Copper

What it does

Copper is a CRM that sits on top of Google Workspace. When a user emails a contact that is in Copper, the emails between them sync into the record. You decide which contacts to add, and Copper then syncs the email history. Calendar and Contacts sync the same way.

On top of that it has pipelines for deals, projects, tasks, and contact enrichment. Higher plans add workflow automation, bulk email, reporting and email series. Copper also has an assistant called Copper GPT that lets you ask questions about your contacts, pipeline and tasks in plain language.

Why you would need it

You feel the pain when your customer history lives in people's inboxes. A colleague goes on holiday, and nobody knows what was promised to a client. Deals sit in a spreadsheet that is always a week out of date.

Copper keeps the history attached to the contact and the deal, in the tool your team already has open. That lowers the effort of keeping a CRM up to date, which is what usually kills CRM adoption in small teams.

Where it fits

It sits next to Google Workspace and takes its data from Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts. It connects onward to tools such as LinkedIn, Slack, PandaDoc, Docusign and QuickBooks. It replaces a shared spreadsheet or a CRM that nobody updates.

It competes with HubSpot, Pipedrive and Folk for the small-team CRM seat.

What stands out

• The Google sync is the core idea. Email, calendar and contacts flow into records without extra steps.
• Plans are simple: Basic, Professional and Business, priced per seat, with contact limits that rise from 2,500 to 15,000 to unlimited.
• There is a developer API with OAuth, webhooks and embedded apps.
• A Zapier integration is documented in the help centre, so you can connect tools that have no native link.

My take

I would pick Copper when your team is small, lives in Gmail and wants the lightest CRM that still has pipelines and automation. The Google-first design is the reason to choose it, not the feature list.

I would be careful if you run Microsoft 365. Copper's pitch is Google Workspace, so a Microsoft-based team should look at Pipedrive, HubSpot or Salesforce. If you need deep marketing automation or a large partner ecosystem, HubSpot is the bigger platform.

Verdict

Pick Copper if you are a Google Workspace business that wants a CRM people actually keep up to date. Skip it if you are on Microsoft 365 or need a full marketing suite in the same tool.