15 Best Free CRM Software for Small Business in 2024
CRM software assists businesses in enhancing their customer engagements while automating a good percentage of their sales process.
This article will review the 15 best free CRM software for small businesses in 2023. Our top 5 choices are as follows:
Pipedrive
Monday CRM
Freshworks
HubSpot CRM
If your business wishes to streamline marketing and communications, free CRM systems can help to pool all your client information into one platform.
It often takes time and many trials to determine which tool is best for your small business.
We have made the process seamless by compiling and reviewing the 15 best free CRM software for small businesses.
Best Free CRM Software for Businesses
Our choices for the 15 best free CRM systems in 2023 are as follows:
- Pipedrive
- Monday CRM
- Freshworks
- HubSpot CRM
- Zoho CRM
- Insightly
- EngageBay
- Capsule CRM
- Less Annoying CRM
- Bitrix24
- Agile CRM
- Really Simple Systems
- Streak
- BenchmarkONE
- Free CRM
1. Pipedrive
Best Free CRM Software that Doubles As An Account Management Tool For Small Business.
Pipedrive is a web-based free CRM app and pipeline management tool that helps users manage sales activities and keep track of deals.
Pipedrive also provides customizable reporting, a simple calendar, email integrations, and automated processes to help you streamline your sales process.
You can start with the free version to get your feet wet with the software and then upgrade to the paid version later.
Best Features
Simple User Interface
Pipedrive has undoubtedly put effort into creating a user-friendly solution. Even complete CRM beginners will find the dashboard, which displays your sales pipeline, well-designed and simple to use. There is a step-by-step setup process that includes things like importing your data and syncing your email and calendar when you sign up.
Robust Integration
Pipedrive offers over 275 integrations with email campaign software like ActiveCampaign and lead generation software, even on the free version. There is an open API setup to ease connection with third-party services if it is missing a specific app you require and the opportunity to link with Zapier for access to more third-party software.
Activity Planning
Pipedrive's activity planning function gives you an overview of what's going on in your business. It is customizable, allowing you to establish multiple tasks and activities based on your specific business needs. You'll enjoy this feature if you want to arrange your deals to avoid missing a meeting, sales call, or deal target. You can sync your whole to-do list with Google calendar, making it easy to stay aware of what activity is coming up next, allowing you to prepare effectively.
2. Monday CRM
Marvelous Free CRM Software For Small Business With Top-notch Lead Management Functionality.
Monday CRM is a leading customer relationship management and project collaboration solution that organizes and synchronizes information in a centralized database to simplify project management and customer support.
This creates a platform for team members to collaborate and make decisions.
Best Features
Sales Automation
Monday.com includes sales automation features to help you automate different parts of your sales process like follow-up campaigns and outgoing calls. Doing so will help you to devote more time to activities that move the needle forward.
Contact Management and Organization
You can connect your email inbox to Monday.com CRM and automatically organize and sync your contacts in one place. That will help you stay organized and know where everything is at all times.
Sales Dashboard
This platform provides a quick look into your monthly sales via the Sales Dashboard. Examples of metrics you'll see on Monday.com’s Sales Dashboard are Customer Lifetime Value, Cost Per Lead, and Monthly Sales.
Integrations
Monday CRM provides a variety of integration with prominent business software, even on the free plan. Gmail, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and over 50+ more services integrate seamlessly with Monday CRM, making it easier to manage everything from a single website.
3. Freshworks
Outstanding Free CRM Software For Small Business With Many Easy-to-Use Customization Options.
Freshworks is a cloud-based free and easy CRM tool that enables businesses in various fields to manage connections with current and potential clients.
The free version of the Freshworks software suite provides a robust CRM platform, where customers can choose from five different products: customer service, sales, marketing, HR, and IT.
Best Features
Activity Tracking
Freshworks provides website and in-app tracking and an activity timeline for viewing lead activity in alphabetical order. Freshworks uses the information gathered to show how contacts interact with your business. Leads can then be assessed to determine which is ready to close a transaction and which requires additional follow-up.
Reports
Freshworks CRM does an excellent job of providing 32 different reports ranging from manual call logs, leads acquired monthly, email activity reports, and more. They're also created instantly, utilizing the information you provide to the software. These reports are available on the free plan.
Workflow Automation
Freshworks automates your workflow, allowing your sales teams to finalize more deals. Setting up rules helps automate tasks that take hours and resources. These custom rules can automatically delegate leads to sales teams based on characteristics like language, competence, and location. You can also create sales routines to automate operations like sending welcome emails to follow up on leads. You only have to set it once, and the routines will run in the background automatically.
4. HubSpot CRM
Best Free CRM Software for Small Businesses In Need of A Wide Range of Integration Options.
HubSpot CRM is an ideal free client relationship management solution for any company that aims to manage leads to allow its sales team to secure more deals and generate more offers. Sales and marketing teams can use HubSpot CRM for deal management, lead management, monitoring of sales pipeline, and automating email marketing.
Best Features
Tons of Free Tools
HubSpot CRM provides many free tools for small businesses. Invoice template generator, email signature generator, free business templates, and blog idea generator are all available. With HubSpot CRM, you'll never have to start your business in the dark.
Sales Hub
The Sales Hub can help users round out their CRM and streamline every area of the sales, marketing, and customer relationship management process. The Sales Hub helps to monitor and sort prospects (as well as generate custom views of data), send automated emails to the sales team about prospects, and offer insight via extensive email tracking and targeted email sequencing.
Integrates with Gmail and Outlook
Many sales teams spend days in their inbox, and the majority of them use Outlook or Gmail suite. HubSpot CRM integrates with these tools seamlessly. This means you can view all of the contact information and lead data for a customer as you're emailing them.
5. Zoho CRM
Best Free CRM for Companies With Remote Workers.
Zoho CRM is a cloud-based business process management software for companies. It offers an excellent free plan that provides sales and marketing automation solutions, analytics, and customer support.
Best Features
Easy to Set Up
Zoho makes installation and setup uncomplicated and straightforward. This makes it an excellent option for small businesses with little or no experience with CRM software. Setting up Zoho CRM is simple, even if you don't have an in-house technical expert. The provided step-by-step guide walks you through each implementation stage, simplifying it so you don't waste time learning how to set up and operate.
Pipeline Management
With Zoho CRM's sales pipeline management feature, users can identify, score, and assign leads to sales teams. This feature includes deal management and account management to give sales teams additional information about their consumers.
Marketing Automation
In Zoho CRM, marketing automation assists sales teams in acquiring new leads, creating and executing ad campaigns, and managing email campaigns. Thanks to Zoho's integration with Google Ads, users may see which ad translates to more sales. Users may also use Zoho CRM to generate and deliver emails, surveys, and drip campaigns using Zoho Campaigns.
Analytics
Sales teams can use Zoho CRM to turn their data into useful information. Users can generate custom reports and sales projections with the analytic function. In addition, Zoho CRM has a management tool that allows users to segment consumers based on their geographic region. This feature is available on the free plan.
6. Insightly
Best Free CRM System With A Project Management Functionality For Small Business.
Insightly is a free simple CRM solution for small organizations.
The platform combines all essential CRM features, such as lead management, workflow automation, email marketing, website visitor tracking, and bulk emailing, into a convenient package.
You also get good project management capabilities and an incredible variety of third-party integrations to expand its usefulness.
Best Features
Robust Integration
If your team uses third-party services that you enjoy, Insightly makes integrating them with your existing pipeline fast and straightforward, even on the free plan. Insightly also works with Zapier, which works with over 1,500 external apps.
Email Marketing
The email marketing features of Insightly are worth exploring. Utilizing the bulk email marketing feature, you can engage your prospect database without extensive technical knowledge. Insightly also tracks your emails; you'll know if your prospects have opened your emails and when they did or if they're ignoring your attempts to reach them.
Lead Management
Your sales staff can focus on potential leads thanks to the intelligent lead routing functionality Insightly offers. You can automatically deliver leads to the appropriate team member during each pipeline stage. Because of the colorful and simple design, your entire team will be able to track the progress of each lead. The dashboard makes it easy to see the progress and history of emails, phone calls, tasks, and meetings, especially the productive activity timeline, making it even easier to monitor the status of emails, phone calls, tasks, and meetings.
Pros
- Offers over 250+ integrations out of the box
- Efficient Google contact sync
- User-friendly interface
- Great customer support
Cons
- Uploading bulk contacts can be very slow
- Does not offer Gantt charts for project management
7. EngageBay
Excellent All-in-One Marketing and Sales CRM for Small Business.
EngageBay is an all-in-one CRM and marketing automation software for small businesses and startups with an excellent free plan.
EngageBay brings together all of the functionality you'll need for your marketing in one spot. This feature set reduces the need to purchase separate tools for various functions.
Best Features
Marketing on Social Media
From the EngageBay platform, you can actively control all of your social media content. You can use this platform to stay updated on all the latest updates and notifications on your social media platforms without going through several apps.
Email Management
You can customize existing email designs with EngageBay to send personalized emails to your customers. With this software, you would be able to categorize your list, track your emails, and create automatic email sequences for all of your business needs.
Multi-Channel Marketing
One characteristic that distinguishes EngageBay from other CRM software is its ability to market across many channels simultaneously. You can automate website messages, push notifications, and SMS with a few simple clicks.
A/B Testing
Every digital marketing strategy should include A/B tests. Different versions of your campaign must be distributed to understand your customer better. This will aid in understanding their preferences, so you can tailor your marketing to their specific interests and increase conversions. EngageBay's A/B testing capabilities let you test every aspect of your campaign to pick the proper working model.
Pros
- Reliable email and chat support
- Free version accommodates 1,000 contacts and emails per month
- Offers an effective marketing hub
- Offers video marketing templates
Cons
- Difficult to customize email templates and landing pages
8. Capsule CRM
Best Free CRM Software With Robust Features for Managing Contacts.
Capsule CRM is a web-based CRM platform for small and developing businesses that want to manage their business and client activities.
With the free plan of Capsule CRM, you can automate lead scoring can keep track of contacts, business partners, conversations, sales possibilities, and pending assignments.
Capsule CRM also assists small businesses with managing their sales pipeline, bids, transactions, and proposals, among other things.
Best Features
Robust Integration
Integration is a significant focus for Capsule CRM. NiftyQuoter, Google Contacts, Signable, WebMerge, TinyBuild, Quotient, and PieSync, are just a few of the integrations available in Capsule CRM. Capsule integrates with Mad Mimi, MailChimp, and MPZ Mail for small businesses running email marketing campaigns. Zendesk, Support Bee, Help Scout, and Enchant, are all compatible with Capsule CRM.
Excellent Support System
Putting a robust and agile CRM in the hands of small businesses without an intuitive user interface and excellent support will be incomplete. Capsule CRM contains many features that are nicely kept under a basic design. While some people may adapt quickly to this system, some businesses will find it challenging to become familiar with all the features. The good thing is that Capsule CRM includes a comprehensive and user-friendly support service with a range of ‘how-to‘ articles to guide users through various activities. The help page is well-documented and comprehensive, covering fundamental functions (like managing multiple sales pipelines).
Efficient Mobile Version
There's a considerable possibility you or your colleagues will need to communicate with clients and partners when on the go. Capsule CRM has created a mobile app that works well on iOS and Android smartphones to assist you in your endeavor. Almost all the functions of the desktop application are available in the mobile app. You can also initiate calls, create emails, and access contact location maps directly from the app, which is especially useful for contact management on the go.
Pros
- Easily integrates with Google Workspace
- Sharing of contact data among teams is easy
Cons
- Does not support bulk emails
- Does not provide many marketing features
- No live chat support
9. Less Annoying CRM
Best Free CRM System for Lead Management.
Less Annoying CRM is a CRM for small businesses that offers cloud-based deployment, numerous configuration options, and a dashboard that provides an overview of contact information, files, projects, and other helpful information.
This client management software helps businesses consolidate their customer information in a single place, accessible to the entire team. It offers an unlimited 30-day free trial.
Best Features
Contact Management
With Less Annoying CRM, you can have all of your contact information stored in one place. You can see all of the notes, files, tasks, events, and pipeline information related to a contact from a single screen. Plus, finding contacts is a lot easier with its simple search feature.
Shared Calendar
You won't have to go back and forth between different apps to use a Calendar. Less Annoying CRM ensures that your calendar and tasks are built directly into its system. You can decide to share your calendar with users at your company from other departments so everyone can stay on the same page. There is also the option to sync with Google Calendar for easy mobile integration.
Lead Management
With its simple lead report that always shows you an up-to-date list of every lead in your pipeline, including the status and priority of the lead, contact info, and the note from the last time you talked to them. Finally, you can be sure that you and your team follow up with all of your leads.
Easy Collaboration
Add unlimited users from your company to the system for just $15/user/month. Each user has their login and password, and you decide who has access to what. Whether you want your reps to access their data only, or you want everyone to share, we make it easy.
Pros
- Fast and straightforward onboarding process
- Great customer support
- Good mobile website implementation
Cons
- Limited email functionality
- Reporting features are basic
10. Bitrix24
Outstanding Free CRM Software for iOS Users.
Offering what might very well be the best free plan on the market when it comes to CRM platforms, Bitrix24 is a collaborative CRM software built to automate procedures in management for all kinds of businesses.
This CRM tool provides a unified and complete set of tools for managing your contacts, messages, emails, files, tasks, and projects.
It is a unique, user-friendly solution that supports web-based and mobile applications suitable to your iPhone or iPad devices.
Best Features
WebForms
With Bitrix24 free form builder, you get unlimited submissions, and the platform lets you have numerous users managing forms. The forms are customizable, online support payments and product catalogues can be included on your website or hosted for free at Bitrix24.com. You don't even need a website to use Bitrix24 forms. It supports different forms such as contact forms, quote requests, support forms, feedback and idea suggestions, online ordering, booking, and reservation forms. All fields are unlimited and support field rules and post-submit actions, like redirect. The forms you create are automatically connected to the Bitrix24 CRM, meaning obtaining valuable data got easier.
Deal Tracking
Bitrix24 takes deal management to the next level with CRM integration. It separates potential leads and serious deals from others. This software will help you manage clients and client relationships, directly leading to closing more deals. Its deal management feature does more than just track deals and leads. It should help collaboration and keep team members on the same page. Since collaboration starts with communication, Bitrix24 offers actionable work-chat, HD video chatting with screen sharing, shared calendars, etc.
Contact Management
First, Bitrix24 helps grow your contact base. Whenever you receive an email from a new contact, that new contact will automatically be added to your contact list. Whenever you get a call from a number not in your contact database, Bitrix24 automatically adds the number to your list. Even when someone contacts you via social network or a website chat, you can add them to your contacts. As your contact list grows, you will have to automate your communications with your clients, and this is where email marketing, robocalls, Facebook/Adwords targeting, and other Bitrix24 marketing automation tools come into play. Bitrix24 gathers all your customer communication channels into a single dashboard called the Contact Center. Integrated with CRM, this feature helps you track all your customer interactions and collect actionable marketing data.
Pros
- Free domain and website tools
- A long list of features
- Kanban user interface available
Cons
- Not the best marketing tools
- Steep learning curve
11. Agile CRM
Amazing Cloud-Based CRM Tool With Excellent Telephony Tools.
Agile CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management solution that offers telephony tools, appointment scheduling, marketing automation, project management, landing page builders, and knowledge base functionalities.
The software also helps users track website visitors to analyze customer behavior and provides marketing automation tools to help users create marketing workflows with a drag-and-drop interface.
Best Features
Contact management
Agile does not only help to keep your contacts organized, but it goes one step further and helps you to get to know your customers better. You can store the basics about your customer base and customize your contacts with information about their interests and how they interact with your brand. Managing your contacts with this feature helps you create lasting relationships with your customer base.
Project Management
The marketing and sales teams need to work together for your business to succeed. Agile project management feature helps you ensure that your teams are perfectly synced and avoid confusion about tasks or project status, preventing miscommunication.
Schedule Appointments
Agile’s online scheduling feature ensures no issues with missing a meeting or scheduling more than one meeting at a time. This, in turn, makes communicating with clients and co-workers easier.
Telephony
Telephony is a feature that helps you make and receive calls using Agile CRM and record calls and take notes afterwards. Some other functionalities of the Telephony feature include enhanced caller ID, call forwarding, and call scripts. Telephony is used to make every call and receive valuable to your business.
Social Media Marketing
With the multifaceted nature of Agile’s social CRM feature, your marketing team can integrate your CRM system with social media channels like Twitter and uses numerous techniques to connect with your customer base.
Pros
- Great for email marketing
- Easy to use
- Makes managing customer data easy
Cons
- Limited third-party integrations
- Lacks reporting tool
- The email feature is often riddled with bugs
12. Really Simple Systems
Excellent CRM Tool Designed for Growing Teams That Provides Excellent Customer Service.
Really Simple Systems CRM is a robust small business CRM that helps you work smarter by managing and tracking your sales leads and customers so you can get on with growing your business.
There's a customizable Sales CRM, plus options for Marketing and Service tools and external app integrations. So everything is in one place, enabling excellent team collaboration and customer relationships that drive sales growth.
Best Features
Opportunity Management
Really Simple Systems tracks all your potential and closed deals, allowing you to prioritize sales efforts and giving you visibility of your and your teams’ sales pipelines. It also keeps all the related information on a single page. The opportunity management feature is excellent for businesses that offer multiple products and services to their clients.
Reporting
Really Simple Systems features a listing report system and forecasting. Multiple built-in reports can be run or modified to meet your needs. You can create and download custom reports to data files and PDFs. With two influential report writers included in the CRM software, you’ll have enough to choose to generate management information.
Custom Charts
The Custom Charts feature lets you create your dashboard widgets from your CRM data. This might be a summary of your customer accounts, sales revenue, or a custom field. Charts are created similarly to CRM reports, displaying output values as pie charts, line charts, bar charts, gauges, or numerical values.
WebForms
You can use web forms to capture contacts from a form on your website that instantly creates a lead in your Really Simple Systems CRM. This feature can be used for newsletter signups, free trials, webinar registrations, demos, video downloads, etc.
Pros
- A simple intuitive user interface.
- Excellent customer support.
- Built-in email integration.
Cons
- Provides limited integrations
- Crashes from time to time
13. Streak
Dedicated Free CRM System for Managing Your Business Through Your Email.
Streak CRM is a dedicated platform for managing your business through your email. Streak allows you to work on everything directly from your mailbox.
This is especially helpful for people who face issues with managing communications in their offices.
Streak CRM offers all the tools and functionalities you might need to make your business prosper and flow seamlessly.
Best Features
Streak Inbox
The Streak inbox lives inside your Gmail but offers much more than your typical Google email features. Relevant information like contact info from email threads is automatically sorted into CRM data. You can also use this as a shared inbox among your team members. Email tracking is attached to this feature, so you are notified when an email is opened. Other email power tools include email templates.
Mail Merge
Mail merge is a handy feature for email marketing and sales follow-ups. This tool helps you send the same email simultaneously to various recipients. Another great thing is that this feature includes automatic follow-ups to ensure your mass emails get through.
Pipelines
With Streak, there are private pipelines and shared pipelines. You can use pipeline templates or customize your pipelines and share them across your team. These pipelines can be colorful and straightforward or packed with crucial data and fields.
Thread Splitter
Gmail sometimes merges conversations that should not belong together. You can use Streak's thread splitter to sort out those falsely fused email threads for better clarity. It also can be used if a sales team member has an email thread with one customer and the customer has a separate support issue. They could split that email thread to another department.
Pros
- It sits discreetly within your Gmail inbox
- Highly customizable
- Provides great productivity tools like mail merge, email tracking, and snippets
Cons
- Lacks many CRM features
- It only works with G-mail
Connects your CRM tools to Gmail with Streak
14. BenchmarkONE
Best Free CRM Software for Email Marketing.
BenchmarkONE is a free marketing automation and CRM solution that aims to help you effectively track and maintain both your prospective and existing customers.
It helps agencies and small business owners propel relationships into sales with all-in-one CRM and marketing automation.
BenchmarkONE’s email marketing tools integrate seamlessly with CRM for data that tells a complete story about your contacts.
It provides features to help users maintain and track prospective and existing clients more effectively.
Best Features
Lead Nurturing
BenchMarkONE helps small businesses nurture leads until they are ready to buy. This is a critical function of any small business CRM. This software makes it easy to serve relevant email messages to prospects and customers, nurturing them throughout their lifecycle. With this aspect of customer relationship management covered, you can use your time more wisely, and work leads ready to buy.
Deals
If you need help tracking business deals, whether they bought, didn’t buy, or are planning to buy, BenchMarkONE provides forecasting and future sales efforts to help this process. As part of their all-in-one marketing, sales, and CRM software, you can be assured of getting lucrative deals to help keep the revenue engine running.
Email Marketing
BenchmarkOne provides an impressive email marketing tool that captures your potential customers with personalized messages. Furthermore, you can access more than 450 customizable email templates to run more successful campaigns. With the BenchmarkONE email marketing tool, you can now automate your marketing emails. For example, you set a schedule for sending emails to specific contact groups. There is also the option to track your campaign progress still while making any real-time improvements it is needed.
Pros
- The customer service team is very responsive
- Fast, responsive, and easy to navigate interface
- Offers integration with various other software through Zapier
Cons
- Needs to include competitor website ranking and SEO recommendations to improve the market analytics reports
- BenchmarkOne's servers can be a little slow sometimes
15. Free CRM
Unlimited Free Software Great for Sales Pipeline Management.
Free CRM is a web-based software solution for customer relationship management and sales force automation.
It is a great free solution that provides contact and lead tracking, sales pipeline management and forecasting, sales, customer service, and business management services.
With Free CRM, you can automate sales processes, close more deals, forecast revenue, and share sales reports.
Best Features
Deal Management
The deal tracking tool and sales pipeline dashboard give you a comprehensive view of your sales activities. You get to know where every customer is in the sales cycle, deal size, contact history, and even competitor information to help design a more effective CRM messaging strategy.
WebForms
Free CRM web forms are answer surveys, questionnaires, and call scripts where data can be explained and inputted by your sales or support staff. The software helps you distribute the forms to existing and potential clients through a web page URL to get customer feedback. Form and survey creation is a breeze with our form builder, creating Wizard Forms – multi-page forms can quickly be followed and completed.
Reports
With Free CRM reporting features, you can gauge the effectiveness of your software solution and how well your sales staff is completing the sales cycle. You can also use reports that track system use for all your team members, helping you see where additional training is needed or extra customization in the application.
Marketing Campaigns
Free CRM can help you develop targeted marketing campaigns based on your customer profiles and history. It also executes email campaigns around time-sensitive promotions and opportunities with unlimited email. You get to track marketing in real-time, focus, and improve the quality of your lead generation. There are provisions for print, SMS, calling, and email campaigns on this platform. You can utilize the promotions function provided by Free CRM to track loyalty and give customers benefits.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Great for contact management
Cons
- System lags sometimes
FAQ
There are hundreds of CRM tools that are either built to be completely free or have free forever versions that you can use, and the great thing about these tools is that you get most of the tools you need for effective customer relationship management. Some examples include Pipedrive, BItrix24, HubSpot, Agile CRM, etc.
The needs and views of CRM software users differ, and there are numerous fantastic free CRM systems available today. But the best CRM solution is Pipedrive, not just because it is excellent for account management but also because it is an all-in-one customer relationship management software.
Each of these CRM systems excels in different areas. Some of these tools are lead management, reports, contact management, and email integration, just to mention a few.
There is also the need for project, time, and task management tools so you don’t have to go through the strenuous process of moving between multiple applications.
You'll face limitations with free CRM solutions that are too many to count. Unlike its premium counterparts that can support unlimited users, many of these free tools restrict the amount of ‘restricted users’ they can allow.
You will also have to deal with annoying ads and to be honest, practically all the features you will encounter on these free tools are limited. You should stay away from free CRM tools if your business is growing or you have a large organization. In both cases, these tools are useless.
Which Free CRM Software Should I Try
As you can see from the list above, there are numerous free CRM tools for you to choose from. Most of these tools cover the basics you will need for better customer relationship management.
Don’t forget that each of these tools has its areas of strength and weaknesses, so it is best to conduct proper research before making a decision based on your organization's needs. Here are our top recommendations to aid your decision-making process:
Pipedrive
Monday CRM
Freshworks
HubSpot CRM
Zoho CRM
Recommended Articles
For further reading on CRMs in general, check out the following articles:
- Best CRMs for small businesses
- Best CRMs for startups
- Best cloud-based CRMs
- Best simple CRMs (no learning curve)