The ability to build and maintain business relationships has become a key factor in every sales and marketing team’s success. So finding the right CRM for your business is crucial. 

However, choosing the right CRM platform that ticks all the boxes (and more) can be an overwhelming task. 

In this blog post, we will compare two well-known CRMs, Pipedrive vs Monday and go into all their key features and functionalities. We will also introduce folk as an alternative to help you make an informed choice.

Presentation of Pipedrive

Pipedrive offers an integrated CRM platform designed for sales teams who need an easy view of their business systems. This helps the salesperson schedule, finish and monitor their activity, making a clear picture of the possible opportunities for sale.

Pipedrive provides an intuitive interface to create pipelines, with key features including tools to interact with leads via email, chat and social media. The software pipelines automatically filter leads and direct the sale through the correct sales rep in order.

Customer comparing folk CRM and Pipedrive:

Presentation of Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management software with a library of templates that help users design their boards based on their needs. Among key features it helps view data in multiple ways, such as Gantt charts and timeline-based tracking boards.

It also integrates with other tools such as Pipedrive, Shopify, Gmail, Outlook, and Slack.

Presentation of folk

folk is a lightweight, customizable and easy-to-use CRM you can adapt to any type of relationships. Its key features include:

• Import contacts from whatever source you might want to use, like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, LinkedIn, Twitter, files or custom integrations, or any other data source
• Enrich missing contact data with a click of a button
• Create contact groups in order to categorize them your way
• Instantly create custom content with the help of AI, such as personalized emails or anything else you want
• Instantly build custom pipelines starting from an existing list of contacts
• Use the mail merge function (more on mail merge below)
• Track custom interactions (such as emails or calendar events) directly in folk
• Take notes, set reminders, and more

Comparison of main CRM functionalities: Pipedrive vs Monday

The most important functionalities on which to compare CRMs Pipedrive vs Monday:

• Synchronization and Integrations
• Pipeline management
• Mail merge
• Activities

Contacts Synchronization and Integrations

Both Monday.com and Pipedrive offer efficient contact synchronization. They integrate with various sources where businesses can import their contacts. With Monday.com, businesses can integrate with Google Sheets and Excel for contact imports. Pipedrive, on the other hand, integrates with Gmail, Google Contacts, and Outlook.com. Both platforms offer API integrations with third-party applications such as Mailchimp, Quickbooks, and Zapier.

folk can also integrate with basic applications such as Gmail, Google Contacts and Outlook.com. If you're looking for something more-ish, you can integrate folk with 1000s of apps via Zapier. Learn more about integrations here.

Pipeline Management

A pipeline view is one of the basic lead management features. When comparing Pipedrive vs Monday, both platforms come with intuitive pipeline management that allows businesses to manage their sales process, prospects, deals, and opportunities. Monday.com's pipeline management features are far more customizable than Pipedrive, enabling teams to manage their sales processes in a more efficient way. Pipedrive focuses on simplicity and practicality. It follows a drag-and-drop system that is straightforward and accessible to use. folk also offers a very simple and easy-to-use pipeline management system.

Mail Merge

Mail merge is an essential feature for sales representatives when sending bulk emails to customers, be it for cold outreach, to nurture leads or generate more sales. It can sometimes be referred to as a marketing automation feature.

Pipedrive users benefit from an email marketing feature and also integrates with several email marketing service providers such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor, two tools that are popular with many small businesses and startups.

Monday.com lacks a dedicated campaign element, but it has some basic email functionality. You can send emails and run automations by opening the details of your contacts and navigating to the email and activities dashboard. You can also track emails and save repetitive emails as email templates.

folk offers an embedded mail merge system directly in the CRM software. It helps small businesses do email marketing and CRM under one roof. This mail merge software draws directly from the data stored in the CRM, in the form of variable, to write ultra-personalized emails to leads, prospects, or any other type of contact. folk also offers readymade email templates that you can use and save directly in the tool.

Reminders and Notes

Reminders and notes are basic features to manage sales pipelines, track leads, follow up activities and generate more sales.

Monday.com and Pipedrive make it easy to set reminders for yourself and your team. However, Monday.com has more flexibility, allowing businesses to choose their notification rules, reminders, and the amount of time before the reminder pops up. Pipedrive reminders are limited to email notifications.

folk also offer easy ways to get reminders and notes. You can get all your reminders in one place thanks to its new notification centre.

Other Features

Both platforms offer mobile applications, making it easy for businesses to access their data on the go, an essential element for CRM software.

Monday.com has a powerful tool to create custom automations which help nurture leads automatically, unlike Pipedrive.

Which CRM has the best free plan, and what are the pricing plans?

Pipedrive's Essential plan is $12.49 per user per month but has more lead engagement features than Monday.com's cheapest plan. These include website visitors monitoring, web chatbots and website live chat.

Monday.com's Basic plan costs you start at $24 per month for 3 seats, with the price rising depending on the number of seats you take and how many features you want access to. Monday offers a free version known as 'Free Forever'.

folk folk offers a generous free plan that includes 200 contacts, access to a library of templates to save new users time, integrations and their Chrome extension, folkX. Their standard plan starts from $18 per month, per user.  It offers useful features designed for teams and power users including unlimited contacts, bulk emailing, access to their AI integration ‘Magic Field’ and more. They also have a premium plan that starts from $29 per month per user. This tier provides a deep level of customization and personal support. For busy businesses that want a dedicated point of contact and Slack channel, folk’s Beyond Limits plan can be tailored to suit specific needs and goals.

All three tools — Pipedrive, Monday, and folk — can be billed annually or monthly.

Pros and cons: Pipedrive vs monday vs folk

Pipedrive

Pros:

• Free 14-day trial
• API access
• Most plans allow automated workflows
• Paid plans are affordable

Cons:

• Only highest tier customers get phone support
• Few features to run a customer service department
• Most plans have limited custom field and reports capabilities
• Reduced functionality for users outside the sales environment

Monday.com

Pros:

• Free trial with no time limit
• Automated flows to communicate with teams and external parties
• Forms are integrated with boards to easily produce daily/weekly/monthly statistical information
• Intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate through boards and review status updates
• Interlinking boards can reduce the maintenance of individual boards
• Integrates with numerous other platforms, such as MS Teams, Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, and Google

Cons:

• Limiting access to boards is absolute, so it won’t allow a team member viewing privileges only
• Basic plan lacks important features, such as automation and integrations
• Potentially steep learning curve for employees new to CRM software

folk

Pros:

• Easy access
• Comes with great library of customizable templates
• Integrates with various apps including emails (Gmail, Outlook), Calendar (Gcal, Outlook) and many others
• Integrates a mail merge system
• Unlimited contacts
• Strong collaboration mode
• Suited to any type of teams not specifically sales teams
• Great free plan to start

Cons:

• No reporting

Conclusion

The decision between Monday.com and Pipedrive comes down to what suits your business best - other tools are explored in this article. Monday.com is the best option if you prioritize flexibility in your CRM platform. It has a more customizable pipeline management system and notification options, making it perfect for managing sales and project workflows. However, if you prefer a straightforward and practical CRM platform, Pipedrive is the better option. But, if you are looking for a CRM platform that is much more customizable than these two, you can try folk. folk offers greater versatility and customization, making it the ideal choice for businesses with specific CRM needs.

Looking for more?

Here’s more on Pipedrive:

• folk vs Pipedrive
• Pipedrive review
• Pipedrive vs Infusion soft
• Pipedrive vs Trello
• Pipedrive vs Copper
• Pipedrive vs Monday.com
• Pipedrive vs Salesmate
• Pipedrive Chrome extension alternatives

And more on Monday.com:

• folk vs Monday.com
• Monday.com vs HubSpot