Groundbase vs Pipedrive for solo founders

Groundbase has one plan, $19 a month or $199 a year, and every feature in the app is in it. Pipedrive has four plans and five paid add-ons, and automation, the meeting scheduler, e-signatures and email campaigns each start in a different place.

I build Groundbase. Pipedrive has the best deal board in the category and I'd recommend it to a sales team without hesitating. This post is about one person: what you get on each side, and which Pipedrive plan or add-on it takes. Prices and plans checked October 2026 on Pipedrive's pricing page.

One caveat on currency. From here, Pipedrive's page only shows Canadian dollars, so the Pipedrive prices below are in CA$. Groundbase is the same number in either currency: CA$19 a month or CA$199 a year. If you're in the US, check Pipedrive's page in your own currency.

What you get in Groundbase

All of this is in the one plan. No tiers, no seats, no add-ons, and no cap on contacts, deals, tasks or notes.

• The CRM itself. Contacts, companies, deals on one pipeline with your own stages, tasks, events, meetings, notes, tags, custom fields, saved views, duplicate merging, CSV import, full export any time, and 30-day restore of deleted contacts, companies and deals.
• Your own email. Gmail, Outlook or any IMAP mailbox, in an inbox inside the CRM, sent from your own address with templates and merge tags.
• Texting and calling. Two-way and scheduled texts, calls from the web, Windows and Android apps, recording, voicemail with transcripts, voicemail drops, STOP handling. It runs on your own Twilio account, which you pay separately: about a US$20 first top-up, a couple of dollars a month for a number, and roughly 1 to 2 US cents a text. The real numbers.
• Workflows. "When this happens, do that," with a Wait step that stops the run if the person replied, booked or opted out.
• Campaigns and newsletters. Email and text campaigns, drips that stop on a reply, A/B tests of up to four versions, lead-capture forms. Campaign email goes through your own Resend account: free to start, US$20 a month for 50,000 emails.
• Booking links. A public booking page with confirmations, reminders by email and text, Yes/No/Maybe buttons, and reschedule and cancel links. Two-way Google Calendar sync.
• Invoicing and quotes. Multi-currency invoices, quotes with an accept link and a deposit, recurring invoices, credit notes, receipts, reminders, and time tracking that bills onto an invoice. Card payments go to your own Stripe, and Groundbase takes no cut.
• Documents and e-signatures. Upload a PDF, place the fields, send it. Signers need no account, and the signed copy comes back with a certificate page.
• Your AI assistant, connected. Through the MCP server, Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can do nearly everything you can do in the app: update records, send texts and email, book meetings, send invoices, quotes and documents, run workflows.

Where Pipedrive puts the same things

From Pipedrive's plan comparison table:

The last row is worth saying clearly: Pipedrive has an MCP server on every plan too, so connecting an AI assistant isn't a difference between us.

Put together, the Pipedrive plan that covers automation, the scheduler and e-signatures without an add-on is Premium. Campaigns are an add-on on top of any plan.

The prices

Per seat, per month, in Canadian dollars:

For one person paying yearly, that's CA$228 for Lite, CA$588 for Growth and CA$948 for Premium. Groundbase is CA$199 a year or CA$19 a month. In Canadian dollars, Groundbase costs less than every Pipedrive plan, including Lite, and Lite doesn't include automations, sequences, email sync or the scheduler.

Groundbase has a 14-day trial. A card is taken up front and nothing is charged until day 15. Pipedrive's trial is also 14 days, with no card required.

Where Pipedrive is the better choice

• The deal board. Pipedrive's pipeline view is the one others get compared to.
• More than one pipeline. Customizable pipelines are on every Pipedrive plan. Groundbase has one.
• Teams. Seats, permission sets, visibility groups, team goals. Groundbase is one user.
• An iPhone app. Pipedrive has native iOS and Android apps on every plan. Groundbase has Android and the web app in Safari, and no iPhone app.
• Integrations. Pipedrive lists over 500. Groundbase has webhooks in and out, plus Zapier and Make, and no marketplace.
• Phone support and SSO. Phone support starts on Premium, and SAML single sign-on is on every plan. Groundbase is email support and has no SSO.

What Groundbase doesn't have

• No teams. One person per account.
• One pipeline.
• No iPhone app.
• Smaller reporting. A dashboard and a pipeline by stage, not forecasting and custom reports.
• Texting needs setup. Your own Twilio account, and for US numbers a carrier registration that takes days to approve. Here's the whole process.

The decision

Pick Pipedrive if you have a sales team or are building one, if you run more than one pipeline, if you need an iPhone app, or if Lite does everything you need and the deal board is the job.

Pick Groundbase if you're one person and want automation, booking, invoicing, quotes, e-signatures and campaigns in one plan without an add-on for each, and texting through your own Twilio account.

If you're not sure Groundbase fits, who it's for and who it isn't is the honest version.

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Questions about this one? Email me directly: blog-pipedrive@groundbasecrm.com — I read every one.