RouterJet vs Pipedrive Automatic Assignment: An Honest Pricing Comparison

You’ve found the automatic assignment feature in Pipedrive CRM. You’ve also found the price tag: upgrade everyone to Premium at $79/seat. That’s $30/month more per person—including your support staff, your marketing coordinator, and your office manager who logs into Pipedrive once a month to update a deal.

Is there a better way? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Let’s break down when Pipedrive’s native routing makes sense and when you’re paying for seats that will never touch a new lead.

The Short Version

Pipedrive CRM’s automatic assignment feature requires their Premium plan at $79/seat/month. The catch? You pay that rate for every user in your Pipedrive organization—not just the reps who need routing for new leads and deals.

RouterJet charges $10 or $20/user/month, but only for the reps who actually receive leads. If you have support staff, managers, or other team members who don’t need routing, you don’t pay for them.

For some teams, Pipedrive’s native solution is perfectly adequate. For others, the math strongly favors RouterJet. Let’s figure out which category you fall into.

When Pipedrive’s Built-In Routing Is Probably Enough

Before we talk about RouterJet, let’s be clear about when you might not need us at all. Pipedrive’s automatic assignment could be the right choice if:

Your entire team is already on Premium or Ultimate. If you’re paying $79-99/seat anyway because you need Pipedrive’s advanced features (AI sales assistant, custom permissions, security rules), then automatic assignment is included at no extra cost. In this case, adding RouterJet would be a pure add-on expense.

Email notifications work for your team. Pipedrive only sends email notifications for deal assignments. If your reps reliably check email and respond quickly to new leads, that might be enough. But if your sales team lives in Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram or needs SMS alerts for fast follow-ups, Pipedrive can’t help you there.

You’re comfortable building custom automations. Pipedrive automation and workflow automation tools are powerful. If you have someone on your sales team who enjoys building complex automations with conditions and can maintain them over time, you can replicate some of RouterJet’s functionality (though not all of it).

Your routing needs are straightforward. If you just need to distribute new deals evenly among a single sales team in your sales pipeline based on basic conditions, Pipedrive’s automatic assignment covers that use case.

If several of these describe your situation, Pipedrive’s native routing is the better fit. There’s no point paying for a tool you don’t need.

When RouterJet Makes More Sense

Here’s where the math favors RouterJet:

Not everyone on your Pipedrive account is on the sales team that needs deal routing. This is the big one. Pipedrive CRM charges per seat, across your entire organization, regardless of role. If you have 15 people in Pipedrive but only 6 of them are sales reps receiving new leads and deals, you’re paying the Premium upgrade cost for 9 people who will never use automatic assignment.

You’re currently on Lite or Growth. Jumping from $24/seat (Lite) or $49/seat (Growth) to $79/seat (Premium) is a significant increase—especially when lead routing might be the only Premium feature you actually need.

You need features Pipedrive doesn’t offer. RouterJet includes capabilities and routing rules that aren’t available in Pipedrive at any price point:

• Shift-aware routing: Only send leads to reps who are actually working, based on their schedule and timezone
• Multi-channel notifications: SMS, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp—not just email
• Escalation workflows: Automatically reassign deals that aren’t claimed within your SLA—no missed follow-ups or stale tasks
• Weighted distribution: Send more leads to your top performers or full-time reps
• Snooze and out-of-office: Reps can temporarily remove themselves from rotation without admin intervention

You have a distributed team across timezones. If your reps work different shifts or are spread across multiple regions, shift-aware routing prevents leads from sitting unclaimed while reps are asleep or offline.

Real-World Pricing Comparison

Let’s look at two actual scenarios to see how the costs shake out.

Scenario 1: Small Team (8 Pipedrive Users, 4 Sales Reps)

Imagine a growing small business with 8 people in Pipedrive: 4 sales reps who need lead routing, plus a sales manager, two customer success reps, and an operations person.

Option A: Upgrade to Pipedrive Premium

To get automatic assignment, you’d need to upgrade all 8 seats to Premium:

Item	Cost
8 Pipedrive Premium seats	8 × $79 = $632/month
Monthly total	$632

This represents an increase of $440/month if you’re currently on Lite ($24/seat), or $240/month if you’re on Growth ($49/seat).

Option B: Stay on Current Plan + Add RouterJet

Keep your existing Pipedrive plan and add RouterJet only for the 4 reps who need routing:

Item	Cost
8 Pipedrive Lite seats	8 × $24 = $192/month
4 RouterJet Starter seats	4 × $10 = $40/month
Monthly total	$232

Or if you want RouterJet’s Business tier with Slack, WhatsApp, and weighted routing:

Item	Cost
8 Pipedrive Lite seats	8 × $24 = $192/month
4 RouterJet Business seats	4 × $20 = $80/month
Monthly total	$272

The difference: $360-400/month saved—and you get better routing features.

Scenario 2: Larger Team (20 Pipedrive Users, 12 Sales Reps)

Now consider a mid-size sales organization with 20 Pipedrive users: 12 sales reps, 3 sales managers, 2 marketing team members, and 3 operations/support staff.

Option A: Upgrade to Pipedrive Premium

Item	Cost
20 Pipedrive Premium seats	20 × $79 = $1,580/month
Monthly total	$1,580

If you’re currently on Growth, that’s an extra $600/month just to get lead routing.

Option B: Stay on Growth + Add RouterJet

Item	Cost
20 Pipedrive Growth seats	20 × $49 = $980/month
12 RouterJet Business seats	12 × $20 = $240/month
Monthly total	$1,220

The difference: $360/month saved—plus you get shift-aware routing, SMS/Slack/Telegram/WhatsApp notifications, and escalation workflows that Pipedrive doesn’t offer at any tier.

Feature Comparison

Price is only part of the equation. Here’s how the routing capabilities compare:

Feature	Pipedrive Premium	RouterJet Starter	RouterJet Business
Round-robin distribution	✓	✓	✓
Rule-based matching	✓	✓	✓
Custom field support	✓	✓	✓
Email notifications	✓	✓	✓
SMS notifications	✗	✓	✓
Slack notifications	✗	✓	✓
Telegram notifications	✗	✓	✓
Shift/timezone awareness	✗	✓	✓
Escalation workflows	✗	✓	✓
Snooze/out-of-office	✗	✓	✓
Rep self-service (claim leads)	✗	✓	✓
WhatsApp notifications	✗	✗	✓
Weighted distribution	✗	✗	✓

The notification channels alone are often the deciding factor. Pipedrive only offers email notifications for lead assignments. If your reps live in Slack or need SMS alerts to respond quickly, that’s not something you can configure in Pipedrive.

What If You’re Already on Premium or Ultimate?

If you’re already paying $79-99/seat because you need Pipedrive’s other Premium features—AI tools, advanced permissions, revenue forecasting, security alerts—the math changes. Automatic assignment is included at no extra cost.

But consider what you’re actually getting. Premium gives you AI sales assistant, advanced permissions, revenue forecasting—sophisticated features across the platform. Lead routing? Still basic round-robin. No shift awareness. No escalation. No Slack notifications.

You’re paying for the best Pipedrive has to offer, but lead routing isn’t where they’ve invested their engineering. It’s a checkbox feature, not a focus area. If you have a distributed team, strict SLAs, or reps who miss email notifications, RouterJet at $10-20/user might still be worth it for capabilities you can’t get from Pipedrive at any tier.

The Bottom Line

There’s no universal answer here. The right choice depends on your sales team structure, your current Pipedrive plan, and what you actually need from lead routing.

Stick with Pipedrive’s automatic assignment if:

• You’re already on Premium/Ultimate for other reasons
• Everyone in your Pipedrive account is a sales rep who needs routing
• Simple round-robin with email notifications meets your needs
• You have the technical skills to build custom automations

Consider RouterJet if:

• You have non-sales users in Pipedrive who don’t need routing
• Upgrading everyone to Premium doesn’t make financial sense
• You need shift-aware routing for a distributed team
• You want notifications in Slack, SMS, Telegram, or WhatsApp
• You need escalation workflows to meet SLAs
• You want reps to be able to claim leads rather than having them force-assigned

We built RouterJet for Pipedrive CRM sales teams who need better deal routing without upgrading everyone to Premium. The 14-day trial connects to your actual Pipedrive account and sales pipeline—you can test it with real deals and new leads and see the notifications hit Slack (or SMS, or Telegram) before deciding.

And if you run the numbers and decide Pipedrive Premium makes more sense? At least now you know.