Zoho CRM x Pipedrive: Which AI CRM is the best?

AI has evolved beyond a mere feature; it now serves as the driving force behind smarter pipelines, quicker decisions, and enhanced customer relationships.

With capabilities ranging from predictive insights to automated workflows, CRM platforms are now competing on the extent to which they integrate AI into every interaction.

While both Zoho CRM and Pipedrive offer intelligent sales support, their levels of AI depth, usability, and overall business impact differ significantly. For teams that prefer simplicity over complexity and avoid overstuffed dashboards, folk delivers robust AI integration that ensures timely follow-ups and insightful analysis of calls and emails, making it the most effective use of AI within a CRM.

Why AI Integration Matters?

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 automates critical actions, predicts outcomes, and enriches data in real-time.

• Faster decisions. AI highlights the leads that should be prioritized based on intent signals or deal velocity.
• Smarter outreach. Tools provide suggestions for message templates, optimal timing, and even analyze tone or sentiment.
• Cleaner data. Say goodbye to manual entries; AI automatically fills in missing information and identifies duplicates or outdated records.
• Sales forecasting. Predictive models enable teams to identify pipeline risks before they arise.
• B2B data enrichment. AI swiftly gathers company size, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, and contact details to complete lead records.
• AI-powered sequences. Personalized cold emails are generated and scheduled automatically based on deal stages, personas, or interaction histories.

When AI is seamlessly integrated into a CRM, representatives can devote less time to administrative tasks and focus more on selling. This distinction sets apart a good CRM from one that truly enhances revenue!

What is Zoho CRM?

Zoho’s Zia serves as a built-in AI assistant, enabling you to chat or speak for instant CRM updates—whether it's requesting reports, editing records, or creating tasks without the usual menu navigation. Behind the scenes, Zia provides dynamic deal-win predictions, anomaly detection, and churn forecasting to maintain a robust pipeline. It enriches records using email signatures, flags competitor mentions in real-time, and recommends workflow automations based on your team's habits. With a custom Prediction Builder, you can easily create tailor-made AI models for any module without any coding skills required.

What is Pipedrive?

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant is integrated within your pipeline feed, highlighting win-probability scores and next-best-action prompts to help reps concentrate on the most promising deals. It creates personalized outreach emails, condenses lengthy email threads into concise summaries, and sends reminders when deals stagnate. You can engage with the Assistant for context-aware insights about your performance, and it will even recommend useful integrations and features to address gaps in your toolkit. All insights and reminders are consolidated in a single feed—no guesswork involved, just guided selling.

Feature comparison of Zoho CRM and Pipedrive

AI Follow-ups

Zia utilizes Workflow Rules to streamline your follow-up tasks. After you establish triggers, such as changes in deal stages or task completions, Zia monitors which follow-up actions prove most effective and can automatically generate tasks or send notifications when it's time to reconnect. Additionally, Zia's 'Best Time to Contact' feature analyzes previous interactions to recommend the ideal moments for your calls or emails. For more complex multi-step branching beyond built-in workflows, you can integrate Zoho Flow or Zapier.

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant tracks your deal activities and suggests optimal follow-up times. After each call or email, it can create a follow-up task with a recommended date and even propose the initial lines of your email based on prior discussions. You have the flexibility to adjust the content or timing before the task is added to your pipeline. If you require multi-step branching—such as sending one template if the prospect replies and another if they don’t—you can utilize Pipedrive’s Workflow Automation to manage those paths seamlessly.

Automated Contact Enrichment

Zoho’s native Zia Data Enrichment automatically provides vital details such as company size, industry, key contacts, and financials by matching your leads with public records. For additional firmographics or technographics not included by Zia, you can enhance functionality by installing marketplace extensions like Clearbit or InsideView. Once integrated, these tools will effortlessly auto-fill your selected fields in real-time, eliminating the need for manual lookups or CSV imports.

Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data similarly streamlines the process by auto-filling essential fields by scanning email signatures and public web records. When you add a new contact, their company name, website, location, and social profiles will populate within seconds—no manual research necessary. For more comprehensive firmographic or technographic insights, such as tech stack or funding information, simply integrate a Marketplace enrichment app like Clearbit or FullContact, and let it enhance your records in real-time.

Smart Fields

With Zia for Emails, just prompt Zia to draft or refine any part of your message—be it subject lines, body copy, or even tone adjustments—and it quickly delivers polished email snippets. You can save these as templates and string them together into a sequence using Zoho’s workflow rules. For complete automation, link Zia-generated templates to Zoho Flow to trigger each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates.

Although Pipedrive doesn’t label them as “Smart Fields,” its Web Forms and Chatbot Builder allow you to tailor questions based on visitor responses. Existing contacts see shorter forms, while new leads only encounter the necessary fields. Additionally, you can map form or chatbot responses to custom fields in Pipedrive, ensuring every piece of data is captured accurately—melding straightforward logic with seamless data entry.

AI-Powered Message & Sequence Generation

With Zia for Emails, you can effortlessly prompt Zia to draft or refine your messages—including subject lines, body copy, and tone adjustments—and receive polished email snippets within seconds. These can be saved as templates and seamlessly integrated into a sequence using Zoho’s workflow rules. For complete automation, connect Zia-generated templates to Zoho Flow to trigger each step based on opens, clicks, or field updates.

Similarly, when you ask Pipedrive's AI Sales Assistant to draft your outreach, it will create a cohesive email sequence that includes subject lines, body content, and send intervals tailored to your deal stage. Within minutes, you’ll have ready-to-use email templates that can be saved in Pipedrive or integrated into Smart Email BCC for automated delivery. If you want to set up follow-up triggers, simply incorporate those steps into your Workflow Automation and let the system take care of the rest.

Next Best Action

Zia’s Next Best Experience widget evaluates deal health, engagement signals, and historical win patterns to suggest the most impactful next steps, such as a call reminder, sharing a relevant PDF, or sending a personalized follow-up. These recommendations are conveniently displayed within your CRM and can be integrated into workflows, ensuring that your sales reps always know the precise action to take next.

Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant also assesses your pipeline health, historical win patterns, and engagement signals to identify the next best step, whether it's making a call, sending a personalized email, or sharing a proposal. These tailored suggestions appear in your deal view or as task recommendations, and can even be synced with your calendar or integrated with Zapier, so your reps are always informed about what to do next and when.

folk CRM: The Best AI CRM

folk serves as the sales assistant teams have always desired. This straightforward, integrated, and proactive CRM handles the busy work, enabling sales reps to concentrate on fostering genuine relationships. With a 4.5/5 rating on G2, folk is recognized as one of the most reliable AI-powered CRMs for lean teams.

Specifically crafted for startups, agencies, and sales teams, folk makes AI both practical and manageable.

Extract Intel from Calls and Emails

A standout feature of folk is its AI-driven call transcript analysis, assisting sales and investment teams in extracting crucial insights from recorded conversations. By integrating with dialers like Ringover, Aircall, or call recording tools such as Grain for Google Meet, users can seamlessly import transcripts into Folk. From this point, they can utilize Magic Fields, an AI feature that allows you to set prompts to extract specific information from the transcript. For instance, sales teams can effortlessly gather details like contract value, number of users, decision-makers, budget, or next steps—eliminating the need for manual note-taking. Investment teams can extract insights like founder backgrounds, fundraising stages, or what a startup seeks. These fields are completely customizable: simply write a prompt, map it to the transcript, and Folk's AI takes care of the rest. The outcome is a well-structured, searchable CRM enriched with valuable data from your calls, enhancing follow-ups, qualification, and reporting efficiency.

AI-Powered Follow-Up Reminders

folk's AI Follow-Up feature ensures that no opportunity is overlooked. This intelligent assistant, integrated into the platform, analyzes your email exchanges to determine when a follow-up is necessary. For instance, if you posed a question in an email and the lead hasn’t responded, Folk will automatically recognize this lack of reply and remind you to follow up at the optimal time.

Moreover, it also identifies leads you may have overlooked or conversations that have cooled off. By examining past interactions, Folk helps you prioritize which contacts to re-engage, facilitating deal progression. This smart, contextual follow-up system saves you time, minimizes manual tracking, and boosts your chances of closing more deals.

AI Features in folk CRM Summary

• Suggested actions: Receive proactive reminders and AI recommendations based on recent activities or deal stages.
• Extract intel from calls: Utilize AI to gather next steps, decision-makers, your leads' budgets, and more.
• AI-generated messages: Save time with context-aware outreach suggestions tailored to each contact.
• Duplicate management: AI identifies and eliminates duplicates to keep your contact list organized.

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

Conclusion

In comparing Zoho CRM and Pipedrive, Zoho offers a robust AI assistant, Zia, that simplifies tasks and provides actionable insights for maintaining a strong pipeline. Pipedrive utilizes its AI Sales Assistant to enhance deal focus, streamline follow-ups, and consolidate performance insights. However, for teams that value simplicity and effective AI integration, folk stands out as a superior alternative. With its AI-driven call analysis, proactive follow-up reminders, and user-friendly interface, folk empowers teams to build meaningful relationships while efficiently managing workloads.

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