Best CRM for Freelancers: 8 Top Options in 2024

Updated Jul 14, 2023.

CRM software is not only for big enterprises; top freelancers are already making more money and saving time with it. Join them by choosing from our best five CRM for freelancers.

Pipedrive icon

Pipedrive

Try Pipedrive if you want an all-in-one CRM that lets you run your freelancing sales pipelines with less effort.
Monday icon

Monday CRM

Monday.com boasts of a no-stress setup for freelancers without any technical knowledge to get started fast.
Hubspot icon

Hubspot CRM

Choose Hubspot CRM if you want a free CRM that's packed with lots of freelance marketing features.
Freshworks icon

Freshsales

Do you want a CRM tool that combines lots of marketing and sales features on a free plan? Try Freshsales.
Zoho icon

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is your best pick if you love to be in total control of your CRM by customizing it to your taste.

Our work is supported by affiliate commissions.

Do you want to say bye-bye to spreadsheets like Google sheets as a freelancer? Are you tired of jumping from one client email to another till you are tired and burnt out? Should I show you ways to strike more freelancing deals?

If you answer “YES” to the above questions, read on. In this article, I will show you eight ideal CRM (including free options) that top freelancers are using now. Choose anyone you want and take control of your sales, deals, and leads from one platform.

Let's move on.

Best CRM for Freelancers in 2023

1. Pipedrive

The Best Overall Freelancer CRM

Pros
  • Access to unlimited & customizable sales pipelines.
  • Over 300 integrations are available on all plans.
  • Availability of 24/7 email and chat support
Cons
  • Limited reporting capabilities.
Pipedrive icon
Pipedrive
4.6
Editorโ€™s Take

Pipedrive is the first CRM tool for freelancers that want access to all the features, which allows them to take control of their marketing and sales processes from start to finish. The best part is that its plans start from less than $10 per month.

Best For
Best overall
Pricing
$9.90 โ€“ $59.90 per month
Annual Discount
Save 17%

Pipedrive is a top CRM tool that's focused on making sales easier and faster for small or large-budget freelancers.

Key Features

Deals and Pipeline

A visual sales pipeline is one of Pipedrive's best features. With Pipedrive, you get a clear and comprehensive overview of your sales process and momentum. It has an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface that allows you to add deals to your pipeline easily. As a freelancer, you can easily organize your freelancing deals and identify which ones will eventually work out successfully. Additionally, you can track the progress of your deals in real-time.

Lead Management

Pipedrive provides easy-to-use lead management tools to discover, manage, and track your new leads faster. Furthermore, you can classify, sort, and filter your leads to engage in personalized communication with your contacts.

Automation

Thanks to Pipedriveโ€™s automation tools, you can save time and effort while making more money as a freelancer. For example, you can virtually automate any stage of your sales process so that you and your team can focus on other important sales activities that will fetch you more money. Furthermore, select your triggers and arising workflows either by starting from scratch or by using any of the available templates that Pipedrive provides.

Customization and Collaboration

Pipedrive gives you full customization control over the stages of your pipeline. You can create, reorder, edit, or even delete your pipeline stages to match every bit of your sales process. That's not all; you can also add custom fields and multiple currencies while connecting with other useful apps with Pipedrive's open API. Also, effortlessly collaborate on freelancing deals and activities with your colleagues or other freelancers. It even allows you to share updates on sales operations and wins. This way, you can easily keep everyone informed.

Client Communication and Email Tracking

Engaging in active customer interactions is a major hallmark of a good freelancer. Fortunately, you can manage your communication process conveniently with Pipedrive. It gives you access to visual histories of your communication, contacts, and activities and allows you to manage contacts efficiently. The best part is that you can make phone calls straight from Pipedrive. Additionally, you can set up meetings and know when recipients click or open their emails.

Insights and Reporting

Apart from getting a clear overview of your deals and leads in Pipedrive's custom dashboard, you can also track progress against key performance indicators by maximizing the Pipedrive visual reports. Conveniently analyze your team's performance and identify the most yielding tasks and actions.

Pricing

Pipedrive offers four paid plans.

Read more Pipedrive pricing

The cheapest plan is the Essential plan at $9.90 per month, while the most expensive plan is the Enterprise plan at $59.90 per month.

2. Monday CRM

Freelancers Do Not Have to Face Any Learning Curve

Pros
  • Getting started is very straightforward
  • Easy-to-use customization and automation features
  • 24/7 customer support and daily live webinars on all plans.
Cons
  • The paid plans and add-ons can get expensive fast
Monday icon
Monday CRM
4.4
Editorโ€™s Take

Monday CRM is the best pick for freelancers who handle lots of freelance projects and want to handle everything in one place. Fortunately, you can set it up easily without any stress or headaches.

Best For
Easy learning curve
Pricing
$10/month โ€“ custom pricing
Annual Discount
Save 18%
Promotion
Free Plan

Monday CRM is cheap, customizable, and easy to use whether you want to manage your sales pipelines, leads, contacts, or client projects.

Key Features

Data Organization

Instead of merely jumping from one app to another, you can seamlessly connect all your new and current data in a single place. To get started, all you need to do is to import all of your data, such as contacts, leads, and accounts, into Monday CRM. And you can also merge duplicate data, thereby eliminating overlaps. For example, you can identify and merge duplicate contacts and leads.

Customer Relationship Management

Monday CRM makes your communication process better in three ways. Firstly, it allows you to get closer to your clients. Secondly, it lets you centralize all communication. And thirdly, it allows you to track communication with your clients. Easily send and receive emails by fully syncing your Gmail/Outlook with Monday.com. Additionally, you get automatic notifications anytime your email is opened or answered by a lead. Also, you can send personalized email templates that automatically fill out details based on contacts' information and history.

Automation

By automating your sales processes, you can save time and close more deals. Monday CRM allows you to assign leads to the necessary teammate and set reminders for pending activities.

Performance Tracking

With Pipedrive, you can easily keep track of your team's performance, targets, and sales pipeline. There's the sales forecasting feature that allows you to set the value and success rate of your freelancing deals. You can also maximize sales reports to track forecasts and actual sales. An example of advanced CRM features for performance tracking is the custom dashboards which allow you to get better visibility of sales deals and processes. You can get immediate reports of your sales figures and deal progress through the help of these custom dashboards.

Activity Tracking

Do you want to understand the capacity of your team while tracking their performance in real time? Then, use the activity tracking feature to access all your team's activities and histories, such as calls and meetings.

Integration

Seamlessly connect your CRM tool with your favorite freelancing tools or business apps. Examples of available integrations are Slack, Zoom, LinkedIn, and Google Drive. With just a few clicks, you can set up any integration with almost any app that you want.

Pricing

Apart from the free plan, Monday CRM offers four paid plans.

The cheapest plan costs $10 per month, while the most expensive plan has custom pricing.

3. HubSpot CRM

Free Freelancer CRM With Multiple Marketing Automation Features

Pros
  • Useful email integration and tracking features
  • Clean and simple visual dashboard
  • Has a mobile app
Cons
  • The paid versions are quite expensive.
Hubspot icon
HubSpot CRM
4.2
Editorโ€™s Take

Freelancers that want to run result-driven marketing campaigns and convert more leads into paying clients fast should consider trying out Hubspot CRM. They would enjoy the free and abundant marketing features available in the free CRM.

Best For
Marketing automation
Pricing
Free
Annual Discount
Available for higher plans
Promotion
Free CRM tool

Hubspot CRM provides CRM tools that let you manage your marketing, sales, and customer service in a single and intuitive platform.

Key Features

Lead and Contact Management

Manage and organize all your contacts in one simple but powerful platform. Easily track every single detail of your contact relationships in one place. Another worthwhile feature is lead management which lets you track leads from the time you discover them to when they convert to paying clients. You can easily keep every record of your leads, including activities and your communication histories. Therefore, you can use this data to build personalized campaigns that will allow you to close more deals.

Client Management and Communication

One awesome communication tool that you get from the Hubspot CRM is a universal inbox. The universal inbox gives you a single place to view, reply to, and manage every communication from emails or live chats. Let's say you have a website where you describe what you offer as a freelancer. Then, you can connect with your website visitors by chatting with them in real time, thereby helping you to convert new leads and close more deals fast. Additionally, generate a scheduling link that you can easily share with new prospects to allow them to book time on your sales team's calendar.

Sales Pipeline Management

You can smoothly manage your sales pipelines while organizing and responding to every issue. You can add deals to the Hubspot CRM platform, assign tasks to the necessary teammates, and track progress in the smooth dashboards, all with ease.

Email Management

There's the email tracking feature that keeps you informed of any activity that a lead performs on your email, such as when it's opened or clicked. From there, you can send a planned and timed follow-up. Hubspot CRM also allows you to convert your repetitive sales emails into templates. With these templates, you can create a library of documents that you can access anytime you want and share with whoever you want.

Other Features

Document management, ticketing, email marketing automation, reporting dashboard, forms and ads, team email, prospect tracking, business insights, and lead segmentation.

Pricing

Hubspot basic CRM is completely free.

Read more Hubspot pricing

But if you want to get access to advanced CRM tools, then you can subscribe to the Starter version, which starts at $45 per month.

4. Freshsales

Ideal Choice for Sales, Marketing, and Inbuilt Communication Capabilities

Pros
  • Clean and simple user interface
  • Availability of AI-driven sales insights
  • Access to advanced CRM customization tools
Cons
  • The free plan does not allow third-party integrations.
Freshworks icon
Freshsales
4.1
Editorโ€™s Take

Freshsales offers a free plan with basic CRM features that lets you manage your contacts and communicate with your clients efficiently. Still, consider going for any of its paid plans if you want to make more sales and close more deals with less effort as a smart freelancer.

Best For
Sales and marketing
Pricing
$15 โ€“ $69 per month
Annual Discount
Available
Promotion
Free Plan

Freshsales is a top and affordable CRM tool for small businesses and freelancers with many unique sales and AI features.

Key Features

Client Management

Freshsales gives you access to different methods of data visualizations such as Kanban board, table, and list views. And you can also get a summary of your CRM records. If you want to see and understand the level of your client's engagement, then you can easily access the chronological view of your conversations with them across various platforms, such as the website and app. For in-depth insights about your contacts, the details section will be highly helpful. Also, you can conveniently view sales sequences, modules, meetings, and activities, thanks to the Freshsales highlight cards.

Communication Channels

With Freshsales, you get to communicate with your clients on their favorite communication channels. For example, you can take advantage of the two-way email sync to connect your inbox with Freshsales. Then, you can match incoming emails with the necessary contacts. Doing so will allow you to build customized campaigns with email templates that you can use anytime you want. You can also maximize the Freshsales chat campaigns feature. With trigger-based chat campaigns, you can easily deliver personalized messages to your leads. Other communication channels that Freshsales provides are Phone, Messenger, SmS integration, and Zoom.

Automation

If you automate your complex and repetitive tasks, you can easily get more work done in a shorter period. Fortunately, Freshsales allows you to automate your sales processes using event-based triggers or conditions. Additionally, you can also set up interactive outreach campaigns while managing the follow-ups and reminders smoothly. Classify and order prospects based on rules and easily identify important territories using built-in metrics. And you can also auto-route conversations to the necessary freelance partners or teammates according to their skill level.

Deal and Inventory Management

Visualize deal progress and define sales stages by creating custom pipelines and easily track the rate of your conversions. Also, you can identify and track goals that you want to achieve based on your deals through the activity goals feature. That's not all; invoice management features are also available. If you are a freelancer that offers different freelancing services at different rates, then you can create a product catalog where you configure your pricing models and organize your product inventory.

Pricing

Freshsales offers three paid plans.

The cheapest plan costs $15 per month, while the most expensive plan costs $69 per month.

5. Zoho CRM

Customize Almost Anything As a Freelancer

Pros
  • User-friendly interface
  • Access to 40 customizable report templates.
  • Multi-lingual support
Cons
  • The paid plans are expensive.
Zoho icon
Zoho CRM
4.0
Editorโ€™s Take

Zoho CRM is highly customizable such that you can design and customize the needed CRM components without the limitations that most apps have. You can set up CRM workflow automation too.

Best For
Customization
Pricing
$12 โ€“ $45 per month
Annual Discount
Save 34%
Promotion
Free Edition

Go for Zoho CRM if you want a free and customizable CRM tool that lets you easily manage leads, contacts, freelancing deals, email marketing campaigns, and reports.

Key Features

Customization

Create a multi-layout format for every sales process and manage sales for multiple processes and products from a single CRM system. You can design your layouts by using links and buttons. Additionally, easily gather every data you need and customize it with fields. Track and discover information fast by creating custom views and filters. Moreover, set up multiple accounts without needing to customize them individually. All you just need is to copy the settings of one CRM account to the other accounts. Link different items to one customer by taking advantage of the subforms that Zoho CRM provides. Additionally, if you want to make sure that only the right information enters your CRM platform, activate the condition checks across multiple criteria.

Targeted Marketing

Easily classify your clients based on lead source, region, and requirements. This way, you can send customized campaigns to them directly. Also, automate your sales process and stay updated with each lead interaction with the lead nurturing feature. Additionally, use the simple drag-and-drop interface to build web forms for your landing pages to capture customer information. Furthermore, you can scan business cards with your mobile devices and import them into your Zoho CRM.

Campaigns

Conveniently set up different types of campaigns such as survey campaigns, email campaigns, Google Ad campaigns, and sub-campaigns. Then, you can measure the overall success of your campaigns, set budgets, and assign tasks to teammates.

Sales Performance

Use the sales forecasting feature to predict and plan your future sales smoothly. Also, build dashboards with custom views that show the stage of your sales process, whether ongoing, pending, or achieved. Note that you can also create forecasts based on hierarchies and territories. The territory management feature is what you need if you want to classify your clients based on products and regions. With it, you can set up rules based on freelancing services, countries, or districts. The AI prediction feature helps increase your chances of converting leads and closing deals.

Pricing

Apart from the free edition, Zoho CRM offers four paid plans.

The cheapest plan costs $12 per month, while the most expensive plan goes for $45 per month.

6. Agile CRM

Rich Free Plan for Low-budget Freelancers

Agile CRM - Sell & Market Like the Fortune 500

Whether you need traditional CRM features, appointment scheduling tools, or marketing tools, Agile CRM is a low-cost option you should consider as a freelancer.

Key Features

Sales Management

There are many benefits you get to enjoy under the sales feature of the Agile CRM suite. Is it the single-page contact management feature that lets you close more deals faster? Or the drag-and-drop task management feature to manage your projects effectively? Also, you can track the stages and milestones of your deals, thereby keeping your sales process running efficiently. You also have access to call scripts, one-click calling, and voicemail automation.ย  Furthermore, share your calendar online and automate scheduling, invites, and follow-ups. Agile CRM allows you to make your sales process more fun by making it look like a game.

Marketing

With Agile CRM, you can handle your marketing workflows with the easy drag-and-drop builder. Intuitive and responsive templates are also available so you can build mobile-responsive landing pages fast. That's not all; you also have access to comprehensive email marketing tools, newsletters, and analytics. Add mobile messaging to your campaigns and send personalized SMSs to your multiple clients. Another important feature is email tracking which allows you to track your email performance with the right sets of metrics. In this century, where social media is king, Agile CRM allows you to integrate social media into your contact views and marketing campaigns.

Service

Seamlessly set up a help desk and provide personalized customer experiences to your clients. Query and analyze clients' feedback, significantly improve customer relations, resolve customer queries fast, and take advantage of pre-formatted replies to deliver responses quickly. And you can also set up a self-service portal so your clients can resolve common issues themselves. Another feature is intelligent views. With smart views, you can prioritize your tickets and visualize them on the dashboard after classifying them by the right conditions.

Integration

Seamlessly connect with other tools that you use as a freelancer, including social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And did I mention that you can also integrate your Agile CRM with Google apps?

Pricing

Agile has a free plan and three paid versions.

Agile CRM - Pricing Plan

The cheapest plan costs $8.99, while the most expensive plan goes for $47.99 per month.

Pros

  • Clear contact timelines
  • Calendar and appointment scheduling tools
  • Personal branding for marketing campaigns

Cons

  • Few integrations on the lower plans.

7. Sendinblue

Best Freelancer CRM for Meeting Scheduling

Sendinblue - Prepare for takeoff

Sendinblue is a simple-to-use sales CRM for freelancers that want to track all their deals in a single place and manage their customer relationships effectively.

Key Features

Deal and Sales Pipeline Management

Easily get access to a comprehensive 360-degree view of all your deals. This way, you can know the deals that drive your revenue the most. Another major benefit of the Sendinblue CRM is that you can centralize all your deals in a single place. Also, you can import your existing deals into the Sendinblue CRM platform with just a few clicks. Conveniently customize your pipeline stages to your preference and get an overview of your freelancing deals. You can, therefore, set up and track opportunities at every pipeline stage.

Sales Pipelines Automation (Future Feature)

If you want to save time and focus on more important tasks, then the Sendinblue sales pipelines automation feature comes in handy. With it, you can automate your repetitive sales tasks and multiple steps in your pipeline. Also, anytime you create or move new tasks, contacts, and deals in your pipeline, workflows are triggered.

Customer Interaction and Team Collaboration

With Sendinblue, you can track the history of every client interaction to know about the deals that you won and the ones you lost. That's not all; you also have access to a comprehensive 360-degree view of your open deals. Collaborating with your team is a lot easier when you choose Sendinblue. Keep everyone on the same page by attaching documents, adding notes, linking contacts, and assigning tasks to the necessary team members. This way, you can increase your team's performance and objectives.

Sendinblue Meetings

With this feature, your clients can schedule meetings with you easily and quickly. You can join from any device that you want, record your sessions, or share your screen. Other available benefits are seamless scheduling tools and custom booking pages.

Conversations

Easily centralize all your client's conversations in a single place and connect with your clients on their favorite social media platforms, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger. Sendinblue also features a chatbot that allows you to provide answers to queries and questions by your website visitors. Thus, you can convert visitors to clients fast.

Integrations

Plugins for various categories such as CRM, contact management, lead generation and forms, email creation, developer tools, and automation platforms.

Pricing

Apart from the free plan, Sendinblue offers three paid plans.

Sendinblue - Pricing Plan

Read more Sendinblue Pricing

The cheapest plan starts from $25 per month, while the most expensive program offers custom pricing.

Pros

  • Access to drag and drop editor on all plans
  • Availability of the Sendinblue WordPress plugin
  • Useful e-commerce and document management features

Con

  • Sendinblue is expensive.

8. Streak

Enjoy Streak Right From Your Gmail

Streak - Manage Projects from Gmail

Streak CRM, built into Gmail and accessible on both web and mobile, allows you to manage your freelancing workflows straight from your inbox.

Key Features

Data Tracking

Thanks to Streak, you can track anything that you want, such as your pipelines, data, and contacts, straight into your inbox. Also, you have access to custom views of your pipelines where you can filter, search, and sort your data. Streak also allows you to track and share files, notes, emails, call logs, and tasks with your team members.

Workflow Customization and Google Sheets Integration

Easily import and export your data by taking advantage of the Google sheets integration with Streak. However, you can also upload a CSV directly. Customize your workflow by adding, personalizing, rearranging, coloring, or removing your pipeline stages. You can also add as many stages as you want. Streak supports all input types, such as checkboxes, text, numbers, lists, tags, contacts, and formulas. And you can use the Streak magic columns to automatically fill in data too.

Mobile Apps

Streak lets you stay informed and updated anywhere you go, thanks to its mobile apps and native integrations. For example, you can search your whole pipeline from your mobile device and view impending tasks with the Today Widget. With Streak, you can easily track calls from your mobile devices and gather notes for future reference. Starting a call on Streak is straightforward. All you have to do is to send contacts from your pipeline to your phone.

Email Power Tools

One of the email power tools that Streak provides is view tracking. And this is how it works; immediately after a client or lead sees your email messages, Streak sends you notifications. Plus, view your tracking information straight in your inbox. Organize your emails by separating the tracked emails from the untracked ones. There's also the email merge tool that allows you to send personalized mass emails where you can add recipient names or any pipeline data that you want. Other email power tools are thread splitter, send later, and snippets.

Integrations

Seamlessly connect with your existing tools and workflows. For example, you get over 1,000 integrations with Zapier. You can also integrate directly with the G Suite, and you can build custom integrations with the API.

Pricing

Streak offers one free plan and four paid plans.

Streak - Pricing Plan

The cheapest paid plan costs $15 per month, while the most expensive plan goes for $129 per month.

Pros

  • Enjoy powerful advanced features on higher plans.
  • You will enjoy the powerful Gmail integration.
  • Save 20% with the monthly subscription.

Cons

  • Limited integrations on the free plan.

FAQs

What is a freelance CRM?

A freelance CRM is a software that allows you to manage clients' data and keep track of your leads and conversions while automating difficult and repetitive freelancing tasks. With it, you can handle multiple functions like marketing, project management, and sales altogether on a single platform.

Does a solopreneur need a CRM?

Yes, a solopreneur needs a CRM, especially a solopreneur that wants to make more money by getting less work done in a short period. With a CRM, a solopreneur can store, access, and manage comprehensive information on clients, contacts, deals, and leads without any stress. Some CRM even provides project management tools for effective project management.

Try the Best CRM Software for Freelancers in 2023

Now that you have seen the top CRM software you can start using now, it's time to get rid of those spreadsheets. Once again, here are the top five options that you should try.

Best Overall

Pipedrive

Try Pipedrive if you want an all-in-one CRM that lets you run your freelancing sales pipelines with less effort.
The Simplest

Monday CRM

Monday.com boasts of a no-stress setup for freelancers without any technical knowledge to get started fast.
Best for Marketing

Hubspot CRM

Choose Hubspot CRM if you want a free CRM that's packed with lots of freelance marketing features.
Most Ideal for Sales

Freshsales

Do you want a CRM tool that combines lots of marketing and sales features on a free plan? Try Freshsales.
Most Customizable CRM

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is your best pick if you love to be in total control of your CRM by customizing it to your taste.

Overall, you can consider other freelance CRM solutions on our list too. No matter what, don't go back to the old and boring way of handling your freelancing business without choosing a freelance CRM today.

Check out these top-rated Founderjar articles on freelancing and CRM.

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Martin Luenendonk

Editor at FounderJar

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.