Introduction
Salesflare and Pipedrive are two of the most popular CRM choices for small sales teams, and for good reason. Both are focused on pipeline management, both are designed for simplicity over enterprise complexity, and both are priced for startups rather than Fortune 500 companies.
But they represent two fundamentally different philosophies. Pipedrive is a visual pipeline tool that gives sales reps full control over their data and process. Salesflare is an automated CRM that does the data entry for you. This comparison covers pricing, automation, pipeline management, email integration, and reporting to help you decide which approach fits your team.
Pricing
Pipedrive has the lower entry point, but the pricing story is more nuanced than the starting numbers suggest.
Pipedrive pricing (billed annually):
- Essential: $14 per user per month
- Advanced: $29 per user per month, adds email sync and workflow automation
- Professional: $49 per user per month, adds forecasting and custom reporting
- Power: $64 per user per month, adds permissions and team management
- Enterprise: $99 per user per month, dedicated support and advanced security
Salesflare pricing (billed annually):
- Growth: $29 per user per month
- Pro: $49 per user per month, adds email sequences and custom dashboards
- Enterprise: $99 per user per month, five-user minimum, adds dedicated support
At face value, Pipedrive is cheaper. Its Essential plan starts at $14 per user per month compared to Salesflare’s $29. However, Pipedrive’s Essential plan is deliberately limited. It lacks email sync, workflow automation, and most of the features that make a CRM useful for active selling.
When you compare plans with similar functionality, Pipedrive Advanced at $29 per user per month matches Salesflare Growth at $29 per user per month. At this tier, the price is identical. The difference is what you get for that $29.
Another consideration: Pipedrive increasingly gates features behind add-ons. Advanced reporting, web visitor tracking, and prospecting tools cost extra on top of your plan subscription. Salesflare bundles more features into its base plans. For a team of five, the total cost of ownership can be surprisingly similar despite the different starting prices.
Automation and Data Entry
This is the single biggest difference between the two platforms, and it is the factor that should drive most decisions.
Salesflare was built around the idea that sales reps should never manually enter data. It automatically pulls contact information from email signatures, social media profiles, calendars, and company databases. When you email a new contact, Salesflare creates the contact record, enriches it with available data, and logs the interaction. It tracks email opens, link clicks, and website visits without any manual setup.
Pipedrive takes a more traditional approach. It provides excellent tools for organizing and visualizing your pipeline, but it relies more heavily on reps to input and update data. Pipedrive does offer workflow automation on the Advanced plan and above, allowing you to automate repetitive actions like moving deals between stages or sending follow-up emails. But the core data entry is still largely manual.
For small teams where every rep handles multiple roles, Salesflare’s automated approach can save hours per week. For teams that want full control over what data goes into their CRM and how it is organized, Pipedrive’s manual approach gives more precision.
Pipeline Management
Pipedrive’s pipeline is its signature feature and arguably the best visual pipeline in the CRM market. The drag-and-drop Kanban board is intuitive, fast, and highly customizable. You can create multiple pipelines, customize stages, add custom fields, and set up activity-based selling workflows that keep reps focused on next actions.
Salesflare also offers pipeline management with a clean visual interface, but it is less customizable than Pipedrive’s. Salesflare’s strength is that pipeline data is more likely to be accurate because the system automatically logs activities and updates deal information. You spend less time maintaining the pipeline and more time working deals.
For teams that live in their pipeline view and want maximum flexibility in how stages, fields, and views are configured, Pipedrive is the stronger option. For teams that want an accurate pipeline without the overhead of manual maintenance, Salesflare delivers.
Email Integration
Both platforms offer email integration, but the depth differs.
Salesflare provides full two-way email sync that automatically logs all sent and received emails to the relevant contact and deal records. It tracks email opens and link clicks out of the box, and it surfaces email engagement data in the contact timeline. On the Pro plan, Salesflare adds email sequences for automated follow-up campaigns.
Pipedrive offers email sync starting on the Advanced plan at $29 per user per month. It tracks emails and can link them to deals, but the tracking is not as automatic as Salesflare’s. Pipedrive’s email features have expanded over time, but they feel more like an addition to the core pipeline tool rather than a deeply integrated capability.
If email is your primary sales channel and you want a CRM that acts as a sales-focused email client, Salesflare has the edge. If you primarily use phone calls or in-person meetings and need email tracking as a secondary feature, Pipedrive covers the basics adequately.
Reporting
Pipedrive offers more granular reporting, especially on higher-tier plans. The Professional plan adds forecasting and revenue predictions, custom report builders, and deal insights. Pipedrive’s reports cover pipeline velocity, deal conversion rates, activity completion, and revenue by team member.
Salesflare’s reporting is solid but less customizable. The Growth plan includes standard dashboards covering pipeline health, sales velocity, and team performance. The Pro plan adds custom dashboards with more flexibility. Salesflare’s reporting is sufficient for most small teams but may feel limiting for managers who want to slice data in very specific ways.
For data-driven sales managers who want detailed, customizable reports, Pipedrive Professional is the better option. For teams that want clean, standard dashboards without the overhead of building custom reports, Salesflare is adequate.
Best For Which Team
Choose Salesflare if you:
- Hate manual data entry and want a CRM that fills itself in
- Run a B2B sales process where email is the primary channel
- Have a small team of 2 to 10 reps who wear multiple hats
- Value data accuracy over pipeline customization
- Want built-in email tracking and engagement insights without add-ons
Choose Pipedrive if you:
- Want the best visual pipeline management available
- Prefer full control over your data and how it is organized
- Need advanced customization of stages, fields, and views
- Require detailed, customizable reporting for sales management
- Have a team that is disciplined about data entry
Final Verdict
Salesflare and Pipedrive are both excellent CRMs for small sales teams, but they solve different problems. Salesflare solves the data entry problem. Pipedrive solves the pipeline visibility problem.
If your team’s biggest challenge is keeping CRM data up to date, Salesflare’s automated approach will deliver more value. If your team’s biggest challenge is organizing and managing a growing pipeline, Pipedrive’s visual tools and customization options are unmatched at this price point.
On user satisfaction, Salesflare edges ahead with a 4.7 out of 5 rating versus Pipedrive’s 4.5, based on thousands of reviews. Salesflare scores particularly high on value for money at 4.8 out of 5. However, Pipedrive has a much larger user base and a more mature ecosystem of add-ons and integrations.
For most small sales teams at startups, we recommend starting with the question: does your team reliably enter data into your current tools? If yes, Pipedrive gives you better pipeline control. If no, Salesflare removes the data entry burden entirely. Either way, both platforms are strong foundations for a growing sales CRM setup.
