Pipedrive vs Close: Which CRM Fits Your Sales Team?

Close fits calling-heavy inside-sales teams and Pipedrive fits pipeline-led teams that sell through meetings and email, because Pipedrive has no built-in calling.

In the Pipedrive vs Close choice, Close builds calling and SMS into every plan and adds a power dialer on Growth at $99 per user per month, billed annually. Pipedrive puts Sequences on Growth at $24 per seat per month, billed annually.

Pipedrive vs Close at a Glance

Both vendors charge per seat, but Close’s seat includes calling while Pipedrive’s buys a cheaper pipeline.

Pipedrive recently launched new plan tiers, names and limits, so a price list that still shows Essential, Advanced, Professional or Power describes its old plans.

Sources: Pipedrive pricing page, Pipedrive calling help, Close pricing page, checked October 2026.

At the automation tier, a Close seat costs about four times a Pipedrive seat.

Key Differences Between Pipedrive and Close

Close is built around a calling rep’s queue, while Pipedrive is built around the deal pipeline. Four differences follow from that:

Pipedrive vs Close: Features Compared

Calling and automation are where the plans differ most; the matrix shows where each feature sits by plan.

Sources: Pipedrive plan features, Close pricing page, checked October 2026.

Pipeline management

Pipedrive is the stronger pipeline tool on price. Customizable pipelines, deal card customization and deal rotting work on every plan, starting with Lite at $14 per seat per month, billed annually.

Close Essentials adds pipelines and team-level visibility at $35 per user per month, billed annually. Close organizes the rep’s day around leads and Smart Views, saved lists a rep can call down, which suits a prospect queue more than a deal board.

Calling and dialers

No, Pipedrive has no built-in dialer: its help center says Pipedrive “doesn’t have a built-in calling integration” and points to calling apps in its Marketplace. Its iOS and Android apps place calls on the rep’s phone, and web-to-mobile calls are charged on the usual phone bill.

Close includes calling and SMS on every plan. Growth adds a power dialer that calls through a saved Smart View in order.

Scale adds a predictive dialer that dials several numbers at once and connects a rep only when a person answers.

A Pipedrive team can still get a power dialer: Aircall lists one on its Professional plan. That adds a second vendor and a second bill to the stack.

Sequences and workflow automation

Both vendors put automated follow-up on their Growth plan. A Pipedrive sequence holds up to 15 steps and up to 500 deals or leads. Each step is an email, sent manually or automatically, or an activity such as a call task.

Close Workflows are only available on the Growth and Scale plans. A workflow can mix email, SMS and call steps, with delays from 1 minute up to 365 days.

Reporting and forecasting

Pipedrive gives every plan Insights reports and a dashboard, adds the forecast view on Growth, and adds multiple dashboards, custom field reports and team goals on Premium. A manager who wants several dashboards therefore pays for Premium at $49 per seat per month, billed annually.

Close puts activity reports, dashboards and the opportunity funnel report on all four plans, Solo included. The workflow performance report and the leaderboard start on Growth, and custom graphs in Explorer need Scale.

Integrations and API

Pipedrive’s Marketplace lists 500+ integrations, and API access and webhooks come with every plan. Close lists over 100 integrations, Zapier for 2000+ apps, and API access with an event log.

A calling team on Pipedrive spends one of those integrations, and a separate subscription, on the phone system.

Pipedrive vs Close Pricing

Pipedrive costs $14 to $69 per seat per month billed annually, or $19 to $89 billed monthly. Close costs $9 to $139 per user per month billed annually, or $19 to $149 billed monthly, plus calling usage.

Annual billing is one payment for the year on Pipedrive: $288 per seat on Growth. Close’s annual plans can be upgraded during the term, but downgrades and cancellations take effect at the end of it.

Both vendors offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card, and Close adds a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The “save up to 50%” banner on Close’s pricing page matches Solo: $9 billed annually against $19 billed monthly. On Close Growth, the annual view saves $109 minus $99, or $10 per user per month.

The Pipedrive pricing page says “save up to 26%” on annual billing, and Growth drops from $34 to $24 per seat per month.

Two vendor terms change bigger deals. Pipedrive makes implementation free on a plan over $400 a year, which five Growth seats at $288 per seat per year clear. Close offers discounts to teams with 10+ seats that commit for 12+ months, through its Success team.

Comparable plans side by side

The plans that do the same job pair up as entry, team entry, automation and admin control.

Sources: Pipedrive pricing page, Close pricing page, checked October 2026.

Upgrade triggers on each side:

• Pipedrive Lite to Growth: email sync, open tracking, automations and Sequences
• Pipedrive Growth to Premium: custom permission sets, phone support, and LeadBooster, Projects and Smart Docs included
• Close Essentials to Growth: workflows, the power dialer and bulk email
• Close Growth to Scale: the predictive dialer, custom roles and lead visibility rules

Pipedrive’s add-ons, from Campaigns to Web Visitors, are priced in my guide to Pipedrive’s plans and add-ons in detail.

What a 5-rep and a 10-rep team pays

A 5-rep team on the automation tier pays $1,440 a year on Pipedrive Growth and $5,940 on Close Growth, billed annually.

Sources: Pipedrive pricing page, Close pricing page, checked October 2026.

Assumptions: US list prices, 12 months, one seat per rep. The totals exclude tax, Close calling, SMS, phone numbers and Call Assistant, Pipedrive add-ons, any calling app, and Close’s 10+ seat discount.

The seat math favours Pipedrive at every tier in this table. The gap narrows once a Pipedrive team must buy a phone system, because Close’s seat already carries one.

On the automation tier, Pipedrive Growth at $24 per seat plus Aircall Professional at $50 per license/month comes to $24 + $50 = $74 per rep a month. Close Growth is $99 per user, and Aircall needs at least 3 licenses.

Calling usage and add-ons

Close bills calls at around $0.02 a minute and phone numbers from about $1 a month, passed through at cost. Calls follow Twilio’s pay-as-you-go pricing, so each call is rounded up to the next minute: a 70-second call is charged as 2 minutes.

Take an illustrative team of 5 reps who each place 40 outbound calls a day, 20 working days a month, with every call lasting 40 seconds.

Per-minute rounding bills each 40-second call as 1 minute. One rep’s day holds 40 x 40 = 1,600 seconds of talk, about 27 minutes, but 40 billed minutes.

The team’s month is 5 reps x 40 calls x 20 days = 4,000 calls, so 4,000 billed minutes. At a rate of $0.02 a minute, that is 4,000 x $0.02 = $80 a month.

Short calls are where the rounding rule shows up; long calls barely change the bill. Close’s Call Assistant, for call transcripts and summaries, adds $50 a month per organization plus $0.02 per minute.

On Pipedrive, the calling cost is whatever route the team picks. Aircall, one of the calling apps Pipedrive’s help center lists, holds its Power Dialer in Professional. Aircall lists Professional at $50 per license/month and requires a minimum of 3 licenses.

Pipedrive’s add-ons are the other layer: LeadBooster starts from $32.50 and Smart Docs from $32.50, and both come included on Premium and higher. A Growth team that needs web forms should price Premium first.

Pipedrive vs Close: Pros and Cons

Each strength below holds on a named plan, and each weakness hurts a specific kind of team.

Pipedrive pros and cons

My full Pipedrive review covers the plans one by one; these lines decide this pairing.

Close pros and cons

The Close CRM review weighs Close on its own; against Pipedrive, these lines decide.

Which Is Better for Your Needs?

Close is better for teams that dial all day, and Pipedrive is better for teams that work a deal pipeline on a budget. The matrix maps each priority to a pick.

Sources: Pipedrive plan features, Close pricing page, checked October 2026.

Skip Pipedrive if: your reps’ day is mostly outbound calls. You would pay for a CRM seat and a phone seat, and Aircall alone needs 3 licenses.

If Pipedrive stays on your list but you want to size it up against one more rival, open Pipedrive vs Copper.

Skip Close if: your reps rarely dial and live in email and meetings. Close Growth costs about four times Pipedrive Growth for a dialer they will not use.

If Close stays on your list but Pipedrive does not, read Close vs Salesflare next.

If neither fits, my list of other Pipedrive alternatives compares tools with different trade-offs.

For a wider shortlist across the category, see the best CRM software for small teams.

Switching Between Pipedrive and Close

Moving from Pipedrive to Close runs through Close’s own CRM importer, which lists Pipedrive; moving from Close to Pipedrive runs through Close’s exporter and Pipedrive’s spreadsheet import.

From Pipedrive to Close:

1. An admin opens Close’s Lead Importer and picks Pipedrive under Import from a CRM. Close’s partner Import2 runs the import, and in most cases it costs nothing when started inside Close.
2. Import2 runs a sample migration first; check the mapped fields, then start the full import.
3. Expect the data model to change. Pipedrive’s Organization becomes a Close Lead, a Person a Contact, a Deal an Opportunity, and a Stage an Opportunity Status.
4. Rebuild the parts that are settings rather than records: Sequences as Workflows (on Growth or Scale), the phone setup, and custom permission sets, which become custom roles only on Scale.

From Close to Pipedrive:

1. Export leads, contacts or opportunities from Close’s Leads page as CSV or JSON. JSON is the only format that exports all activities.
2. Download Smart Views, email and SMS templates, notes and phone numbers as CSV files with Close’s support tools, which need a Close API key. Keep them as the record of what to rebuild in Pipedrive.
3. Import into Pipedrive as XLS, XLSX or CSV files of no more than 200,000 rows and under 50 MB each. Activities exported as JSON must be turned into a spreadsheet first.
4. Replace calling with a Marketplace app or web-to-mobile, and rebuild Workflows as Sequences, which carry email and activity steps.

Close’s migration guide says the sample import alone can take a few hours, depending on its size, so start it early in the trial.

How I Compared Pipedrive and Close

I read both vendors’ US pricing pages in both billing views, their plan-features pages and their help centers on October 21, 2026, then compared plans that do the same job.

The criteria were calling, automation, pipelines, reporting, permissions, integrations and price per rep. Plans were paired by job: Lite with Solo, Lite with Essentials as the cheapest team plans, Growth with Growth, Premium with Scale. Prices, limits and plan gates come from the vendors’ own pages; the cost tables are my arithmetic on list prices.

Two gaps shape the advice. Pipedrive’s pricing page prints add-on prices without a billing unit.

The migration guides give no time for a full import. Where a decision turns on one of them, the article points to the trial.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Close a good CRM?

Yes, for teams whose day runs on the phone. Close logs every completed call on the lead page automatically and keeps calling, SMS and email in one record. Teams that rarely call pay for capability they skip: calling and SMS come with every Close plan, and workflows start at $99 per user per month, billed annually.

What are the downsides of using Pipedrive?

The main downside is calling: Pipedrive has no built-in dialer, so a calling team adds an app with its own price and subscription. Lite also lacks email sync and Sequences, which pushes any team that emails from the CRM to Growth at $24 per seat. Phone support starts on Premium.

What are the main competitors of Pipedrive?

Close is the rival for calling-heavy teams, as this page shows. If HubSpot is also on your shortlist, my comparison of HubSpot and Pipedrive prices that pairing the same way.

For a larger team weighing a full platform, my Pipedrive against Salesforce comparison covers that move.

For the wider field, my list of Pipedrive alternatives compares other CRMs by the trade-off each makes.

Final Verdict: Pipedrive or Close?

Buy Close if your inside-sales team calls all day and needs the dialer in the CRM. Buy Pipedrive if your team works deals through meetings and email and wants the cheaper seat with Sequences.

The main trade-off is price against the phone: Close’s higher seat buys the dialer, recordings and SMS that a Pipedrive team would rent elsewhere. Run your own call list through Close’s 14-day trial and your deal pipeline through Pipedrive’s before you sign an annual plan.

Before you commit, compare Close with one more rival in Freshsales vs Close.