4 Top DealCloud Alternatives for 2025, Reviewed and Compared

Private equity teams don’t have time for clunky software. Your CRM needs to keep up with fast-moving deals, emerging opportunities, and timely outreach with the help of real relationship intelligence technology.

DealCloud has become a well-known CRM option in the capital markets space, but it has its limitations. Some teams find DealCloud too rigid. Others are looking for faster deployment, cleaner UX, or more intuitive automation.

We’ve created a competitor analysis to compare four of the best DealCloud alternatives for firms looking for a smarter way to manage deals and relationships.

TL;DR

Our top picks for DealCloud alternatives: 

1. Meridian
2. Affinity
3. 4Degrees
4. Altvia

Where DealCloud falls short

DealCloud is a well-known name among customer relationship management (CRM) software for the financial services industry. But just because it’s popular doesn’t mean that it works for every team.

The platform has wide-ranging functionality that enables it to accommodate many types of capital markets businesses. Unfortunately, this “everything to everyone” approach leaves a lot to be desired for PE teams.

While the CRM can be customized to meet many private equity workflows, that work may have to be handled by the DealCloud team, which can make setup both time-consuming and expensive. Plus, any changes you want to make down the line will require looping their team back in again.

The software also falls behind when it comes to automation and integrations. It doesn’t have advanced AI features for relationship management or data enrichment, and it doesn’t connect seamlessly to many key tools, including Microsoft Outlook.

That means deal teams may find themselves stuck doing manual data entry, which can stunt adoption and affect deal pipeline visibility.

Teams looking to spend more time building and nurturing relationships that drive better deals (and less time wrangling software) are likely better off avoiding DealCloud.

4 leading DealCloud alternatives to help your PE firm improve deal management 

Choosing the right CRM platform marks the difference between chasing data and chasing deals. Below are four of the best private equity CRMs that enable stronger pipeline management, smarter workflows, and better deal outcomes.

1. Meridian

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Focus Area: Complete AI-powered CRM for PE

Designed from the ground up by PE experts, Meridian is a comprehensive CRM solution for firms that need to manage long deal flow cycles, streamline complex workflows, and actually use the data they’re sitting on. The platform helps private equity teams find better prospects, move faster, and minimize spreadsheet chaos.

At its heart is Scout, an AI agent that extracts key metrics from CIMs, auto-generates comps and memos, and benchmarks new targets against both your firm’s past deals and broader market activity. 

With automated data migration and enrichment, Meridian is quick and easy to set up. Plus, it gives your team access to a centralized platform of data that helps them move faster without looking down rabbit holes for context. 

Standout features

• Scout AI: Vertically integrated AI agent that enables teams to close more deals through smart workflows, from sourcing to IC prep.
• Outlook integration: Links with the most popular private equity mail platform, automatically turning emails, events, and contacts into CRM data.
• 26M+ enriched company records: Proprietary and public market data, including contact databases, are integrated directly into your CRM.

Why choose Meridian over DealCloud 

Unlike DealCloud, Meridian offers an AI-native architecture that speeds up sourcing and simplifies workflows, all with a speedy ramp-up and implementation timeframe.

2. Affinity

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Focus Area: CRM and deal management platform

Affinity offers relationship intelligence and auto-syncing features that can help private capital firms spot opportunities and make warm introductions. Its CRM software captures communication data from emails and other sources and leverages AI-powered analysis to track relationships and rank connections. 

This helps users to identify which opportunities need attention, when to reach out to contacts, and how to prioritize engagements to help teams close deals.

While it does have plenty of useful CRM features, Affinity is primarily a deal management platform designed for businesses that operate in the venture capital space.

Standout features

• Affinity Sourcing: Centralizes sourcing insights, relationship data, and opportunity monitoring to help you discover emerging deals.
• Automatic data capture: Captures email and calendar events to create a relationship map for your firm.
• Analytics and reporting: Provides insightful reports about team activity and performance by tracking deals and win rates across a range of metrics.

Why choose Affinity over DealCloud 

Where DealCloud requires manual data entry to keep things current, Affinity auto captures deal and network updates to keep your pipeline fresh with minimal lift.

Learn how Affinity compares to other competitors in our Affinity alternatives article, or see a side-by-side comparison of Meridian vs. Affinity.

3. 4Degrees

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Focus Area: Deal flow

4Degrees aims to streamline relationship tracking for deal teams. The platform is built on a simple idea: the most valuable opportunities often come through warm introductions, and those paths can be hard to spot if you don’t have the right pipeline management system in place.

4Degrees simplifies deal tracking, with options to view pipelines as Kanban boards or in list format. This enables users to gain valuable insights about the deal flow at a glance. 

You don’t need deep technical know-how to create pipelines that reflect your existing workflows. But getting the platform to operate exactly as you envision might require custom APIs or third-party integrations, both of which can quickly increase the system’s cost and complexity.

Standout features

• Relationship intelligence: Leverage your firm’s existing network to identify the best path to a company, expert, or investor and streamline deal sourcing.
• Salesforce + 4Degrees: Layer relationship context and auto-capture features into Salesforce via the 4Degrees integration.
• Deal flow monitoring: Track deal flow momentum, engagement levels, and communication cadence at a glance.

Why choose 4Degrees over DealCloud 

DealCloud’s complexity can be overkill for lean teams. 4Degrees is a simpler, lighter-weight CRM that maps relationships, tracks deals, and supports custom workflows.

4. Altvia

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Focus Area: Full fund lifecycle support

Altvia operates on the Salesforce CRM platform, offering tools for private capital workflows from LP engagement to deal execution. It’s built specifically for alternative investment firms, layering fundraising, investing, and investor relations workflows onto the classic sales CRM infrastructure.

Its AIMe AI assistant surfaces key insights from firm data and automates administrative tasks to free up deal teams for more impactful work that leads to better relationships and deals.

While it’s a deal management platform designed for private equity and venture capital firms, it’s not completely plug-and-play. Because it lives within Salesforce, customizing workflows and integrating tools from your existing tech stack often requires assistance from Salesforce admins or consultants.

Standout features

• AIMe: Analyzes firm data to identify patterns, surface insights, and suggest next steps, helping teams prioritize outreach and manage relationships more proactively.
• Integrated VDR and LP portal: A centralized platform for LPs to access updates, documents, and engagement data.
• Scalable architecture: Add or adjust workflows as your firm’s structures, teams, and processes evolve.

Why choose Altvia over DealCloud

Altvia’s AIMe surfaces real-time insights into your team’s deal pipeline to help users move faster than they can when relying on DealCloud’s manual, rules-based setup.

What to consider when choosing a DealCloud alternative

The right customer relationship management platform will free your team from manual data entry, keep team members aligned, and ultimately help you close deals. But not every CRM platform can meet the unique needs of a private equity firm. 

You want to look for a platform that’s:

• Built for private equity: CRM software designed for investment workflows will align better with complex relationship management and drawn-out deal cycles.
• Designed for deal-making: Good deal flow management requires you to have clear visibility across your pipeline, and you need centralized data to simplify tracking.
• Equipped with AI and automation: AI-driven features like relationship intelligence and data enrichment cut down on manual work to keep deal momentum going.
• Able to integrate: Your deal management platform needs to connect seamlessly with the tools your team uses every day, like Outlook and Excel.
• Easy to deploy: Quick rollout and scalability beat lengthy, consultant-reliant processes every time and lead to higher adoption rates. 

The all-in-one CRM private equity teams actually want to use

DealCloud is tailored to generally serve sectors in the financial service industry, from accounting to investment banking, so it may not feel like a perfect fit when private equity firms try it on. While it covers many CRM basics, adjusting it to meet your team’s workflow can take a fair amount of time, money, and effort.

Meridian is the private equity CRM that’s designed to work the way you do, combining deal flow tracking, relationship insights, and firm-wide visibility in a platform that’s easy to implement and intuitive to use.

The AI-native platform handles manual work for you: outreach is tracked automatically, IC memos summarize themselves, and pipeline visibility doesn’t require a full-time admin.

Meridian is the all-in-one solution that helps you move faster and push the right deals forward, making it a clear choice among DealCloud alternatives for PE firms that want to gain a competitive edge.

Frequently asked questions about DealCloud alternatives

Is DealCloud similar to Salesforce?

DealCloud and Salesforce are both CRM platforms, but they’re built for different users. Salesforce is a general-purpose system that requires significant customization to support private equity workflows. 

DealCloud, on the other hand, is tailored specifically to capital markets firms and investment professionals, and it comes with built-in support for fundraising, deal tracking, and relationship management. For many investment teams, DealCloud is a more functional option straight out of the box.

Who bought DealCloud?

DealCloud was acquired by Intapp in August 2018. The acquisition was part of Intapp’s broader strategy to deliver cloud-based solutions tailored to professional services and capital markets firms. 

Not much about DealCloud has changed since the acquisition. It’s still a CRM for investment banking, private equity, venture capital, and advisory firms, but it now also benefits from Intapp’s enterprise infrastructure and support.

How much does DealCloud cost?

DealCloud doesn’t publish its pricing on its website, and you need to get in touch with the sales team to get an estimate. This makes it tough to put together any kind of DealCloud pricing comparison.

Costs will vary depending on the size of your firm, the number of users, and the specific modules and integrations you need. There may also be implementation and customization costs on top of the cost of the software.

Is DealCloud a CRM system?

DealCloud is a CRM system that combines standard CRM capabilities with deal and pipeline management tools, relationship intelligence, and workflow customization. The platform also supports compliance and collaboration workflows specific to professional services firms.