The Best CRM Software (Copper vs. Pipedrive vs. HubSpot vs. Salesforce vs. Airtable)

Over the past 7 years, we've answered the question "Which CRM should I use?" endlessly. So as if you had just sent us a text message and had asked us this very question yourself, here's what we'd tell you!

First, when you're in the position to be making the decision to choose a CRM, it can seem like there is an overwhelming number of options. But the truth of the matter is that there are only four main "core" players in the CRM space that we'd say are worth considering: Copper, Pipedrive, Hubspot and Salesforce.

Team Size, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365

Choosing the right CRM will be based on two main areas: how many people on your team will be using the CRM, and what productivity suite you're using in your business.

How many team members will be using the CRM?

If under 300 team members will be using the CRM, you would fall in the "Small/Medium" business category when it comes to the CRM space. In this case, consider either Copper or Pipedrive.

Are you using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

1. Using Google Workspace? Use Copper.
2. Using Microsoft 365? Use Pipedrive.

If you have over 300 team members that will be using the CRM, consider Hubspot or Salesforce. Remember, when we say 300 team members, we're talking about actual team members using the CRM, not your total employee count. Your company may have 800 employees, but only 100 of those may be using the CRM. If that's the case, you're better off using one of the CRM's above.

Read more about each CRM below.

Copper CRM for Google Workspace

We've been using Copper for the past 7 years or so internally, and implementing it into companies for just about that long as well.

If you're using Google Workspace, Copper CRM is going to be the best CRM on the market. Why? There's no other CRM on the market that integrates as deeply.

Add a contact to Copper and it will go back and entire year into all of your team's emails and log them all into the CRM as activities for that contact (along with any upcoming Google Calendar events).

Most of the competing CRMs on the market use a "moving forward" syncing technology, which means you shouldn't really be writing a contact without first adding them to the CRM (so their emails can sync over of course). This can be a bit of a headache.

With Copper, this is an annoyance of the past. Write emails on-the-go, or at your computer. So long as the contact is in your Gmail (email interface tools like Superhuman work totally fine as well), they will be added to Copper.

Syncing goes a layer deeper with files sent via email too. It syncs all files sent via email and aggregates them onto the person record, and flow up to the person's company as well, allowing you to easily find all the files you sent to XYZ without having to dig in the depths of Google Drive. The Google Workspace integrations are like magic!

Finally, Copper is super easy for teams to adopt. Copper has a friendly Chrome Extension that pops up on the right hand-side of your Gmail inbox. The extension allows team members to have quick access to the CRM and easily add people/leads to the CRM, or reference previous communication, straight from their inbox.

Pipedrive for Microsoft 365

Using Microsoft 365? Use Pipedrive (we sometimes recommend Hubspot, but it has issues and also gets wildly expensive quite quickly).

We've implemented both Pipedrive and Copper for our customers and they more or less have very similar features.

The core differences are in the features we highlighted above with Copper. Pipedrive follows that "syncing forward" methodology we mentioned, won't aggregate attachments for you —and of course doesn't have the Gmail extension.

Beyond that, Pipedrive has everything a small/medium business would need and we recommend it as one of the best CRMs on the market for Microsoft 365 users.

Hubspot AKA the more enjoyable Salesforce CRM for large teams

Hubspot is often what people end up landing on when they are thinking about getting Salesforce. Hubspot is a better fit than Salesforce for most, but you're going to spend a LOT more on Hubspot than you think you are when first signing up.

We've had customers switch from Pipedrive to Hubspot because "it's a free CRM" and they are now spending $40-60k/yr on Hubspot alone. They have a good way of sucking you in for "free" and then paying for contacts, so you're paying an insane amount for having 20-40k contacts in your CRM (you will have that easily over time).

But, as you'll see below, Salesforce costs even more to set up and is really not enjoyable to use so with that we'd always recommend Hubspot over Salesforce.

Salesforce AKA the customizable behemoth for CRM enterprises

Salesforce is good if you have 500+ employees, but as a startup, stay away! You're going to either burn way too much money configuring it to be the way you had envisioned, or it's going to be a mess.

Either way, employees and salespeople don't enjoy using Salesforce. They might be used to it at their prior job, but their prior job probably also spent $300k getting it set up to how they remember it as.

Here's a deeper article and more thoughts on this:

Why Businesses Are Moving Away From Salesforce (Salesforce vs. Copper)

❌ Airtable (The Database — Not CRM)

As a side note, because this comes up often — we don't recommend using Airtable as a CRM, it's an amazing tool but not a good CRM for your company. We have an entire article about this too:

Airtable CRM: 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Airtable As Your CRM

Final Thoughts For Start-Ups Choosing a CRM

If you're a young B2B startup, use a more flexible smaller CRM like Copper or Pipedrive, it'll allow you to easily build out your company processes, iterate, and your team will actually enjoy using it. Yes, the hope and goal is to grow quickly but often the answer to "should we use Salesforce?" is 99.9% of the time no. Unless you already have 500+ people already using the CRM daily, don't go there. If you get it too early, it'll slow your team down from growing.

Don't believe us? Just take it from our friend Christophe Pasquier (CEO & Founder at Slite— a software we use daily!)