CRM software refers to customer relationship management and involves managing potential and existing customers. It allows businesses to efficiently organize and access customer data, eliminating the need for messy post-its on your desk. This means that marketers and sales agents can utilize real-time data for their work.
The development of CRM software as it exists today is relatively new. In 2004, SugarCRM created the first open-source CRM system during a time when CRM was transitioning to cloud-based platforms. This shift made CRM software more accessible to solopreneurs and small businesses who couldn’t previously afford such technology, leading to the birth of small business CRMs.
CRM software has undergone continuous evolution, with standardized CRM solutions being replaced by industry-specific ones that can be customized to suit every business. For instance, businesses with online stores can explore Drip’s ecommerce CRM, which offers advanced marketing automation capabilities.
It is evident that having adequate CRM software is essential to compete in industries focused on direct customer relations. In fact, a CRM system can lead to a notable boost in leads, sales revenue, and customer retention for most companies. It has the potential to transform a small business into something larger, which is a desire for all.
What to Look for in the Best Small Business CRM
When considering the best marketing CRM software, it is important to prioritize the ability to personalize your dashboard and the data collection. However, there are additional aspects to keep in mind.
The cost:
For small businesses, it is not ideal to allocate a significant portion of their monthly budget to CRM software, particularly considering the availability of several robust free CRM options for beginners. Additionally, it is unnecessary to pay for all the extravagant features that accompany an all-in-one CRM software if only a few functionalities will be utilized.
The convenience of usage is – Think step by step about the ease of use, while maintaining the same meaning without adding or removing information.
Fortunately, as a small business owner, you don’t have to worry about the daunting process of learning intricate new software. Thankfully, CRM tools have undergone significant advancements in recent years, making it effortlessly accessible for even those who are entirely inexperienced to understand and navigate the CRM platform in just a couple of sessions. Additionally, it is advisable to seek out CRM systems that offer extensive support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and training videos.
Striving for the perfect balance of customization.
When using certain tools, it is possible to feel a little overwhelmed because of the numerous customization options they offer, but it is also important to avoid being restricted by the software.
Managing the pipeline:
Utilizing CRM software offers the actual advantage of advancing more leads towards conversion in a systematic manner. A reliable CRM platform allows for a comprehensive understanding of the progress of leads within the sales process and aids in making lucrative choices.
Is it based on the cloud?
Not every CRM solution has its own app, so you and your team will need the ability to access your CRM data from anywhere, at any time, and on any device.
Integrations: Step-by-step thinking is required to rephrase the text below while maintaining the same meaning. No additional information should be added, and no information should be removed. Integrations:
A well-functioning CRM should have the capability to seamlessly integrate with the social, productivity, and email marketing tools that you prefer. It is also possible that the chosen CRM encompasses these aspects, allowing you to eliminate several subscriptions. This feature can be appealing to small businesses aiming to consolidate their sales and marketing activities in a single platform.
Having strong support is crucial.
Naturally, you desire your CRM software to be user-friendly, but if you encounter any problems, dependable and supportive assistance is necessary.
Now, let’s examine the top marketing CRMs suitable for small businesses with a more thorough approach.
Best CRM for Small Businesses:
HubSpot CRM
Almost everyone in the sales or marketing field is familiar with HubSpot, including its co-founder and CEO, Brian Halligan, who is credited with popularizing the term ‘inbound marketing’. This concept forms the foundation of HubSpot’s approach and the company strives to provide education on it through various courses and free resources.
Having been established in 2006, HubSpot has experienced significant growth and currently has a global workforce of over 3,000 individuals. This is largely due to its wide range of products and exceptional customer support. However, the question remains: what sets it apart as one of the top CRM tools?
The HubSpot CRM solution is great because you can start using it without any cost, and most businesses will not need to upgrade from the free plan for many years. It doesn’t charge you anything if you have less than 1 million contacts. Isn’t that generous?
The aspects of HubSpot that I enjoyed were:
HubSpot CRM is a great option for small businesses in need of a free CRM platform. It offers features such as lead and customer tracking, creating interaction timelines, real-time chatting with potential customers, integration with Gmail and Outlook, setting team tasks and goals, and more. You can also track messages and calls, as well as monitor document openings when uploaded to the platform.
The software is excellent because it is easy to use. You can see that they have dedicated time and money to create a user interface that is not overwhelming for people who are not tech-savvy. It also provides a mobile app and the ability to integrate with numerous third-party apps.
Both the free plan and the Marketing Hub Starter plan offer unlimited users, which makes it an ideal choice for budget-conscious large teams. The Sales and Service Starter plans, on the other hand, include 2 users only, with the option to pay for additional users. Furthermore, there are numerous third-party integrations available.
EngageBay
EngageBay is an affordable CRM software for small businesses that offers a wide range of features to satisfy both the sales and marketing team, making it another excellent option.
Founded in 2017, the EngageBay team takes pride in their CRM software’s user-friendly nature and the fact that they have acquired a customer base of over 5,000 companies.
You can gain a comprehensive understanding of your customers by using this tool. It enables you to quickly see all interactions with customers, including SMS, automations, phone calls, and emails. Additionally, you can automate repetitive tasks, analyze customer data, and foster both existing and new customer relationships.
EngageBay had certain aspects that I found appealing.
Why is EngageBay considered as one of the top CRM software products?
EnageBay’s pricing is categorized into sales, marketing, and service hubs, and I discovered that the plans are quite reasonably priced. The prices increase gradually, and their Basic plan is available for just $12.99 per user per month.
EngageBay is an excellent option for individuals with limited experience in sales pipeline and deal management, as it offers a highly user-friendly interface. Notably, users can easily navigate between sales, marketing, service, and live chat dashboards, ensuring efficient organization for different teams without causing excessive complexity.
Salesmate
Salesmate is an accessible CRM and automation solution that aids small businesses in simplifying their sales, marketing, and customer experience processes. It offers numerous features and remains within your budget, making it a cost-effective choice.
Salesmate, established in 2016, has experienced significant expansion, supporting over 4000 sales teams across different industries. What sets it apart as an exceptional CRM for small businesses?
The aspects of Salesmate CRM that I enjoyed.
Salesmate is a CRM platform with a wide range of strong features. It encompasses contact management, sales and marketing automation, as well as built-in calling and live chat.
Salesmate allows you to create automation journeys based on various triggers and conditions. You can automate any task using Salesmate. Additionally, the automation builder is user-friendly and has a visual interface, making it easy to use. Overall, I found the software to be very user-friendly.
Salesmate provides a mobile app for both iOS and Android, and also has data centers in the US and EU.
Freshsales CRM (From Freshworks)
Freshsales CRM was introduced in 2016, five years after the launch of the multi-product suite from Freshworks, which includes customer service ticket-related products such as Freshdesk, as well as live chat and call center solutions.
Freshworks’ package includes several features that make it appealing to small businesses, such as built-in phone software that logs calls automatically, lead scoring, user behavior tracking, and sales automations.
The aspects of Freshsales CRM that I appreciated were:
With a wide range of customization options and the ability to store various types of information, this CRM software is highly durable and ideal for small businesses that wish to effectively manage their sales pipelines. Additionally, in addition to the provided 25+ fields, users can incorporate numerous advanced custom fields as required, particularly on the higher tier plan.
Despite the abundance of choices available, it prides itself on having a user-friendly interface. The drag-and-drop deal pipeline view, in particular, stood out to me as it provides a comprehensive overview of essential details such as ‘Warm lead’ or ‘At risk’ tags. This feature facilitates the prioritization of leads requiring immediate attention and ensures a seamless sales process.
Freshsales includes a dedicated app for Android and iOS with every plan.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is primarily an email marketing provider, and it excels in this area. In fact, ActiveCampaign is our top choice for sending email campaigns. Its automations and deliverability are outstanding, but what about its CRM software?
ActiveCampaign, established in Chicago in 2003, released its CRM software as a complementary product after eleven years. The initial price is $70 per month on the Plus plan, but there are discounts for annual payments.
What makes ActiveCampaign’s CRM software a good choice for your business?
The things that I enjoyed about ActiveCampaign were:
Although ActiveCampaign does not offer a free plan, it is important to consider that the price may appear slightly higher. However, it is worth noting that ActiveCampaign offers advanced automated workflows, which is truly impressive, as well as the provision of up to 25 user accounts for colleagues. In contrast, other providers on this list charge per user, which can become quite expensive rapidly, and they do not include advanced automations.
The system is user-friendly due to its drag-and-drop deal pipeline. You can customize the stages according to your requirements and create multiple sales pipelines for different products or services. The Conversations feature allows for natural customer relationship development, which can potentially boost sales. Additionally, the system has an outstanding advanced landing page builder.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive, a CRM software designed for small businesses, is known for its affordability. The interface is clean and user-friendly, allowing for easy navigation and quick setup.
You have the option to sync Pipedrive with your preferred email client, such as Gmail or Outlook, and this allows you to synchronize emails dated up to 6 months ago. These synchronized emails are then connected to the corresponding contact persons, organizations, and deals.
Sharing contacts with other team members is extremely straightforward. Additionally, it possesses certain email functions that effectively streamline your sales process, such as templates and the ability to send group emails to a maximum of 100 contacts.
The aspects of Pipedrive that appealed to me were:
Pipedrive is a highly regarded tool for managing sales pipelines. The platform is quite user-friendly and provides a comprehensive overview of your leads and sales. The aforementioned email capabilities enhance productivity through task automation. The reporting features are also extensive, enabling a thorough examination of each sales agent’s metrics. Sales teams will find this CRM solution highly satisfactory.
Unlimited contacts are included in all plans.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a renowned CRM software that is familiar to many small businesses. It is possibly the most popular CRM tool available. While it is commonly utilized by larger businesses and enterprises, Salesforce offers a discounted small business package that allows you to access its powerful CRM tools and resources.
Whether Salesforce is suitable for you or not entirely depends on your business requirements and level of technical expertise. If you are in search of a user-friendly CRM software that can be easily set up, then Salesforce may not be the best fit for you. However, if you are willing to invest additional time and desire to leverage its advanced customization options and enterprise-grade business capabilities, then please continue reading.
One thing I enjoyed about Salesforce was
Salesforce offers a diverse array of cutting-edge CRM features such as sales prediction capabilities, characteristics for project management, and workflow automation. This vast range of features empowers users to accomplish limitless possibilities while effortlessly accommodating business expansion.
Salesforce’s recent acquisition of Evergage grants them access to the latter’s advanced artificial intelligence technology, which will inevitably result in users benefiting from advanced predictive features in the coming days.
Reporting tools are of high quality and enable the analysis of customer data at a detailed level.
Agile CRM
Agile CRM earned a place on this list of CRMs for small businesses due to its competitive pricing, but it’s important to consider that low prices are not the only factor to consider. On a superficial level, it appears to be a good option as it offers all the necessary features and reasonable allowances, however, the key questions are: how user-friendly is it and how effectively does its system operate?
The aspects of Agile that I enjoyed were:
Agile’s free plan is beneficial for small businesses that are growing because it offers 10 users. Additionally, this plan includes various features like a landing page builder, email campaigns and tracking, lead scoring, and appointment scheduling. The paid plans start at a budget-friendly price of $8.99.
The dashboard provided by the well-designed system offers a comprehensive overview of your activity and tasks that require attention. It allows you to easily toggle between pipeline and list view and apply tag-based filters.
All the necessary information such as tasks, emails, deals, lead score, etc. can be viewed within the contact profile.
On all paid plans, you are entitled to phone support, and in the Regular plan, you have the ability to both make and receive calls from leads within the platform.
Streak
Streak CRM is designed for individuals who prefer to handle contacts and deals within Gmail, thus eliminating the need to switch platforms. Coming from someone with numerous tools at their disposal, I must admit that Streak presents an attractive proposition. It appears to offer a simplified CRM solution, yet one wonders if it sacrifices any functionality or features. Let us delve deeper to explore this.
The aspects I appreciated about Streak:
You can create pipelines within the system and add leads/orders/projects as they are received. There are several useful pipeline templates available. Furthermore, you have the ability to attach tags to contacts or email threads, as well as monitor email activities.
Best all-in-one CRM software for small businesses
Vtiger (Web, iOS, Android)
Vtiger emerges as the top choice for small businesses seeking an all-in-one CRM software. It effectively manages contacts and deals, integrating inventory, marketing, help desk, project management, and documents.
Although one might assume that the user interface would be chaotic with all this information, Vtiger maintains a neat organization. Each major feature set has its own dedicated screen, and there is easy navigation at the top. If you need to switch screens, such as going from inventory to sales pipeline, simply click on the hamburger menu located at the top-left. This will reveal a comprehensive menu, allowing you to directly access your desired location.
Another potential drawback of all-in-ones is the presence of excellent features alongside average ones. Vtiger excels in this aspect, and the following examples serve as evidence:
- Adding a new contact brings up a short form, so you can get it done quickly between calls or emails. Later, you can open up the main contact page, where you can add all the relevant info when you have time.
- The sales screen has a visual pipeline to help you keep track of your deals. Clicking on a deal lets you see the next task, along with all the detailed information about the data connected to it.
- The help desk screen keeps track of open cases submitted by your customers, a live chat tab, and the possibility of building your own FAQ section to help your support team.
- The email marketing screen lets you build campaigns and autoresponders. You can create and save your own templates with dynamic fields to personalize each message with the recipient’s data.
- The projects page lets you add all your projects, queue tasks inside, and assign them to anyone. It has its own activity feed where you can send messages or post updates. You can attach and link everything here to make this your single source of truth.
- As for inventory, you can keep track of products and services, invoices and purchase orders, and even manage product-related taxes.
What’s even better is that all these features are interconnected. Just completed a transaction? Simply click to transform it into a project. Interested in including the typical products or services that a contact often asks for? You understand how it works.
Best affordable all-in-one CRM software for small businesses
Flowlu (Web, iOS, Android)
With a reasonable cost, Flowlu offers sufficient capability, provided that there are a minimum of eight individuals working alongside you. It offers a user-friendly interface and a comprehensive onboarding task list, allowing you to integrate sales, projects, financial functionalities, collaboration, client portals, and knowledge bases. Flowlu is an all-in-one CRM that mainly focuses on project management and business aspects.
Every day when you log in, a feed of recent messages will be visible to you. To ensure that everyone is updated, you can conduct a quick poll or enter announcements. After that, the left side menu will provide shortcuts to various locations, enabling you to effortlessly create new tasks, deals, or contacts without the need for multiple clicks.
All of the contact and sales management features are available. You can use the filterable list view to organize your work or track your team’s performance. Another great feature is the ability to set automations for each stage of the sales pipeline, allowing you to focus on your sales tasks instead of administrative work.
Flowlu is an all-in-one platform that prioritizes project management. It allows you to effortlessly connect your projects with the respective contacts and conveniently stores all information in a single location for convenient retrieval. Moreover, it offers the flexibility to choose between waterfall and Agile methodologies.
Best CRM for scaling your small business
Zoho CRM (Web, iOS, Android)
When making a decision about software for your company, you take into account not only the immediate situation. Although this application currently meets my requirements, I wonder if it will be able to handle the additional workload without causing financial strain if we expand our client list next year.
Zoho CRM offers a good free plan. The lowest plan is considered fair. As you move up to the higher tiers, the pricing remains affordable, considering the comprehensive range of features available, including advanced reporting, machine learning, and AI, to name a few notable ones.
Despite not having the most attractive user interface, Zoho compensates by providing strong features. Along with sales, it incorporates email marketing and a company activity feed to enhance team communication. It also supports the creation of self-service portals for customers, offers help desk features, and includes automatic lead scoring. As a result, Zoho can be considered a comprehensive solution.
If you want to keep track of your projects, you have the option to establish a smooth connection with Zoho Projects. This will allow you to retrieve your tasks from the CRM dashboard after completing the setup. Additionally, the CRM is compatible with many other Zoho apps, and most of them offer a free plan or affordable paid plans. You have the flexibility to upgrade or downgrade depending on your budget changes.
Best small business CRM for managing projects
Capsule (Web, iOS, Android)
In summary, Capsule is a powerful CRM integrated with a reliable project management application. Similar to other effective productivity apps, it recognizes the significance of user experience. It features a user-friendly interface and a dashboard that helps manage overwhelming tasks. This is crucial because enhancing productivity requires discipline, just like controlling your food intake at an all-you-can-eat diner; if you exceed your plate’s capacity, you will either become exhausted (experience burnout) or fail to complete tasks (leave unfinished work).
The Projects screen offers three views: calendar, Kanban, and list. This screen allows you to add all necessary tasks, assign them to the appropriate individuals, and include any required files for execution. Afterward, you can return to the dashboard and find all your tasks organized in a list on the left side, ready to be tackled. On the right side of this list, you will find the most recent activity for both you and your team, which includes completed tasks, calls, and updates on deals.
Once you have been productive for a few weeks, you can examine the reports to identify any issues with productivity. These reports supplement the overall sales pipeline data, which is available in almost every app of this kind. Utilize this information to determine which tasks are taking longer and to identify individuals who may be struggling to progress in their projects. These individuals may require assistance, guidance, or some words of motivation.
Best small business CRM for simple, ultra-personalized emails
folk (Web)
Be aware that folk stands out from the other options mentioned in this list. It does not have the capability to handle complex sales pipelines or generate impressive reports using pie charts. It does not encourage you to view your business relationships as mere statistics on a screen. Instead, it provides a straightforward solution for managing all your contacts and sending personalized emails to your lists in a large quantity. It replaces robotic templates with the distinct charm of a human conversation.
If you are familiar with Notion, you will find it comfortable to use. On the left side, you can initiate a search in your contacts database, view your emails’ breakdown, and access the settings. Moving down a bit, you will find all your contact lists. folk is helpful for managing various types of relationships. For example, you may have clients in a traditional sales pipeline and investors in different relationship stages. In case you need more inspiration, you can browse the template gallery, which offers 50 different templates to begin with.
To create ultra-personalized emails, start by clicking on a contact list and then click on the top-right to compose a new dynamic email. While writing, use a forward slash to insert any of the contact’s data fields into the email body. This can include their name, company, or any other custom text field you have for your contacts. After writing the email, carefully review it to ensure that the static content aligns well with the dynamic tags. Finally, click on send to distribute the email to the whole contact list.
If you lack data, personalizing extensively is not possible. Folk offers a contact enrichment feature that can automatically provide missing contact information such as companies, job titles, and phone numbers, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the individual you are communicating with.
The simplicity, ability to handle multiple relationships, and customization options are so strong that they make up for the absence of advanced analytics and reports. Consider folk as a tool for everyday sales tasks rather than a high-level software for management and boardroom use.
Best CRM for managing your Gmail inbox
NetHunt (Web, iOS, Android)
Have you ever thought about having a CRM integrated into your Gmail account, allowing you to use it effortlessly throughout your day? Well, NetHunt is the solution you are looking for. Unlike many other CRMs for Gmail, NetHunt offers a distinct dashboard where you can make important decisions and adjust controls to enhance your overall experience.
To begin, simply sign up with your Gmail account and NetHunt will quickly set itself up. After installing the browser extension, you can easily access NetHunt on Gmail. Alternatively, you can use the web app, which has a user interface similar to Gmail, ensuring a seamless experience. With the web app, you can manage deals, update and create contacts, send email campaigns to your lists, and automate repetitive tasks with workflows.
If you want to explore the business intelligence software category, you can utilize Looker Studio’s available integration to feed your data. This will allow you to create interactive dashboards and reports that update in real time, providing you with simple reports on user activity, pipeline, and time in stage. This way, you can easily stay updated with the latest information.
