Pipedrive vs. monday: Which is greatest? [2026]

As an account supervisor within the mid-2010s, my complete relationship with our gross sales workforce consisted of two interactions: formal buyer handoff calls and random run-ins on the water cooler. Regardless of working for a similar firm and having the identical targets, our groups existed in numerous components of the workplace and used solely separate apps for work. I had no visibility into their CRM, no advance warning about incoming prospects, and relied solely on particular person gross sales reps’ written summaries to know buyer wants.

This fragmented sales-to-delivery handoff was commonplace a decade in the past. Right now, it is solely pointless. Trendy platforms like monday.com and Pipedrive enable seamless coordination between groups and transparently report each buyer interplay. This creates a brand new query, although: which app do you have to select?

Till just lately, the selection was clear: Pipedrive for gross sales CRM, monday for venture administration. However now, each apps can do each issues.

I’ve examined Pipedrive’s and monday’s CRM and venture options to gauge their relative strengths. On this comparability, I will stroll you thru what I found so you possibly can select the proper app to your workforce.

Desk of contents:

Pipedrive vs. monday at a look

Here is a breakdown of the important thing variations between these two platforms.

monday is greatest for groups that want all-in-one workflow administration. Its gross sales CRM is lacking some specialised lead gen instruments, however its highly effective venture administration options, versatile interface, AI brokers, and seamless sales-to-delivery handoffs make it best for organizations the place gross sales is only one piece of a bigger operational puzzle.

Pipedrive is greatest for groups laser-focused on gross sales efficiency. Whereas its venture options are restricted, its purpose-built offers pipeline, spectacular lead technology instruments, and sales-specific AI help make it good for companies the place closing offers drives every little thing else.

monday is a venture administration app with a CRM possibility

“Did you place it in monday but?” 

This grammatically-challenged phrase echoes by places of work worldwide because of monday’s recognition as a venture administration app. (Funnily sufficient, one of many principal gripes customers have with monday.com pertains to its awkward branding fairly than the product itself.)

With lots of of hundreds of customers, monday is certainly one of the most well-liked venture administration apps (or “work administration” apps, as monday likes to place itself). By organizing your tasks into boards and organising customized fields and variables, you will get far more finished utilizing monday than you’d have the ability to in a easy venture spreadsheet.

One motive for that is improved collaboration: monday’s boards make it simple for anybody in your workforce to see how tasks are progressing. You may arrange refined automations to maintain teammates knowledgeable and preserve tasks buzzing alongside easily. (For instance, if a venture’s due date is approaching and sure duties have not been accomplished, you possibly can arrange a set off that notifies the venture supervisor.)

monday additionally lets your workforce collaborate inside the app itself, fairly than simply reporting on work that occurs elsewhere. With monday workdocs, you possibly can arrange collaborative docs that seamlessly combine together with your venture. For instance, you possibly can create a product launch plan doc that embeds a stay venture schedule so the doc stays related even after the venture launches.

In the event you’re a venture administration professional, you will discover every little thing you want in monday. Gantt charts, a staple {of professional} venture administration, are simple to spin up on any board. It is easy to create tons of different venture views too, like Timeline, Kanban, and Calendar, together with customized charts that present how key facets of the venture are coming alongside.

Along with monday’s preset views, you can even create any views you need simply by describing them, utilizing its new AI widget creator.

Want a customized view that reveals you precisely what number of hours you are budgeting per venture or shopper? Now you can achieve this in a couple of seconds.

monday is adaptable sufficient to suit into all types of labor eventualities. It is so versatile, in truth, that many groups have been already repurposing it as a makeshift CRM system earlier than any official gross sales instruments existed. This unofficial use case clearly caught monday’s consideration, and finally, in 2022, they launched monday CRM.

At first look, monday CRM feels a bit like monday slapped a special coloration of paint onto its present Work OS product. However whereas monday CRM is much from essentially the most superior possibility in the marketplace, it has helpful sales-specific options that are not out there in monday’s core product:

• CRM knowledge enrichment with Crunchbase to robotically fill in prospect firm particulars

• Deal phases widget, leaderboard widget, and gross sales pipeline view

• Shared electronic mail inbox, marketing campaign instruments, mass emails, and monitoring capabilities

• Quotes and invoices to streamline the closing course of

• Automated sequences and process reminders to nurture prospects

• AI gross sales reps that qualify leads, conduct outreach, and seize interactions

• Lead brokers that determine prospects based mostly in your ICP

• Lead scoring to prioritize prospects (Enterprise plan solely)

In the event you’re already utilizing monday for venture administration, you solely want to purchase seats in monday CRM to your gross sales workforce and different customer-facing workers. (Everybody else can preserve utilizing monday work administration.) Your venture administration and CRM interfaces present up as separate workspaces in the identical account, making it simple to leap between them when you’ve got entry to each merchandise.

Information flows seamlessly between monday CRM and monday work administration. For instance, when your gross sales workforce closes a deal in monday CRM, they will robotically set off a brand new venture in monday work administration—full with pre-populated buyer info and duties assigned to the suitable workforce members.

monday CRM’s most up-to-date product enhancements have closed a number of the hole with devoted CRMs, significantly new options like lead scoring, AI-powered SDR brokers, and electronic mail sequences. Nonetheless, it is lacking specialised lead technology instruments like built-in web site customer monitoring, a deep prospecting database, native electronic mail advertising and marketing, and built-in eSignatures—all of which Pipedrive affords.

Pipedrive is a gross sales CRM with a tasks add-on

Pipedrive has been a sales-focused piece of software program since its inception in 2010, when a workforce of Estonian salespeople hacked collectively a customized CRM that made sense for his or her gross sales course of. (Enjoyable reality: NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal was certainly one of Pipedrive’s early buyers.)

The guts and soul of Pipedrive is its deal pipeline, a Kanban-style board that offers you a chook’s-eye view of alternatives throughout all phases in your gross sales course of. In the event you’ve bought a number of gross sales processes—some merchandise that solely want a fast demo, others that require sign-off from a number of C-suite decision-makers—you possibly can simply arrange completely different Pipedrive pipelines.

Whenever you zoom into the deal itself, you possibly can see the complete scope of each rep’s interplay with that deal thus far: calls, conferences, notes, emails, paperwork, and feedback.

One other approach Pipedrive streamlines the gross sales course of is with its new Sequences function, which is a hybrid between electronic mail automation and conventional gross sales exercise. You may create sequences with step-by-step greatest practices for following up on sure forms of offers: when to electronic mail, when to name, when to set conferences, and when to take a break. As soon as you’ve got added a deal to a sequence, the actions in that sequence robotically populate within the dashboard of the gross sales rep who owns the deal. You can automate the e-mail portion of your sequences, however you do not have to—you can even simply use sequences to information your reps or streamline your individual gross sales actions.

As soon as your gross sales efforts are in full swing, you want a dependable approach to see how they’re doing. As a sales-first platform, Pipedrive has oodles of stories to maintain gross sales managers completely happy, together with metrics like pipeline well being, gross sales exercise, lead conversion, deal period, and win fee and loss fee.

Whereas Pipedrive’s interface is extra finely-tuned to the gross sales course of than monday’s, you might create a strong approximation of this expertise in monday CRM. However in lots of instances, you would be hacking a system collectively your self fairly than entering into one thing that is preloaded with every little thing you want.

For instance, monday has a sequences function, but it surely’s not as tightly designed across the pipeline and deal infrastructure that is so core in Pipedrive. And monday CRM’s Leads part is actually a desk of contact info and statuses, whereas Pipedrive’s Leads inbox looks like a command heart for really producing leads, nurturing them, and transferring them into your gross sales course of.

Pipedrive’s LeadBooster add-on, at $39/month further per firm, provides a chatbot, stay chat, internet kinds, and prospecting software program to your Pipedrive subscription. (LeadBooster is included in Premium and Final plans.) Net Guests, a $49/month add-on, provides you perception into the organizations which are searching your web site.

All of this will add as much as a significant improve in lead quantity, which signifies that though these add-ons price extra, Pipedrive can typically add extra worth than monday CRM. Pipedrive can even deal with different facets of your gross sales course of, like lead nurturing campaigns, gross sales paperwork, and eSignatures.

As soon as you’ve got closed a deal, you possibly can convert it instantly right into a Pipedrive venture in a single click on. (You can too arrange an automation that handles this for you.) As soon as you’ve got finished that, it’s going to migrate out of your Offers dashboard to your Initiatives dashboard.

Discover any similarities? Like monday CRM, Pipedrive Initiatives (an $8/consumer/month add-on) is a repurposed model of Pipedrive’s unique product. However that high-level Kanban overview that works so properly for managing offers looks like a very sales-like mind-set about venture administration. (“The place is it within the pipeline?” is not at all times the perfect query while you’re managing advanced tasks.) Whereas Pipedrive Initiatives most likely works nice for 60-day software program implementations, it is laborious to see it being the only option for a 12-month search engine optimisation venture or an ongoing content material manufacturing workflow.

What’s odd, and (to me) type of a deal-breaker within the venture administration house, is that you do not discover Kanban options the place you really want them: on the venture stage. As a substitute, you get a minimalist dropdown listing of duties and actions. Since there isn’t any timeline or Gantt chart view, it is powerful to know whether or not your venture is on monitor. And with out Kanban to handle your duties, it looks like a flowery to-do listing fairly than a approach to handle your venture’s workflow.

Wish to arrange project-focused automations, like assigning a chunk of content material to your editor for evaluate after a author completes it? You are out of luck with Pipedrive. And neglect about extra superior workforce administration options like workload balancing and useful resource allocation. Gross sales-focused groups with easy implementation processes ought to undoubtedly attempt Pipedrive Initiatives out—there is a large profit to having your knowledge in a single place—however Pipedrive merely is not constructed for sophisticated tasks with loads of transferring components.

monday AI is extra bold, however each apps combine AI in helpful methods

Each monday and Pipedrive keep away from the “AI hype” lure and ship AI options that genuinely enhance the consumer expertise. Pipedrive’s AI options are pretty restricted and focus fairly narrowly on the gross sales expertise. monday AI is a broader effort that features each focused enhancements (like AI-powered columns) and impressive agentic capabilities.

Let’s begin with Pipedrive. The very first thing you will discover is that its AI Gross sales Assistant is accessible all through the platform. (You may entry it by clicking the purple AI-looking star icon on the high of the app.)

Gross sales Assistant has entry to your entire deal info and may reply strategic (or mundane) questions. You may ask it that will help you:

• Forecast income

• Determine bottlenecks

• Remind you of alternatives

• Evaluate your workforce’s efficiency throughout completely different time frames

• Suggest subsequent steps to maintain offers transferring ahead

Pipedrive can even write and summarize emails with AI for those who use its Gross sales Inbox function. I discovered this to be of some use, but it surely has limitations. I could not get it to insert variables for [first name] or [company name], for instance, so that you’d have to try this by yourself. For a big gross sales operation, creating Pipedrive gross sales electronic mail templates that cowl each circumstance is likely to be a greater use of vitality, and it will undoubtedly improve the consistency of your messaging.

Lastly, Pipedrive additionally affords AI-generated stories. Whereas this does not sound all that thrilling, it is really fairly neat: since you possibly can proceed prompting after your report is generated, it is easy to fine-tune the information conversationally.

What Pipedrive would not have, no less than for now, are AI gross sales brokers or lead brokers. You may combine with AI prospecting apps like Overloop and pull that knowledge into Pipedrive, however there isn’t any native performance. 

monday now payments itself as an “AI work platform,” and whereas there’s some advertising and marketing hype in that positioning—is not there at all times?—monday actually is among the most AI-forward venture administration and CRM apps you will discover.

Let’s begin with certainly one of monday’s smaller AI options that improves day-to-day productiveness: AI-powered columns. That is useful whether or not you are utilizing monday for venture administration or as a CRM.

A number of examples of what AI-powered columns can do:

• Translate content material

• Assign labels

• Assign folks

• Detect sentiment

• Extract data

• Write with AI

• Summarize

For sure workflows, this could be a enormous time saver. For instance, think about you are sorting buyer suggestions. You could possibly add uncooked knowledge to your desk, then use AI-powered columns to robotically summarize the suggestions, detect sentiment, assign labels, and assign buyer help reps to observe up on anybody with detrimental sentiment.

AI can even proactively counsel new columns that would prevent time based mostly on the way in which you’re employed. Under, for instance, monday has advised including a Due Date Precedence column to flag objects that want consideration.

monday has loads of different productivity-boosting AI options. You can too:

• Generate workflows

• Add AI steps to automations

• Write emails and different content material

• Generate formulation

• Generate templates and content material inside docs

• Search by each doc

• Get pipeline insights (like at-risk offers)

• Take notes with AI (paid add-on)

I will not linger on any of the above, since they’re all pretty self-descriptive. Plus, there are nonetheless three different main areas of monday AI to cowl: monday sidekick, monday vibe, and monday brokers.

monday sidekick is an AI assistant that works quite a bit like Pipedrive’s gross sales assistant. It is out there all through the platform—whether or not you are utilizing monday work administration or monday CRM—and it understands the complete context of your tasks. You need to use it to draft emails, write content material, create subitems, assign venture house owners, and create columns. It is also helpful for repetitive “venture administration hygiene” duties like updating columns or altering standing fields.

monday vibe is, as you might need guessed, a vibe coding app. Its integration with the monday ecosystem is what makes it distinctive: you possibly can create apps that pull from knowledge in your monday boards, and make them out there to anybody in your group. 

monday brokers are already stay for a few gross sales capabilities, and extra are within the works. At present, you possibly can activate an AI gross sales agent and an AI lead agent. 

I examined each, and so they’re surprisingly good. When the gross sales agent known as me, its voice was barely robotic, however the truth that monday has added faux “workplace background chatter” makes the expertise really feel type of natural. You may select from a couple of completely different personalities and outline the objective of the calls so your AI rep has a playbook to function from.

On a check name, I attempted to confuse my agent (“Tim”) by half-answering a query after which saying I could not hear him. He did job of getting the dialog again on monitor. Then, I advised him I needed to run, and he politely let me go, presumably as a result of he is an AI with the capability to name me again tirelessly. As soon as your AI SDR finishes a name, the transcript and recording are logged robotically in your CRM.

Proper now, monday’s Gross sales Agent can solely make calls, however quickly it’s going to additionally have the ability to ship emails and LinkedIn messages.

monday’s Leads Agent robotically suggests an ICP, helps you outline the data you wish to accumulate (like firm identify and LinkedIn URL), and proposes a lead technology schedule. You may then funnel new results in any board you need, and it is easy to arrange a movement whereby your Leads Agent gathers leads and your Gross sales Agent robotically follows as much as qualify them.

Extra AI brokers are within the works, together with specialised venture administration brokers who can do issues like competitor analysis, recruitment, and vendor sourcing.

monday is extra inexpensive than Pipedrive

Pipedrive is not costly on this planet of gross sales CRMs, which may price lots of of {dollars} a month per consumer (and typically embody hefty setup charges). However for those who’re evaluating it with monday, Pipedrive feels expensive: it is roughly twice as costly as monday work administration or monday CRM, and prices much more for those who go for add-ons like Initiatives ($8/consumer/month) or LeadBooster ($39/firm/month).

Pipedrive’s entry-level Lite plan prices $24/consumer/month. For automations, you will want the Development plan at $49/consumer/month, and in order for you lead gen and full-cycle gross sales instruments, you will want the Premium plan ($79/consumer/month) or Final plan ($99/consumer/month). One good thing about upgrading to Pipedrive’s Premium or Final plans is that they embody three paid add-ons: LeadBooster, Initiatives, and Sensible Docs with eSignatures. In the event you’re contemplating these add-ons anyway, it is price doing the mathematics to see if the higher-tier plans make sense.

monday’s work administration instrument begins at $14/consumer/month with the Customary plan, which supplies you the venture administration necessities plus 250 automations per 30 days. The Professional plan prices $24/consumer/month and provides time monitoring and extra boards, automations, and integrations.

In the event you’re signing your gross sales workforce up for monday CRM (as a substitute of monday work administration), their seats will price barely extra: $18/consumer/month for Fundamental, $25/consumer/month for Customary, and $41/consumer/month for Professional.

Lastly, there are a pair edge instances to think about.

In the event you’re a solopreneur or your group solely has two customers, Pipedrive might be your best choice since monday requires a minimal of three seats for any paid plan. (Although for those who actually wish to use monday as a solo consumer, you possibly can pay for the additional seats with out utilizing them.)

In the event you’re in search of a “without end free” plan, solely monday work administration affords one. You solely get a most of three boards, although, and it is a considerably stripped-down model of the complete product with no automations, no AI, and no integrations. monday’s free plan might work for a handful of restricted use instances, however most customers should improve to maintain getting worth out of it.

Each combine natively with lots of of apps—and hundreds extra with Zapier

monday connects with over 200 apps instantly by the monday market, which integrates with a large set of venture administration and collaboration instruments. And Pipedrive affords 500+ integrations by its app market, protecting every little thing from electronic mail advertising and marketing platforms to accounting software program.

Utilizing Zapier, you possibly can join both monday or Pipedrive to hundreds of different apps. Orchestrate workflows throughout your complete tech stack and construct AI-powered programs that transfer your work ahead.

In order for you the perfect of each worlds—a strong venture administration app and a state-of-the-art gross sales CRM—you possibly can join monday and Pipedrive by way of Zapier to go tasks and contacts from one app to the opposite. Be taught extra about learn how to automate monday.com and learn how to automate Pipedrive, or get began with certainly one of these pre-made workflows.

monday vs. Pipedrive: Which is healthier for you?

In the event you’re not fairly certain which platform is sensible for you, listed here are some last ideas that will help you determine.

• Select monday if your corporation revolves round advanced venture supply or for those who actually need built-in AI brokers. monday’s lower cost level, highly effective venture administration platform, spectacular AI options, and practical CRM make it a strong alternative for groups in search of an all-in-one office answer.

• Select Pipedrive if closing offers is your major focus. Pipedrive’s sales-first method gives specialised instruments that monday’s CRM cannot match, together with lead technology, web site monitoring, and AI-powered deal steering. Whereas Pipedrive’s venture administration options are primary, they’re sufficient for easy implementations.

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This text was initially revealed in February 2025. The newest replace was in February 2026.