Hubspot x Pipedrive: Which AI CRM is the best?

AI has evolved beyond a mere feature; it now serves as the driving force behind more intelligent pipelines, quicker decision-making, and enhanced customer relationships.

Today, CRM platforms compete on the extent to which they integrate AI into every interaction, offering everything from predictive insights to automated workflows.

While both Hubspot and Pipedrive promise intelligent sales assistance, their levels of AI integration, user-friendliness, and overall business impact differ significantly. For teams that prefer simplicity over complexity and avoid cluttered dashboards, folk provides seamless AI integration that aids in timely follow-ups and extracts valuable insights from calls and emails. It's the most potent application of AI within a CRM.

Why Does AI Integration Matter?

AI revolutionizes CRMs, transforming them from static databases into proactive sales assistants. Rather than waiting for representatives to sift through contacts or draft follow-up messages, AI now automates critical tasks, predicts outcomes, and enriches data in real time.

• Faster decisions: AI identifies which leads to prioritize based on intent signals and deal velocity.
• Smarter outreach: Tools recommend message templates, optimal timing, and can even assess tone or sentiment.
• Cleaner data: Say goodbye to manual entry; AI automatically fills in missing information and flags duplicates or outdated records.
• Sales forecasting: Predictive models enable teams to identify pipeline risks before they become issues.
• B2B data enrichment: AI gathers details like company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact information to instantly complete lead records.
• AI-powered sequences: Personalized cold emails are generated and scheduled automatically based on deal stage, persona, or interaction history.

When AI is thoroughly integrated into a CRM, sales representatives can focus less on administrative tasks and more on actual selling. This distinction is what sets apart a good CRM from one that genuinely boosts revenue!

What is Hubspot?

HubSpot's Breeze AI suite integrates generative copilot tools across Marketing, Sales, and Service Hubs. Breeze Copilot quickly drafts emails, social media posts, and blog content, while Breeze Intelligence enhances predictive lead scoring, forecasting, and data enrichment, all within your CRM. With Agents for Content, Customer, and Social, routine tasks such as note-taking, follow-ups, and report generation are automated. ChatSpot's conversational interface enables you to query your database using plain English for instant insights—no need to switch contexts.

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant resides in your pipeline feed, providing win-probability scores and next-best-action suggestions to help reps focus on the most promising deals. It crafts personalized outreach emails, condenses lengthy email threads into concise summaries, and alerts you when deals stagnate. You can communicate with the Assistant for context-aware responses about your performance, and it also recommends useful integrations and features to address any gaps in your toolkit. All insights and reminders are consolidated into a unified feed—eliminating guesswork and promoting guided selling.

Feature comparison of Hubspot and Pipedrive

AI Follow-ups

HubSpot Copilot swiftly drafts your follow-up emails by extracting context from recent calls, notes, and CRM records. You'll receive suggested subject lines, engaging openings, and CTAs directly in your sequence editor—just adjust the tone and hit send. It smartly times your emails for optimal engagement, ensuring you never miss an opportunity. For conditional branching, like “send this if the prospect doesn’t open,” you can easily integrate Workflow AI Actions or a Zapier connection for more complex logic.

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant keeps tabs on your deal activity and recommends the best times to follow up. After each call or email, it can generate a follow-up task with a suggested date and even propose the opening lines of your email based on previous interactions. You have the flexibility to modify the content or timing before the task enters your pipeline. For multi-step branching—sending one template if the prospect replies and another if they don’t—you can utilize Pipedrive’s Workflow Automation to manage those scenarios automatically.

Automated Contact Enrichment

When a new lead arrives in your inbox, Breeze Intelligence instantly matches it against a database of over 200 million profiles, auto-filling essential details such as job title, company, phone number, and website—eliminating the need for manual imports. This ensures your lists remain accurate, up-to-date, and ready for outreach. For specialized data like technographics or funding rounds, you can seamlessly integrate third-party enrichers like Clearbit through the App Marketplace. It’s a hands-free solution that maintains your data hygiene and keeps your sales efforts flowing.

Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data automatically populates key fields by analyzing email signatures and public online records. As soon as you add a new contact, their company name, website, location, and social profiles are filled in within seconds—no manual research necessary. For more in-depth firmographic or technographic insights, such as tech stacks or funding information, simply connect a Marketplace enrichment app (like Clearbit or FullContact) to enhance your records in real time.

Smart Fields

Simply instruct Copilot to “build a 5-step outreach for [your persona],” and it will generate a comprehensive sequence complete with subject lines, body text, and send cadences tailored to the deal stage and engagement history. In mere minutes, you'll have ready-to-send templates that feel personally crafted. Just drop them into Sales Hub, and let Workflow AI Actions automatically trigger the next steps based on opens, clicks, or property changes. Experience full-funnel automation without the hassle of copywriting.

Although Pipedrive doesn’t label them as “Smart Fields,” its Web Forms and Chatbot Builder allow you to dynamically show or hide questions based on visitor responses. Known contacts encounter shorter forms, while new leads only see essential fields. Additionally, you can map form or chatbot answers to custom fields in Pipedrive, ensuring every data point is captured accurately—merging intuitive logic with effortless data collection.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

Simply instruct Copilot to “build a 5-step outreach for [your persona],” and it will generate a comprehensive sequence, including subject lines, body copy, and sending cadences, all customized to your deal stage and engagement history. In just minutes, you’ll have ready-to-send templates that sound as if you authored them yourself. Integrate them into Sales Hub and enable Workflow AI Actions to automatically trigger follow-ups based on opens, clicks, or property changes. Experience seamless full-funnel automation without the hassle of copywriting.

If you ask Pipedrive's AI Sales Assistant to craft your outreach, it will create a cohesive email sequence that aligns with your brand: subject lines, body content, and sending intervals tailored to your deal stage. In mere minutes, you’ll obtain ready-to-use email templates that can be saved in Pipedrive or integrated into Smart Email BCC for automated sending. Need follow-up triggers? Just incorporate those steps into your Workflow Automation and let the system take care of everything else.

Next Best Action

Sales Hub’s AI-Guided Selling evaluates deal health, engagement signals, and historical win patterns to suggest the most impactful next steps—be it a call reminder, sharing personalized content, or sending a nudge on LinkedIn. You can access these recommendations directly in your sales workspace or integrate them into your pipelines and workflows. The outcome? Your sales reps will always know their next move, eliminating guesswork and boosting win rates.

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant examines your pipeline health, historical win patterns, and engagement signals to identify the best next action—whether it’s making a call, sending a personalized email, or sharing a proposal. These recommendations appear in your deal view or as task suggestions, and you can even sync them with your calendar or integrate with Zapier, ensuring reps are always aware of what to do next and when.

folk CRM: The Best AI CRM

folk functions as the sales assistant teams have always desired. This integrated and proactive CRM minimizes busy work, allowing sales reps to concentrate on nurturing genuine relationships. With a commendable 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk stands out as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs for lean teams.

Tailored for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk makes AI accessible and user-friendly.

Extract Intel from Calls and Emails

A standout feature of folk is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, which empowers sales and investment teams to glean essential insights from recorded conversations. By integrating with dialers like Ringover and Aircall, or call recording tools such as Grain for Google Meet, users can seamlessly import transcripts into folk. Once in the system, they can utilize Magic Fields, an innovative AI function that allows you to set prompts for extracting specific data from the transcript. For instance, sales teams can effortlessly retrieve information like contract value, user count, decision-makers, budget, or next steps—eliminating the need for manual note-taking. Similarly, investment teams can access insights such as founder backgrounds, fundraising stages, or a startup's needs. These fields are fully customizable: simply write a prompt, map it to the transcript, and folk's AI handles the rest. The outcome is a structured, searchable CRM enriched with valuable data from your calls, streamlining follow-ups, qualification, and reporting.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk's AI Follow-Up feature is crafted to ensure that no opportunity is overlooked. This intelligent assistant, built directly into the platform, analyzes your email exchanges to pinpoint when a follow-up is necessary. For example, if you send an email with a question and receive no response, folk will recognize this and prompt you to follow up at the optimal time.

Moreover, the feature also works proactively—highlighting leads you may have forgotten or conversations that have gone cold. By reviewing past interactions, folk assists you in prioritizing the right contacts to re-engage, thereby advancing deals. This smart, contextual follow-up system saves time, cuts down on manual tracking, and boosts your chances of closing more deals.

AI Features in folk CRM Summary

• Suggested actions: Receive proactive reminders and AI-driven suggestions based on recent activities or deal stages.
• Extract intel from calls: Utilize AI to pull next steps, decision-makers, your leads' budgets, and all pertinent data.
• AI-generated messages: Save time with outreach suggestions that are context-aware and tailored to each contact.
• Duplicate management: AI identifies duplicates and tidies up messy contact lists to maintain an organized CRM.

folk starts at an affordable $20 per user per month, offering a 14-day free trial with no credit card required!

Conclusion

Both Hubspot and Pipedrive present strong AI integration for sales teams, with Hubspot excelling in automated content creation and predictive insights, while Pipedrive focuses on win-probability analysis and personalized outreach. However, folk offers a powerful alternative, combining seamless AI-driven call insights, proactive follow-up reminders, and streamlined user experience—all tailored for lean teams. With an affordable price point and a focus on eliminating busy work, folk stands out as the ideal CRM for those seeking efficiency and effectiveness in customer relationships.

Start your 14-day free trial or book a demo today.