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Pipedrive vs Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Zoho CRM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Pipedrive is 1.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 8.1%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho CRM is 3.1%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Sales Cloud8.1%
Zoho CRM3.1%
Pipedrive1.3%
Other87.5%
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Willem Lambrechts - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to create multiple pipelines and the flexibility in filtering and reporting
We do a lot of analytics and reporting ourselves. We don't necessarily use all the features that Pipedrive provides, but it's very helpful at least. It has streamlined our deal-closing process. We use it for everything. When we create a lead, we put it into Pipedrive. That lead can be converted into an opportunity, which we manage through our whole pipeline. This includes having all data related to the opportunity in one place. Once the deal is closed, we use Pipedrive to follow up on the invoices until they are paid. We also manage sales commissions and payments to our salespeople through Pipedrive.
Kamal Deep - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience exceptional project enhancements and seamless automation integration
Salesforce Sales Cloud itself is a wonderful solution, and there are two different versions: Lightning and classic. The Lightning version is a new generation version compatible with any mobile device, whether it's a phone, iPad, or any size of screen. The reporting and analytics functionalities, especially with the Einstein feature, are wonderful because it allows for analysis of data regarding your opportunity pipeline, giving insight into how long it will take to close deals. This gives a great understanding of running different levels of campaigns and defining smart workflows, where if one task is done, the other task can automatically get created and assigned to different team members. This flexibility is a key benefit of Salesforce Sales Cloud. Lead management is a great feature in Salesforce Sales Cloud because if you go for enterprise and above licenses, you can define different record types. For example, if one company is into two different businesses such as real estate and car reselling, both being opposite, this can be defined in Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing for different workflows, fields, and mechanisms that do not affect each other's operations. The predictive insight feature known as forecasting is a very old feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud, giving predictions based on your pipeline and previous opportunity closings. The new Einstein analytics feature is more advanced and is enabled with AI, providing better forecasting based on your current pipeline. Salesforce Sales Cloud is working smartly with AI to help close more deals based on opportunity stages, trends, and industries, advising on the steps to take next. Lead generation is the most important thing because every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.
Romani Labib - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization options empower workflow management, though support understanding can be enhanced
Currently, I am still working with Azure and I use the Azure products for my current work. I use Azure Active Directory. I don't use products like App Service from Azure or Azure Logic Apps, Front Door, but I think it's very straightforward. Once I take the first step to use Azure, I can track myself to use another application, program, or module in Azure. I use Office 365 because we actually have Exchange mail server 2019 on premises. In the last few months, I upgraded from Exchange on premise to use Office 365, which is faster, easier to troubleshoot, and more secure. I use Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as the best solution because I make a private server in my data center room. I have many users that need to access the internet, so I don't join the server to my domain because if I have any malware or other attacks, I can resolve it easily without any damage to my internal network. Microsoft RDS is more user-friendly and easier to use compared to RDS from Azure Microsoft or another provider. I purchase Microsoft Remote Desktop Services directly from Microsoft. I have had an MCSE and Microsoft account for 15 years. I work with SharePoint and Exchange, which are famous applications through Microsoft and Office 365. For daily tasks, I use Microsoft tools and Linux tools because I have applications like CRM, ERP, and HRM running over CentOS, an operating system by Linux. Regarding CentOS, in Egypt, we have issues paying for things from the internet, especially due to the large margin between US dollars and Egyptian pounds. CentOS is totally free from the internet, so I create ISO and install it on the server to use all features, policies, and security modules. Currently, I use 3CX as voice solutions, and Asterisk is the Linux platform I use, along with firewalls by Linux called pfSense. All data centers in my company have products between Microsoft and Linux systems. For DNS, I use deDNS to make remote access or subdomains from deDNS organization. Sometimes, I pay for a main domain from HostGator and re-route the domain to my data centers. Based on other competitors, I would rate Zoho CRM's price as a five, as it has a middle-range price compared to others. Overall, I rate Zoho CRM a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Pipedrive's most valuable features are that you can keep the whole information that's related to managing your sales process and you can customize it easily. The person that we have who is customizing Pipedrive is very junior in means of software development or process development. He can easily use it, anyone can use the solution. It has a very easy user interface to customize your processes and apply them to the Pipedrive process."
"Pipedrive makes it easy to understand who I'm talking to at a glance. It has all the activities, node features, opportunity interface, deal interface, and time drive deals.The sales process is extremely simple, which saves me time and energy. I can send the document for e-signature and make the most out of my deals. I can automatically send emails and phone calls. You need to do only a little API programming. It offers massive flexibility. You can run an entire enterprise on the platform. The ease of use facilitates huge adoption."
"It is a stable platform."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution is very stable."
"The solution is pretty easy to use and intuitive."
"The usability of the solution is its valuable feature."
"Pipedrive's most valuable feature is reporting and insights. The CRM shows the database and lets the salespeople arrange their daily activities. The insights are essential from a management point of view because it helps the sales staff improve or adjust their whole sales cycle, activities, and quality."
"The company wants to implement the idea of democracy within IT. As an end user, you can do a lot by yourself, so you do not have to write code. The idea is that they go for low-code and they use flow. It's possible to update records and do things like automation without writing real codes. I think this is one of the advantages of the solution."
"Different leads and fields can be utilized inside of Salesforce, using the Sales Path to follow those specific leads, and what leads convert over into opportunities. The leveraging of fields help to track progress on the user interface."
"The automation of Salesforce Sales Cloud makes the process very easier to focus on leads and converts them automatically to accounts, contacts, and opportunities."
"The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable."
"I like that Salesforce is ERP agnostic. In the past and at different companies, I have implemented new or replacement ERPs. It's best in class. I like that it's a SaaS. I like that it can work on any device—any Windows, Android, or Apple device."
"It is nice to have the install base information at your fingertips when you look up a company."
"The tool is quite flexible."
"I have found Salesforce Sales Cloud to be stable."
"The most valuable feature of Zoho CRM is emailing. You can send emails to customers directly from Zoho CRM. The marketing team in my company uses this feature, and it's effective."
"The most valuable features are the lead, opportunity and task management as well as dashboard creation, reporting, contact management and campaigns."
"The whole forecasting and pipeline management is very good."
"The dashboards and visualizations help us see how different markets perform. I find the dashboard feature most valuable because it's easy to visualize data. I've been trying to use the built-in quotations feature, which could reduce turnaround time. We're not using many automation features for record management and opportunity tracking. I'm trying to integrate Zoho CRM with Zoho Flow for quotation submission workflow."
"The login and logout times of each employee of our company are recorded by Zoho CRM for productivity calculations"
"CRM software that's simple to use, with good technical support, scalability, and stability."
"It also provides robust reporting capabilities to analyze and report on these key aspects of customer relationship management."
"Zoho CRM is very simple and easy to use."
 

Cons

"The product is expensive."
"The tool's APIs are challenging. It should also be compliant with HIPAA, FINRA and GLBA. The data centers should be within US so that they are compliant with regulations."
"We are using the lowest version of it. As we become more sophisticated, we might outgrow the tool, but there are features that are available in the higher-level versions, which I'm unfamiliar with, that might be able to meet the needs we would have in the future. They can maybe add some of the features to the basic version or make it more reasonably priced or free."
"Pipedrive could be more efficient. I want the management to be more transparent so it's easier to monitor the sales team's activities and results and do business forecasting. It would help them to improve the quality of the sales cycle."
"You must pay more if you need an additional feature."
"Reporting capabilities of the solution could be improved."
"The form builder works even though it has some shortcomings...Also, the forms don't have the ability to avoid or stop people from signing up if they don't have a corporate email."
"The automation process is challenging."
"It does not include a professional accounting system, it is operations and it is CRM. It is not capable of accounting things."
"The licensing price could be cheaper."
"The tool's technical challenges vary depending on the requirements. When a new requirement arises, we must analyze the best approach to address it, whether through automation tools or coding. We encounter limitations such as the number of reports we can process or update, the queries we can write, and other similar constraints. Understanding when to utilize coding and when to rely on simple configurations is crucial."
"Salesforce could improve its response speed."
"The setup of Salesforce Sales Cloud is complex. You need specialists in that area to be able to have a good setup. Once it's set up properly, running it is seamless. That's the most beautiful thing about Salesforce Sales Cloud."
"The product lacks to offer some AI capabilities."
"The solution can be difficult to understand for customers of Salesforce."
"It's a very broad tool."
"There was a challenge while deploying Zoho when we brought an API code. Because integrations "aren't perfect" for every organization."
"The customization options for roles in Zoho CRM are currently limited."
"Zoho CRM’s customer service can be a little difficult to reach sometimes."
"The only thing I noticed was that it does not support multi-country operations. In Canada, for example, we do not use the term "state," but rather "province," and we do not use zip codes, but rather "postal codes.""
"Certain functions have occasional performance issues."
"In Creator, you can do calculations and change another field immediately after you enter any value. If you add the quantity or price in any field, you can immediately change the total in Creator. The same functionality is not directly available in CRM because it is prebuilt."
"There are two things I would like to see from Zoho CRM. The first would be to include a calling feature that is connected to our call center. Second, I would like financial targeting and how to measure targeting for the sales agent to be connected better with bookings."
"Adding a new contract to the solution is quite complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pipedrive is relatively more affordable than other solutions."
"We pay $1000 a month for the tool."
"Pipedrive is the most cost-effective in terms of the balance between cost and features. I would take Pipedrive over HubSpot or Zoho CRM. It's well-positioned on the market."
"As of now, the pricing and value are quite good."
"The product is expensive but provides valuable services."
"The price of Pipedrive has been reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is excellant. It costs 65 dollars a month for top tier plan."
"Pipedrive keeps increasing the prices, which is becoming a bit annoying. It was reasonable when we started, but now they're increasing all the time."
"Not the cheapest"
"The price of the product is very high. I rate the product price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means expensive."
"Sales Cloud is expensive."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"The price of the Salesforce Sales Cloud is expensive. We pay monthly for the solution but we are billed quarterly."
"The main issue is the price. Because it's SaaS, you will have to pay on a monthly or yearly basis."
"It is a premium product, so it is not the cheapest solution. I think if it's implemented well, and you're getting the soft cost benefits, the efficiencies, it's justified. But not if you're looking at just apples for apples as a subscription, without the complexity that you can achieve. It can deal with complex business requirements. Some other CRMs can't. But you certainly pay, so it's a premium-charged solution. It's one of the more expensive ones."
"The main thing is it is costly. Salesforce it is not cheap, it's costly. Some of our customers say it is a costly solution. So, we have lost some sale opportunities regarding the high price. This is the main thing that we are facing. It is sales per user and the user price is about $150 per month, per user for the Enterprise Edition. The other edition is less than this, but it is costly. A company that has 70 or 80 users would pay more than $8,000 USD yearly because it is cloud based."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The licensing is the subscription, where we pay $50 per month per user."
"Its price is lower than the other software."
"The tool started out quite cheap. It's had some changes with small and medium business subscriptions, but it's still worth the price. I'd say it's priced a bit below the medium range."
"We pay for an annual license to use this solution."
"The product costs $35 per user per year."
"Zoho CRM is an expensive tool."
"Compared to other solutions, I would say Zoho CRM is very, very affordable because we can use different applications with one license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Retailer
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
7%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise40
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pipedrive?
The most valuable feature is the ability to create timelines and custom fields.
What needs improvement with Pipedrive?
New features sometimes seem bolted on rather than being smooth.
What do you like most about Salesforce Sales Cloud?
The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Sales Cloud?
From a customer perspective, it's a very stable system, and people are used to its functionalities, good and bad. Imp...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud?
For managing two different things, I'm managing some sales pipeline, the pipeline of sales of some products, and also...
What do you like most about Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM integrates easily with customer service workflows.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho CRM?
I rate the pricing as a five out of ten, as it offers good value for money.
What needs improvement with Zoho CRM?
The UX for the product in general is probably below standard compared to some of the other CRMs.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Amazon, SkyScanner, TDW, Vimeo, ReMax, Festo
Coca-Cola Enterprises, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Financial Times, Just Eat, Jobsite, H.R. Owen, PlayerLayer, O2, DMGT, Philips, Xtreme.ie, Business Stream, Remote Asset Management, Dialogue Group
JetHub, Anderson Sales Advantage, ActionCoach, Milagro Advisory Group, TECO Pneumatic, Proteomics Consult
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in CRM. Updated: August 2025.
866,300 professionals have used our research since 2012.