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Pipedrive’s headline price looks friendly. Then you add a few seats, turn on email sync, bolt on web forms and a chatbot, start sending newsletters, and the monthly invoice is suddenly a lot bigger than the number you signed up for.
That gap between the sticker price and the real bill is the main reason people start looking for Pipedrive alternatives for small business teams. Pipedrive is still one of the nicest pipeline tools around. But if you’re a 2–20 person business paying for seats, add-ons, and a separate email tool, it’s fair to ask whether one subscription could do the same job for less.
To find out, I went through the pricing pages, add-on details, and import guides for five alternatives — EngageBay, Zoho CRM, Freshsales, HubSpot, and Less Annoying CRM — and used Pipedrive as the yardstick. Then I priced each one for a 3-, 5-, and 10-person team so you can see the all-in numbers side by side.
Where Pipedrive costs start to add up
Pipedrive charges per seat, and the plan you pick decides which features you get. That part is normal. What catches small teams off guard is everything sold on top.
Here’s how it works at the time of writing, based on Pipedrive’s pricing page:
- Plans: Lite is $14 per seat per month billed annually, Growth is $39, Premium is $59, and Ultimate is $79. Third-party pricing guides list month-to-month rates of $24, $49, $79, and $99 per seat.
- Email sync and automation start on Growth. Lite covers the pipeline and integrations, but most teams want their inbox connected, which means Growth for everyone.
- Lead capture is an add-on below Premium. Pipedrive’s help center says LeadBooster (chatbot, live chat, web forms, and a prospecting tool) is included on Premium and higher plans but can be added to Lite and Growth. Pricing guides put it at about $32.50 a month per company, billed annually.
- Email campaigns are an add-on on every plan. Pipedrive’s pricing page lists Campaigns from $13.33 a month, and its help center says the price is based on how many subscribers you have.
- Other extras cost more. The pricing page also lists Web Visitors (shows which companies visit your site) from $41 a month and Smart Docs (proposals and e-signatures) from $32.50 a month.
None of this is hidden. It’s all on the pricing page. But it does mean the true cost of Pipedrive depends less on the plan name and more on how many add-ons you stack. And there’s no help desk at all, so if you also answer customer questions, that’s another tool and another bill.
What a switch actually involves
Before comparing tools, it helps to know what moving looks like.
What exports cleanly: Pipedrive’s help center explains how to export leads, deals, organizations, people, products, activities, notes, and files as Excel or CSV files. You need global admin rights to export everything by data type. Activities, notes, and files linked to deals are exported separately, and files stored in Google Drive aren’t included in a global export.
What you’ll rebuild: automations, email templates, web forms, chatbot flows, and custom reports. These live inside Pipedrive and don’t travel. If you use the Campaigns add-on, your email designs stay behind too.
What makes it easier: some tools on this list have a Pipedrive import path built in, which saves a lot of spreadsheet work. I’ve noted these in each section below.
How I compared these Pipedrive alternatives
I used four criteria that matter most when Pipedrive’s add-ons are the problem.
1. All-in monthly cost
Not the entry price, but what a small team pays once everyone has a seat and the features you actually use are switched on. This is the comparison most pricing pages make hard.
2. What’s included without add-ons
Web forms, live chat, email campaigns, and a help desk either come in the box or they don’t. The fewer extras you need, the more predictable your bill.
3. How easy the move from Pipedrive is
A built-in Pipedrive migration tool beats hand-mapping CSV columns. Free migration help from the vendor is even better.
4. Ease of use for a small team
Pipedrive is known for being simple. A cheaper replacement that your team avoids opening isn’t really cheaper.
Pipedrive alternatives compared
Here’s the overview. Prices are per user per month, billed annually, based on published rates at the time of writing unless noted. Please check each vendor’s own page before you buy, since prices and plan details change.
| Tool | Starting paid price | Free option | Web forms, chat, campaigns, help desk | Moving from Pipedrive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipedrive (reference) | $14/seat (Lite) | 14-day trial | Forms and chat via LeadBooster below Premium; campaigns are an add-on; no help desk | — |
| EngageBay | $13.79/user (Basic) | Free plan, up to 15 users | All four in the all-in-one suite | Free migration and onboarding help |
| Zoho CRM | $14/user (Standard) | Free for up to 3 users | Sales CRM; campaigns and help desk are separate Zoho apps | Built-in Pipedrive migration (API token) |
| Freshsales | $9/user (Growth) | Free plan (up to 3 users, per pricing guides) | Sales CRM with chat, email, and phone; marketing is a separate product | Built-in Pipedrive import (CSV files) |
| HubSpot | $20/seat list price (Starter) | Free tools, up to 2 users | Marketing, sales, and service starter tools in one bundle | Smart Transfer supports Pipedrive |
| Less Annoying CRM | $15/user, one plan | 30-day trial | Simple CRM; bulk email through Mailchimp | Standard contact import |
Now for a closer look at each.
Pipedrive (the reference point)
It’s worth being fair to Pipedrive. Its visual pipeline is genuinely easy to use, the 14-day free trial needs no credit card, and Lite at $14 per seat billed annually is a reasonable price for a pure deal tracker.
The trouble is that most growing teams don’t stay on Lite. Once you want email sync and automation, you’re on Growth at $39 per seat. Add LeadBooster for web forms and a chatbot, and Campaigns for newsletters, and you’re paying three separate line items for what other tools bundle together. Premium folds in LeadBooster, but at $59 per seat, a 10-person team pays $200 a month more than on Growth just to get it.
If you only need a pipeline and your team is happy, there may be no reason to move. The alternatives below make the most sense when the add-ons are piling up.
EngageBay
EngageBay takes the opposite approach to Pipedrive. Instead of a lean sales tool with paid extras, it puts a CRM, email marketing, landing pages, web forms, live chat, and a help desk into one all-in-one suite, priced per user.
At the time of writing, EngageBay’s all-in-one plans look like this, based on its pricing pages and recent third-party pricing summaries:
- Free: up to 15 users, 250 contacts, and 1,000 branded emails a month.
- Basic: $13.79 per user per month billed yearly ($14.99 monthly, or $12.74 on a two-year plan), with 500 contacts.
- Growth: $59.79 per user billed yearly ($64.99 monthly), with up to 5,000 contacts and marketing automation.
- Pro: $110.39 per user billed yearly, adding custom reporting and higher limits.
Moving from Pipedrive: EngageBay’s own Pipedrive comparison page says it offers free migration and onboarding to help you move and get set up. If nobody on your team wants to spend a weekend matching CSV columns, that’s a real time saver.
Why it fits Pipedrive users: The features Pipedrive sells as add-ons — web forms, live chat, and email campaigns — come inside EngageBay’s suite, along with a help desk that Pipedrive doesn’t offer at all. That means one login, one contact record, and one bill instead of three. The free plan for up to 15 users also lets your whole team try it before you cancel anything.
The catch: EngageBay is a broad tool, and its pipeline reporting isn’t as deep as Pipedrive’s. Review summaries point to reporting and analytics as the most common complaint, and its library of native integrations is smaller. If your sales manager lives in detailed forecasting dashboards, test those reports with real deals during the trial.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is a long-running, highly customizable CRM from a company that makes dozens of business apps. For Pipedrive users, its biggest draw is a smooth way out.
Based on third-party pricing guides, the Free edition supports up to 3 users. Standard is $14 per user per month billed annually (about $20 monthly), and Professional is $23 per user billed annually (about $35 monthly). Paid plans come with a free trial.
Moving from Pipedrive: Zoho’s help center describes a direct migration. You paste your Pipedrive API token into Zoho’s import settings, and it brings across organizations, people, deals, activities, products, users, and files. Custom modules aren’t supported, and you can undo or rerun the migration three times, so try it with care.
What stands out: Strong value per dollar and plenty of room to customize fields, layouts, and processes.
The catch: Like Pipedrive, Zoho CRM is mainly a sales tool. Email campaigns and help desk tickets live in separate Zoho apps, so you trade Pipedrive add-ons for extra Zoho subscriptions. Setup also takes longer than most tools here.
Freshsales
Freshsales is the sales CRM from Freshworks. It’s built around the pipeline, much like Pipedrive, but with chat, email, and phone built in.
According to the Freshworks pricing page, Growth is $9 per user per month billed annually, Pro is $39, and Enterprise is $59. Pro adds contact scoring, deal insights, territory management, and sales sequences. There’s a 21-day free trial, and pricing guides list a free plan for up to 3 users. The pricing page also lists paid extras, such as branded documents at $19 per user per month.
Moving from Pipedrive: Freshsales has a dedicated Pipedrive import. You export your Pipedrive data as CSV files, zip them, and upload the zip in the admin settings. It brings across contacts, accounts, deals with pipelines, notes, and activities, though emails aren’t migrated and you can bring over up to 10 pipelines.
What stands out: The lowest per-seat price on this list, plus built-in calling for phone-heavy teams.
The catch: It replaces Pipedrive’s sales side, not marketing or support. Email campaigns live in a separate Freshworks product, so if Campaigns is one of your Pipedrive add-ons, you’ll still need a second tool.
HubSpot
HubSpot is the best-known all-in-one platform here, with marketing, sales, and service tools that share one database.
HubSpot’s free tools cover up to 2 users. The Starter Customer Platform lists at $20 per seat per month and bundles starter versions of its marketing, sales, and service tools, with 1,000 marketing contacts included on Marketing Hub Starter. HubSpot was also showing a lower introductory rate for new customers when I checked, so your quote may come in below list price.
Moving from Pipedrive: HubSpot’s knowledge base lists Pipedrive among the apps supported by its Smart Transfer migration tool, which can audit your Pipedrive data before moving it. Availability depends on your subscription, so confirm it with HubSpot before you plan around it.
What stands out: A huge ecosystem, polished tools, and an easy path to bigger plans.
The catch: The jump past Starter is steep. HubSpot’s own pricing guide puts Sales Hub Professional at $90 per seat per month billed annually with a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee, and Marketing Hub Professional at $800 a month with a $3,000 onboarding fee. If you’re leaving Pipedrive because of creeping costs, make sure Starter covers you. I’ve covered this in more detail in my guide to HubSpot alternatives for small business.
Less Annoying CRM
I picked Less Annoying CRM over Capsule for one reason: it’s the purest answer to the add-on problem. There’s one plan at $15 per user per month, and its pricing page says everything is included, with no tiers and no features locked behind upgrades. There’s a 30-day free trial with no credit card, and support is free.
Moving from Pipedrive: There’s no dedicated Pipedrive tool, so you’ll export your Pipedrive data and bring contacts in through its standard import.
What stands out: You always know what next month’s bill will be. For a small team that just wants contacts, a pipeline, tasks, and a calendar without surprises, that’s appealing.
The catch: It’s deliberately simple. For bulk email, it relies on a Mailchimp integration that syncs contact groups, rather than a built-in campaign tool, and there’s no help desk. Teams that want automation and lead capture in the same place will likely outgrow it.
What a 3-, 5-, and 10-person team pays all-in
Let’s put numbers on it. These are rough monthly costs, billed annually where available, based on published rates at the time of writing. Pipedrive totals include the add-ons a small team typically needs to match an all-in-one tool: LeadBooster for forms and chat (about $32.50 a month per company) and the entry tier of Campaigns ($13.33 a month). Campaigns costs more as your list grows.
| Tool and setup | Built in: forms, chat, campaigns, help desk? | 3 people | 5 people | 10 people |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipedrive Lite (no add-ons) | No | About $42 | About $70 | About $140 |
| Pipedrive Growth + LeadBooster + Campaigns | Forms, chat, and campaigns (no help desk) | About $163 | About $241 | About $436 |
| Pipedrive Premium + Campaigns | Forms, chat, and campaigns (no help desk) | About $190 | About $308 | About $603 |
| EngageBay Free | Yes (250 contacts) | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| EngageBay Basic | Yes (500 contacts) | About $41 | About $69 | About $138 |
| EngageBay Growth | Yes, with automation | About $179 | About $299 | About $598 |
| Freshsales Growth | Sales only | About $27 | About $45 | About $90 |
| Zoho CRM Standard | Sales only | About $42 | About $70 | About $140 |
| Less Annoying CRM | Sales only, one plan | About $45 | About $75 | About $150 |
| HubSpot Starter (list price) | Starter-level marketing, sales, and service | About $60 | About $100 | About $200 |
A few things stand out:
- Upgrades and add-ons multiply Pipedrive’s bill. For three people, Growth plus LeadBooster and Campaigns costs nearly four times as much as Lite. The flat add-on fees hit small teams hardest because they’re spread over fewer seats.
- EngageBay Basic costs about the same as Pipedrive Lite but includes forms, chat, campaigns, and a help desk. The trade-off is the 500-contact limit on Basic, so count your active contacts first.
- Sales-only tools are the cheapest, but they don’t replace everything. Freshsales, Zoho, and Less Annoying CRM are great value for a pipeline. If you also need newsletters or support tickets, budget for a second tool.
- Automation is where costs converge. EngageBay Growth and Pipedrive Premium land in a similar range for 5 and 10 people. At that level, the deciding factor is whether you’d rather have a help desk and marketing automation built in (EngageBay) or a deeper sales pipeline (Pipedrive).
How to switch from Pipedrive in seven steps
A clean move is mostly about preparation. This order works for most small teams:
- Check your renewal date. If you’re on annual billing, find out when it renews so you don’t pay for two CRMs longer than needed.
- List what you actually use. Write down your pipelines, custom fields, automations, web forms, and add-ons. This tells you which plan you need in the new tool.
- Export everything. Use Pipedrive’s Export data tab (admin access needed) to download deals, people, organizations, activities, notes, and files as CSV or Excel. Keep a copy even if your new CRM has a migration tool.
- Clean up before importing. Remove duplicates, dead leads, and bounced emails. A smaller list may also keep you on a cheaper plan.
- Rebuild pipeline stages and fields first. Set them up in the new tool so deals land in the right place. Freshsales, for example, asks you to create custom fields with names that match your export.
- Run a small test import. Bring over 10–20 records, check owners, stages, and dates, then import the rest.
- Switch your forms and chat last. Once the team is working in the new CRM, point your website forms and chat widget at it, then cancel Pipedrive and its add-ons.
If you’d rather not do this yourself, choose a tool that does it for you: EngageBay offers free migration help, and Zoho and Freshsales have built-in Pipedrive imports.
Which Pipedrive alternative is right for you?
1. Small teams paying for Pipedrive add-ons plus a separate email or support tool
This is where EngageBay fits best, and it’s my top pick for this group. Forms, live chat, email campaigns, and a help desk are part of the suite, so you can drop LeadBooster, Campaigns, and your separate support inbox in one move. Start on the free plan with the whole team, then move to Basic or Growth when you need more contacts or automation. For a wider look at budget options, see my roundup of the best affordable CRM for small business.
2. Sales-focused teams that just want a cheaper pipeline
If the pipeline is all you use, Freshsales has the lowest per-seat price and a built-in Pipedrive import. Zoho CRM offers more customization and a direct API migration from Pipedrive.
3. Very small teams that want a predictable bill
If surprise charges are what’s bothering you most, Less Annoying CRM keeps it simple: one plan, one price per user, everything included. Pair it with Mailchimp if you send newsletters.
The bottom line
Pipedrive is a good sales tool with a pricing model that rewards teams who only need a pipeline. Once you’re paying for Growth, LeadBooster, Campaigns, and a separate help desk, though, there are Pipedrive alternatives for small business teams that cover the same ground for less.
If you just want a cheaper pipeline, Freshsales, Zoho CRM, or Less Annoying CRM will serve you well. If you’re happy to pay a bit more for HubSpot’s ecosystem, Starter is worth pricing out. But if your goal is to replace Pipedrive and its add-ons with one subscription, EngageBay was the most complete option for the money I found.
The easiest way to know is to try it with your own data. Sign up for EngageBay’s free plan, import a slice of your Pipedrive export, rebuild one pipeline and one web form, and invite your team. If it works, paid plans come with free migration help for the rest.
FAQ
What is the best Pipedrive alternative for small business?
It depends on why you’re leaving. If add-ons for forms, chat, and email campaigns are driving up your bill, EngageBay bundles them with a help desk at a lower price. If you only need a cheaper pipeline, Freshsales or Zoho CRM are strong picks. If you want one flat price, Less Annoying CRM is worth a look.
Why does Pipedrive get expensive for small teams?
Pipedrive charges per seat, and features like email sync and automation start on the Growth plan. LeadBooster (web forms and chatbot) is an add-on below Premium, and Campaigns is an add-on on every plan. Stacked together, the monthly bill can be several times the Lite price.
Is there a free alternative to Pipedrive?
Yes. EngageBay has a free plan for up to 15 users, Zoho CRM’s free edition supports up to 3 users, and HubSpot’s free tools cover up to 2 users, at the time of writing. Pipedrive itself offers a 14-day trial rather than a free plan.
Can I move my data from Pipedrive to another CRM?
Yes. Pipedrive lets admins export deals, contacts, organizations, activities, notes, and files as CSV or Excel. Zoho CRM can migrate directly using your Pipedrive API token, Freshsales has a dedicated Pipedrive import, and EngageBay offers free migration help. Automations, forms, and templates usually have to be rebuilt.
Is EngageBay cheaper than Pipedrive?
For most small teams that need more than a pipeline, yes. EngageBay Basic costs about the same per user as Pipedrive Lite but includes forms, live chat, email campaigns, and a help desk. Watch the 500-contact limit on Basic, and test the sales reports if you rely on detailed forecasting.
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