Good For Microsoft 365 Users
If you're using Google Workspace, you're going to get a much deeper integration with Copper, so we don't think it's truly worth considering Pipedrive unless you are using Microsoft 365 (we sometimes recommend Hubspot, but it has issues and also gets wildly expensive quite quickly, more on that below).
We've implemented both Pipedrive and Copper for our customers and they have very similar features. You can easily add leads, create sales pipelines and track activities and notes to help your sales team close deals. Pipedrive has a fairly robust API so integrating with other tools is also possible and will allow you to scale. What you won't get with Pipedrive that we covered above is the automatic aggregating of email attachments/files and of course, doesn't have the Gmail extension.
Set Up Email Syncing
If compared to Copper, Pipedrive doesn't have that "syncing forward" methodology for emails which means if you exchanged emails with a lead and added them to the CRM after the correspondence started, those emails won't be tracked. This means you'll possibly lose some important data unless you strictly try to add each lead to the CRM before you even reach out.
Setting up Pipedrive to ingest your emails is also a bit of a manual process initially, it won't automatically happen like with Copper. So if you're using Pipedrive, just make sure to do that first because if you forget, you might be wondering why your teams emails aren't showing up in the CRM.
Workflow Automation
What we like about Pipedrive's workflow automation is that they have a visual editor that allows you to easily create workflows. It's quite intuitive to use which is great for small business owners that are eager to get some automations running to help their team members save time.
Source: Pipedrive
Unlike Copper, Pipedrive's workflow automation will allow you to trigger automated emails to prospects and customers. So for example, want to send an email when a deal enters a new stage in your pipeline? You can set that up with Pipedrive's workflow automations.
One thing to keep in mind is that the automations feature is available on Pipedrive's Advanced pricing tier and beyond.
Pipedrive only offers workflow automations starting on their "Advanced" tier
Pipedrive's Add-Ons
While Pipedrive started as a CRM for sales teams and have gained quite a big market share in the small business CRM space, they have continued to add on features in order to continue to scale. While this might seem tempting, the problem when tools do this is they become an "all-in-one" tool that is trying to do everything, and therefore doing many things mediocrely.
Choose Specialized Tools
For example, on Pipedrive's "Most Popular" tier they offer document and contract management—we would never recommend anyone use this feature. There are tools like PandaDoc, who specialize document and contract management and believe us, the experience is going to be much better than anything you'll get with Pipedrive. We believe in using the right tool for the job, and once you get outside of the core CRM features, with Pipedrive you're going to get a bunch of half baked features that are kludgy to use.
Looking further at Pipedrive's Add-Ons they offer "Campaigns", which we'd say avoid and use something like MailChimp that will offer a much more user friendly experience. Instead of using Pipedrive's Projects add-on, use a proper project management tool. Forget their Smart Docs add-on, use PandaDoc or Airtable instead.
If you're deciding between Pipedrive or Copper because of the "many additional features" Pipedrive offers, we're here to tell you that you're going to have a much more stable, less buggy experience with using tools that were built for the job and integrating them with your CRM. Even if you are using Pipedrive, we wouldn't recommend adding on any of these features. In other words, don't let Pipedrive's "Add-Ons" be a determining reason between Copper and Pipedrive, the only time we'd recommend Pipedrive is if you are using Microsoft 365 (not Google Workspace).
