity to engage with your customers.

We created a ton of campaigns throughout our six months of testing.

We really liked the helpful email templates provided by Pipedrive (shown below).

These are perfect for beginners looking to create powerful email campaigns (without the learning curve). 

Once we selected a template, we could customize (just about) every facet of each email with a drag-and-drop interface. 

Here’s how it looked (for context). 

We could easily add the following elements to each email: 

TextImagesVideoButtonsSocial links Custom code

From there, we could schedule and send emails to clients (all from within the CRM tool). 

The nitty gritty: Pipedrive delivers powerful campaign creation for SMBs looking to ramp up their marketing efforts. 

If you’re looking to take your marketing to the next level, this feature is certainly worth checking out!

Great customer relationship management is essentially impossible without a way to effectively manage your customer data.

Luckily, Pipedrive provides a fantastic solution that allows you to effortlessly maintain and nurture customer relationships. 

Pipedrive offers a range of awesome features for managing your contacts:

Comprehensive contact information: With Pipedrive, you can store all the important details about your clients, like their contact info, deals, notes, and activity history.Easy navigation: The contact data is organized in a way that’s super easy to navigate. You’ll have no trouble getting a quick understanding of each client’s current status and history.Segmentation: You can easily categorize your contacts, which helps you personalize your approach to each client.Interaction tracking: Keep track of every interaction with your clients. No detail will be missed, and you can seize every opportunity.Integration: Pipedrive seamlessly integrates with various communication platforms, giving you a streamlined, all-in-one contact management experience.

Here’s a sneak peek of how it looked when we added a new contact with Pipedrive. 

With just a few clicks, we could input all important details, ensuring we had a comprehensive view of each client. 

This feature has been a game-changer in effectively maintaining and nurturing our customer relationships!

Keeping track of your day-to-day tasks is critical in running a successful business. It’s about staying organized and ensuring no task falls through the cracks. 

That’s where Pipedrive comes in. 

Its activity tracker is a fantastic tool that simplifies task management (making it easy to stay on top of your calendar). 

It’s not just about listing your tasks—it’s about managing your business operations effectively. 

Here’s a look at what Pipedrive brings to the table:

Meetings: Never miss an important meeting again. With Pipedrive, you can schedule and manage all your meetings in one place, sending reminders to all participants and keeping everyone in the loop.Calls: Pipedrive allows for seamless call scheduling and monitoring. It logs calls, keeps track of call durations, and even allows for call recording, ensuring no critical information is lost.Tasks: The platform allows you to create, assign, and manage tasks efficiently. It keeps you informed about task progress, ensuring nothing gets overlooked.Events: Organizing and managing events is a breeze with Pipedrive. It allows you to schedule events, send invites, and track attendance, all from a single interface.

Check out an activity card we created (during our six months of testing) for a meeting with a client.

Within each card, we had a ton of information at our fingertips, including:

Time & dateLocationGuestsIntegrationsDescriptionOwnerAssociated dealsCalendar view (to avoid double booking)

The nuts and bolts: Pipedrive’s Activity Tracker is a one-stop solution for managing your daily tasks, making it a valuable tool for any SMB.

For an extra $39/month, Pipedrive provides a powerful tool to help you identify and engage with potential leads. 

When you upgrade to LeadBooster, you immediately gain access to the following:

Prospector: This feature allows you to find new leads by crawling many online sources (including social media profiles and company websites).Chatbot: Automate your lead qualification process with the help of an intelligent chatbot that can gather information and route leads to the right team member.Live chat: Interact with potential leads in real-time, providing them with immediate assistance (and converting their contact information into leads within your CRM).Web forms: Create and embed customizable forms on your website to capture leads and gather information about them.

We tested this feature (over six months) and were impressed with the lead management capabilities provided by Pipedrive.

We saw a significant increase in our leads and conversions (thanks to the efficient lead generation tools).

The breakdown: Pipedrive offers some of the best lead management features on the market, making it an excellent choice for SMBs looking to boost their sales growth!

Insightly Top Features

Let’s take a look at some of Insightly’s best features. 

If you want to grow your business successfully, you’ll need an effective way to manage your sales pipeline. 

Enter Insightly—an affordable CRM with all the tools you need to manage your sales process (from prospecting to post-sales).

Here’s a closer look at what Insightly has to offer:

Visual pipeline: Insightly provides an easy-to-use, color-coded sales pipeline that allows you to track and manage every stage of the sales process.Customizable stages: You can customize your pipeline stages to fit your unique sales process, making it easier to stay organized and on top of your deals.Deal tracking: Have a comprehensive view of every deal in progress, including details such as contact information, tasks, notes, and emails.

We added some of our affiliate marketing deals to fully test this feature.

Here’s how it looked to add a new deal.

We loved the sleek layout of each deal card, which provided a ton of information (but wasn’t overly cluttered).

Once we had our deals input, we could easily track them at a glance from our sales pipeline (shown below).

Our takeaway: Insightly offers a visually appealing and user-friendly pipeline management system that helps you stay on top of your sales process. 

It’s affordable, sleek, and powerful—what’s not to love? 

I’ve always been a firm believer in making data-driven decisions.

Luckily, Insightly provides fantastic, customizable dashboards that allow you to track and visualize your performance metrics, making it easier to figure out what’s working (and what’s not). 

For example, here’s a look at my team’s sales dashboard during our testing. 

We were able to track the following metrics with ease: 

Deals: Insights on both won and lost deals.Win/loss rate: An in-depth look at your success rate.Sales: Tracking your overall sales performance.Top sales reps: Identifying your highest-performing sales team members.Sales funnel: A comprehensive view of your sales process.

We absolutely loved the customizability and adaptability offered by Insightly’s dashboards. 

It’s a great tool for staying on top of your team’s performance and making data-driven decisions.

The breakdown: Insightly offers fantastic analytics capabilities to help your sales teams stay on top of their performance while you scale to new heights. 

Great contact management can be the difference between a successful sale and a lost opportunity. 

Insightly offers robust contact management tools that make it easy to store, track, and manage your contacts in one place. 

Here’s what you get: 

Custom fields: The option to create custom fields for each contact (think job titles, phone numbers, locations).Tags: The ability to tag contacts for easy organization.Contact history: Store all interactions with a contact, including notes and emails.Duplicate prevention: Insightly will notify you if you try to add a duplicate contact (saving you time and headaches).

We tested this feature by importing some of our B2B affiliate marketing contacts at Small Business Bonfire. 

The whole process involved just a few clicks (and took less than 5 minutes). 

Here’s how it looked once we had everything added. 

We loved the sleek interface and how easy it was to get an overview of our clients at a glance. 

The brass tacks: Insightly allows you to easily manage contacts as you scale your SMB. It’s incredibly easy to use and customize.

In addition to a full CRM, Insightly also provides fantastic email marketing tools to take advantage of. 

For example, the CRM platform provides the ability to create email templates to easily send out to leads (or schedule them ahead of time). 

We used these features to send out some email campaigns for our affiliate marketing deals (and saw great results). 

Let’s walk you through our experience.

To start with, we created a new email template for the rollout of our newsletter. 

Here’s how it looked (for reference). 

We could easily customize the body of each email, add attachments, and add links or custom code.
From there, we could schedule and send each email with just a click. 

These templates saved our team a ton of time manually sending each email.

Here’s our email templates dashboard, where we could see all the templates we created at a glance. 

Plus, we could easily see the following metrics for our emails sent with Insightly:

Open rate: The percentage of recipients who opened our email.Click-through rate: The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in our email.Bounce rate: The percentage of emails that were not successfully delivered.Unsubscribe rate: How many people unsubscribed from our emails after receiving them. 

The need to know: Insightly offers powerful email marketing tools that allow you to easily create, schedule, and track your email campaigns. It’s a great way to keep in touch with leads and nurture them into customers.

The ability to automate tasks is one of the key features that sets Insightly apart in the CRM landscape. 

Insightly’s automation capabilities truly shine in the realms of sales, marketing, and workflow management. 

Here’s how we utilized this feature:

Sales automation: Insightly allowed us to set up automated actions based on deal stages. This meant we could automatically assign tasks to team members when a deal moved to a certain stage, saving us time and ensuring nothing slipped through the cracks.Marketing automation: Insightly enabled us to automate our email marketing efforts across the board. With the ability to schedule bulk emails and set up auto-responses, we witnessed a boost in our email campaign efficiency and lead nurturing process.Workflow automation: Insightly made it simple to automate repetitive tasks. For instance, we could auto-generate follow-up tasks after a call or meeting, which increased our productivity and ensured consistent customer communication.

The bottom line: Insightly’s automation capabilities enable you to streamline your sales and marketing processes, improving efficiency and reducing the risk of human error. 

It’s perfect for (just about) any SMB looking to scale and grow.

Insightly stands head and shoulders above many of its competitors due to its comprehensive project management capabilities. 

This feature offers a fully integrated approach to managing your projects right from within your CRM. 

As a result, you can seamlessly transition from closing a deal to initiating a project without ever leaving Insightly. 

Here are some aspects of this feature that we loved:

Project dashboards: Insightly’s dashboard provides an overview of all ongoing projects, including deadlines, team members involved, and progress tracking.Task management: You can easily create and assign tasks to your team members within a project. Plus, you can set due dates and priority levels (and attach relevant files or links).Collaboration tools: The platform offers a range of collaboration tools that make it easy for team members to communicate and share project updates.

Here’s a look at some of the projects we added and tracked during our six-month testing period. 

Our two cents: Manage your projects like a boss with Insightly’s robust project management capabilities. It’s a one-stop shop for all your CRM and project management needs.

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly Features Winner: Tie

AJ’s Take: This round was incredibly close! Both platforms offer the sales and marketing features needed to effectively scale your business. 


Related Reading

After testing, we compiled a thorough list of our favorite CRMs for Small Businesses. Check it out now! The list might surprise you. 


Pipedrive Vs. Insightly: Customer Service

Customer service can make or break a CRM, so let’s see how Pipedrive handles Insightly in this matchup.

Pipedrive Customer Service

Pipedrive offers some fantastic customer service capabilities. 

Let’s look at the following:

Availability & responsiveness: Pipedrive provides 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support. Their support team was always there when we needed them!Knowledge base: The CRM tool offers a comprehensive knowledge base with articles, videos, and tutorials to help users navigate the platform.Training: Pipedrive Academy offers a range of courses on topics like sales techniques and CRM best practices.

Insightly Customer Service

Insightly offers great customer service (although it’s only available on paid plans).

Let’s break it down:

Availability & responsiveness: Insightly offers phone and ticket support. The longest we had to wait was about 3 hours to hear back. Knowledge base: Insightly offers a great knowledge base and video tutorials.Training:  The CRM software offers helpful webinars and training videos.

Insightly Vs. Pipedrive Customer Service Winner: Pipedrive

AJ’s Take: Pipedrive dominates this round with 24/7, always-available customer service. Plus, Pipedrive Academy provides fantastic tutorial resources in a convenient location. 


Insightly Vs. Pipedrive: Integrations

Let’s put Insightly head-to-head with Pipedrive for integrations. 

Pipedrive Integrations

Pipedrive offers a ton of native integrations. 

Some of our favorites include:

TrelloSlackMailChimpIntercomZoom

Plus, Pipedrive offers a great pairing with Zapier, unlocking thousands of additional third-party pairings. 

Insightly Integrations

Insightly boasts a large number of native integrations.

Some standouts include: 

GmailSlackShopifyJiraMagentoAsana

Insightly also offers a great Zapier integration, allowing for tons of additional options.

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly Integrations Winner: Tie

AJ’s Take: This round is a clear tie—both platforms provide fantastic integration options for SMBs of all sizes. 


Pro Tip #1: Free plans are great, but they’re often very limited. Be sure and figure out your exact business needs before committing to a free CRM.
– AJ Silber

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly: Ease of Use

Let’s look at how easy to use Pipedrive and Insightly are. 

Pipedrive Ease of Use

Ease of use is where Pipedrive really shines. 

It has a beautifully intuitive interface (with a minimal learning curve). 

Even if you’re new to the CRM game, Pipedrive makes things straightforward. And hey, that means less time scratching your head and more time growing your business!

Insightly Ease of Use

While Insightly is easy to use, it’s a bit more complex than Pipedrive. 

Running multiple processes simultaneously can be tricky, but once you get the hang of it, Insightly’s tools and features are straightforward to navigate.

Insightly Vs. Pipedrive Ease of Use Winner: Pipedrive 

AJ’s Take: Pipedrive wins by a hair in this round. With its easy-to-use interface and minimal learning curve, it’s perfect for SMBs who want to hit the ground running with their CRM. 


Insightly Vs. Pipedrive: Best Mobile App

Having access to your CRM on the go is essential for modern businesses. 

So, let’s see how Pipedrive and Insightly’s mobile apps stack up. 

Pipedrive Mobile App

Pipedrive offers a mobile app for iOS and Android devices that allows you to manage your sales pipeline, contacts, activities, and deals from anywhere. 

Some notable features include:

Call loggingOffline accessReal-time notificationsDeal managementCustomer data management

With Pipedrive, we felt like we had a full CRM in the palm of our hand. The only complaint would be that the pipeline management isn’t quite as intuitive as the desktop version. 

Insightly Mobile App

Insightly offers a great mobile app for iOS and Android devices. 
Here’s what we loved:

Deal trackingOffline accessTask managementPowerful analyticsContact management 

We found Insightly’s mobile app to be user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it a great on-the-go addition to the desktop version.

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly Mobile App Winner: Tie

AJ’s Take: Once again, this one is too close to call. Both platforms offer robust mobile apps with features that make managing your CRM on-the-go a breeze. 


Pro Tip #2: You’ll want the platform you choose to have scalable (yet affordable) pricing plans for every step of the way
– AJ Silber

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly: Knowledge Center

A knowledge center equips customers with the resources and guides they need to navigate a platform effectively. 

Let’s see how the knowledge centers of Pipedrive and Insightly compare.

Pipedrive Knowledge Center

Pipedrive has an extensive knowledge base with articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the CRM. 

Plus, Pipedrive Academy offers a variety of courses on topics like sales techniques and CRM best practices.

Insightly Knowledge Center

Insightly’s knowledge center is user-friendly and comprehensive, offering articles, videos, guides, and webinars. 

However, some resources are only available on paid plans, which could be a drawback for smaller businesses.

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly Knowledge Center Winner: Pipedrive

AJ’s Take: Pipedrive wins this round with its robust knowledge base and user-friendly training options. While Insightly offers great resources, some may not be accessible to smaller businesses on a budget. 


Insightly Vs. Pipedrive: Limitations

Every solution has limitations, and it’s important to understand these when choosing the right CRM for your business. 

Pipedrive Limitations

Pipedrive is a great all-around CRM, but some limitations to be aware of include:

No free plan:  While Pipedrive offers a 14-day trial, there is no free plan available. This can be a barrier to entry for startups and SMBs on a tight budget. Limited customer journey view: Outside of pipeline management, Pipedrive doesn’t offer as much visibility into the customer journey compared to other CRMs. 

Insightly Limitations

No CRM platform is perfect, and that includes Insightly. 

A few limitations of Insightly include the following:

Limited free plan: Insightly offers a free plan, but it’s quite limited in terms of features and doesn’t include customer supportFew advanced features: While Insightly has all the basics covered, it doesn’t offer advanced features such as live chat or A/B testing. 

Pipedrive Vs. Insightly Limitations Winner: Pipedrive 

AJ’s Take: Despite Pipedrive’s lack of a free plan, its overall power and ease of use give it the edge over Insightly in this round. 


Pipedrive Vs. Insightly: Which is Best for Small Businesses?

This was one of the closest matchups we’ve had! Our overall winner is Pipedrive.

If you need a robust CRM with a powerful sales pipeline management tool and an intuitive interface, Pipedrive is the way to go. 

But if you’re on a tight budget and just need basic CRM functionality, Insightly is also a solid choice.

Both platforms offer great features for SMBs, so check them out today for free and decide for yourself!

The post Pipedrive Vs. Insightly 2023: What’s Best for Your SMB? appeared first on Small Business Bonfire.

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