The best sales automation software in 2026

If Dwight Schrute had his way, sales automation would involve inventing an anthropomorphic robot that brainwashes his prospects into ordering enough paper to land him a spot as salesman of the year. Here in the real world, though, sales automation software is more achievable and less sinister: it takes the manual, repetitive parts of your sales process and turns them into smooth behind-the-scenes workflows so your team can actually spend time selling.  

But with every platform under the sun promising to “streamline your pipeline” or “boost conversions with AI,” figuring out which tool is actually worth your time and budget can feel like a full-time job.

So Zapier testers did the work for you. We tested a range of sales automation platforms—from build-it-yourself systems to fully AI-powered outreach engines—to see which ones genuinely help sales teams move faster, personalize better, and close more deals. Based on all that testing, here’s the best sales automation software.

The best sales automation software

What makes the best sales automation software?

What works for a five-person startup is probably overkill for a 500-person team, and vice versa. But across the board, the best sales automation tools all have a few things in common: they make your team more efficient, consistent, and focused without turning the sales process into a black box.

Here’s what to look for:

• Ease of use. If it takes a week of onboarding just to automate a follow-up email, it’s probably not worth the lift. The best tools are intuitive enough for non-technical users but flexible enough to scale as your needs grow.

• Customization without chaos. Your sales process is unique. Great automation software should let you tailor workflows to your team’s flow, not force you into a rigid system that kind of works if you squint.

• Smart AI, not spammy AI. Everyone’s adding AI features now, but not all AI is actually helpful. Look for tools that actually help: writing better emails, prioritizing leads, surfacing insights—not just generating generic content and calling it a day.

• Visibility into the process. Automation shouldn’t mean mystery. The best tools let you see what’s happening behind the scenes, like what’s running correctly and where things might be breaking down.

• Strong integrations. Your CRM doesn’t live in a vacuum. The top platforms either integrate natively with your core tools or play nicely with Zapier so you can orchestrate your entire sales stack.

• Scalability. The right software should grow with you, whether you’re handling a dozen leads a week or a few thousand. Bonus points if it makes your team feel like it suddenly has five more people on it.

The best sales automation software at a glance

The best sales automation software for AI orchestration

Zapier (Web, iOS, Android)

Zapier pros:

• Integrates with 8,000+ apps

• Deep customization with built-in AI

• No-code automation and dashboard building

Zapier cons:

Zapier is the AI orchestration layer that makes your entire sales stack smarter. If your current tools work mostly well but still leave you doing too much manual busywork (copying data between apps, reminding reps to follow up, logging every little thing), Zapier can step in and quietly automate it all in the background.

With Zaps, you can connect 8,000+ apps—CRMs, email tools, ad platforms, form builders, spreadsheets—and build custom workflows that handle everything from lead capture to deal updates to post-sale handoffs. You don’t have to rebuild your process from scratch or switch platforms; Zapier works with the tools you already use.

Where Zapier really levels up is with artificial intelligence:

• Create AI-powered workflows across your existing tools that generate personalized emails, qualify leads, enrich contact data, or route deals based on behavior.

• Build AI agents that take natural language instructions (“Send a follow-up if I don’t hear back in 3 days”) and run full workflows autonomously.

• Embed AI chatbots to answer pre-sales questions, qualify leads, or triage incoming requests—no custom dev work required.

And if you do want to get more hands-on, you can layer in Tables (Zapier’s lightweight database for tracking leads, deals, or anything else) and Interfaces (custom dashboards and forms) to create flexible, no-code sales systems tailored to your workflow.

Zapier won’t hand you a plug-and-play CRM—but that’s the point. You get full control over how your sales process runs, with automation and AI doing the heavy lifting and connecting your existing sales tools in the background. For teams that want flexibility, speed, and scale without reinventing the wheel, Zapier is the orchestration layer that holds it all together.

Learn more about how to automate your entire workflow using Zapier, or get started with these pre-built templates.

Zapier pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $19.99/month (billed annually)

The best sales automation software for an enterprise CRM

Salesforce Sales Cloud (Web, iOS, Android)

Salesforce Sales Cloud pros:

• Industry-leading AI capabilities

• Extensive customization options

• Huge ecosystem of apps and support

Salesforce Sales Cloud cons:

Salesforce may be old enough to remember Y2K, but it’s still the undisputed heavyweight champ in the CRM space. There’s a reason enterprises keep coming back to it: it’s massive, deeply customizable, and built to handle the scale and complexity that large organizations live and breathe.

The standout here is Einstein AI (named after the physicist, not the bagels). Right out of the box, Einstein handles things like predictive lead scoring, deal prioritization, and pipeline forecasting, so sales teams can spend less time guessing and more time closing.

If you have developers (or a budget for consultants), you can go deep:

• The Einstein Opportunity Insights tool flags deals at risk with an honestly scary level of accuracy. It pulls from signals like how often you’re talking to a prospect, whether key stakeholders are engaging, and what similar deals have looked like in the past.  

• Use Einstein Prediction Builder to train custom AI models.

• Build custom Einstein Bots for everything from lead qualification to post-sale support.

• Plug in your own large language models with the LLM Open Connector so you’re not limited to Salesforce’s native AI.

• Automate complex sales workflows using Salesforce Flow, which lets you design branching logic, assign tasks, update records, and trigger actions across your sales pipeline without writing any code.

Salesforce is incredibly automatable. You can design workflows that handle everything behind the scenes, from prospecting to post-sale, so your sales reps can stay focused on selling. 

I won’t sugarcoat it, though: Salesforce’s strength is also its complexity. Fully customizing Einstein often requires technical expertise, extra licensing, or a consultant who speaks fluent Salesforce. But if you’ve got the resources, you can mold the platform into exactly what your enterprise needs.

You can also connect Salesforce to Zapier to bring AI orchestration into the mix. Do things like triggering AI workflows based on activity in Salesforce to automatically draft emails, update deal stages, enrich lead data, or even loop in AI agents that take care of entire follow-up sequences. Learn more about automating Salesforce, or try one of these pre-built templates.

Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing: From $25/user/month (billed annually)

The best sales automation software for aligning sales with marketing

HubSpot CRM (Web, iOS, Android)

HubSpot CRM pros:

HubSpot CRM cons:

Once just a scrappy marketing automation tool, HubSpot has evolved into a full-fledged CRM powerhouse—and it’s one of the best platforms out there if you’re trying to get sales and marketing automation working in harmony instead of in silos. 

HubSpot‘s sweet spot is automation that’s both powerful and approachable. You can build workflows that move leads through your funnel, trigger email sequences based on activity, assign tasks to reps, and update deal stages—all without needing a developer on standby. The automation engine keeps things running smoothly in the background, whether you’re nurturing warm leads or following up after a demo.

Sales and marketing can stay in sync because everything from contact history to campaign performance lives in the same ecosystem. That means your sales team always knows what marketing sent, and marketing knows what actually moved the needle.

HubSpot also offers features like:

• Customizable lead scoring, so you can prioritize the right prospects based on behavior and fit

• Email templates and sequencing tools that help scale outbound without losing the personal touch

• Automated campaign tracking and reporting, so you know what’s working without building dashboards from scratch

• A robust library of pre-built workflows you can use right out of the gate, or tweak to fit your funnel

And yes, HubSpot has AI too (via Breeze AI)—but it’s baked into the experience in a way that supports your automations instead of complicating them. Need help writing a subject line, summarizing contact activity, or building a workflow? The AI is right there, ready to help—but never in the way.

Of course, you can also connect HubSpot to everything else you use via Zapier’s HubSpot integrations. For example, you can instantly send new Google Ads leads to HubSpot and alert your sales team in Slack, all without touching a spreadsheet. Combine that with Zapier’s built-in AI, and Zapier becomes your AI-powered automation layer keeping your marketing and sales efforts tightly aligned. Read more about how to automate HubSpot, or try one of these pre-made workflows.

HubSpot CRM pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $9/user/month

The best sales automation software for sales-focused visual automation

Pipedrive (Web, iOS, Android)

Pipedrive pros:

• Strong automation and analytics

• Intuitive visual interface

• AI features available on the lowest-tier plan

Pipedrive cons:

Have you ever looked at a CRM and thought, “Why does this feel like a project management tool in disguise? Pipedrive keeps the focus on sales, where it belongs. Built around a clean Kanban-style pipeline, Pipedrive gives sales teams a visual, drag-and-drop experience that makes moving deals forward feel like progress instead of a chore.

Where Pipedrive shines is in how it automates the sales process without overcomplicating it. You can create automated workflows that handle repetitive tasks like:

• Updating deal stages based on activity

• Sending follow-up emails after calls or meetings

• Assigning leads to reps based on predefined rules

• Notifying team members when deals move or stall

You don’t need to write a single line of code—just pick your triggers, actions, and conditions, and Pipedrive takes care of the rest. And with multiple pipelines, you can tailor automations for different products, services, or sales teams without overlap.

Everything is built to keep momentum going. Once a lead enters the pipeline, Pipedrive tracks every interaction—emails, calls, notes, activities—on a clear timeline, so reps always know what’s happened and what’s next.

There are also some handy AI tools baked in, like the Sales Assistant, which flags which deals need attention based on your activity patterns, and an AI email writer for drafting quick outreach or follow-ups. But those tools support the core automation engine—they’re not the main event.

Pipedrive isn’t trying to be an all-in-one marketing-sales-service platform. Instead, it’s laser-focused on helping sales teams move faster, stay organized, and close more deals—without getting bogged down in manual work.

And with over 500 integrations in the Pipedrive Marketplace, plus Zapier’s library of thousands more, you can extend it however you like. For example, Zapier can automatically log a new high-value deal, analyze its trajectory, generate a summary, and drop it into Slack so your leadership team is always in the loop. Here are some other examples to get you started, or you can learn more about how to automate Pipedrive.

Pipedrive pricing: From $14/seat/month

The best sales automation software for automated lead research and data enrichment

Clay (Web)

Clay pros:

Clay cons:

Clay is built for modern, data-driven prospecting, with AI and automation baked right in. That means your sales team can spend more time actually selling rather than digging through spreadsheets all day.

The platform offers two main ways to automate: AI agents and custom workflows. The star of the show is Claygent, an AI research agent that basically becomes your personal SDR assistant. You can prompt it to dig up company and contact details, and it returns with all the info you need to qualify leads and kick off outreach. You can run searches manually or use pre-built templates if you want to hit the ground running.

Then there are Clay’s workflows, which use logic-based rules to automate repetitive lead tasks like refreshing outdated data, enriching only high-potential leads, or routing the right contacts to your CRM or email platform. You don’t need to know how to code, but expect a bit of a learning curve while setting things up.

Once you get rolling, the time savings are real. Edward White, head of growth at beehiiv, put it best: “Clay connects the data dots in one space. It lets me plug in OpenAI, LinkedIn, and others, then merge the outputs automatically. That helps us personalize faster.” He also noted that they’re saving 8–10 hours per week by cutting out manual data cleanup. Instead of playing spreadsheet detective, the team can focus on strategy.

Clay comes with 50+ direct integrations to CRMs, databases, and email tools, but it really opens up when you connect it to Zapier. That’s how you start automating everything else—like creating new Clay records from a Google Sheet, or syncing enriched data back into your sales stack. It’s a great way to orchestrate lead research across tools without adding more manual steps. Learn more about automating Clay or get started with one of these workflows.

Clay pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $134/month for the Starter plan

The best sales automation software for AI outreach

Regie.ai (Web)

Regie.ai pros:

Regie.ai cons:

If you could take the best parts of your sales stack—email writers, sequencing tools, data enrichment, personalization engines—and smash them into one AI-powered control center, you’d get something that looks a lot like Regie.ai.

Think of it like a mini AI CRM—built from the ground up to help sales teams automate and scale outreach that still feels human. It handles everything from writing emails to scheduling them, enriching lead data, and even replying to inbound messages (which most AI tools conveniently ignore).

What makes Regie.ai stand out is how much outreach you can automate from a single, easy-to-use dashboard. It’s built to take manual effort out of the equation at every stage of the sales process. You can automate:

• Email sequencing, from cold outreach to follow-ups, with personalized content generated and scheduled for you

• Lead warming, using AI agents that engage prospects automatically to move them closer to a call

• Inbound reply handling, letting the platform automatically draft or respond to messages that come in (most tools stop at outbound)

• Call script generation, tailored to each prospect so reps show up prepared, without having to write their own talking points

• AI-driven personalization, which adapts messaging to each prospect at scale without manual tweaks

Regie.ai takes what would normally require five tools (and probably a spreadsheet or two) and wraps it into one streamlined automation engine. You can launch full campaigns—prospecting, enrichment, messaging, sequencing, and follow-up—without bouncing between a half-dozen tools. Whether you’re cold emailing, following up, or even responding to inbound interest, Regie is your AI sales assistant that can handle it.

It’s not trying to be a chatbot platform or a virtual assistant, and that’s fine. Regie’s strength is its focus: outreach. If you want a tool that can generate, personalize, and deliver your message with minimal effort—and do it at scale—this is one of the most complete sales automation platforms out there.

Regie.ai pricing: By request

The best sales automation software for deep CRM automations out of the box

Keap (Web, iOS, Android)

Keap pros:

Keap cons:

Keap’s strength is its layered automation builder, which gives you just the right amount of control whether you’re new to workflows or basically running a no-code ops department. You can start with Easy Automations, which are as straightforward as it gets. The workflow builder is based on simple if-this-then-that rules, which are perfect for quick setups like updating your sales pipeline when a quote is accepted or pinging your team when someone books a call.

But if you’re ready for something more powerful, Advanced Automations let you work in a drag-and-drop canvas where you can chain together triggers, actions, and conditional logic in a way that’s actually fun to build. Want to launch a sequence when someone makes a purchase, clicks a link, or fills out a landing page? You can do that—and build the landing page in the same flow.

Then there’s the AI layer. Keap’s AI Automation Assistant takes your business information, offer details, and customer pain points, and turns them into full funnel workflows: email sequences, lead capture forms, even subject lines and CTA copy. It’s not fully hands-off—you’ll still want to fine-tune the messaging—but it gives you a strong starting point and accelerates your go-to-market in a way few CRMs can match.

And like any good automation tool, Keap plays well with others. Thanks to its Zapier integration, you can easily expand its reach across thousands of apps—from calendar tools to payment platforms to whatever else you’re using to run the show. Learn more about how to automate Keap, or get started with one of these templates.

Keap price: $299/month for all features, for 2 users and 1,500 contacts

Other sales automation software worth checking out

Sales automation isn’t one-size-fits-all. While the tools I covered above are some of the best in their categories, there’s a whole ecosystem of platforms out there that can help you level up different parts of your sales workflow, whether you’re a solopreneur, a fast-growing startup, or part of a big RevOps team looking to tighten things up.

Here are a few more worth exploring:

At the end of the day, the “best” sales automation software is the one that fits your team’s workflow, feels intuitive to use, and quietly handles the busywork so your team can focus on building relationships and closing deals. No matter if you’re piecing together your first stack or fine-tuning an advanced system, the right mix of tools can turn your sales process from a grind into a growth engine.

And if you’re looking to connect all those tools—and orchestrate automations across your entire sales funnel—Zapier brings it all together.

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