Choosing the best CRM software can improve substantally your sales process, just as much as making a poor choice could break it. And if you're torn between Pipedrive and Zendesk, you're not alone. Both platforms offer great features for managing customer relationships, but they serve businesses differently.
In ths guide, we’ll discuss how you can benefit from both CRMs, and how they compare to one another. And we’ll also introduce Zeeg, a scheduling solution that integrates with various CRMs and helps you generate more leads and retain clients.
What is Pipedrive?
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM designed to help teams manage their sales pipeline more effectively. Founded in 2010, its visual pipeline management and intuitive interface are probably good reasons for being so popular these days, in Europe and in the US. The platform puts emphasis on deal tracking and sales process optimization, and it’s quite useful for businesses that want to visualize their sales journey nicely.
Key features of Pipedrive
Pipedrive offers several core functionalities that make it a favorite among sales teams:
- Visual pipeline management: Drag-and-drop for moving deals through sales stages
- Lead management: For tracking and qualifying leads with your own scoring systems
- Activity tracking: Follow-ups with thorough activity management
- Email integration: Emails get connected with the CRM for communication tracking
- Sales forecasting: Accurate revenue predictions based on your pipeline
- Mobile app: Sales management can be done on the go with a mobile app
- Workflow automation: Custom workflows to automate repetitive tasks
- LeadBooster add-on: To generate and qualify leads with Pipedrive web forms and chatbots
- AI sales assistant: Smart recommendations to improve your sales process
The platform's design makes it accessible even for teams with limited CRM experience. Its visual approach to pipeline management gives sales representatives clear visibility into their deals and priorities. The deal rotting feature alerts teams when opportunities have been inactive for too long, preventing potential sales from falling through the cracks.
👉 Read more: Pipedrive web forms
Pros and cons of Pipedrive
✓ Clean, user-friendly interface with minimal learning curve
✓ Practical pipeline management with drag-and-drop functionality
✓ Strong email integration capabilities
✓ Detailed activity tracking and reminders
✓ 400+ integrations with essential business tools
✓ Affordable entry-level pricing
✓ Effective automation capabilities
✓ Marketing add-ons for lead generation
✓ Two-way Google Apps synchronization
✓ Helpful onboarding resources and video tutorials
✗ Limited reporting options in lower-tier plans
✗ No native calling or SMS capabilities
✗ Some advanced features only available in higher-priced tiers
✗ No free plan (though they offer a 14-day trial)
✗ Limited marketing tools in base packages
What is Zendesk Sell?
Zendesk Sell (formerly Base CRM) is Zendesk's sales-focused offering that complements their customer service platform. While Zendesk is primarily known for its customer support solutions, Zendesk Sell provides sales teams with tools to manage their pipeline and close deals more effectively. The platform creates a seamless connection between sales and support, keeping customer experiences consistent.
Key features of Zendesk Sell
Zendesk Sell brings several distinctive capabilities to sales teams:
- Unified contact management: Store all customer information in one centralized database
- Built-in calling and SMS: Make calls and send text messages directly from the platform
- Sales pipeline visualization: Track deals through customizable pipeline stages
- Email sequence automation: Create personalized email sequences for prospects
- Activity tracking: Log all customer interactions in one place
- Mobile CRM: Access customer data and manage deals from iOS and Android devices
- Territory management: Assign leads and accounts based on geographic territories
- Reporting and analytics: Track performance with detailed sales reports
- Integration with Zendesk Support: Create a smooth handoff between sales and support
The integration with Zendesk's customer service platform is useful for businesses that want to maintain a unified view of the customer journey from prospect to support. This creates a more cohesive experience for both customers and internal teams, with no information lost during handoffs between departments.
Pros and cons of Zendesk Sell
✓ Native calling and SMS capabilities
✓ Seamless integration with Zendesk Support
✓ Good data structure flexibility
✓ Unified customer journey tracking
✓ Clean, straightforward interface
✓ Built-in prospecting capabilities
✓ Territory management features
✓ Centralized access to customer data
✓ Detailed activity tracking suite
✗ Less sophisticated pipeline management compared to Pipedrive
✗ Limited automation capabilities
✗ Less intuitive for complex sales processes
✗ Lacks strong marketing add-ons
✗ Higher starting price point
✗ Limited customization options
✗ Steeper learning curve for advanced features
👉 Want to compare Pipedrive with other CRMs? Read more:
- Pipedrive vs Hubspot
- Pipedrive vs Keap
- Pipedrive vs Monday
- Pipedrive vs Salesmate
- Pipedrive vs Trello
- Pipedrive vs Salesforce
- The best alternatives to Pipedrive
Pipedrive vs Zendesk Sell: Overview
Pipedrive vs Zendesk Sell: Feature comparison
When comparing these two CRMs, several key functional areas matter most for sales teams.
Sales pipeline management
Pipedrive: Works well with on its visual pipeline, making it easy to see deals at each stage and drag them between stages as they progress. The interface shows clear sales progress, with customizable stages that adapt to any sales process. Its "deal rotting" feature alerts you when deals have been inactive for too long. Teams can customize the stages o their Pipedrive pipeline to match their exact sales methodology, allowing for more precise tracking and forecasting.
Zendesk Sell: Provides standard pipeline management capabilities with its list-based interface. While functional, it lacks the visual clarity of Pipedrive's solution. The pipeline view is more rigid and less customizable, which can make it harder to adapt to complex sales processes. However, it does include basic deal tracking and stage progression features that work well for teams with straightforward sales processes.
Verdict: Pipedrive wins on pipeline management, with a more intuitive and customizable interface.
Contact and lead management
Pipedrive: Offers solid contact management with detailed customer profiles and Pipedrive's custom fields to organize it the way your business needss. The LeadBooster add-on adds lead generation capabilities with chatbots, web forms, and prospecting tools. Lead scoring helps prioritize your most promising opportunities. The Prospector tool helps teams identify potential leads, while customizable web forms gather prospect information directly into the CRM.
Zendesk Sell: Provides good contact management with a focus on unified customer data. Its built-in prospecting tools help find new leads without additional software. The platform's data structure is somewhat more flexible than Pipedrive's, with customizable fields that can be adapted to various business needs. Custom fields can be enabled when importing data, making it easy to maintain important data points during migration.
Verdict: It's a tie – Zendesk Sell offers better built-in prospecting, while Pipedrive has more advanced lead scoring and qualification.
👉 Read more: Pipedrive custom fields
Communication tools
Pipedrive: Strong email integration allows tracking of conversations and templates for quicker responses. However, it lacks native calling and SMS capabilities, requiring integration with third-party tools for these functions. Email templates and tracking features help sales teams maintain consistent messaging and monitor engagement.
Zendesk Sell: Has built-in calling and SMS features that allow sales reps to communicate directly from the platform. Call recordings and logs are automatically saved to the appropriate contact records. This eliminates the need for separate communication tools and keeps all customer interactions documented in one place. The modular communication interface includes separate tabs for emails, calls, chats, and social media interactions.
Verdict: Zendesk Sell wins for communication tools, thanks to its native calling and SMS capabilities.
Automation capabilities
Pipedrive: Offers solid workflow automation through its Workflow Automation feature. Users can create complex automation rules with multiple triggers and actions to simplify sales processes. The AI-powered sales assistant provides smart recommendations. Workflow automation can be customized to handle everything from lead assignment to follow-up reminders, saving teams considerable time on routine tasks.
Zendesk Sell: Includes basic automation capabilities but lacks the depth and flexibility of Pipedrive's offerings. The automation tools have limited scope and complexity. While it can handle simple automations like task creation and email notifications, it doesn't support the more sophisticated workflow rules available in Pipedrive.
Verdict: Pipedrive wins on automation with more sophisticated workflow capabilities.
Reporting and analytics
Pipedrive: Provides customizable dashboards and reports focused on sales performance. Revenue forecasting helps predict future outcomes. However, advanced reporting features are limited to higher-tier plans. The sales analytics tools help teams identify bottlenecks in their pipeline and fine-tune their sales process for better results.
Zendesk Sell: Offers good reporting with a focus on sales activities and outcomes. Its analytics capabilities are solid, with good visualization options for sales data. The platform includes pre-built reports that provide insights into team performance, deal progression, and customer engagement. However, some users mention limitations in customizing analytics displays.
Verdict: Tie – both platforms provide adequate reporting capabilities with slightly different focuses.
Integrations
Pipedrive: Has approximately 400 native integrations with other business tools, including email platforms, marketing automation software, and document management systems. The marketplace makes it easy to find and install new integrations. Direct connections with popular tools like Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, Asana, Trello, and QuickBooks allow teams to maintain their existing workflows.
Zendesk Sell: Offers fewer native integrations than Pipedrive but connects seamlessly with the entire Zendesk suite, creating a unified customer experience platform. It also integrates with major business tools and services. The platform relies more heavily on Zapier for connecting with third-party applications, which may require additional setup steps.
Verdict: Pipedrive wins for overall integration breadth, but Zendesk Sell is superior if you're already using other Zendesk products.
Mobile experience
Pipedrive: Has a fully-functional mobile app for iOS and Android that includes all core CRM features. Sales reps can manage deals, contacts, and activities on the go. The mobile experience is designed to provide access to critical sales information from anywhere, keeping deals moving even when teams aren't at their desks.
Zendesk Sell: Also offers a good mobile experience with access to customer data, deal management, and communication tools. The mobile app provides a streamlined interface for tracking sales activities and managing customer relationships remotely.
Verdict: Tie – both platforms provide strong mobile experiences.
Marketing capabilities
Pipedrive: Offers several marketing add-ons like Campaigns for email marketing and Web Visitors for website tracking. These tools help bridge the gap between marketing and sales. The Campaigns add-on facilitates email marketing campaigns and client engagement, while Web Visitors helps identify and track potential customers visiting your website.
Zendesk Sell: Has limited marketing capabilities, focusing primarily on sales functions without significant marketing features. While it can track basic customer engagement, it lacks the dedicated marketing tools found in Pipedrive's add-ons.
Verdict: Pipedrive wins for marketing capabilities with its more useful add-ons.
Customer support
Pipedrive: Known for its responsive support team, offering email, chat, and phone support depending on your plan. The knowledge base is well-organized and helpful. Users frequently praise the quality and responsiveness of Pipedrive's support team, with 24/7 chat support available for all plans.
Zendesk Sell: Provides decent support options, but some users report longer response times compared to Pipedrive. While Zendesk is known for its customer support platform, ironically, the support for its sales product sometimes falls short of expectations.
Verdict: Pipedrive edges out Zendesk Sell on customer support quality and responsiveness.
Pipedrive vs Zendesk Sell: Pricing comparison
Pipedrive pricing
Pipedrive pricing structure has five tiers (billed monthly):
- Essential: €14 per user per month when billed annually
- Advanced: €39 per user per month when billed annually
- Professional: €49 per user per month when billed annually
- Power: €64 per user per month when billed annually
- Enterprise: €99 per user per month when billed annually
All plans include a 14-day free trial. Key differences between plans include:
- Essential: Basic lead and deal management, customizable pipelines, and 400+ integrations
- Advanced: Adds workflow automation, two-way email sync, and meeting scheduling
- Professional: Includes AI-powered Sales Assistant, contract management, revenue forecasting, and team management
- Power: Adds advanced security, increased control of permissions, and 24/7 support
- Enterprise: Offers unlimited custom fields, maximum automations, and dedicated success manager
👉 Read more: How much does Pipedrive cost?
Zendesk Sell pricing
Zendesk Sell has four pricing tiers (billed monthly):
- Sell Team: €25 per agent per month (€19 when billed annually, €228/year)
- Sell Growth: €69 per agent per month (€55 when billed annually, €660/year)
- Sell Professional: €149 per agent per month (€115 when billed annually, €1,380/year)
- Sell Enterprise: €219 per agent per month (€169 when billed annually)
All plans include a free trial period. Key differences between plans include:
- Sell Team: Basic features with 2 sales pipelines, basic calling and text messaging, pre-built dashboards
- Sell Growth: Adds product and price books, advanced reports, sales forecasting, prospecting credits (25/month), and bulk emailing
- Sell Professional: Includes lead and deal scoring, task automation, advanced roles and permissions, more prospecting credits (150/month), and up to 300 email recipients per sequence
- Sell Enterprise: Offers unlimited pipelines, direct dial phone numbers, company tech stack integrations, and 10,000 enrichment credits per month
👉 Read more: Full CRM pricing Guide
Pricing comparison overview
Pricing verdict
When we examine their pricing structures, Pipedrive offers significantly better value at every price point. The price differential becomes even more pronounced at higher tiers, with Pipedrive Enterprise (€99) costing less than half of Zendesk Sell Professional (€149), while offering comparable or superior functionality.
For budget-conscious businesses, Pipedrive provides more features at lower price points, with fewer essential capabilities locked behind expensive tiers. Zendesk Sell only becomes the more logical choice when tight integration with other Zendesk products is a primary requirement or when its native calling features are essential to your workflow.
Companies that need advanced automation, customization, and pipeline management will find Pipedrive's pricing structure more favorable, especially as they scale, since the cost per user remains more reasonable even at higher tiers.
Who should use Pipedrive?
Pipedrive works best for sales teams looking for clear, visual pipeline management. If your team has established lead sources and needs a tool to track deals and opportunities effectively rather than generate new leads, Pipedrive delivers what you need. Sales teams that want to reduce manual tasks will find value in Pipedrive's workflow automation, which handles repetitive processes and frees up time for selling.
In addition to that, Pipedrive's marketing automation have evolved significantly over the years, making it suitable for companies investing in lead generation and engagement. With its add-ons for web forms, email campaigns, and visitor tracking, Pipedrive bridges the sales-marketing gap effectively. Businesses handling 10-50 daily customer interactions can easily manage their pipeline without getting overwhelmed by complexity. But there's, of course, capacity more more.
We should also point out that, for growing companies, its extensive integration stack (400+ connections) ensures you can extend functionality as needed. Plus, pricing options seem more flexible, and overall more affordable than Zendesk, especially for small businesses. Which doesn't mean that there wouldn't be cheaper options than Pipedrive too.
👉 Read more: Pipedrive marketing automation
Who should use Zendesk Sell?
Zendesk Sell is the natural choice for businesses already using Zendesk Support who want to create a handoff between customer service and sales departments. Not suprisingly, the platform's biggest strength is its built-in communication tools – sales teams needing native calling and SMS capabilities can work directly within the CRM.
Companies that value prospecting tools will appreciate Zendesk Sell's built-in lead finding features that work without additional software. The platform creates a unified view of the customer journey across sales and support teams, giving everyone access to the same information. Like Pipedrive, it handles the needs of businesses with 10-50 daily customer interactions well, providing just the right amount of structure for teams with straightforward sales processes, but naturally Zendek is also used by large corporations.
If your business already relies on Zendesk for customer support, adding Sell creates a good experience that improves both team efficiency and customer satisfaction.
The verdict: Pipedrive vs Zendesk in 2025
After comparing them, Pipedrive comes out ahead as the stronger overall CRM for most sales teams. Its intuitive interface, better pipeline management, effective automation capabilities, and marketing add-ons make it a more versatile solution for sales teams looking to improve their processes.
However, Zendesk Sell has its place, especially for businesses already using Zendesk Support who want to maintain a unified customer experience across sales and support. Its built-in calling and SMS features also provide value for teams that prioritize these communication channels.
Your final choice should depend on your specific needs:
- Choose Pipedrive if you prioritize visual pipeline management, workflow automation, marketing capabilities, and value for money
- Choose Zendesk Sell if you need built-in calling/SMS, are already using Zendesk Support, or require unified customer journey tracking
Top tip: Integrate Zeeg with your CRM for optimal scheduling
Regardless of what your choice is, CRMs usually have appointment scheduling built-in. However, you migh find their scheduling options short to what your company needs. you choose, often connecting with a scheduling tool like Zeeg can improve your sales process. Zeeg works smoothly with both Pipedrive and Zendesk, allowing you to:
- Let prospects book meetings directly through your calendar
- Automatically sync appointments with your CRM
- Qualify leads through custom booking forms
- Route meetings to the right team members
- Analyze meeting metrics to optimize your sales process
By connecting your CRM with Zeeg's scheduling capabilities, you can eliminate manual data entry, prevent scheduling conflicts, and create a smoother experience for both your sales team and your prospects.
Frequently asked questions
Can Pipedrive handle customer support as well as sales?
While Pipedrive focuses primarily on sales, it can handle basic customer support functions. For more complete customer service capabilities, you would need to integrate it with a dedicated support platform.
Does Zendesk Sell offer a free plan?
No, Zendesk Sell does not offer a free plan, but they do provide a free trial so you can test the platform before committing.
Which platform is easier to use for beginners?
Pipedrive is generally considered more intuitive and user-friendly for beginners, especially with its visual pipeline management system.
Can I import my existing data into these CRMs?
Yes, both Pipedrive and Zendesk Sell offer data import tools that can transfer your existing contacts, deals, and other data from spreadsheets or other CRM systems.
Do both platforms offer mobile apps?
Yes, both Pipedrive and Zendesk Sell provide fully-featured mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, allowing you to manage your sales on the go.
Which CRM offers better integration with email platforms?
Pipedrive generally offers stronger email integration capabilities, with options to connect to Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers for seamless tracking of conversations.
Can I customize these CRMs to match my sales process?
Both platforms allow customization, but Pipedrive offers more flexibility in adapting the pipeline stages and workflow to match your specific sales process.
