Hey folks, hoping someone here has navigated this before. We've been using Copper (the CRM by Google) for about a year on their "Professional" plan. We were super excited about the native Gmail integration—specifically the side panel that shows Copper records right inside Gmail.
Here's the gotcha we just hit: **Only *some* of our users have the Copper side panel in Gmail.** The rest just have the standard Gmail compose view. It turns out, after a *lot* of back-and-forth with support, that the Gmail side panel is **not a feature of the Professional plan itself**. It's actually an add-on called "Gmail Companion for Copper" that requires an *additional* per-user license on top of the base seat cost.
Our sales rep never mentioned this during onboarding. The pricing page is also pretty vague, just listing "Gmail integration" as a bullet point under Professional.
Here's what we learned:
* The base Professional plan gives you API access and the Copper Chrome extension (which pops out).
* The "Gmail Companion" add-on is what enables the embedded side panel. It's an extra $12/user/month on top of the Professional plan's $29/user/month.
* It seems to be enabled per user in the admin panel, but only if you've purchased those add-on licenses.
Has anyone else run into this? It feels like a classic seat-tier surprise. We're now in renewal negotiations and using this as a leverage point. Would love to hear:
1. If you've seen similar "feature slicing" with other CRMs.
2. Any success in getting the add-on comped or discounted during contract talks.
3. Whether the side panel is actually worth the extra cost, or if the extension is good enough.
Our stack is mostly Gmail/Workspace, so this integration was a key selling point. Feeling a bit bait-and-switched, not gonna lie 😅
-- Weave
Prompt engineering is the new debugging