19 Best CRM Software of 2024 (Comparison and Honest Reviews)
Choosing the right customer relationship management software (CRM) can improve your customer relations dramatically.
In this guide, we’ll review and compare the 19 Best CRM Software of 2023.
Freshworks CRM
Monday CRM
The best CRM software offer solutions for mitigating the challenges associated with connecting with customers and managing customer information.
As most would agree, it can be quite a chore to manage customer relationships, even with a designated person to do the job.
Customer relationship management software enables organizations to establish strong customer relationships and organize customer data.
But there are hundreds of different CRM software on offer these days, so much so that finding the best fit for your organization can be a tedious process.
So, this article will guide you by reviewing and comparing the 19 Best CRM Software of 2023.
What is the Best CRM Software?
To our thinking, the 19 best CRM software for 2023 are listed below:
- Pipedrive
- Keap
- Freshworks CRM
- Zoho CRM
- Monday CRM
- HubSpot CRM
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Salesmate
- Bitrix24
- Zendesk Sell
- Close
- Nimble
- ActiveCampaign
- Copper
- Insightly
- NetHunt CRM
- SugarCRM
- Nutshell
- Agile CRM
Save by Comparing CRM Software Quotes
1. Pipedrive
Great CRM Software for Dealmakers.
- Offers an intuitive interface and deal-driven workflow
- Excellent mobile apps with call and email synchronization
- No campaign planning features
- Does not separate new leads from existing contacts
We consider Pipedrive one of the best CRM software not just because of its simple user interface, but also because it has tremendously improved its small-business-focused offering with many new advanced capabilities, chatbot creation for websites, and more efficient reporting.
Pipedrive is a CRM software designed by salespeople for salespeople. Your company’s sales process becomes more effective with its simple user interface and sales progress tracker.
Key Features
Lead Booster
Pipedrive’s lead management tools include a lead booster, enabling organizations to set up pre-programmed questions to capture new leads with a customizable chatbot.
The Simple User Interface
Pipedrive is easy to navigate, and its user-friendly interface makes it easy to design your workspace to suit your preference.
Customizable Email Templates
Staying in touch with potential customers can be challenging because you have to keep sending constant sales emails to keep them informed. Pipedrive makes this process easy with its customizable email templates, which give you various email template options. You only have to customize one and send it out, making your email marketing strategy easy.
Pricing
- Lead Management
- Deal Management
- Pipeline Management
- 300+ Integrations
- 24/7 Chat Support
- Custom Email Templates
- 30 Active Automations/User
- Email Tracking & Signatures
- Mass Emailing & Scheduling
- 10000 Opened Deals
- Unlimited Custom Dashboards
- 60 Active Automations/User
- Automated Deal Calculations
- Contact Timeline
- 100000 Opened Deals
- Unlimited Reports
- 100 Active Automations/User
- Unlimited Custom Fields
- Unlimited Teams
- Unlimited Opened Deals
Find out more Pipedrive pricing
This sales-focused CRM has four payment plans with a 14-day free trial.
- The Essential plan costs $15 for a user per month and lets you get started setting up simple sales processes.
- The Advanced plan costs $29 per user per month and lets you scale your sales processes quickly using easy-to-use email and automation.
- The Professional plan costs $59 per user per month and offers everything you need to boost performance and revenue.
- The Enterprise plan offers unlimited customization for users and costs $119 per user per month.
2. Keap
Best CRM Tool for Small Teams
- Simple and user-friendly interface
- Does not automatically save work progress
We love Keap because it provides sales and marketing automation features designed to help grow your business. It features greater client organization, fewer repetitive tasks, easy-to-implement automations, and tons of third-party integrations.rnNo matter what plan you choose, it is evident that with Keap, growth is the name of the game.
Keap is a reliable and suitable option for businesses with small teams. This CRM software makes managing customer experience and streamlining sales easy.
Key Features
Marketing Automation
Keap provides automation for sales and marketing tasks to run your business without any stress effectively. You can access all your client information on your device.
Integration
Keap provides external apps for integrations so that you can easily connect with other social applications for business growth and sales. Integration with Gmail, Outlook, Zapier majorly helps run your business efficiently.
Sales Pipeline
Keap helps avoid chaos by providing accurate status of every deal in one place. You can manage leads by synching the CRM with many customized pipelines.
Pricing
- 1500 Contacts & 2 Users
- Additional Users: $29/Each
- Automated Lead Capture
- Sales Pipeline Automations
- Robust Email Marketing Toolkit
- 2500 Contacts & 3 Users
- Additional Users: $29/Each
- 150 Custom Fields
- Marketing Analytics
- Lead Scoring
Find out more Keap pricing
Keap has no free forever plan but offers a 14-day free trial.
- The Lite plan: costs $79 for a user per month and is best for new businesses.
- The Pro plan costs $169 per user per month and is best for growing businesses.
- The Max plan costs $199 per user per month and is best for larger, more established businesses and their teams.
3. Freshworks CRM
Excellent CRM for Online Customer Support.
- Simple user interface
- Mobile apps available
- Great integration with external applications
- Relatively expensive
This all-in-one customer service platform is dear to our hearts because it offers everything you need to deliver intuitive and engaging customer experiences and offer stellar support across the board, whether on the web, mobile, social, or via messengers.
Freshworks CRM is a top intuitive software tool for customer engagement and support. Through multiple platform engagements, it gives sales reps 360° views of their prospects with its auto-profile and activity tracking tool.
Key Features
Contact Management
With Freshworks CRM, your contacts automatically show through a saved contact database CSV file. The customer's complete profile will pop up when you click a client contact.
Sales Automation
Freshworks offers a solid platform for sales. With contact management, lead scoring, and sales sequencing features, you can automate customer outreach across multiple channels like email and social media.
Customization
You can customize the interface to your liking with the drag-and-drop widget and arrange the information on your dashboard.
Pricing
- Contact Management
- Workflow Automation: 20 Rules
- Deal Management
- Sales Dashboard
- Storage: 2GB/User
- 10 Multi-Sales Pipelines
- Workflow Automation: 50 Rules
- Sales Forecasting
- Tailored Mass Emails: 1000/Day
- Storage: 5GB/User
- Dedicated Customer Agent
- Workflow Automation: 100 Rules
- 5000 Free Bot Sessions
- Tailored Mass Emails: 5000/Day
- Storage: 100GB/User
Freshworks CRM offers a free forever plan and a few other paid plans.
- The Growth plan ($15 per user per month) supports small but growing sales teams.
- The Pro plan ($39 per user per month) is great for managing multiple sales teams.
- The Enterprise plan ($69 per user per month) offers advanced customization, governance, and control.
4. Zoho CRM
Top User-friendly CRM Software with Features for All Business Types.
- Good email marketing and automation features
- Works offline
- Slow support
150,000 businesses can’t be wrong, that’s how many businesses trust Zoho CRM to build lasting customer relationships and maximize team productivity. And we love it for all the same reasons, too. rnThe platform's expanded omnichannel support for phone, email, live chat, social media, and in-person meetings make it the most tightly integrated system on the market.rn
Zoho CRM is one of the most prominent cloud-based CRM platforms for all sizes and types of businesses and industries.
Key Features
Platform Customization
One key feature of Zoho CRM is the ability to customize almost every aspect of the interface with its various in-built customization tools like Canvas and Wizards.
Sales Team Automation
One advantage of using Zoho CRM is increased sales productivity. It simplifies your various sales processes, from sales appointment scheduling to giving updates on sales opportunities.
Analytics
Zoho CRM makes it easy for sales teams to convert their data to meaningful insights. Users can create dashboards, sales forecasts and build reports using the analytics feature.
Pricing
- 3 Users
- Lead Management
- Deal Management
- 1 Webform/Module
- Integrations with Zoho Apps
- Sales Forecasting
- Mass Email: 250/day/org
- Lead Scoring
- 5 Webforms/Module
- 5 CRM Extensions
- Unlimited Custom Email Templates
- Mass Email: 500/day/org
- Data Import: 20000/batch
- 10 Webforms/Module
- 10 CRM Extensions
- Zia AI Assistant
- Mass Email: 1000/day/org
- Data Import: 30000/batch
- 20 Webforms/Module
- 20 CRM Extensions
- Data Storage: 5 Million Records
- Mass Email: 2000/day/org
- Data Import: 50000/batch
- 100 Webforms/Module
- 50 CRM Extensions
Zoho CRM offers a free trial and no free plan. Users have five payment plans, the Standard plan, priced at $18 per user per month; the Professional plan costs $30 per user per month; the Enterprise plan ($45 per user per month) and the Ultimate plan ($55 per user per month).
5. Monday CRM
Reliable CRM Software That Doubles as a Project Management Tool.
- Easy transfer of data to spreadsheets
- Intuitive user interface
- Supports integration with other software
- Not able to track project goals
More than just a CRM, this all-in-one work OS boasts all the tools you need to manage every aspect of your work, from your projects to your customer interactions. rnWhether you need to streamline your sales pipeline, want to create a marketing campaign process, run a robust CRM, or build a project management tracker, we can confidently recommend Monday.com.rn
Monday CRM enables the improved and organized management of your customer relations. Its features help you automate repetitive work, centralize customer communication, and manage your data in one place.
Key Features
Gmail/Outlook integration
Monday CRM integrates your Gmail or Outlook account to centralize all client communication on one platform. This helps you track every interaction.
Google Calendar
Monday CRM’s Google Calendar integration lets you log and manage any event or meeting from within the platform.
Activity tracking
Keep track of your sales team’s activities and performance with Monday CRM’s activity tracker. It gives a clear overview of your activities and adjusts your strategy quickly.
Pricing
- Unlimited Contacts
- Purchase Unlimited Seats
- Lead Web Forms
- CRM Templates
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Lead Management
- Deal Management
- Contact Management
- 250 Automations/Mo
- Integrations: 250 Actions/Mo
- Email Analytics & Automation
- Mailchimp & Hubspot Integration
- Sales Analytics and Forecasts
- 25000 Automations/Mo
- Integrations: 25000 Actions/Mo
- Automatic Lead Scoring
- Salesforce Integration
- Enterprise Reporting
- 250000 Automations/Mo
- Integrations: 250000 Actions/Mo
Find out more Monday pricing or Monday review
Monday CRM offers a free forever plan for two users. The payment plans are as follows:
- The Basic plan ($8 per seat per month) is best for teams of three or fewer people.
- The Standard plan (10$ per seat per month) provides visualization and automation tools for tracking your contacts, pipelines, and projects.
- The Pro plan (16$ per seat per month) offers a complete CRM platform to manage your sales cycle from end-to-end with powerful tools and automations.
6. HubSpot CRM
Leading CRM Software for Maximizing Sales.
HubSpot CRM is one of the best examples of commercial software for sales, marketing, and customer service. It aims to maximize sales for organizations with its main products: operations hub, sales hub, marketing hub, service hub, and content management system hub.
Key Features
Prospect tracking
It enables you to track the buyer's journey. With the help of clear sales pipelines, sales representatives can easily follow prospects.
Customer Support
HubSpot provides a live chat tool for customer support, where customers can quickly receive answers to common questions about Hubspot CRM. A ticketing tool is available to help respond to customers quickly.
Automated Data Capture
HubSpot CRM keeps track of prospect and customer touches. It tracks calls and emails made from the system and automatically records them on the contact record page in a timeline view.
Pros
- Smart integration with marketing automation tools
- Offers extensive third-party integrations
Cons
- No support provided for free plan users
- Interface is not the most customizable
Pricing
- Unlimited Users
- 1 000 000 Contacts
- Contact Management
- Deal Management
- 5 Email Templates
- Sales Automation
- Remove Hubspot Branding
- 2 Deal Pipelines/User
- Unlimited Email Tracking
- 5000 Email Templates
- 5 User Accounts
- Additional User $90/Mo
- 15 Deal Pipelines/User
- Deal Scoring (5 properties)
- Salesforce Integration
- 10 User Accounts
- Additional User $120/Mo
- 100 Deal Pipelines/User
- Recurring Revenue Tracking
- Predictive Lead Scoring
Find out more Hubspot pricing
Hubspot CRM does not provide a free plan. There are three payment plans available for users.
- The Starter plan costs $50 per month for two users only.
- The Professional plan starts at $1,780 for five users per month with two thousand marketing contacts.
- The Enterprise plan is priced at $5,000 per month and can accommodate only ten paid users.
7. Salesforce Sales Cloud
Easy-to-use CRM Software for Enhancing Sales Process.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is used to streamline all stages of sales. Connecting with clients is less stressful with this unique sales automation and customer contact management software.
Key Features
Opportunity Management
This is a top Salesforce Sales Cloud feature that gives you the chance to see the activity timeline of your clients. It also shows the various deal stages, which helps determine your next move.
Dynamic Dashboard
This software gives you a pictorial view of your business performance in the market.
Contact Management
This feature not only provides access to critical data on customer history but also gives insights and engage-enhancement strategies. You can easily share customer contact information, insights, and important documents with team members.
Pros
- Simple customization options to suit personal preference
- Good external software integration
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Customer service is poor
Pricing
- Contact Management
- Lead Management
- Business Process Automation
- Web Form Capture
- Opportunity Management
- Pipeline Management
- Sales Orders Tracking
- Lead Registration
- Forecasting Mobile App
- Workflow Builder: 5 flows/org
- Opportunity Scoring
- Pipeline Insights
- Advanced Reporting
- Unlimited User Roles
- Unlimited Workflows
- Lead Scoring
- Predictive Sales Forecasting
- Conversation Insights
- Work Queue
- Salesforce Inbox
Salesforce Sales Cloud has no free plan but a free trial for all the payment plans.
- The Essentials plan costs $25 per user per month and is basically an all-in-one sales and support app.
- The Professional plan stands at $75 per user per month and provides a complete CRM for any size team.
- The Enterprise plan costs $150 per user per month and is a deeply customizable sales CRM for your business.
- You will be charged $300 per user per month for the Unlimited plan. This plan gives you unlimited CRM power and support.
8. Salesmate
Great CRM Software for Small and Medium Enterprise.
Salesmate is a web-based CRM software that manages sales, marketing, and customer relations across communications platforms like text, chat, calls, and email.
Key Features
Activity Tracking
Salesmate software enables you to plan, prioritize and track daily activities. You also have the option of delegating tasks and measuring your team's performance using the activity tracking tool.
Sales Report
You have access to an automatically generated report from your sales on Salesmate. It provides a pre-built and customizable report, developing your sales report by measuring team performance, lead score analysis, individual deals, and pipeline conversion.
Shared Team Inbox
You and your team have the option to opt for a shared team inbox; this will enable transparency and collaboration among teammates.
Pros
- Easy to set up
- Tracks sales pipeline
- In-built SMS and call function
Cons
- Does not sync data
Pricing
Salesmate offers four payment plans and a 15-day free trial
- The Starter Plan costs $15 per user per month and contains the features you need to build & organize your sales function.
- The Growth Plan is priced at $30 per user per month and includes sales automation tools to help you close more deals.
- The Boost payment plan stands at $50 per user per month and adds team management features to the mix.
9. Bitrix24
Top Collaboration Software for CRM.
Bitrix24 is a platform that handles day-to-day tasks and operations. This software improves cooperation and communication among users with its extensive organizational features.
Key Features
Manage and secure information
You can manage your internal and external communication on Bitrix24, with the guarantee that your communication and information are secure.
File-Sharing
Bitrix24 allows you to share your saved data to different platforms. You can use the share option on the software to transfer files and documents.
Third-party integration
Bitrix24 supports the integration of popular external software like MailChimp. You can use a third-party app through Bitrix24 to access information on the external software.
Pros
- Kanban view is available
- Allows extensive customizations
Cons
- The user interface can be hard to get the hang of
- Too many confusing tools
Pricing
Bitrix24 offers a generous Free plan with an unlimited user feature and a free space of 5 GB. Aside from the free plan, Bitrix24 offers three payment plans:
- The Basic Plan is $30 for all users per month with a 24 GB free space.
- The Standard plan is $60 for all users per month with 100 GB of space.
- The Professional Plan costs $120 for all users per month with 1 TB of storage.
10. Zendesk Sell
Simple-to-Use CRM Software for All-Round Customer Experience.
Zendesk Sell is a web and mobile-based software designed to improve operational efficiency for customer service teams, sales teams, and marketing teams.
Zendesk Sell includes features like pipeline visibility, insight reporting, and communication management, making it great for business to customer (B2C) operations.
Key Features
Numerous channels for communication
Zendesk Sell helps sales teams use multi-channel marketing campaigns as a sales strategy. Sales reps can directly communicate with customers through Zendesk Sell Voice software, live chat and email. External voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) can also be used for this purpose.
Mobile App
This software supports mobile usage for users' convenience. When you switch to your mobile app, Zendesk Sell syncs all the data on your web application so you can manage your sales on the go.
Customer Service
Zendesk Sell has 24/7 customer support for users. You can access online customer support through various mediums like email and live chat.
Pros
- Supports mobile use
- UI is easy to understand
- Easy integration of third-party apps
Cons
- Does not have a free plan
Pricing
Zendesk Sell pricing starts with a payment plan and no free plan.
- The Sell Team plan costs $19/per user/month for no more than three users.
- The Sell Professional plan costs $49 per user per month and it supports unlimited users.
- The Sell Enterprise plan costs $99 per user per month.
11. Close
Best CRM Software for Small Businesses.
Close is a customer relationship management software designed to help businesses convert leads to revenue. This software helps your sales team maintain long-lasting connections with loyal customers, features lead generation tools, and enables you to convert those leads to paying customers.
Key Features
Email Marketing
Email is an essential tool for salespeople, and Close provides many emailing features to make it easy to connect with your clients. You can easily send out newsletters and other marketing messages.
Reporting and Analytics
Close provides you with reports and analytics visible on the leaderboard, where you see your sales activity reports like calls and emails. You also have the option to customize how your reports are displayed.
Task Management
Close provides a task management tool. This tool efficiently delegates tasks, and team leaders can share tasks among their team members based on availability and skill.
Pros
- Intuitive and user-friendly interface
Cons
- Lacks quality customer support
Pricing
Close offers four payment subscriptions and a 14-day free trial for each plan. It does not offer any free plan.
- The Starter plan costs $29 per month per user for up to 3 users.
- The Basic plan costs $69 per month per user and covers up to 30 users.
- The Professional plan costs $99 per month per user for 100 users.
- The Business plan costs $149 per user per month.
12. Nimble
Top-tier CRM Software for Social Media and Marketing Integration.
Nimble is a cloud-based CRM tool that makes maintaining relationships with your leads and clients easy. This customer relationship management solution allows organizations to build strong relationships with potential and existing customers through multiple communication platforms that ensure they stay connected throughout the customer journey.
Key Features
Automatic Set-up
The automatic set-up feature makes it easy to get the software up and running. You don't have to go through any lengthy process to set up manually; all you have to do is input your preferences, and Nimble automatically sets up the interface for you.
Team Tracking
With the team progress tracking tool, monitoring the progress of a task is very easy. This tool is displayed in the software as a table that shows scheduled, in-progress, and completed tasks.
Direct integration with Google workspace
Nimble offers direct integration with Google workspace. It adds any information found on all your Google apps like Gmail and Google workspace.
Pros
- It has a good contact search function
- Efficient in project management
- Great customer service
Cons
- It does not work well with emails
- Integration with third-party apps is limited
Pricing
Nimble has only one payment plan, plus a 14-day free trial. The Business plan costs $25 per user per month for a monthly subscription and $19 per user per month when you opt for annual billing.
13. ActiveCampaign
Best CRM Software for Marketing Automation.
ActiveCampaign is a top CRM software with excellent marketing automation features for starting and advanced marketers alike. It is one of the best software for email marketing automation with in-built customer relationship management tools.
Key Features
Automation
ActiveCampaign is known for its flexible and easy-to-use marketing automation tools that help you pull in and compile data from the different marketing platforms you use. All you need to do is use the drag-and-drop interface to create a workflow, and it saves automatically.
On-site tracking
This feature shows you services, information and the products your clients are interested in, making it easy to convert prospects into customers.
Lead Management
ActiveCampaign aids lead management using the two lead scoring tools: contact and deal scoring.
Pros
- Easy to use for marketing automation
- Supports a variety of third-party software integration.
Cons
- Steep learning curve
Pricing
Find out more ActiveCampaign pricing
This software does not have a free plan, but it offers four payment plans:
- The Lite plan costs $9 per month for one user; it is more suitable for small businesses.
- The Plus plan starts at $49/month and accommodates 25 users. This plan offers SMS marketing and email support to boost your business.
- The Professional plan costs $149 per month/50 users. It offers numerous communication channels, sales engagement automation, and website personalization.
- The Enterprise plan stands at $ 279 per month and it supports unlimited users.
14. Copper
Excellent CRM Solution for Google-Driven Businesses that Value Simplicity.
Copper is an excellent customer relationship management (CRM) solution that focuses on workflow automation and simplicity. This easy-to-use software provides a better structure for lead management and growth in customer relationships.
Key features
Automation
One of the most significant factors Copper offers businesses is seamless workflow automation. With Copper, you can easily automate repetitive tasks and reduce manual data entry and administration tasks. Another time-saver is the ability to sync contacts between Copper and Google Contacts.
Lead Management
Copper CRM provides a robust set of lead management features to help your team generate, store, and nurture new leads. This CRM system also allows you to set up custom triggers and reminders based on where a lead sits in the pipeline.
Reporting
Copper CRM simplifies the reporting process and makes it easy for everyone on your team to use. From templates and a drag-and-drop interface, you can easily lay out the most crucial data you need to see (or share) at a glance without headaches. It only takes a few clicks to see or share data.
Pros
- Most of its features are accessible from your Gmail or Inbox
- Pulls new leads directly from the email into lead management listing
Cons
- Pipelines often don’t contain qualified leads
- Doesn’t do well with third party integrations besides Google
Pricing
Copper provides a 14-day free trial for its new users. Pricing starts at $25/month/user, billed annually, and the highest plan costs $119/user/month, billed annually.
15. Insightly
Extremely Intuitive CRM Solution With a Wide Range of Functions.
Insightly is a visually attractive and intuitive client management software with various functionalities. It is a robust platform with marketing automation tools that help businesses connect their marketing activities with operations and sales.
Key features
Relationship Tracking
Insightly’s relationship tracking feature is a great asset for small businesses to have better customer relationships. It helps you find all your contact points within an organization with just a few clicks, thereby saving time.
Contact Tagging
You can easily classify all your customer data and contacts based on influence. This software’s contact tagging feature uses tags to resolve your contact management needs.
Start Dates on Tasks
This CRM software helps you set due dates and start dates. Your organization will set more realistic expectations, thereby providing better CRM services.
Project Categories
With this feature, Insightly doubles as a project management tool that helps businesses that provide different services or products to categorize their projects. This feature helps to visualize resource allocation.
Pros
- Comes with a dynamic design
- Extensive range of third-party integrations
- Provides built-in project management features
Cons
- So many features can be confusing
Pricing
Insightly CRM offers a free trial to all new customers. It offers three paid plans that start with $29/month/user and can be as high as $99/month/user.
16. NetHunt CRM
Excellent Cloud-Based CRM Software for Sales Teams.
NetHunt CRM is an all-in-one cloud-based CRM system for all your sales processes, from managing customer data to sales forecasting. It integrates with Gmail and supports lead generation via email, chats, messages, and social media.
Key features
SalesForce Automation
This modern-day sales savior reduces the labor of the repetitive tasks associated with the sales process. It gives your business a boost in the productivity of your sales team, as well as saves time and money with sales forecasting.
Web Form Builder
This lead management feature is NetHunt CRM’s solution to building and sharing intuitive web forms that help capture leads on your business website.
Pipelines
With NetHunts’ Pipeline, you get complete control over your sales process. You can also effortlessly tackle sales forecasting with each salesperson, your team, or your whole company.
Reports
You are sure to fuel your growth with NetHunt’s Reports. It keeps you updated on the sales activities of your business and translates them into key metrics that will profit your business.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Offers seamless integration with G-mail
- Highly customizable
Cons
- Limited third-party integrations are available
- Auto-create function often attaches wrong records to email threads
Pricing
NetHunt CRM provides a 14-day free trial for all its paid plans. The pricing plan starts at $24/user/month and can get as expensive as $96/user/month. There is also a unique startup plan.
17. SugarCRM
Best CRM Software for Marketing Automation.
SugarCRM is a customer relationship management software that makes it to this list due to its ability to effortlessly handle marketing automation, sales automation, and customer relationship management needs.
Key features
Reporting & Dashboards
Monitor your marketing, sales, and customer support metrics with Sugar’s Dashboards. Use Sugar Reports to turn your data into insights. Manage existing relationships better and build new ones – one customer at a time.
Sales Forecasting
Increase visibility and predictability of your overall business performance. Sugar’s sales forecasting software is designed for the individual user as much as for the decision-maker.
Campaign Management
Enhance your marketing and sales initiatives with Sugar’s campaign management software. Create, execute and track campaigns across multiple channels. Develop effective email marketing programs and easily capture leads from your website.
Project Management
Build and manage sales, marketing, and customer support projects. Streamline the tasks necessary to complete the job with our CRM project management feature.
Pros
- Integrates with multiple third-party systems
- Simple and intuitive interface
- Good customer service team
Cons
- Sugar’s server is slow
- New glitches develop with every upgrade
Pricing
SugarCRM offers a 7-day free trial. Its pricing model ensures that you do not have to pay for unnecessary features. Its pricing begins at $52/user/month, with a minimum of three users, and can cost as high as $1000 per month.
18. Nutshell
Unique CRM Software for Email Marketing.
Nutshell is a customer relations management software that provides an all-in-one growth platform for customer support, marketing automation, lead generation, and so much more.
Key features
Sales Force Automation
You and your team will be able to design and execute your sales process with this feature as quickly and efficiently as possible. Specify the actions and follow-ups that need to happen from initial qualification through final negotiations, put your email outreach on autopilot, and accurately measure the impact of your efforts.
Lead Management
Nutshell is one of the most flexible CRM for sales reps; it offers up to four ways to view and manage your sales pipeline. Map view, List view, Chart view, and Board view are all designed to help you decide on the best ways to work your deals, save views and share with your team.
Marketing Automation
With Nutshell, you get multiple marketing tools that help you send specially designed marketing emails to thousands of contacts at once, maintain flawless customer interaction, create custom audiences from your CRM database, and track the impact of your emails.
Pros
- Quick setup and deployment
- Enhanced team collaboration
Cons
- Not the best as a standalone
Pricing
Nutshell does not provide a free plan but offers a free trial. Its pricing starts with The Starter Plan for $20/user/month and ends with The Pro plan, which costs $42/user/month.
19. Agile CRM
Intuitive Sales and Marketing CRM Software for Complete Customer Engagement.
Agile CRM is a customer relationship management software designed for small to midsize companies. It provides a full breakdown of your sales cycle management and insight into how you can optimize your sales process to boost revenue.
Key features
Custom Reports
You can create custom reports to display data exactly as you need. You can schedule these reports to run at a particular time and deliver the results to your email inbox.
Deals
Deals is an Agile CRM software that helps streamline your sales process with a drag-and-drop workflow. You can drag deals between milestones for better sales process tracking and automation.
360° Contact View
Agile CRM helps you build a detailed profile for each contact containing their contact information, social media profiles, communication history, points of engagement, interests, lead scores, and related tasks and notes. You will have access to all this information from a single contact page.
Pros
- Friendly and intuitive interface
- Efficient email reporting
Cons
- Customer service is not the best
- Importing contacts can be difficult sometimes
Pricing
Agile CRM provides a free plan for up to 10 users. Its pricing plan begins at $8.99/user/month, and the highest plan costs $47.99/user/month.
How to Choose the Right CRM Software?
Choosing the right customer relationship management (CRM) solution for your business is no small task and can be pretty overwhelming.
How do you choose the right one with so many options that individually provide a different array of tools, CRM capabilities, and features?
We listed specific things you should be on the lookout for when making your decision and the best way to streamline your options.
1. Know Your Business Goals & Requirements
Before comparing CRM solutions, there must be specific business requirements or existing operational problems that you wish to resolve. Before you begin the selection process for the best CRM system for your business, you might want to consider your yearly business performance reports and use these to set future goals for your company.
You should aim to have specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. You must have an idea of the fundamental features of CRM solutions before you make your decision.
2. Gather Input From Various Teams & Departments
The best way to gauge if a CRM system is what it says it is as a potential customer will be to get the input of different departments in your organization.
Most CRM solutions come with features that cover functions like marketing automation, sales pipeline management, customer support, and many others. These functions tend to affect more than one department; hence it is vital to get their input.
3. Make a list of the Essential Features You’ll Need
After reviewing your company goals, determining your business needs, and asking related teams for their input, the next step is to compile the features you will need in a CRM solution. Divide the features you encounter into two groups: a must-have feature list and a nice-to-have feature list.
Ensure that you prioritize data security when creating your list. The CRM platform you choose should provide reliable customer support that’s easily accessible across multiple channels. Ensure there is provision for live chat, email, and phone support for technical assistance if you need it.
4. Research the Best CRM Companies That Match Your Needs
Once you’ve sorted the list of features you need, you will have to research the best CRM software to meet your needs. There are three ways you can narrow down your options and decide which CRM platforms to test.
The first is to ask colleagues, peers, and other business owners what CRM tools they use and their experience. Focus on the pros and cons and if they would recommend the CRM system to you or not, and the reasons behind their decision.
Another approach is to read online and printed publications that will give you an idea of which CRM tools are popular in your field.
Last but not least is to read online reviews from the customers of the software you might be considering. Ensure that the reviews are reliable and are not outdated.
5. Sign Up for Free Trials & Live Demos
While all the steps above are critical, nothing beats seeing the CRM solution you might be considering in action. In most cases, if the software does not have a free plan, there is usually a free trial so potential customers can test it before purchasing.
You might want to look out for free trials that give you access to all software features, allowing for a full assessment and giving enough free trial days for you to get a complete sense of the product.
The most effective way to maximize free trials is to set up a trial team composed of members from the different teams that will use the CRM. If you test your potential CRM solution like this, you will gather well-rounded feedback from the potential end-users.
Types of CRM Software
Operational CRM
An operational CRM is an approach to customer relationship management designed to improve business processes and securely store customer and prospect data on all your business activities. The key features of an operational CRM are to help businesses measure, analyze, and tailor their customer journey in real-time.
An operational CRM helps tie the goals of each team and ensure that they align with the business’ general goals. This CRM subset CRM is the best to use when marketing lead data is directly linked with the sales cloud and existing or potential customer data is handed to the service team so that they can provide the best support.
Analytical CRM
Analytical CRM is a subset of CRM where a company compiles data relating to its customer interactions to boost customer retention and satisfaction rates.
This CRM subset is a behind-the-scenes process; your customer is unaware of the capture and analysis of their actions and interactions with your organization.
With this approach, companies may forecast consumer behavior and recommend better goods they are more likely to respond to based on the information collected about customer behaviors, experiences, and the end effects of these experiences.
Analytical CRM is an essential part of managing customer relations. Analytical CRM compiles and analyzes consumer data of various kinds, like sales, marketing, and financial data.
Collaborative CRM
Collaborative Customer Relationship Management (CCRM) is a CRM approach in which the customer interaction data of an organization is managed to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty for maximized profitability and revenue.
Collaborative CRM integrates processes, customers, insights, and strategies, which allows your business to effectively and efficiently serve and ensure customer retention.
Collaborative CRM data is selected and shared to implement strategic customer and product analysis from customer interactions through chat, websites, email, and voice response systems.
It also supports several business processes, like sales pipeline management, invoicing, marketing, advertising, finance, and planning.
FAQ
CRM software is a software system that helps business owners provide a better customer experience to their clientele.
CRM solutions also deal with workflow automation, project management, marketing automation, lead management, and other functions.
We cannot just say that any one option is easiest to use because your specific needs will play a huge role in determining which CRM platform is easiest to use.
If we consider simplicity, we must mention certain customer relationship management software. Freshworks CRM, Hubspot CRM, Copper CRM, and Zendesk Sell are options you should consider.
Several popular CRM offerings are available today, and each of them is popular for different reasons. Monday.com, for example, is known as an all-in-one solution. HubSpot CRM is also a top-rated CRM offering due to its simplicity, and it provides a powerful and flexible platform for small businesses.
The most crucial benefit you get from CRM software is improved customer satisfaction due to better data insight and analytics, knowledge of customers, faster communication, and so many more functions that a CRM solution provides.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system helps manage customer data. It supports sales management, delivers actionable insights, integrates with social media, and facilitates team communication.
While Google does not have its own CRM tool, it effortlessly integrates with most CRM software, so you don’t have to go through any unnecessary stress as a Google user.
A typical CRM software provides a higher return on your investment by managing each sales cycle stage more efficiently.
Of course, you survive without making that investment. You might even be able to put together a CRM customer data repository with your spreadsheets and email. About 30 to 40 percent of marketers take this route.
As you grow, you’ll quickly discover the law of diminishing returns and realize that you need a CRM system.
Nucleus found that CRM with other third-party integrations brought productivity increases across sales, service, and operations and a 20 to 30 percent growth in business.
Of course, you need to compare the costs of the CRM software options.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP), which evolved from material requirements planning (MRP), is a way for manufacturers to understand and manage all the resources needed to operate a successful business. ERP serves as a shared database for all parts of an organization.
ERP also manages inventory management, order management, supply chain management, and data related to service organizations. ERP touches on procurement, production, distribution, and fulfillment as well.
On the other hand, CRM is software that manages how a customer interacts with a business. Sales performance management and sales incentive compensation are features also included in some CRM systems, but they’re often sold separately because of their complexity.
The fundamental difference between ERP and CRM is that ERP is for financial data and the finance department, while CRM is customer data used by the sales and customer service departments. ERP is often referred to as the back office, and CRM is the front office.
Some ERP systems include a CRM component, while others do not, but CRM software systems do not include ERP components.
HubSpot’s free account can store up to a million contacts and supports an unlimited number of users. Just because its free version is excellent does not mean that HubSpot’s paid plans are useless.
While opinions may differ when it comes to the best sales CRM software, in our view, Pipedrive will be ranked number one on the list of sales CRM software. This sales-focused CRM uses AI to automate repetitive tasks and covers sales and lead management.
If you’re not a massive fan of Pipedrive, then you can consider the likes of Freshworks CRM, Zoho CRM, and HubSpot CRM, to mention a few.
When discussing the best free CRM software, some names constantly pop up. The first, no doubt, is HubSpot CRM because it provides all the basic CRM features for free. The next is Zoho CRM which covers marketing, secure cloud storage, and sales for free.
When discussing the best free CRM software, some names constantly pop up. The first, no doubt, is HubSpot CRM because it provides all the basic CRM features for free. The next is Zoho CRM which covers marketing, secure cloud storage, and sales for free.
We've written in-depth reviews on the best CRM tools by country: best CRM in the UK, best CRM in South Africa, and best CRM in Canada.
Read our specialized guides on CRM for private equity and CRM for banks.
CRM Software Comparison
A CRM solution can't be completely flawless; however, the CRM software list above contains some of the best CRM software you will find. Keep in mind the essential features you need in a CRM solution so you don’t get swayed by the extravagance of some of these apps.
All of these tools have their strengths and weaknesses. We recommend some of the following CRM solutions based on their areas of expertise:
Freshworks CRM
Zoho CRM
To learn more about CRM tools and ERP software, you can check out the following articles from Founderjar:
- What is CRM?
- Free CRM Software for Small Businesses
- Best Client Management Software
- Best Client Database & Customer Database Software
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Martin Luenendonk
Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.
This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.