Getting started with Pipedrive

Pipedrive's pitch is a sales pipeline you can actually read at a glance — and the good news for a small team is that the pipeline is fully there on the cheapest plan. Here's how to go from empty account to a working setup in an afternoon, plus an honest note on what the entry tier does and doesn't include.

Pricing checked Aug 2026 — confirm the current plan on Pipedrive's page before you commit.

Set it up in five steps

1. Define your pipeline stages. Map the real steps a deal moves through — e.g. Lead in → Contacted → Demo → Proposal → Won. Keep it to the stages you actually use; you can rename and reorder any time.
2. Import your contacts. Bring people and organisations in from a spreadsheet or your old tool. Map the columns carefully once and it's clean forever.
3. Add your open deals. Create a deal for each live opportunity, attach it to a contact, and drop it on the right stage. This is where the pipeline starts to earn its keep.
4. Set activities and reminders. Pipedrive's core discipline is "every deal has a next step." Add a call, email or task to each deal so nothing goes quiet — the activity reminders are the real product.
5. Connect your email. Sync your inbox so conversations attach to the right deal, and you work without switching tabs.

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What the $14 tier covers — and what it doesn't

The Lite plan (~$14/user/mo annual) gives you the full visual pipeline, contacts, deals, activities and email sync — enough to run a small team's sales properly. The things that live on higher tiers are the ones you add later as you scale: deeper workflow automation, advanced reporting and forecasting, and some team-management features. Start on Lite; upgrade when a specific missing feature is actually costing you time, not before.

A few things that save regret later

· Fewer stages, not more. A pipeline with 12 stages nobody updates is worse than 5 that everyone does.
· Clean the import. Duplicates and mismatched fields imported on day one haunt you for months — fix the spreadsheet before importing.
· Make the "next activity" non-negotiable. The whole value is that no deal sits without a scheduled next step.

Frequently asked

How much does Pipedrive cost to start?

Pipedrive's entry Lite plan is about $14/user/mo billed annually. The thing that matters for a small team: the visual pipeline — Pipedrive's whole reason to exist — is fully available on that entry tier, with nothing core held back for a plan you haven't seen priced. There's no free plan, but there is a trial.

How long does it take to set up Pipedrive?

An afternoon for a basic, working setup: define your pipeline stages, import your contacts, add your open deals and set activities. The learning curve is genuinely short — the pipeline is drag-and-drop and reads at a glance, which is Pipedrive's main advantage over broader CRMs.

Is Pipedrive better than Zoho or Close?

Depends on the job. Pipedrive is the fastest visual pipeline to learn at $14/user. Zoho matches the price and adds a free tier plus a wider app suite. Close is built for phone-heavy sales but its dialer features sit behind a $99/user plan. See our head-to-head comparisons for the details.

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