Why doesn't NPM work for you? If it's an user-permission thing (which is common if you installed node straight-up), consider installing nodejs using NVM (node version manager). This also has the advantage that you don't have to sudo npm.
I've had issues with NPM in the past due to having a proxy server on our network, and dealing with some absurdly arcane errors t oresolve it. The only package manager that I've ever had a problem with.
That said, I don't tend to use node.js, so NPM's virtues illude me.
I usually have to google two to three errors that popup on an npm install --save to get things working and sometimes I don't. Its quite inconsistent, but these issues are probably with node versioning as well. In any case I never have this issue with pip.
