Copper

Copper is the CRM you pick when your team already lives in Gmail and Google Calendar, and you’ve accepted that nobody’s going to log their activities manually. It’s the best Google Workspace-native CRM I’ve used — and I say that with the caveat that its strength is also its limitation. If you’re a Google shop with 5-50 people who need a CRM that doesn’t fight your existing workflow, Copper is a strong choice. If you need advanced reporting, deep customization, or you run Microsoft 365, look somewhere else entirely.

What Copper Does Well

The Gmail integration isn’t just good — it’s the whole point. Copper runs as a sidebar inside Gmail, and I mean inside it. You don’t toggle between tabs or copy-paste contact info. When you open an email from a prospect, their full CRM record appears on the right: deal history, past emails, linked files from Drive, upcoming calendar events, notes from colleagues. I’ve implemented CRMs with Gmail “integrations” that were really just plugins pretending to talk to each other. Copper is different. It was built for Google from the ground up, and it shows.

The automatic data capture is where Copper saves real hours. Every email sent or received gets logged to the right contact automatically. Calendar meetings attach themselves to the associated deal. Google Drive files shared in email threads link to records without anyone clicking a button. During one implementation for a 30-person recruiting firm, we estimated that reps were saving 45-60 minutes per day compared to their previous CRM (Salesforce Essentials) purely on data entry. That’s not a small number over a quarter.

Pipeline management is visual and straightforward. You get a Kanban-style board where deals move through stages via drag-and-drop. You can run multiple pipelines — useful for firms that track both new business and account renewals. Stage-based automations let you trigger tasks, email notifications, or field updates when a deal moves. It’s not as sophisticated as Pipedrive’s automation engine, but it covers 80% of what small teams need.

The relationship intelligence feature is genuinely useful and underappreciated. Copper automatically maps which people on your team have communicated with which contacts. This means a sales manager can see at a glance that two reps have both been emailing the same prospect — or that nobody has followed up with a key account in three weeks. For relationship-driven businesses, this kind of visibility typically requires enterprise-grade tools.

Where It Falls Short

Reporting is Copper’s Achilles heel, and it’s been this way for years. The built-in dashboards cover the basics — pipeline value, conversion rates, activity summaries — but they’re rigid. You can’t build the kind of multi-dimensional reports you’d get in HubSpot or even Freshsales at a similar price point. Copper’s workaround is pushing data to Google Sheets or Looker Studio, which works if you have someone comfortable building reports there. But if your VP of Sales expects polished, self-serve dashboards inside the CRM, they’ll be disappointed.

The Google-only dependency is a real constraint, not just a footnote. I consulted for a company that acquired a team running Outlook. Integrating those users into Copper was essentially impossible — they had to switch to Google Workspace first or use a completely different CRM. If there’s any chance your organization might adopt Microsoft tools in the future, or if you’re in an industry where clients require Outlook compatibility, factor this in seriously.

Customization hits a wall faster than you’d expect. Custom fields are available across all plans, but custom objects — creating entirely new record types beyond contacts, deals, and companies — require the Business plan at $134/user/month. That’s steep. I worked with a property management firm that needed a “Properties” object linked to deals and contacts. On the Professional plan, we had to hack it with tagged records and custom fields, which was messy. On Business tier, it worked properly, but the cost jump was hard to justify for a 12-person team.

Pricing Breakdown

Copper doesn’t offer a free plan, which puts it at an immediate disadvantage against HubSpot’s free CRM tier. There’s a 14-day trial, but no freemium option.

Starter at $29/user/month gets you the core Google Workspace integration, one pipeline, and basic task management. The 1,000 contact limit is the real constraint here. For a solo consultant or tiny team just starting out, it’s fine. But any business doing meaningful outbound will blow past 1,000 contacts within months. There’s no bulk email at this tier either, so you’re limited to one-off messages.

Professional at $69/user/month is where most teams land. You get up to 15,000 contacts, workflow automations, bulk email capability, multiple pipelines, and access to Copper’s integration marketplace (Slack, Mailchimp, DocuSign, etc.). The jump from $29 to $69 is significant — that’s a 138% increase — but the feature gap between Starter and Professional is large enough that most teams can’t stay on Starter for long. This feels intentional.

Business at $134/user/month adds unlimited contacts, email sequences, lead scoring, custom objects, and advanced reporting. For a 20-person team, you’re looking at $2,680/month or about $32,000/year. That’s approaching Salesforce Essentials territory in cost, and Salesforce gives you far more customization at scale. The Business tier makes sense for companies that are deeply committed to Google Workspace AND need the advanced features, but I’d push most teams to evaluate whether they’ve outgrown Copper before committing to this tier.

All prices are billed annually. Month-to-month billing costs roughly 20% more. There are no setup fees, which is a plus.

Key Features Deep Dive

Gmail Sidebar CRM

This is the feature that makes or breaks your decision on Copper. The Chrome extension places a full CRM panel to the right of your inbox. Open any email and you’ll see the sender’s contact record, associated company, deal history, recent activities, and linked files. You can create deals, add notes, set tasks, and update pipeline stages without ever leaving Gmail.

In practice, this means reps actually use the CRM. I can’t stress this enough. CRM adoption is the number one challenge in every implementation I’ve done, and Copper sidesteps it by meeting people where they already work. The sidebar loads quickly — typically under two seconds — and doesn’t interfere with Gmail’s performance. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a CRM that doesn’t feel like a CRM.

Automatic Contact and Activity Capture

Copper uses Google’s APIs to pull in contacts, emails, and calendar events automatically. When you email someone new, Copper suggests creating a contact record. Once they’re in the system, every subsequent email, meeting invite, and file share gets logged without manual intervention.

The accuracy is solid but not perfect. I’ve seen it occasionally create duplicate suggestions when the same person emails from multiple addresses. And it doesn’t capture phone calls unless you’re using Google Voice. But compared to manual logging — which, let’s be honest, most reps abandon after two weeks — it’s dramatically better. One client’s CRM data completeness went from roughly 40% with their old system to over 90% within three months of switching to Copper.

Workflow Automations

Available on Professional and above, Copper’s automations trigger based on record changes, stage movements, or time-based rules. Common setups include: auto-assigning tasks when a deal moves to a negotiation stage, sending an internal Slack notification when a deal exceeds a certain value, or flagging stale deals that haven’t been updated in 14 days.

The builder is straightforward — if/then logic without needing a developer. That said, it’s limited compared to HubSpot’s workflow engine or even Pipedrive’s automation capabilities. You can’t build multi-step branching sequences or trigger automations based on complex field combinations. For teams that need sophisticated automation chains, you’ll end up connecting Copper to Zapier or Make, which adds cost and complexity.

Email Sequences

Business plan only, which is frustrating. Copper’s email sequences let you build multi-step outbound cadences — a series of emails sent over days or weeks, automatically stopping when the prospect replies. You can personalize with merge fields pulled from CRM data.

The sequence builder is clean and does the job for basic outbound. But it’s bare-bones compared to dedicated tools like Apollo or Salesloft. There’s no A/B testing of subject lines, no phone call steps mixed in, and analytics are limited to open and reply rates. If outbound prospecting is a major part of your motion, you’ll likely need a separate tool regardless.

Google Drive Integration

Every file shared in an email thread or linked in a Google Doc automatically associates with the relevant CRM record. This means when a rep pulls up a deal, they can see the proposal, the signed contract, and the SOW all linked right there — without anyone manually uploading anything.

For document-heavy businesses like agencies, law firms, and consulting companies, this feature alone can justify choosing Copper. I helped a creative agency implement Copper, and their account managers went from spending 10-15 minutes hunting for the latest version of creative briefs to finding them instantly within the deal record.

Relationship Mapping

Copper tracks every interaction between your team and external contacts, then visualizes these relationships. You can see communication frequency, recency, and who on your team is the primary point of contact. The “Suggested Contacts” feature flags people you’ve been emailing frequently who aren’t yet in the CRM.

This is genuinely useful for preventing deals from falling through the cracks. During a quarterly review with one client, we discovered three six-figure opportunities that had gone cold simply because the assigned rep left and nobody picked up the thread. Copper’s relationship data made those gaps visible immediately.

Who Should Use Copper

Google-first teams of 5-50 people. Copper’s sweet spot is small to mid-sized businesses already running Google Workspace. If Gmail is your team’s primary communication tool and Google Calendar runs your meetings, Copper will feel natural from day one.

Relationship-driven businesses. Agencies, consultancies, recruiting firms, real estate brokerages, PR firms — any business where the value is in who you know and how recently you’ve talked to them. The automatic relationship tracking is purpose-built for this.

Teams with CRM adoption problems. If you’ve tried Salesforce or another traditional CRM and reps refused to use it, Copper’s low-friction approach is worth a look. I’ve seen adoption rates above 85% with Copper where previous implementations stalled at 30-40%.

Companies that don’t need heavy customization. If your sales process is fairly standard — contacts become leads become opportunities become clients — Copper handles that well. If you need 15 custom objects and complex approval workflows, you’ll outgrow it fast.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

Microsoft 365 users. This isn’t a soft recommendation — Copper literally doesn’t work without Google Workspace. If you’re on Outlook, check out HubSpot or Pipedrive instead.

Data-driven sales teams needing advanced analytics. If your leadership expects detailed forecasting, cohort analysis, or custom report builders, Copper will frustrate you. HubSpot or Salesforce are better bets. See our HubSpot vs Salesforce comparison for a detailed breakdown.

Large teams scaling past 100 users. Copper starts showing strain at scale. The lack of custom objects on lower tiers, limited automation depth, and basic reporting make it impractical for larger organizations. Salesforce or Zoho CRM offer more room to grow.

High-volume outbound sales operations. If your team sends hundreds of cold emails daily and needs sophisticated sequence management with A/B testing and multi-channel cadences, Copper’s built-in sequences won’t cut it. You’d need to bolt on a dedicated sales engagement tool anyway, at which point Copper’s tight integration advantage shrinks. Freshsales bundles stronger outbound tools at a lower price.

Teams on a tight budget. With no free plan and a useful-but-limited $29 Starter tier, Copper isn’t the cheapest option. HubSpot’s free CRM gives you more features than Copper Starter at zero cost. Streak, another Gmail-native CRM, has a free tier that covers basic pipeline management.

The Bottom Line

Copper does one thing better than any CRM I’ve tested: it makes Gmail your CRM without making you think about CRM. For Google Workspace teams that value adoption over advanced features, it’s the right call. Just go in with clear eyes about its reporting limitations, the Google lock-in, and the pricing pressure that pushes you toward higher tiers faster than you’d expect.

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